The Sniper's Wife

Chapter 12

Willy Kunkle sat in a corner of one of the holding pens tucked under the misdemeanor court at 100 Centre Street in Downtown Manhattan. The cell was about twenty-bytwenty and held some ten men who were waiting to be taken upstairs for their moment before the judge. One of them was sequestered in a small cubbyhole at the back, which had a barred window through which he could talk privately with his lawyer. Willy had been here two hours, watching his roommates intermingling in subtle hierarchical ways, and wondering if and when one of them might confront him to find out who he was and what he was in for. So far, no one had shown any interest in him.

He was a little nervous. After Joe and the lawyer had left him behind at Rikers, pending his court appearance the following day, Kunkle had been extracted from the general-population barracks where he'd been staying and put into isolation for his own protection, presumably because Gunther had confirmed that he was in fact a cop, and thus at risk among other prisoners who might be interested in moving up the food chain.

But right now was not the following day. It was only three hours after that meeting with Gunther. To his surprise, Kunkle had been taken from his cell, driven to 100 Centre Street, and placed in this cell. Almost afraid of jinxing what looked like an early release, he'd nevertheless asked one of the commanding COs if Joe Gunther had pulled more strings to speed up his processing. The answer had been that the DA was behind it and that Gunther couldn't be located, despite their efforts to do so, presumably because his pager was malfunctioning.

On the surface, this was good news. Willy had been expecting Joe and Sammie to be at his hearing and to then do everything possible to stop his returning to the streets. This latest development implied he was about to sneak out before they found him. But that was just an assumption. This system, with which he was all too familiar by now, did not usually pride itself on working ahead of schedule. Thus, the possibility lurked that something was amiss, and that he was about to be handed a nasty surprise.

"Kunkle?" a CO asked from the hallway outside, a clipboard in hand.

Willy rose to his feet. "That's me."

"Step out."

Watched by the others, Willy rose and did as he'd been asked. The CO took him by the arm and escorted him down the narrow hallway, up a cramped flight of windowless stairs, and to a door at the top. There, he pushed open the door and gave Willy a gentle shove in the small of his back.

Ready for anything by now, Willy found himself in a huge, vaulted, wood-paneled room full of people and voices, as big as a train station, it seemed to him, especially in comparison to the reduced quarters he'd just left.

It was the misdemeanor court, in full action. Architecturally just like the staid and impressive place so popularly featured on TV and in the movies, complete with a raised platform and ornate carved bench for the judge, along with other latter-century touches of decorative excess, but in fact a place reminiscent of old Bedlam. It was jammed with people: spectators, lawyers, court officers, stenographers, newspeople, and, looming above them all, a black-robed, efficient, and calm woman judge, who looked as comfortable here as if she'd been supervising a family dinner at home.

Willy froze in place, causing the CO to bump into him from behind.

"Keep moving-over there." An index finger appeared over his shoulder and indicated the same lawyer Willy had met a few hours earlier.

It was only then that Willy Kunkle realized that no one besides his lawyer even knew who he was or cared anything about him. Everyone else was there on other business. As he walked hesitantly to where his attorney awaited him, Willy began to differentiate the various groups cluttering the room. Apparently, in order to keep things moving quickly, the system encouraged defendants to be processed by the judge as on a production line, each equipped with a legal representative, a prosecutor, and perhaps a few others, and each variously awaiting his or her turn, pleading the case, discussing some postjudgment deal with the appropriate bodies, or simply filling in paperwork at the court secretary's desk.

The lawyer quickly shook Willy's hand without making eye contact, his attention distracted by the contents of his open briefcase. "We're up in a few minutes. Like I explained at Rikers, this is an arraignment and a sentencing both. Just stay quiet, look at the judge, be respectful, and follow instructions. It'll be over before you know it."

It was over almost that fast. His name and case number were announced, the judge asked both sides what they wanted, the prosecution and Willy's Legal Aid rep traded facts about the circumstances, the character references, the otherwise clean record, and ended up presenting the one option they wanted the judge to take, which she did summarily. Before Willy had a chance to carefully study the faces of the people responsible for his fate, he was told he could go. The whole thing had taken mere minutes.

He was out on the street shortly thereafter, feeling like he'd just been teletransported there, the product of some weird commingling of Star Trek and The Twilight Zone.

Despite his surprise, however, he was certain of three things: He was once again a free man, he was in immediate need of his wallet, badge, and gun, and he wanted to finish his conversation with Nathan Lee.

He began looking around for a subway station. "It was over here," Mrs. Goldblum said, gesturing to them to follow her.

Ogden, Gunther, and Sammie Martens crossed the modest room to where the elderly woman was now standing by the window.

