Presumption of Guilt

by Archer Mayor

  Willy patted his stomach with his right hand. “Instinct.” He dropped his feet from his desktop and leaned forward to make his point. “Look, could it be a bunch of losers? Sure. But what if that was the whole point? If you grab a cop’s kid solely to make Dad lay off the case, that’s not gonna work. Everyone’s gonna go apeshit. But if you’re subtle, and just introduce the idea that the same kid—and everyone else who’s near and dear to this squad—is at risk, but for no clearly defined reason, what do you think that’s gonna do to the squad’s effectiveness and morale? On that level, you gotta admit, it’s brilliant.”

  “Only if you buy into it,” Sam pushed back. “Right now, you’re the only one making the point, so you’re bumming us out all on your own.”

  Willy held up his hand. “Okay. I wasn’t doing it for that. I just don’t believe for a second that Lester’s brat was taken by a bunch of teenagers. I think we ought to keep our eyes open for an alternate theory. Let’s not forget that by requesting a VIN at that time and for that address, they were almost guaranteed to get Dave Spinney.” He suddenly looked at his boss. “Speaking of all this, please do not tell me that the sheriff’s office is the primary investigator. Why the hell don’t we have it?”

  “Same answer to both questions,” Joe told him. “Conflict of interest. David’s family to us, and on the sheriff’s payroll. The state police are handling it. They’ll keep us in the loop.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” Kunkle grumbled.

  He was silent from then on, but what kept gnawing at him was the conviction that David Spinney’s kidnapping was not isolated.

  Only Willy knew about Dan Kravitz’s covert visit to Johnny Lucas’s house, and the resulting findings struck him now as only part of a sequence of developments. The discovery of Mitchell’s body, a main suspect’s elusiveness, and the kidnapping of one of the investigators’ children—as Willy was interpreting them—were starting to look more and more neatly aligned.

  There was something here darker, more current, and truly dangerous going on, he thought, than the ancient murder of a long-forgotten roofer.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “You were seen, dipwad.”

  Willy and Dan were in the restaurant, again after hours, again in one of the booths.

  “I don’t believe so,” Dan said. “On what evidence are you basing that opinion?”

  Willy rubbed his eyes. “I think I liked it better when all you said was Yup and Nope. Now, half the time, I feel like swatting you just because you sound like a fucking professor.”

  Dan smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry. We could return to that.”

  Willy sat back abruptly. “Forget it. How’re you so sure you weren’t?”

  “The house was empty. I checked it thoroughly. I located the security and alarm systems and bypassed them. I was confident enough that there were no remaining cameras to proceed.”

  “Cameras? Plural? Meaning there were more, beyond the one at the front door?”

  “Oh, yes. A pretty standard array.”

  “Couldn’t there’ve been another set, separately wired?”

  “Yes,” Dan readily agreed. “My standard, pre-entry assessment of these situations normally relies on multiple sources of intelligence, such as background checks, past social history, and other indices, to guide me in my approach. Your time constraints with this assignment did not allow me to reach that comfort zone, as I made clear at the time.”

  “For Chrissake,” Willy complained, essentially to himself.

  Dan, however, was not simply being academic. He was worried, if privately. He hadn’t told Willy of Sally’s involvement, and she was of paramount concern to him now.

  “Could we step back a few paces, Mr. Kunkle? What’s making you think that I might have been observed?”

  “You heard about the kerfuffle at the sheriff’s office today?”

  “I heard a news release reporting that a couple of deputies had misbehaved at the expense of one of their colleagues, resulting in their being disciplined. It sounded like a fraternity prank that got out of hand.”

  Willy grunted. That had been the sheriff’s doing, making Dave’s abduction sound vague and sophomoric and restricted to fellow deputies. High jinks duly reprimanded, with no names given. Not built to withstand much scrutiny, it was likely to work, given the lack of fallout and the waning keenness of the local journalistic cutting edge.

  “That was the cover story,” he partially explained. “People are saying I’m being paranoid, but I’m not sure it wasn’t payback for your little visit.”

