Proof Positive: A Joe Gunther Novel (Joe Gunther Series) Read Free Page A

cousin, it turns out.”
    “Ouch,” Owen said, although clearly relieved to gain some insight on why Joe was there. He leaned into the computer again, checking its contents quickly. “The ME sent me a preliminary finding. I didn’t think there was anything suspicious, or that I’d dropped the ball. Just a heart attack and some minor trauma related to the landslide.”
    “Undetermined for the time being,” Joe clarified. “You ever meet Hillstrom?”
    “The chief up there? I heard about her. She’s not much fun, supposedly.”
    “She can be driven,” Joe specified. “With Ben, she’s saying she wants to wait for the tox results, but that’s because she has no hard evidence of a straight-out coronary. This one is bugging her.”
    “He was family,” Owen suggested.
    “True,” Joe agreed affably. “But that should sharpen everyone’s game. Not just hers. Most people have family somewhere.”
    Baern looked down at the desktop, abashed, before looking up and raising his eyebrows. “You want to see the place? Where we found him? I wouldn’t mind a second pair of eyes.”
    *   *   *
    Dummerston is typical of many communities across Vermont, less an actual town than a collection of sub-villages. There’s an elementary school at one location, a church and municipal offices at another, the meeting hall and the primary fire station at a third. It’s largely a spiderweb of roads, dirt and paved, including the longest covered bridge within Vermont proper. But its spread-out quality notwithstanding, the people who live in its embrace are more interconnected than residents of the average urban apartment building. Visitors—and locals—sometimes poked fun at the layout, referring to the homegrown as “woodchucks.” Joe Gunther, however—a native of a similar town, farther north—knew better. These communities could come close to being disjointed families, along with a vitality—and a level of caring—that most neighborhoods could only envy.
    Owen Baern drove an unmarked four-wheel-drive vehicle to the end of a badly rutted, overgrown dirt road that finally ran out of ambition at a clearing on the edge of Ben Kendall’s property. It was past the foliage season, and what leaves were slated to fall had done so, leaving a skeletal superstructure of stark and empty hardwoods crowding in from all sides, as well as a dark blanket of rotting vegetation underfoot. To Joe’s eyes, it set the perfect backdrop to the bleak, time-pummeled collection of aging buildings before him, guarded by a thrown-up palisade of twisted and rusting machine parts that made the totality look like some sole survivor’s last stand in a postapocalyptic wasteland.
    “Wow,” Joe commented, stretching his legs beside the car as he got out, and trying to read the lay of the land.
    “That’s one word for it,” Owen agreed. “You can see the challenge to conducting a by-the-book scene survey. It reminds me of one of those man-against-the-machines movies, where everyone lost.”
    “That it does,” Joe muttered, choosing a deliberate course between the obstacles, heading for the compound’s main house, and fighting the notion that one of the bristling metal haystacks might suddenly stir to life. It also didn’t help that, typical of this time of year, the low sky was bruised and menacing.
    Baern fell in beside him. “Not hard to figure what Jason found attractive. When I interviewed him, he admitted that before he knew Ben was inside, dead, he didn’t know where to start. There was so much to choose from, he wished he’d stolen a flatbed truck first.”
    “Tell me more about Jason,” Joe requested.
    “Meaning might he have killed Ben in exchange for all this?” He waved an arm at the piles they were skirting.
    “Maybe if he got surprised?” Joe asked.
    Owen gave it some thought before shaking his head. “Never say never, as they say, but I don’t see it. Beyond a totally nonviolent rap sheet, I don’t think it fits his