Presumption of Guilt (34 page)

“What's his story?”

“That's where it ends, pretty much. Old-time crook out of New York, according to NCIC, associated with the so-called Jack Panik family.”

“Mob?” Joe reacted with surprise.

But Willy was shaking his head. “Nonaffiliated. Also old news. I called a pal down there, to see what they might have. Jack died years ago. His daughter, Tina, took over. She's a spitting image of the old man, according to my source, but more clever and subtle. They got nuthin' on her that'll stick. Walter Nesbit may or may not have worked for her, but in what capacity, nobody knows who'll talk to us. According to NYPD, Walter's kept his nose clean for decades.”

“What about before?”

Willy snorted. “Suspected of having knocked off a couple of guys, using a garrote.”

“Did you fly this by Linda? To see if she'd open up?” Joe asked, suspecting the answer.

“My guess?” Willy answered indirectly. “Her refusing to cooperate is a dead giveaway she knew what was up. Good luck proving it, though.”

“And the Kravitzes?” Joe asked, admitting to himself that Willy was probably right.

“Walter hadn't started on them, if that's what you're asking. Our arrival was, to use your kind of word, timely.”

“Did he tell them what he wanted?”

Willy gave him an equivocal expression, not willing to admit that he knew the answer. “He asked who they were working for.”

“When they broke into Lucas's?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh,” Joe grunted. “So, there's an unknown party besides Walter and the Paniks.”

“Or Walter thought there was a double-cross goin' on,” Willy pretended to muse before moving to another topic. “Maybe it was whoever whacked BB Barrett. That's still the missing piece of all this.”

“True,” Joe said thoughtfully.

His colleague studied him. “You're sittin' on something, boss. I can tell. My money's on Greg—the son of a bitch's been buggin' me since I met him.”

After a pause, Joe said, “Could be. I been chewing on that since I got here.”

“You feel like sharing? It's only a class A, top-of-the-list felony.”

“Well, for one thing, unless Greg's some sort of
Mission: Impossible
mastermind, you said he had an ironclad alibi.”

Kunkle couldn't dispute it. “Lester was the one who joked that Greg hired a shooter, but I get what you're saying. Okay—granted,” he allowed. “Who else, then?”

Joe went on, “Lucas was at Stratton sipping wine and abusing parking attendants. The rest of the old crowd—Carlo, Jimmy, Lacey, and the others, including Sharon Mitchell—have all been checked out by us.”

Willy remained silent, letting his boss lay out the options.

“It started me wondering about the ‘why' part of BB's killing,” Joe said. “It could've been mechanical, like we were saying at one of the squad meetings—the Paniks cleaning up old garbage.”

“That's what
you
were saying,” Willy reminded him. “Basically, that BB was a loose end for a bunch of yuppie crooks who didn't want the past to bite 'em in the ass. I didn't argue the point, since—if we're right about the money laundering—BB still could've named names and caused trouble.”

“Which made me suspect that a Walter-type was already in the area,” Joe agreed. “Especially after you ruled out Greg.”

Willy smiled, enjoying this process, despite his reputation—among those who didn't know him well—as an action-driven, impulsive maverick. “'Cept we're now pretty sure Walter hadn't hit town yet—we backtracked his movements using the timing of Linda Lucas's kidnapping and the motel and rental registrations, not to mention when those cameras magically came and went outside Lucas's house. And it's not likely that the Paniks sent
two
triggermen, and then recalled the first one for no reason.”

“Yeah.” Joe stretched out the word. “Therein lies the dilemma. That's what got me thinking BB wasn't the purely mechanical problem we thought he was.”

“Something more personal,” Willy mused. “I can work with that. But again, who?”

Joe gave him a sad and tired smile. “I keep going back in time, trying to connect the Hank and BB killings somehow. We're trained to see a homicide as an act of impulse—you piss me off; I shoot you. Cause and effect.”

“That's the way it usually goes.”