  “Why would something involving the sheriff be directed at you?”

  “The deputy who got ambushed is a colleague’s kid. And nobody got disciplined—no other deputies were involved. Somebody else grabbed the young man, tossed him into the puckerbrush, and stole his gun.”

  “Was he harmed?”

  “Not a scratch. That’s the beauty of it. If it was a threat, the damage is all in the mind of the beholder.”

  Dan maintained his composure, not wanting to reveal the nature of his own fear. “If you’re right, the target was frighteningly close to home.”

  “That’s my point,” Willy said darkly, his violent nature coloring his voice. “Which means I want to get my hands on the asshole behind this, ASAP.” He stared at Kravitz. “Which brings me to the subject at hand—what did you get?”

  Dan pulled the canvas bag up from the seat beside him and placed it on the table. “I’ve included a thumb drive containing photographs and documents. There’s a fair amount of material in there—financial, personal, miscellaneous. Having no idea what you were after, I collected probably more than you need.”

  “Anything jump out?” Willy asked, foraging through the bag.

  “Nothing like the last time we worked together,” Dan said wryly, alluding to a photo album he’d found and brought to Willy years earlier, containing what the latter had referred to as “snuff pictures.”

  Willy looked up. “Yeah—well, that was over the top.” He slid out of the booth and slipped the bag over his shoulder. “Keep your eyes open, Danny Boy. Let me know if I’m right, or just seeing bad guys where there are none.”

  Dan usually saw his guest to the door on these occasions, but not this time. In fact, he was too angry to do more than sit and watch Kunkle leave.

  A careful man, not given to spontaneity, Dan had been put in an awkward position by Willy Kunkle, who didn’t share his self-control. As Dan saw it, Kunkle had pressured him into breaking and entering a target not of his choosing and in violation of his protocols, and, in the process, exposed Dan and—more importantly, Sally—to an unknown threat.

  It was time, Dan thought, to take some independent action, albeit for his own self-interest.

  * * *

  “He asleep?” Sue Spinney asked her husband.

  “Yeah,” Lester said, settling onto the couch beside her. “I finally forced him to take a swig of scotch. He didn’t like it, but I think it’ll help. It was all, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ while he was bouncing off the walls.”

  Sue kept her professional nursing demeanor, being fresh from her shift at Springfield Hospital. “Meaning what?”

  He caught her tone and became more focused. “Meaning pretty standard post-event adrenaline, nothing worse. Totally within the spectrum of a winning football team, or a pumped-up skydiver, or anyone else who’s just been in a high-stress situation. I’ve seen it more times than I can count.” He slipped his arm across her shoulders and drew her nearer, feeling bad about omitting the detail concerning the gun that had been held against her son’s head. “I’m not bullshitting you, Sue. You’ve seen it, too—probably more than I have. Obviously, we’ll watch for more, like PTSD, but that’s not what I’m getting so far.”

  She reached up and squeezed his fingers. “What the hell happened out there?”

  “Sounds like what he told us—three hyped-up morons in search of a rush. And it seemed totally out of the blue—they couldn’t�
��ve known who’d be responding to a VIN call. And nobody called him by name, either. I hope it’s not the start of a trend, but I don’t think there was much real threat involved.”

  She craned her neck to kiss his cheek. “That’s very sweet, honey, but it’s a crock. You do what they did to a cop, it’s a fine line to using his gun on him next time.”

  He looked at her, startled by her unsettling accuracy. “Susie,” he protested, “I may’ve been sugarcoating a little, but from what I heard, there was more male posturing going on than anything else.”

  “Cops are shooting people and people are shooting back,” she said. “It’s in the news every week.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say. His wife had never been a shrinking violet, but this was harder language than he was used to—as if she were at once reading his mind and beating him at his own game.

  But he was a deliberate man, if under a carefree, joke-cracking surface, and—as with his son earlier—he was willing to let his wife sort through her feelings before returning to the subject later.

