Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) (4 page)

BOOK: Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series)
11.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“I take it that worked,” Joe suggested.

“More than I’d dared to hope. They hit it off. It took a while. Hoarders are not generally open to scrutiny, and certainly not fond of people invading their inner sanctum. They are at once embarrassed and possessive of their supposed riches. But Rachel was clever enough to show up first without her camera, and to keep private what she thought about his lifestyle. She’s a canny young woman.”

“Not unlike her mother.”

Beverly accepted the compliment. “Thank you. In any case, she eventually made it a habit to drop by Ben’s every few weeks, and he became a virtual tour guide of his world for her. You can see the footage—in fact, you’ll probably want to. He reminded me of that appropriately named idiot toady, Robin Leach—who hosted
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
years ago. Ben would hold up random scraps of junk and go into their histories and provenance as if they were objets d’art. Of course,” she added, backpedaling a little, “they were valuable to him, I guess, so I shouldn’t be judgmental.”

“Did Rachel finish her project?” Joe wanted to know.

“No. Actually, the story becomes a little more tangled. The project expanded as a result of finding Ben’s photographs. She stumbled across hundreds of portraits that he’d taken of his piles of possessions, almost as if they were family photos. She was astonished, of course. I’d told her that he’d been a photographer, but even I hadn’t realized that he’d kept it up. He’d exchanged the photojournalism of his youth for these abstract images of all sorts of—” she hesitated again. “—things.”

“Anything good?”

Her face brightened with pleasure. “They are amazing, Joe. Truly beautiful. When Rachel brought them home, it felt like she’d uncovered the lost masterpieces of some extraordinary artist. It was such a gift. They immediately made me think of past masters like Weston and Steichen, but with a style all their own. Some are so detailed, and almost voluptuous, that they look three-dimensional—reminiscent of those famous nudes and bell peppers that always appear in art books. But Ben’s extend even further, lending the same sort of sensuality to objects most of us regard as trash.”

“You have them?” Joe asked, surprised.

“Yes. That also took some doing. Hoarders are not prone to letting go. But given that it was Rachel, and that she promised to return them safe and sound, he finally came around. It didn’t hurt that she got the college museum interested in displaying them in a one-man show.”

Joe’s brow furrowed slightly. “How did they find out about him?”

“She showed her advisor some raw footage from her video project, including a couple of Ken Burns–style slow pans of Ben’s photographs. The advisor showed it to the curator, and then urged Rachel to convince Ben to share his work with the rest of the world.

“The irony was,” Beverly added, “that in the end, the abstracts weren’t the exhibition’s sole focus. Once again, the war came back to haunt, as Ben put it. Scrounging through the collection, Rachel discovered some old Vietnam prints. They were completely at odds with most photographs of that time and place—which always zeroed in on the violence. Like the abstracts—which are really still lifes—these were so compelling and unusual that the museum wanted them, too.”

“How did Ben feel about that?” Joe asked. “Sounds like he wasn’t too happy.”

“In many ways, my cousin was a fatalist.” Beverly continued, “He knew in his heart that he could never be free of Vietnam. But, to answer your question, this is where Rachel got really creative. At first, she was merely surprised to have found the Vietnam pictures. She never knew Ben had been over there. But when she returned to Dummerston to tell him of the museum’s excitement, she was completely unprepared for his reaction. He had a meltdown, and refused to be any further part of her plan.

“But don’t forget that by now, she had physical possession of the entire archive. It was at my house, where most of it still is. That gave her the leverage to slowly work him around to agreeing to have all of it displayed, albeit anonymously, and with only a token showing of the war images.”

“Nobody knows who shot it?” Joe asked.

“That was the deal. If the Vietnam pictures were included, they were to play a minor role, and there was to be no credit given.”

“Is the exhibition still on?”

“Not only on, but it’s one of the most popular the museum has ever mounted.
The New York Times
ran an article about it in their Sunday edition. It turns out that a reporter from the magazine section was in Burlington, visiting relatives, when they decided to see the show. Now everyone’s flocking to see it.”

Joe smiled slightly. “I take it Rachel got a passing grade.”