“As it probably did this time. Except that the two events were separated by decades because Hank was so well disposed of. Where I'm going is that, instead of BB being knocked off as part of all this recent activity, his sins—as seen by his killer—were born when Hank was thought to have simply disappeared.”

“Which brings us back to Greg,” Willy argued.

“Maybe,” Joe hesitated. “I think you're on the right track, but not with Greg. He's the one who—for better or worse—has been wrestling with his demons.”

“Sharon?” Willy asked, surprised. “Little Miss Uptight? Lashing out at BB once Hank's vanishing act was explained?” He shook his head. “Why? If she'd thought BB had anything to do with Hank leaving her, she wouldn't've stood for Barrett putting the moves on her.”

“Unless she'd always thought Hank was coming back. Remember: We never did nail down if Hank left her or if she threw him out. If it was the second, her guilt might've gone through the roof after he resurfaced as a murder victim. People can get pretty tangled in their thinking.”

Willy laughed, rose from the guest chair, and crossed to the door. “Golly gee, boss, I wouldn't know anything about that. I'm as simple as they come. You wanna give Sharon another go with the rubber hose, though, you know who to call for company. I wouldn't wanna miss out on
that
conversation.”

Joe gave him a thumbs-up. “You got it.”

“Don't strain yourself in the meantime,” Willy continued. “And I'm glad you didn't get killed, by the way.”

Joe smiled. “Nice of you to say.”

Willy scowled. “It was, wasn't it? Sorry 'bout that.”

*   *   *

Kunkle stepped into the hospital's newly updated lobby and saw Sally Kravitz sitting along one wall, her hands dangling between her knees.

He sat a couple of feet away from her, staring into the same vague middle distance she was. “You okay?”

“I guess.”

“Tough day.”

“No kidding.”

He reached into his coat pocket, took out a roll of Life Savers, expertly pried one partly loose with his thumbnail, and offered it to her, expecting her to pass.

Instead, she plucked it free and slipped it between her lips. “Thanks.”

He worked another one free for himself. “Sure.”

The conversation lapsed. He let it hang there for a while before asking, “You waiting for somebody?”

“You, I guess.”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or the other guy. The older one. Joe?”

Willy nodded. “They're keeping him a little longer.”

He considered what she'd just been through—and thought of his own daughter, who, though just a toddler, had so distracted him when he'd thought she might be under threat.

“This have to do with your dad?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she admitted tiredly.

“You two're pretty tight.”

“We were. I don't know now.”

Willy twisted around to face her. “He'll always be there for you,” he said with conviction. “My bet is you're the one going through changes—maybe rethinking what you had, or thought you had.”

She seemed to absorb that.

In the silence, he asked, “If you were waiting for me or Joe, what did you want to know?”

She glanced at him. “For one thing, is my dad in any trouble?”

“The short answer is: No,” Willy assured her. “But Dan and I—and Joe—have had this conversation before. There used to be a don't-ask, don't-tell thing goin' on. Your father and I had an agreement, but you know that's over. That puts him out on his own from now on. Just another citizen. And in case you thought what he was doing was cool, I don't need to tell you it was illegal as hell.”

“I know. I know.”

“So, to answer your question, that's official. No more wink and nod. Your old man gets caught creeping around—or you get caught with him—you're done.”

“I won't be with him,” she said quietly.

He heard the loss in her voice. “The bloom off the rose?” he asked gently.

She gave him a sad smile. “I was being a kid. I thought it would be fun, hanging out with him. And it was exciting, doing that stuff.”

“Sure it is,” Willy agreed. “And dangerous, and maybe a little creepy. But no way it wasn't an invasion of privacy, right?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Turns out privacy is a little selective with my dad. I didn't know that before.”

Willy guessed there was more to that statement than he knew, but he didn't press her for details. She'd come to him, after all, which was a novelty in his life. Most people worked to avoid him. He was liking this.

“What're your plans?” he asked.

“Get a summer job,” she said. “Maybe away from here. Then college. Normal things.”

