Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) by Archer Mayor Read Free Book Online Page A

‘It was the war.’ You could tell it was a place he didn’t want to visit. I thought I’d get more out of him after I found the Vietnam pictures.” She indicated the exhibition again. “But I had enough on my hands just getting him to let go of them. Did Mom tell you that I pulled this show off only because I already had them at her house? And that I’d promised not to use his name anywhere?”
    “She did,” Joe conceded. “Was the anonymity because of his personality, or something else?”
    Again, she reflected before answering, “It might have been something else. I didn’t think it was, at first—that it was just shyness. But when we started negotiating putting on the show, I realized his privacy concerns were second to his wanting the pictures to be universal, and not about who took them—kind of the way the Vietnam shots are about the country and not the war. That’s one of the reasons I tried so hard to make this happen. The images are beautiful and haunting because of what they don’t say.”
    She looked down at her hands. “I guess now that he’s dead, that’s even more true.”
    Joe gave her a few seconds before he reached out and laid a hand on her forearm. “Rachel?” he asked. “Would you do me a big favor?”
    “Sure,” she said immediately, looking into his eyes.
    He smiled supportively. “Thank you. I’d like to see your video footage of Ben and his environment, but I’m hoping you’ll also be willing to come down to Dummerston and give me a private guided tour. I think it would help me to see the place through your eyes.”
    She stood up, checking her watch unobtrusively. “I better get to class, Mr. Gunther, but I’d be happy to help. It’s the least I can do after everything Ben did for me.”
    Joe stood also and thanked her again, shaking her hand in departure. After she’d left, however, he resumed his seat and watched the crowd slowly shuffling in and out of the gallery entrance.
    His most nagging question had little to do with what he’d spoken about with Rachel. Rather, he was wondering why, while purportedly conducting a simple favor for a friend, he was feeling the same adrenaline buildup that attended a regular case.
    His unit, the VBI, represented the elite of Vermont law enforcement, and its ranks were filled with the best, most motivated transplants from almost every agency or department across the state. Scratching around the edges of an apparently accidental death had nothing to do with his mission.
    Except that something about it was beginning to bother him.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    “Updating your porno?”
    Joe looked up from the computer screen, where he’d been watching Rachel Reiling’s unedited documentary footage on Ben Kendall. “Yeah. Found a flash drive in your drawer. Hope that’s okay.”
    Willy Kunkle, one of the three other special agents on the squad, laughed outright as he hung his jacket on the coat tree near the door. “Right. You wouldn’t stand a chance, getting into my desk. I’ve got it rigged to explode if anyone tries.”
    Joe believed him. Willy was a fellow combat vet—an ex-sniper, in fact—who embodied paranoia. Also, he was a recovering alcoholic, a transplanted New York City cop—although decades ago—and, most noticeably, the acerbic and blunt-spoken owner of a crippled left arm, which he kept anchored in place by shoving his hand into his pants pocket. It was an unlikely detail for a cop, but through the Americans with Disabilities Act, his own persistence, and—albeit never acknowledged—Joe’s help, he’d fought his way back from being disabled during a case years earlier.
    “You hear about the Dummerston hoarder they found dead at home?” Joe asked him, knowing how Willy tracked the police dailies.
    “Yeah. Thought that was accidental.”
    “It is for now. I’m just making sure.”
    To Joe’s surprise, Willy walked over and glanced at the screen, where Rachel’s images were still unfolding. Kunkle was