The sniper's wife

Chapter 10

The trip to the Tombs downtown, more formally known as the Manhattan Detention Complex, brought back memories to Willy of life in boot camp-lots of yelling, manhandling, shuffling together in groups, and a general sense that one's position in the human race had almost slipped from sight. That impression was driven home by his being cuffed and chained not just to a heavy belt around his waist, but to another man beside him. Fifteen of them, only a couple of whom he recognized from the bar, and certainly not Nathan Lee, were driven by guards like a small herd of clanking animals, first to a general processing center designed to handle large groups, then into a van with caged windows for transportation to the Tombs. The mechanisms involved in all this, and the clear point of it all, heightened a small tidal pool of dread Willy had been trying to ignore.

He'd hidden his badge and ID not solely from embarrassment, although that had been a factor. He'd also been keenly aware of what could happen to a cop in a prison environment. And the Tombs housed almost a thousand prisoners.

Years ago, just back from Vietnam, in an attempt to return to normalcy, Willy had gone out on a blind date with a college girl. They'd chosen a movie house in Greenwich Village, very trendy and filled with the sweet smog of marijuana, to see a black-and-white silent movie by some German pessimist. It had been about a future of brain-dead automatons, ruled by an unseen autocratic force, inhabiting a world of oversized, jagged, steel-andstone structures, all designed with an indefinable but clearly industrial styling. The humans-as-cogs-in-a-machine point of the show hadn't suffered from any subtlety, but the image-unlike the name of the girl-had never left him.

As the guard from the van pounded on the roll-down steel door of the detention center's sally port off Baxter Street, sending up a rolling, clattering echo between the dark, high walls around them, the memories of that movie set, along with everything it implied, returned with the clarity of a prophecy come true.

Like the members of a chain gang, Willy and his coprisoners were off-loaded from the van, paraded through the newly opened gap-actually a narrow alleyway between the two buildings constituting the Tombs-and told to stand still while the metal curtain rattled down behind them, cutting off the exterior world with a guillotine's finality. They were herded through a small door beyond a guard station, brought down a set of tiled concrete steps, and told to line up along a sterile, hard-surfaced, Lysol-smelling hallway whose only decorations were warnings of what they'd better not be doing, carrying, or even thinking about while they were there.

The most telling environmental detail for Willy, however, wasn't the harsh lighting or the antiseptic odors or the constant presence of mostly overweight people in uniform. It was the sounds of incarceration-the constant slamming of heavy metal doors, far and near, the harsh buzzing of electronic locks, and the nonstop chatter of people on portable radios, usually asking for some door or another to be sprung open on screeching hinges. That hard-edged, piercing, brain-grating symphony gnawed at him like a rat chewing a wire behind a wall, and was made all the more insidious by the steady, upbeat, dismissive laughter and bantering among the correctional officers.

For a man who didn't like being boxed in by people, routine, or impenetrable walls, the cumulative effect of all this began taking its toll. By the time it was his turn to be interviewed by the booking officer, Willy Kunkle's only thought was to keep his mouth shut.

"What's your name?"

Willy stared at the counter between them.

"What's you name, bud?"

Again, he kept silent.

The officer didn't react as the cop on the roof had. He simply sighed, looked over to his partner, said, "You deal with him," and beckoned to the next prisoner in line, reinforcing how little Willy's choices mattered to his eighthour day.

And so it went throughout the entire procedure. Various people with various tasks asked him the questions assigned to them, got nothing for their pains, and simply passed him down the line. He was photographed, logged in as a John Doe, electronically fingerprinted on an AFIS machine, checked out for any injuries, strip-searched with a thoroughness even he found impressive, told to sit on a magnetic chair sensitized to any metal objects hidden in any body cavity, and finally relegated to a cell in the quarantine section reserved for the ill, the mad, the truly filthy, and the otherwise unclassifiable. For the time being, until the police could find out who he was, he would sit there, alone and thinking, trying to pitch the cool logic of the puzzle pieces he'd discovered so far against the personal demons that were nestling in the hard, bland, tiled walls of his cell. Joe Gunther got the phone call the next day, sitting at his desk in Brattleboro. As soon as he recognized the nasal New York accent on the other line, he knew, if not the nature of the call, at least its subject.

"This is Officer Denise Williams of the New York City Department of Correction. We have a man in holding down here who seems to be one of your detectives."

"Is his name Kunkle?"