  So, for the moment, he returned her kiss, got up, and announced, “I’m gonna head up. You want to join me? We could watch some TV, if you want to put your brain on hold. Couldn’t hurt.”

  She smiled up at him. “In a bit. I want to decompress first. I won’t be long.”

  She listened to him, first tidying up in the kitchen, and then tromping up the stairs.

  She had a good life—good kids, good husband, a job she still found challenging and worthwhile after so many years. Lester was in a great place, finally doing what he loved best, with people he respected. The change that overtook him upon joining the VBI had been transformative, and had turned the final trick in giving them all the sense of peace and accomplishment that she had always dreamed about.

  It was in that spirit that she’d wished her son well when he announced a desire to follow in his father’s footsteps and attend the police academy. Lester so clearly loved the job that she was reluctant to deny her son the same opportunity—although she well knew of its risks. Lester had never been a foolish man, but even so, he’d had the occasional close call. Plus, she wasn’t a fawn in the wilderness. Being an ER nurse for so long had exposed her to every kind of carnage and mishap this neck of the woods had to offer.

  All of which made hearing of Dave’s misadventure that much more disturbing.

  Perhaps it was the aimless nature of it that had frightened her—what she’d been telling Lester about the world’s encroaching violence. She thought that had Dave known the young men who’d mugged him, it might have made his ordeal at least partially comprehensible.

  Or maybe it was that he’d barely been given a chance to grow into the job before undergoing an experience that, as far as she knew, had never happened to another cop in Vermont’s history.

  Whatever its source, Sue now understood being the victim of a terrorist act. No one might have been hurt, and, as Les was hoping, the aftereffects for Dave might even be transient, but the end result was that she was now in fear for her son’s life, and—for his sake—forced to keep that distress under wraps.

  The mother in her raged at being put in such a position, and her anger made her want to lash out.

  But it was an emotion without outlet, forced to either die of its own accord—or fester.

  * * *

  Willy Kunkle didn’t have a home office. Sammie had once suggested one, safely isolated toward the rear of the house, and he’d tried it briefly. But among his idiosyncrasies was a distrust of anything habitual. He would often sleep in odd spots around the house, enter through the front or back doors on a whim, or variously park in the garage, in the drive, on the street, or a block away. He also preferred moving about with his computer and files, setting up shop at the dining table, the guest bedroom, the living room, or even on the floor of his daughter’s room, sometimes in the middle of the night.

  He’d been a lethal loner in the military, and had put his skills to repeated use. Now he’d absorbed many of the sniper’s quirks as his own in civilian life—moving restlessly and unpredictably, rarely acting the same way twice, staying completely still and silent for hours on end. Sam saw his mobile office routine as another extension of the same grab-bag of eccentricities.

  She was therefore not surprised to find him in the living room, quasi-pinched between the wall and the back of the couch, sitting on the floor with the sofa’s end lamp twisted around to give him light.

  She kneeled on the couch, rested her arms along its back, and peered over the edge. “Whatcha doin’, hunny-bunny?”

  He looked up at her, openly astonished by her greeting. “You drunk?”

  She chuckled. “Nah. Just lightening you up.” She tilted her head at his spread-out paperwork. “Cramming for finals?”

  “Could say that,” he said. “I had Dan Kravitz steal a bunch of stuff from Johnny Lucas’s house. I’m trying to see what he’s up to.”

  She poised her chin on the backs of her hands. “You are a piece of work. You know that?”

  “You’re not gonna give me the your-illegal-shit-becomes-my-shit speech, are you? How the hell else’re we gonna find out what makes him tick?”

  “Like everyone else in law enforcement?” she proposed as a question. “Through old-fashioned, court-sanctioned police work?”

  “Waste of time,” he grumbled, back to sorting through Dan’s research.

  “Okay,” she said. “Then, for the sake of form, and implying that I give a damn anymore, I will repeat that your fondness for breaking and entering—however you go about it—will in fact eventually cost us both our jobs and possibly our freedom and put Emma in foster care. Just for the record.”

  “Point taken,” he said, not looking up.