"I was watering this plant when I saw the man working on the fire escape. He was right there, where the ladder swings down from that platform to the ground."

They were across the alley from Mary Kunkle's building, looking at its wall and her living room window on the third floor. There, they could clearly see the crime scene unit, or CSU, gathering what evidence they could. The CSU leader had made his unhappiness with his assignment crystal clear to Ogden, describing the apartment as "sloppy fourths" after EMS, the first police search, and finally Willy Kunkle had all raised havoc with it. But his was not to argue in the long run-he functioned at the investigator's pleasure. And he had confirmed that the shavings they'd found on the kitchen counter were consistent with a key cutter's.

Now Ogden, temporarily using his two unofficial tagalongs instead of an assigned partner, was conducting a canvass that would have been done long ago had Mary's death been deemed suspicious. They had just met their first ray of hope in Mrs. Goldblum, after two hours of knocking on doors and meeting with blank looks.

"That's great," Ward Ogden said soothingly. "Could you tell what he was doing?"

But the old lady shook her head. "I thought it must have been some maintenance work. They do that sometimes. I didn't think anything of it because he was wearing a uniform and had tools. What did he do?"

Ogden answered blandly, "As far as we know, he was working on the fire escape, like you said. We're just asking people if they saw anything at all. It doesn't mean it was anything bad, necessarily. Did you happen to get a look at him, by the way?"

Again, she disappointed them. "He was wearing one of those caps with the bill pulled down. All I could see was the top of his head."

Joe Gunther was still looking out the window, and softly asked, "Did the maintenance man ever go up the fire escape, or did he just stay by the ladder?"

"He just stayed there, moving it up and down." Ten minutes later, the three of them were standing at the bottom of the alleyway, looking up. They'd come in from the street, through a gate with a broken lock that Ogden noted with interest, and now Joe Gunther reached out and pulled the chain hanging down from the ladder suspended below the fire escape's second-floor platform. It swung down to meet them without so much as a squeak.

The silence was telling. Without a word, Ogden led the way up the ladder until they were clustered around the hinge at the top. He touched it with his fingertip and examined the fresh, thick, greasy results. Then he cast his gaze farther up the escape, obviously visualizing the route one could take to Mary's window once this standardly noisy and attention-getting obstacle had been bypassed.

Sammie Martens voiced a counterargument to what was clearly going through Ogden's mind. "But her window was locked from the inside."

"Worse than that," Ogden replied. "I checked the lock earlier. It's old and stiff. You can't jimmy it from the outside without either leaving traces or waking up the neighborhood."

There was a long pause as they each digested that point.

Ogden finally straightened and prepared to return to ground level. "Well, let's see how the CSU people are faring. I'm afraid that so far things aren't looking too good."

Sammie flared at that. "What do you mean? What about the key shavings?" She pointed at the hinge. "And that?"

But both older detectives knew they needed more. And they knew a little patience and some more time might give it to them. Gunther laid his hand on her shoulder as she reluctantly started down. "Don't get worked up yet, Sam. We're just beginning."

Back on the ground, Gunther paused as they began heading back toward the street. "What's the weather been like the last few nights?"

Ogden stopped. "On the cool side."

"So no reason for Mary to have her window open?"

"No. Cooler than that. Besides, that would call on coincidence. Unless the guy lived within sight of her window, he'd want to be sure the window was open before he set out to visit her."

Gunther wandered the length of the alley, his eyes running along where the wall met the pavement. He found behind a Dumpster a basement window with a metal grate before it. He crouched down and gave it a shake. It was loose enough that he tried again with more force, and found that a greaseand dirt-covered wire was all that was keeping it closed. The padlock supposedly doing the same thing had been surgically bypassed with a pair of cutters.

Ogden had joined him and was looking over his shoulder as he discovered this. "You ever hear of a CUPPI?" he asked.

Gunther glanced up at him over his shoulder. "A CUPPI?"

"Yeah-stands for Circumstances Undetermined Pending Police Investigation. It basically means any dead body we get where we're not sure of the manner of death. Guy's found stone cold in the park. Did he fall and hit his head, or did someone hit his head with a rock and make him fall? That's a CUPPI until we find out he was a drunk prone to falling and was last seen stepping on a banana peel."

Gunther understood where Ogden was heading. "Mary Kunkle's become a CUPPI?"

Ogden straightened from where he'd been studying the grate over the basement window. "Officially, not yet." He tapped the side of his head. "But up here, absolutely. Let's take a tour of the basement."

They located Jose Rivera for this, who with growing irritation took them downstairs to near his own subterranean apartment, and there unlocked a door to the basement and utilities area.

