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

personality. He’s a schmoozer, and probably a bit of a coward. Plus, he did make the phone call, which speaks of somebody seriously out of his element. And let’s not forget that the body was already decomposing.”
    “Good point,” Joe agreed.
    They reached the door, which had been sealed with yellow tape and a NO TRESPASSING order. Baern pulled out a knife and cut through it, explaining, “We might not’ve done this normally. But with the autopsy still pending, and no other residents, I figured it couldn’t hurt.…”
    “Sure,” Joe said. “You put a man out here?”
    “The lieutenant said it wasn’t warranted. The tape’s to discourage more Jasons from crawling out of the woodwork for a shopping spree, but the budget couldn’t handle a babysitter.” Owen yanked open the door, adding, “Prepare yourself. It don’t smell pretty.”
    It didn’t, despite the removal of Ben’s body. It was also no brighter inside than at midnight, every window being blocked by possessions.
    Equipped with flashlights and breathing with their mouths open, they retraced Jason’s journey through tunnel and over dunes, to where the funeral home and others had excavated around the landslide’s foot, mostly by throwing heaps of material across the room. Joe could only imagine the disgust that had accompanied the clearing process.
    “You were here when he was removed?” Joe asked.
    Owen was looking around, playing his light across the landscape. There was an overhead bulb burning, here and there, but to little effect. “Yup. Took pictures, too. Believe it or not, it seemed tidy compared to this. Everybody was in a rush to get him out.”
    Joe was trying to reconstruct the scene as they’d found it. “You never suspected foul play?”
    Baern sensed where this was headed. “Honestly? No. I know what you’re thinking: that we just wanted to get the hell out of here. I’ve asked myself that a dozen times already, especially since you walked into my office. I swear to God, between how we found Ben and what I found out later about Jason Newville, I can’t see anything here beyond a really sad accident.”
    “So, how’s that work?” Joe asked him. “Ben was walking by the doorway and everything from one room suddenly caved in on him?”
    Baern fidgeted with his tie. “That’s the way it looked at the time. Things have been moved—”
    “Not that much,” Joe pointed out. “There’s no place to walk by. You either approach the pile head-on, from this direction, or you slide down it the way Jason did, from the other.”
    Owen became a little defensive. “There are other rooms where it’s not a pile that spills into the next room, but a stacked wall. I was thinking the same was true here, and that maybe he was standing in front of it, maybe looking for something down low, when he destabilized the whole thing and it crushed him. I mean, it looks like the side of a hill now, but it might not’ve been that way originally.”
    Joe was nodding. “Okay. I could see that. Do you remember—was he mostly pinned by tools and hardware, or magazines and boxes?” He gestured toward the rest of the room. “Like what was thrown off to get to him afterwards?”
    “Softer stuff,” Owen said. “Why?”
    “I haven’t seen the autopsy photographs yet, and I know he was partially decomposed, but from what you told me, he was kind of beaten up—scratches and bruises and whatever.”
    His younger colleague pondered that a moment before conceding, “Which is a little unlikely from a pile of paper.”
    Joe faced him encouragingly. “Not impossible, but ‘unlikely’ is a good word.”

 
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    Joe was sitting in a booth at the back of an out-of-the-way restaurant in Burlington when a woman slid onto his bench, pressed herself up against him, and delivered a kiss. He responded by infiltrating her unbuttoned coat with his hand and caressing her flat stomach and the underside of one breast.
    Beverly Hillstrom broke