“Not yet, but this certainly won’t hurt. Remember, the video assignment is still unfinished,” Beverly replied. “And sadly, everything’s been tainted by Ben’s passing. There are so many odd aspects to the timing of his death. That was one of the reasons that I reached out to you, Joe. There is possibly so much more to it than what’s appearing on the surface.”

“Where’s Rachel now?” Joe asked.

“Burlington. She lives in one of the dorms, and I’ve already asked her if she’d be willing to speak with you. I hope you don’t mind. She’d very much like to, if you’re interested.”

“I am. I’d also like to see the photographs.”

His two statements cheered her considerably. “As I mentioned,” she said, “the exhibition is still up, but I have copies at home—along with hundreds more—if you’d like to see them.”

He waved at the waitress, commenting, “I thought you’d never ask.”

*   *   *

Hillstrom lived south of Burlington, on the edge of Lake Champlain, in what, to Joe’s eyes, was a tastefully understated mansion. Her ex-husband, Daniel Reiling, was one of the city’s more successful lawyers, and Beverly’s income as chief medical examiner for over twenty years was substantial. Even before Joe had heard about her moneyed background, he’d felt that she was well off.

They arrived in two cars, since neither one of them ever knew when a pager call might summon them to their separate duties, and began the second half of their evening in the kitchen, standing by the fridge and eating ice cream out of its container with a shared spoon.

Joe took advantage of their proximity to lean over and put his cool mouth on hers.

She chuckled as they kissed, lightly licking the vanilla from his lips. “This is where it began in earnest,” she said softly, reminiscing about an earlier late-night snack in this same kitchen.

He laughed. “That’s right. The famous midnight bowl of soup.”

“I couldn’t have you driving all night without dinner,” she protested.

“I remember getting more than dinner that night,” he said, kissing her again.

She dropped the spoon into the container and placed it onto the nearby counter before draping her arms around his neck and kissing him deeply. “I am so glad you accepted my invitation to drop by.”

He stroked her back, his fingers gliding across her figure, gathering up the fabric of her blouse until he’d pulled it free of her slacks. “I’m glad I happened to be working a case so nearby.”

She stiffened with a moan as he slid his hands up along her spine and unhooked her bra. Her fingers buried themselves in his hair. “There’s a sofa I’d like to show you, just through that door,” she murmured.

He reached around to cup one of her breasts. “I’d like to see it.”

In a slow shuffle, punctuated by dropped clothes, they worked their way out into the living room.

The ice cream was left to melt.

*   *   *

Ben Kendall’s boxes of photographs looked out of place, piled in the corner of one of Beverly’s immaculate guest rooms. They were old, discolored, dented, and scarred by a lifetime of being shoved about from one spot to another, and then—finally—abandoned in the heart of a hoard.

“Was he taking pictures up to the end?” Joe asked as they stood side by side, wearing long, belted bathrobes—after visiting the downstairs sofa and then using one of the largest shower stalls Joe had ever seen.

“No,” she said. “From what Rachel and I could determine, he gave it up about ten years ago—maybe longer. When she first found the still lifes, she told me that Ben seemed genuinely surprised, as if he’d completely forgotten they existed.”

“That seem likely?”

She pursed her lips before responding, “It’s possible. Hoarders covet their belongings while forgetting what they’ve got. It can sometimes be difficult to tell if they’re absentminded or coy.” She hesitated and then added, “Of course, we’re talking about the later work. Not the Vietnam material. That would have been a more emotionally charged topic, but Rachel didn’t discover that until after she’d brought all this here.” She waved her hand across the pile of boxes.

Joe got to his knees and pulled one off the top, opening it carefully. Beverly joined him, holding back the flaps as he reached in and extracted a thick wad of eleven-by-fourteen-inch black-and-white prints.

“See what I mean?” she asked as he began leafing through the collection—all of it documenting a mesmerizing world of angles and objects, light and shadow, at once detailed and open, seductive and disturbingly harsh. He thought back to her comments about the unlikeliness of scrap metal being able to compete with artistically posed nudes as subject matter. Now he could understand what she’d been saying. In his eyes, Ben Kendall had become the undiscovered genius that fiction so often heralds, but which so rarely exists in fact.

Beverly crawled to one side of the pile to drag over another box. “Here is some of the war stuff.”