Williams's voice, which up to then had sounded half asleep, perked up with interest. "You know we got him?"

"I knew he was in New York. Not that he'd been locked up. What're the charges?"

"Disorderly conduct, obstructing governmental administration, and resisting arrest."

Gunther winced at the bureauspeak aspect of the second charge, thinking Willy had made a career out of that one. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"That's not my job, but from what I heard, he was in an after-hours bar."

"Drinking?" he asked in alarm.

There was a pause. "Well…it is a bar."

"He's a recovering alcoholic-hasn't touched a drop in years."

"Oh." There was a slight ruffling of papers in the background. "There's nothing about drunk and disorderly here, but if he was on police business, we don't know about it and he's not talking. Hasn't said a single word since we arrested him. We only found out about him 'cause the fingerprint machine kicked back his ID."

Gunther mulled that over for a moment before asking, "Why was he arrested in the first place?"

"It was a sweep. Looks like just a wrong-place, wrong-time kind of thing, but I don't really know. I was just told to contact you."

"What happens now?"

"Not much. As soon as we found out who he was, he was arraigned and moved upstairs. I'm not exactly sure, but he might be on Rikers already, waiting for his case to be heard. Anyhow, if he's not there now, he will be. You want to find out, here's the name and number you should contact." She rattled off the information in rapid fire, forcing Gunther to ask her to repeat it.

He hung up the phone and looked across the small room. Sammie Martens was staring at him, a piece of paper frozen in her hand.

"What's he done?" she asked.

"Nothing much. He was picked up in a sweep at an illegal bar. They're minor charges, but it doesn't sound like they're cutting him any slack. He's on Rikers right now, from what it sounds."

She put the paper down on her desk slowly, as if it were a thin sheet of ice. "A bar. What's it mean?"

"For his career? Don't know yet. Getting caught in a sweep is no big deal. He might have had a good excuse. It doesn't sound like he was drinking, so maybe he was running something down. But they mentioned flight and resisting arrest. Those might be problems. It wouldn't take much for our bosses to fire him, he's made himself so popular."

Sammie sensed a weariness in Gunther's voice, and understood-even if she wasn't much good at it herself- that there came a time when making allowances for someone wasn't in anyone's best interests any longer.

But she knew in her gut that this was not that time. Unfortunately, it also wasn't her choice to make.

Gunther was watching her with a small smile on his face.

"What?" she asked.

"Don't worry," he told her. "We'll make a quick field trip. Find out what he's been up to." Willy Kunkle lay on his bed, his head propped up against a bunched-up pillow, staring at the ceiling. No longer alone in a small, dark cell, he was now someplace he considered far worse: in a huge barracks-style room, well lit with two opposing walls of windows, amid a serried legion of beds just like his own, each the tiny domain of an inmate just like himself. There were dozens and dozens of men here, bored, frustrated, restless, and full of the nervous need to talk, shout, throw things at one another, and get the ire of the few COs, or correctional officers, who watched them from a control booth at the head of the room.

He was on Rikers Island, which, with some nineteen thousand inmates, was touted as the largest penal colony in the world, depending on whom you believed. Mostly consisting of landfill, Rikers had over four hundred acres and hosted eleven different jails housing men, women, and juveniles. The facilities came in every conceivable shape, from open dorms like Willy's, for people accused of lesser crimes, to twenty-three-hour-per-day isolation cells designed for the truly out-of-control. All but a small percentage of these people were in fact inhabitants of a legal twilight zone, charged but not yet convicted of crimes that had yet to be adjudicated by New York's overworked, understaffed, around-the-clock court system. Some people had been living on the island for years, awaiting trial.

"Kunkle? You got a visitor."

He took his eyes off the ceiling and looked into the face of a tall, muscular Latino CO. "Who is it?"

The CO smiled broadly and quickly glanced over his shoulder. "Hey, Frank, he talks. English and everything."

Frank's distant voice floated overhead. "He tell you to get stuffed?"

The CO merely laughed and tapped Willy on his shoulder. "Come on. Get up."

Willy rose and turned to be cuffed, a gesture that had become second nature by now. He was then steered by the CO through a series of doors and long corridors, all ammonia-clean and shiny bright, feeling like a tiny particle in an industrialized intestinal tract, until he was finally delivered to a windowless beige room with a linoleum floor, filled with cramped glass-partitioned cubicles.

