Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) (8 page)

“For the moment, yeah, but I’m sure we’ll get more. If nothing else, I bet the Philly PD has a file on him. Stands to reason, given what we think he was up to. There’s a lot of data that hasn’t made it to the national data banks, especially if it’s local, older stuff.”

Joe kept quiet for the moment, given the presence of their young outsider, but Ben Kendall and this Bajek having both originated from the same city seemed an unlikely coincidence.

He returned to the earlier topic. “Rachel, before we let you go, tell us more about these tunnels. You must’ve asked him what they were for.”

As it had been throughout, her response was quick and enthusiastic. “I did, but I never got a straight answer. Also, it’s not like there were a ton of them. I think I saw two or three. I always thought at least one might lead to his version of a den—just from things he used to say about ‘burrowing in,’ and ‘being as snug as a mouse in his hole.’ Remember what I said about how sometimes he reminded me of an animal that way? I actually thought it was kind of cool, and fantasized that at the end of one of them was a large cave with a TV and a pool table and all the rest. I know it wasn’t true, but that’s how I saw it in my mind’s eye.”

“God knows what it was really like,” Willy said in a low voice, a man well known for his lack of possessions.

“Speaking of nooks and crannies,” Joe said. “You mentioned some pictures that were missing from his version of a bedroom. Did you happen to shoot those with your camera, or were they off-limits?”

Rachel smiled shyly. “They were, kind of. But I shot them anyhow, when he wasn’t looking.” She gave Lester an idea of where to find the footage on his computer. A minute or two later, they were all looking at a trio of snapshots of a smiling young woman, thumbtacked to one of Ben’s walls.

“Pretty,” Sammie murmured.

“And he never identified her?” Joe asked again.

Rachel shook her head. “Nope. Like I said, just a friend. That was it.”

They asked her a few more questions about Ben’s living habits, getting little more in return, before thanking her for the video and her help, and escorting her to the door of their second-floor office.

“Was that tunnel booby-trapped?” Lester asked once the door had closed.

“I think so,” Sam answered. “After they got the body out, Joe and I gave what was left of the tunnel a pretty good look. You could see how the stack spanning that part of the passageway had been built off balance, with a massive hunk of metal positioned right over it.”

“The top of a welding table,” Joe filled in. “Course, that kind of heavy equipment was all over the place. But Sam’s right about it looking built to collapse. It seemed like the tunnel was narrower at that point, too, so the user would have to shove his way through to keep going, thereby triggering the cave-in.”

“Why?” Willy asked succinctly. “Was there something worth protecting down the line?”

“I wondered the same thing,” Joe admitted. “But we’ll have to keep at it. There was no more excavation after that. We sealed the scene and sent the crew packing. From what we could tell, there wasn’t anything to see beyond where Bajek’s body was found.”

“It was like the trap was the whole point,” Sam added.

“Curiosity killing the cat,” Willy said.

“Maybe so,” Joe agreed. “If Ben was aware of the rumors that he was hiding secret loot, he might’ve built it solely for that purpose.”

They’d each returned to their respective desks by this time, except Spinney, whose computer they’d been using to watch Rachel’s footage.

It was he, therefore, still manning his keyboard, who said, “Wow. That’s a double whammy.” He looked up at Joe. “Boss, you may not love computers, but when they work, they’re hard to beat. I was just checking e-mails and found a message from the Philadelphia PD—a Detective Elizabeth McLarney. She contacted the sheriff’s department with an inquiry a couple of days ago, which they then put onto the intel Listserv. But she’s not asking about a missing person named Bajek—she’s asking if anybody up here has ever heard of Benjamin Kendall.”

“You’re kidding me,” Willy reacted.

“Apparently it’s in context with a case they got down there,” Lester finished. “Here’s the contact info.” He recited McLarney’s phone number, which Joe took down on a pad.

He looked up at his squad members. “Any reason not to jump on this now?”

No one bothered answering, as he was already dialing.

The voice over the speaker phone was brusque, urban, and fast-spoken. “Detective McLarney.”

“Detective, this is Special Agent Joe Gunther of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation.”

“You gonna talk to me about Benjamin Kendall?” she asked. “What the hell kind of name is Dummerston?”

Everyone in the room laughed.