Ogden asked him to lead them to the window off the alleyway, and Rivera took them to a long, dark room cluttered with an assortment of junk and discarded equipment, smelling dank and faintly evil. There was a general skittering sound when he hit the lights which made both Sammie and Gunther think about the safety of their ankles. Sammie let out a small, spontaneous, "Gross."

"Rats," Rivera explained simply. "They love this place. Was that the window? There're four of 'em."

Not needing to approach it, both Gunther and Ogden immediately agreed. It was the only one overlooking a crude staircase of piled wooden boxes.

"What's down here?" Ogden asked the super.

"Besides all this shit? Nuthin'. There's the usual service stuff-heating, water, electrical panels. There used to be a laundry, but that got messed up a long time ago."

"Where are the utilities?" Gunther asked.

Rivera picked his way down the middle of the room, turned left, and took them through an opening into a slightly less cluttered, windowless cavern whose walls and ceiling were interlaced with pipes, conduits, and a supporting trellis keeping it all in place.

The light was a dim glow from a couple of encrusted bare bulbs, so walking around inside the room felt like being surrounded by a black-and-white hologram. Ogden crossed to the wall housing most of the controls and tried deciphering its contents.

"Each apartment has its own panel?"

Rivera stayed rooted in the middle of the room. "Yeah. That way, one of them shits the bed, no one else loses out."

Ogden pointed at an assemblage of boxes, switches, and levers, all of which, like everything else in the place, looked like it had been built around the time of the Titantic and was now resting on the same sea bottom, complete with mysterious growths. "So, this is how you would control everything in Mary Kunkle's apartment on the third floor?"

"You got it."

This time it was Gunther's and Sammie's turn to sidle up next to Ogden and scrutinize what had caught his eye.

"Mr. Rivera, could you come here for a sec?"

The super reluctantly approached them. "What?"

Ogden pointed at what looked like a small steering wheel. "What's that for?"

"Heat."

Sammie looked at him in surprise. "The apartments don't have thermostats?"

Rivera laughed. "Not from around here, are you? You know what a bunch of junkies and drunks do when you give 'em a thermostat? They run you outta business, that's what. No way. We fix the temperature from down here. Even the fancier buildings do that. We keep 'em warm enough, even if they do bitch now and then."

Gunther could imagine the conversations there, and figured that "now and then" probably accounted for the entire winter.

"Which way do you turn the wheel to make things hotter upstairs?"

Rivera made to demonstrate the technique, but Ogden caught his hand in midmotion. "Don't touch anything, Mr. Rivera. Just tell me how it works."

"Clockwise. All the way. Makes the place hotter'n a bastard."

Ogden nodded. "Great. Thanks. Do me a favor, would you? Go upstairs and tell one of the police officers in that apartment that we need a detective down here."

Rivera scowled. "Look, I been real useful to you, but I got a job, you know? I can't-"

"You want us out of here as fast as possible, right?" Ogden asked.

Rivera shook his head angrily and moved toward the door. "All right, all right."

They heard him cursing under his breath as he picked his way back toward the basement door.

"What did you find?" Sammie asked the New York detective after Rivera had moved out of earshot.

Ogden motioned her closer to the hand wheel. "Take a look, and compare it to the others next to it."

She quickly saw what he had, that the surface of the metal, dusty and grimy everywhere else, had been wiped clean on this one, presumably to remove any fingerprints.

"The CSU people ought to be able to tell us which direction it was moved last."

She looked up at him questioningly, unable as yet to connect the dots as apparently he had.

Joe Gunther, however, was right up to speed. "It goes to the locked window and the key cutter's dust, Sam. How do you kill someone and make it look accidental? Best way I know is to make sure everything's locked from the inside. We're guessing whoever's been lurking around here made a key in the kitchen using Mary's original to lock the door behind him. The trick is to explain how he got in in the first place."

"He could have knocked on the door," Ogden picked up, "but in this town, that's risky. Too many nosy neighbors and too many thin walls. Plus, around here you don't let somebody in you don't know."

"We looked at the window," Gunther resumed, "and found it was too stiff to jimmy from the outside, so the only alternative, as unlikely as it seems, was to somehow get the occupant to open the window on her own."

The light went on over Sammie's head. "So, you crank up the heat and gain access up the pre-oiled fire escape and through the open window, any small sounds being masked by the fan she probably had running as well."

"Bingo," said Ogden with a smile. "Not that any of that happened, but it sure looks good."

"An official CUPPI?" Gunther asked him.

The smile faded from Ogden's face. "We'll need the lab to confirm all this." He waved his hand at the apartment utility controls. "And we'll have to run some interviews, but I think we're already beyond the CUPPI stage. My gut tells me we're into a murder investigation now- one I promise in particular to see through to the end."