Sitting next to a man who was clearly a Legal Aid lawyer was Joe Gunther.

Freed of his cuffs at the door, Willy settled opposite them at the small table, his feet almost tangling with theirs, and addressed Gunther directly, ignoring the lawyer and his outstretched hand. "Now I know why I tried to stay anonymous."

Gunther didn't take offense. If anything, the attitude gave him hope that Willy was still functioning up to par. "Hi to you, too. And you almost got your wish. The AFIS took close to twenty-four hours to kick out your prints. You're a glitch wherever you go."

The lawyer tried asserting himself. "Mr. Kunkle, I thought you'd like to know our strategy in dealing with all this."

Willy barely glanced at him. "Just do what you got to do." He asked Gunther, "Is Sammie here, too?"

"You think I could keep her away?"

Willy scowled. "Shit. As if I didn't have enough on my plate already."

"She wants to help, Willy, and it's pretty obvious you need it."

"I need it from him"-Willy pointed at the lawyer- "not from you two."

"He's here because of us. I talked to the DA and the cops. Sammie was a character reference. Like it or not, we're helping you out. But I want something in exchange."

"Why? I didn't ask for any favors."

"You got 'em anyhow, and the biggest one is that you get to keep your job. The DA could've dropped the resisting arrest charge from the get-go, which is what's really hanging you up right now, but since the arresting cop was so pissed off, mostly because you put them all through a chase, the DA wants to do a little face-saving to appease the boys in blue. Your lawyer here will play his role, the DA'll do the same, and the judge'll have no other real choice but to kick you loose with time served. From our side, if you tell me what you were doing there, which I'm guessing had nothing to do with drinking, then I'll be able to clean your slate entirely with our bosses back in Vermont, and that'll be an end to it."

Willy pressed his lips together and didn't answer.

"Why were you there?" Gunther repeated.

"I was meeting a guy."

"What about?"

Willy struggled with the frustration boiling up inside him. He just wanted to get out of here so he could pick up where he'd left off. He didn't give a damn about his job or the good graces of his superiors or fulfilling any deal with his Boy Scout boss.

"Joe," he finally said. "This is private, okay? I got busted on some chickenshit thing that doesn't have anything to do with anything. If my job's in trouble because of it, then the whole bunch of you are stupider than I thought. Just get me out and leave me alone. And tell Sammie to mind her own business."

"She feels she is."

Willy was beginning to feel hot, almost dizzy, the past twenty-four hours threatening to take him over by force. He pressed his hand against his forehead, fighting the urge to simply strike out in anger. "What is it with you people? You don't have the right to tell me what to do. Due process will get me out of this dump, and some excuse about vacation time or bereavement leave or whatever the hell will get me off with the pencil pushers in Vermont. Or not-I don't give a shit. Just leave me alone, okay?"

He shifted his attention to the lawyer at this point, fixing him with a furious stare. "Do your job. Don't feed me strategy. Just spring me out of here."

The lawyer looked from one of them to the other. Joe Gunther nodded slowly and rose to his feet. "You two go ahead. Willy, you should be out by tomorrow morning, maybe the afternoon if things get jammed up downtown. If you don't act like a jerk and all goes as planned, Sammie and I'll see you afterward." He paused and leaned on the tabletop, putting his face close to Willy's. "I know what you're doing down here. I know you're not going to take Mary's death at face value till you can prove it to yourself." He quickly held up a hand to stop Willy from responding and added, "I'd do the same thing in your place. Just remember one thing, though, okay? You're not alone, much as you might think you are. And if Mary's death was anything other than what they're saying, you're also not the only one who wants to set that right." He straightened and finished by saying, "You know my pager number. I'm a phone call away."

He left the room, crossed the hallway, and exited the building through a double-doored vestibule where one door had to be locked before the other could be unlocked. At the other end, he retrieved the identity card he'd left with the CO there and went out to where he'd parked his car. There waiting for him was Sammie Martens.

"What happened?" she asked as soon as he'd slid in behind the wheel.

"For starters, you were right about not going in. He's wired so tight, his eyeballs are bulging. But I think he'll play ball with the DA. He is up to something, though-he didn't argue when I implied he was investigating Mary's death. I just don't know what he's got, if anything."

Gunther started the engine and put the car into gear. "One thing's for sure, though: As soon as he's out, he's going back on the trail, and I'd love to know exactly what that means."