“Ah,” he responded. “That kind of a letdown?”

“Kind of. It'll probably be good for me.”

She stood up on that, checking her watch without real purpose—more as an excuse to leave.

Willy remained seated. “Probably,” he agreed with her. “Do me a favor?”

“What?”

“You just graduated from the knife-and-gun club. You've been tied up, threatened, scared half to death, and God knows what else. Give it time to sink in. And get to know your father. He's screwy, and I guess he hurt your feelings. Kids put their parents on a pedestal sometimes, which they don't ask for. And when that changes, everything collapses, and the parent is left wondering what the hell happened. I'm the first one to call Dan an oddball, but he's solid people. I just don't want you to lose out on finding that out for yourself—especially fresh from a string of super traumatic experiences.”

Sally looked at him, her expression soft and accepting. When he'd finished, she stooped and gave him an awkward hug.

“Thank you,” she said, and walked away.

*   *   *

It was dark when Joe pulled to the curb opposite Sharon Mitchell's house. The day had been warm, his window was down, and he paused to appreciate the novelty of spring's tentatively announcing itself—along with the otherworldly white noise that came from the unseen interstate running atop the massive berm in the distance.

He'd brought along Willy, less for backup, and more as a show of thanks for his not challenging Joe's thinking earlier, in the hospital.

There was symmetry here, being back where this case had begun, that Joe appreciated. It had even played a part in his current theory. As Willy had said at his bedside, there was maybe something personal beneath the money laundering so long ago, Lucas's early elimination of pesky obstacles, and the subsequent accumulation of cash for a lucky few.

Lost in all the machinations, the passage of time, and the bloody fallout following a chance act of jackhammering was the decades-old tale of a love affair shattered and a family destroyed—a blip on a crowded radar scope that only now had caught Joe's attention.

“You ready?” he asked Willy.

Kunkle hitched a shoulder. “For what, I'm not sure, but yeah.”

Joe opened his door and got out slowly, nursing his aching body and whispering to himself, “That makes two of us.”

They approached the house, noticing an extra car parked in the driveway. Joe rang the doorbell.

Sharon didn't appear surprised to see them. “Ah.”

“Mrs. Mitchell,” Joe said as a greeting.

She stepped back slightly. “You want to come in?”

“If you don't mind.”

She pursed her lips briefly. “I don't think that's up to me anymore.”

She opened the door wide and moved aside, revealing a tired-looking, limp-haired blond woman sitting on the living room couch facing them.

“Julie Washburn?” Joe asked, entering the room, working to hide his surprise.

The woman stared at him listlessly, her eyes red-rimmed and moist. Her expression didn't change, but Joe saw her swallow once, and blink resignedly.

“Yes.”

“I'm Joe Gunther, with the Vermont Bureau of Investigation,” he said, displaying his credentials. “I think you know Agent Kunkle.”

She ignored Willy. “Are you here to arrest me?”

He hesitated, glancing at Sharon, who stood with her hands slack and her head bowed. He'd homed in on this house by instinct, seeking enlightenment as much as confirmation. In his mind, the answer to BB's death had to have come from here—not logically from Sharon, necessarily, but somehow from the emotional tsunami that had engulfed her entire family.

Julie's stark question hit him like the revelation of a much-anticipated, long-secreted solution to a puzzle.

“I am,” he answered. “For the murder of Robert Barrett.”

She nodded, and then seemed a little confused, glancing around. “What happens now?”

A small moan escaped Sharon's lips as he said, “I read you your rights and place you under arrest.”

Her eyes darted for a split second to her mother, perhaps checking that she wouldn't collapse, before she responded, “Okay.”

He proceeded without hesitation with the
Miranda
warning, and followed with the unofficial but forever hopeful inquiry: “Will you talk with me now, or would you like a lawyer?”

To his relief, she replied, “What's the point? I did it.”

“Those're your rights, Julie.”

She pressed her lips together briefly. “No,” she then said. “I'll talk to you. Here?”