“Detective,” Joe told her, “I was about to tell you that you’re on a speaker up here. I’m with members of my squad.”

“Hey, guys,” she said, unconcerned. “So, who’s Kendall?”

“Why’re you askin’?” Willy asked from across the room.

“You’re no Vermonter,” she shot back. “Even I know that.”

“He’s ex-NYPD,” Joe explained. “A long time ago.”

“Apparently not long enough,” Sam threw in.

“Apparently not,” McLarney agreed. “Look, you’re calling me ’cause I got the ball rolling. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. Not the other way around.”

Joe could see that Willy was about to argue the point, so he spoke quickly, “Ben Kendall was a local hoarder, originally from your fair city, but up here for decades. We found him dead in his house a few days ago, of undetermined causes, and he wasn’t fresh. In the process of cleaning out the hoard, we found another body, also decayed.”

“Jesus. Don’t you people have noses up there?”

Willy could no longer keep silent. “No—we have houses, with things like trees and grass between them. Ya oughta try it.”

“He lived in the boonies,” Joe filled in. “But there’s another wrinkle to it: We just found out that the second body also has ties to Philadelphia. We got a name of Tomasz Bajek.” He spelled it out for her. “That’s all we have, though, and apparently the national data bank didn’t cough up any criminal history, which strikes us as unlikely. So, any help you could give us from local sources down there would be appreciated. You willing to share now?”

“We found his ex-wife, Jennifer Sisto, tortured to death,” she answered bluntly.

The air in the squad room instantly electrified. Joe felt his face redden. Beverly had told him that Ben had married before going to Vietnam, and divorced upon being discharged from the hospital. He’d had it in his notes to chase that angle down, to see what the ex-wife might have to offer, but he hadn’t done so. Now, not only had Bajek’s origins compounded the oversight, but Rachel’s missing photographs of the pretty young woman on Ben’s wall also suggested a sickening, coldly logical connection to what they’d just been told.

“Why was she tortured?” he asked, covering his embarrassment.

“We have no clue,” McLarney reported. “Right now, our theory is that the bad guys didn’t get what they were after, ’cause they ransacked her place from one end to the other. We figure they came up empty. And no,” she added without pause, “there was no record of a safe deposit box, or any alternate hiding spot. We’re still checking her background, coworkers, neighbors, and so on, but right now, it’s not looking good. Would you be willing to send me what you got on Kendall?”

“Sure,” Joe readily agreed. “Would you do the same with Sisto and whatever you can find on Bajek?”

“You got it.”

“When was Sisto worked over?” Willy asked, having reached the same conclusion as Joe.

McLarney gave them the approximate date, prompting Willy to say, “That sounds like it was after our guys got killed.” He glanced at Joe, but without criticism, and added in a quiet voice, “And after those pictures disappeared from Kendall’s house.”

“We’ll include whatever the medical examiner found out about Bajek,” Joe said, keeping on task. “Given the hometown coincidence, it may be useful.”

“Hey,” McLarney said, “you never know.”

“Okay,” Joe concluded, his finger poised above the speaker button. “Any full face shots of Sisto would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your help, Detective.”

“No problem, Hon,” she said. “Talk to you later.”

The line went dead and Joe looked up at his colleagues. “What did she call me?”

Willy shook his head. “It’s a Philly thing.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I’m sorry. I know all this field and stream crap is supposed to make me feel good, but I think it’s … I don’t know … unnatural.”

Frank Niles took his eyes off the road long enough to cast his partner a look. “You sure that’s the word you’re looking for?”

Neil Watson pointed vaguely at the passing Vermont countryside, admittedly not at its best—stark branches stripped of colorful leaves, grass killed by night frosts, all ready for a face-saving blanket of snow that had yet to arrive. “Cute. Come on. Look at it. It’s a butt-ugly waste of space. Even worse than the last time we were up here, poking through that sick bastard’s House of Shit. They should
do
something with this real estate.”

“You’ll like Burlington,” Frank ventured. “It’s got thousands of people. Traffic jams, pedestrians getting in the way, exhaust fumes. Maybe even manhole covers, just like New York.”

“You’re a funny guy, Frank,” Neil grumbled. “I’m just sayin’, ya know?”

“Yeah.”

“How much longer till we get there?”

“Burlington?” Frank asked, checking the dashboard GPS. “Another forty-five minutes.”