Her description had prepared him for something unusual, but the close-up portraits, urban scenes, and vistas of Vietnam’s eerily familiar countryside were arresting in their peacefulness. Cumulatively, they were testament to how a culture at war can at least in part maintain the appearance of normalcy.

But there were others—a few images of soldiers on patrol, their eyes wide and fearful, of a land mauled by past explosions and fire—which struck a deep-seated chord of pathos and sorrow for a combat veteran like Joe. They weren’t numerous, or graphic. There were no likenesses of a napalmed child running naked down a road, arms outstretched, or of a South Vietnamese officer shooting a man in the head. But such icons echoed as distant memories nevertheless, and because of them, Ben’s pictures of a nation and a people struggling to maintain a peaceful routine became all the more powerful.

Sensing as much, Beverly laid her hand supportively on his shoulder as he studied the sampling before them.

“Such a waste,” she said.

He didn’t argue the point. He’d once followed the orders of superior officers to fight for God and country, never questioning—at first—how either God or the country’s fate were remotely being threatened by the enemy opposing him.

He thought of the costs, both immediate and long range, blatant and subtly corrosive. “And not one that’s run its course yet, more’s the pity.”

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

Philadelphia homicide detective Philip DesAutels logged in with the uniformed officer at the apartment’s front door and stepped inside. His partner, Elizabeth McLarney—the so-called “up-person” for this call, or nominal lead—was already there, having responded directly from the unit’s headquarters.

“You get to have dinner?” she asked. She was wearing a Tyvek suit, a disposable hospital cap, and surgical booties over her shoes.

He frowned as he struggled to match her appearance, variously pulling, grunting, and hopping on one foot as he spoke. “Girl had just taken my hoagie order, and—
bam
—the pager went off. It’s like clockwork, every damn time.”

Elizabeth reached out with her latex-gloved hand and patted his proud belly. “I think you’ll live, Phil. Draw on your reserves.”

DesAutels extracted gloves from his pocket and yanked them on as final preparation. “Very cute. What’ve we got?”

They were in a section of town just west of University City called Cedar Park—an early-1900s mixed neighborhood of two- and three-story row houses, apartments, small stores, a few restaurants, and a couple of churches. It was slowly undergoing a financial uplifting, stimulated in part by the muscle flexing of the nearby University of Pennsylvania, but its roots as a post–Civil War “trolley car” suburb of Center City were clear to see, as were the rail tracks still in use along Baltimore Avenue, the neighborhood’s main drag.

Not the high-rent district, but not the kind of area where McLarney and DesAutels spent most of their professional time, either.

Elizabeth had him follow her past a small living room with bow windows overlooking the front porch, and down a narrow hallway. They were on the first floor of a three-story Queen Anne row house, once a family home, but since then chopped up into three separate apartments, cramped and made awkward by the need to accommodate a landing, a bathroom, and a kitchen on each floor.

“Came in as a ‘welfare check,’” she said over her shoulder. “This woman’s best friend supposedly called her every couple of days, as a routine. She got a run of no answers, got worried, and called 911.”

“You talk to the friend?” Phil asked.

“Chelsea Kline. Not yet. She talked to someone from Detectives East, just enough to give ’em a name and number. I got a couple of guys driving her to the unit for an interview—also chasing down names of people the dead woman worked for. No alarm bells yet, and the BFF sounds like the real deal. See what you think.”

With that, she entered a kitchen at the back of the house.

Phil stopped short. “Whoa,” he said softly.

An older woman with short gray hair was lying spread-eagled on the floor, her wrists and ankles bound and attached by duct tape to four opposing, convenient anchor points. She was in the middle of a coagulated pool of blood, flanked by crime scene techs and a medical examiner, all busily at work like the curiously detached professionals they’d become through overexposure.

DesAutels joined his partner against a wall. “At least it doesn’t look like she was raped,” he said, relieved.

BOOK: Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series)
11.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Shadow Cabinet by Maureen Johnson
The Industry of Souls by Booth, Martin
Ghost at the Drive-In Movie by Gertrude Chandler Warner
This Perfect World by Suzanne Bugler
Appalachian Galapagos by Ochse, Weston, Whitman, David
Born of Illusion by Teri Brown
Maximum City by Suketu Mehta