  “Now that that’s over,” she continued in a lighter tone, “did you find anything interesting?”

  “Not so far,” he told her. “But I am just starting.”

  “Why him?” she asked. “Why not the rich guy? BB? Or the bar crawlers?”

  “Johnny’s rich, too. And he acts like he has something to hide,” Willy stated. “I might sic Dan on the rest of them next.”

  “What’re you thinking?” she wanted to know. “At the staff meeting, you sounded bored by Lucas.”

  “I wasn’t thinking much of anything, at first,” he said. “Now I’m wondering if finding Hank maybe didn’t kick up a wasps’ nest.”

  Sammie made a quick calculation. “Because of what happened to Dave Spinney?” she asked, her voice incredulous.

  He gave her an appreciative gaze. “You’re good. Yeah. In part. I don’t like things that happen for no reason, so I’m not buying the whole teenagers-on-a-dare fantasy the rest of you’re so happy with. Also, I like Lucas ’cause he came outta nowhere, and wouldn’t open his door to a cop. Seemed way too hinky to me. Last but not least, if I didn’t get the lowdown on him this way, how else d’you think we’d learn anything?”

  “How do you mean, he came outta nowhere?”

  “Aha,” Willy exclaimed in a discovery-moment parody. “You didn’t read the fine print. In all those piles we’re collecting at the office, there’s background material we got from the fusion center on some of our players—what they were up to back when Hank was put underground. Most of ’em were either local or came up for the VY job, and then stuck around after—like the late Tom Capsen. But not Johnny Lucas. Lucas is just there, like Scotty beamed him down—the man without a past.”

  Sammie was trying to fit together the pieces. “Dave Spinney was trussed up and dumped because of something that happened before Hank got killed forty years ago?” she asked. “Aren’t there about fifty easier theories?”

  “Not if you line up the latest ducks,” Willy said. “We find Hank; we start poking around; I get Dan to snoop on Lucas, who was tipped off by Joe’s knocking on his door; and Dave gets grabbed. To me, it’s not much of a reach to suppose that Lucas caught wind of Dan’s visit—maybe through a video system Dan missed—and that Lu
cas, or whatever his name really is, then decided to issue a subtle threat by informing us all that he knows who we are, where we live, and who our kids are.”

  Sam was skeptical. “I don’t know, Willy—”

  He didn’t care. “Tell you one thing: It’ll make you a believer if another cop’s relative gets grabbed—or worse.”

  She scowled at him. “You better not be saying you want to set Emma up as bait.”

  He reached up and grabbed her hand, a virtually unheard-of show of emotion. “Babe, you know better. Maybe I am being paranoid. Fine. What I’m saying is that if I am right, I don’t want Emma in harm’s way. I don’t give a rat’s ass what everybody else thinks, or if and how they want to watch their backs. I want our kid safe.”

  As far-fetched as the conversation had become, especially given the little evidence Willy had to offer, Sam shared his belief that preparation trumped regrets later on. “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  “Having said what I did,” he said, “I don’t wanna go crazy. Louise is an ex-cop. That’s one of the reasons we picked her as a babysitter. So, instead of shipping Emma off somewhere, I say we restrict her to quarters, bring Louise up to speed, make sure she’s armed, and invoke a no-one-in, no-one-out policy for a few days. We’ll supply food and anything else she needs, and figure out a way for Louise to reach at least one of us at the drop of a hat, in case something comes up.”

  He paused to look around. “As you know, when I got this place, I made sure of its defenses. It’s not a bunker, but it’s got stuff even Dan might have trouble with.”

  In another first, he gave Sam a slightly embarrassed expression. “Too much? Too crazy, even for me?”

  She leaned way over and kissed him. “Not a bit, sweetie. It’s all good.”

  Of course, it wasn’t. As she left him to pursue his studies into Johnny Lucas, she couldn’t help considering the blurry line between any rational theory they were trying to establish in the Hank Mitchell case, and the possibly deranged conclusions that Willy was reaching in the current void.