Neil unholstered his gun and checked to see if a round was chambered. A nervous twitch, of course. He never carried it empty or uncharged.

“I do like that they don’t have gun laws here,” he said. “I guess they’re not total losers.”

“They’re hunters,” Frank told him. “Or at least that’s their culture.” He added cautiously, “Still, I don’t think it would be a great idea to be seen packing heat.”

Neil replaced the gun angrily. “No shit, Frank. I got that. How long you think we’ll be stuck here, anyhow?”

Frank tilted his head philosophically, personally enjoying what was parading by their windows. He liked mountains and sloping meadows and quaint farmhouses leaking plumes of chimney smoke. But unlike Neil, he also enjoyed reading and listening to music and even going to a museum now and then. “You know as much as I do. Kendall gave us diddly before he croaked. The museum Web site said nothing about him or who was behind getting his pictures on the wall, except for that ‘anonymous donor’ bullshit I showed you. Maybe it’ll all be printed on a plaque on the wall when we get there.”

“And if it isn’t?”

Frank smiled pleasantly. “Then we do what we do. Find out who’s got what we need and have a chat with them, too.”

“That’s done us a lot of good so far,” Neil groused.

Frank shrugged. “We’ll get what the customer wants. That’s what we get paid for.”

*   *   *

Lester Spinney awoke from his nap and sighed at the long line of traffic stretching ahead of their temporary hilltop vantage point. To him, it looked like an oversized boa, its scales comprised of shimmering blotches of colorful automotive paint. They were in New Jersey, on I-287, driving south at fifteen miles an hour.

“Who
are
all these people?” he wondered aloud. “And why’re they out here, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“I ask myself the same thing every time I come here,” Joe replied. “Rough night?”

“Total waste. As a favor, I helped out a pal at the Springfield PD last night. A no-brainer, but it took forever.” Resigned to the wonder of so much traffic, Spinney reached into the back seat of the car to retrieve their case file, speaking as he did so. “Sam told me that McLarney had sent up something from Philadelphia, but you sprang this trip on me first thing this morning. I’m not complaining, by the way. But
why’re
we going there?”

“Sorry ’bout that,” Joe said, keeping his eyes on the bumper four feet ahead. “I was planning to tap Sammie for this, figuring she’d like to stretch her legs a little, but I think she saw it as a chance for her and Willy to get a little private time in, away from us. Was Sue okay with the short notice?”

“Oh sure,” Lester told him. “The way the hospital throws extra shifts at her, she’ll probably barely notice. It’s more Dave who’s on my mind right now.”

“Oh?” Joe knew that Lester’s eighteen-year-old son had recently joined his local sheriff’s department, so the concern was meaningful. Lester was in some ways his most dependable teammate. Also the unit’s only traditional family man, he was steady, reliable, good-natured, and smart. Hard qualities to beat.

“Yeah,” Spinney said. “He got into the academy.”

Joe looked at him. “But that’s great.” He hesitated before asking, “Isn’t it?”

Lester burst out laughing, setting his boss at ease. “Oh, yeah. He’s totally psyched. But nervous, too. He’s never been away from home, and he’s all worked up about being a wimp. Everyone at the sheriff’s department is telling him what ball busters the instructors are. You know the routine.”

Joe waved a hand at the manila folder now in Lester’s lap. “Compare the pictures of Ben Kendall with the ones of Jennifer Sisto, from the Philly PD. Tell me what you see.”

Les leafed through the pictures and pulled out the appropriate ones, as instructed. “Damn,” he said, half to himself, pausing over Sisto’s. “They sure worked her over. Thank God it doesn’t look as bad as I thought it might.”

“Difference between inflicting pain that shows and that which doesn’t,” Joe suggested. “Look at her forearms and especially that mark on her side, near her abdomen.”

“Okay.”

“You could argue that those could’ve gotten there any number of ways, but look at the same spots on Ben Kendall.”

Les pulled up a roughly similar shot of their case subject. “That’s not so easy. He’s pretty far gone.”

“Give it a hard look. See the similarity?” Joe asked.

Lester took his time. “That’s weird.”

Joe nodded. The traffic was beginning to pick up slightly. “There are others. Some are subtle—or hard to see, like you said—but I think they’re telling.”