The Sniper's Wife

Chapter 24

It was a fruitless effort. By the time Willy reached his car, Andy Liptak's BMW was long gone. Nevertheless, trusting to instinct, Willy took off in the direction he'd seen Liptak use, flooring the accelerator and paying no attention to any obstacle that couldn't either be ignored or defeated by the weight of his vehicle. He rammed trash cans, destroyed parking meters, creased several parked cars, and burned through every red light he encountered in his effort to catch some glimpse of the black German car.

Beneath all this frenzy, though, his instincts were still at work, for in short order he found himself within sight of an on ramp to the Gowanus Expressway, one of his tires flat from hitting a curb, but in time to see the BMW heading north at high speed.

As frustrating as that should have been-his quarry within reach but his car out of service-Willy was instead seized with a cold, calm confidence. He knew, as surely as if he'd been left a detailed map, where Liptak was headed. All he'd needed to see was the direction and the fact that Andy had chosen a freeway to take.

Twenty minutes later, his tire changed and his spare gun moved from his glove box to his pocket, Willy was driving north toward Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was a long drive, propelled by anxiety and self-recrimination, but accompanied, too, by the realization that the city had slipped behind him like a bad dream after an abrupt awakening. Willy drove automatically, steady and very fast, trusting to luck that he wouldn't be pulled over, feeling with each passing mile a sharpening sense of purpose. This was his third hasty departure from New York-once to go to war, once in an attempt to escape his past. This time, the most precipitate, also found him the most resolved. With his own fate as tenuous as ever, he felt the job at hand had never been clearer. There would be no second-guessing now. No walks along the road or procrastinating at a diner, as there'd been when he'd left Vermont to find Mary in the morgue. New York, in its confusing, contradictory, all-enveloping way, had finally seen fit to set him free.

He stopped once at a pay phone to call a friend of his in the New Hampshire State Police, telling him he was on a case and needed the address for the license plate he'd memorized off of Casey Ballantine's SUV. He was given an address in exclusive Castle Island, New Hampshire, located in the mouth of Portsmouth Harbor. He felt no elation or sense of luck turning. He'd remembered Andy mentioning a house in Portsmouth. All this information did was specify his target.

Besides, self-congratulation, never his strong suit, was now as remote as his ability to grow a new arm. All his thoughts through this long, sleepless night were on Sammie, on her miraculous appearance at the last moment, on the fact that she'd tailed him from their meeting at the cemetery, against his wishes. It had been a rare show of willful independence, shown not only for his benefit, but in defiance of the caution that cops especially were supposed to honor.

It wasn't just her recklessness that so moved him, however, although that was certainly impressive. It was that she'd acted instinctively. Much was made of the fellowship among cops-how they stuck up for each other, created the ballyhooed "thin blue line"-and Willy himself, though he never used the term, had demonstrated that same loyalty.

But rarely had it ever been extended toward him.

It had come time to pay homage, regardless of the confusion that might cause in a man so supposedly committed to solitude and hostility. Joe Gunther, Ward Ogden, Jim Berhle, Phil Panatello of the Customs/NYPD car theft task force, and a host of others all showed up at the Bush Terminals building shortly after Willy had left in pursuit of Andy Liptak. Responding to Sammie Martens' call to Joe that she'd followed Willy here and was about to enter the building, what they found instead were Willy's service weapon, a.40-caliber shell casing, fresh tire marks, a small amount of blood, and, eventually, a rental car in Sammie's name parked up the street.

Feelings were running high. Officers were missing, along with the primary suspect, and evidence of gunplay was clear to see, as was the fact that it had all transpired without any knowledge or sanction. In a department well known for lopping off the heads of people found responsible for screwups, even Ward Ogden's lofty perch was beginning to look assailable. It was only he and Gunther working together as a choir that convinced the doubters-including Ogden's Whip-that without these supposed Vermont renegades, the case would never have progressed this far. Things were looking a little chaotic, fair enough, but in chaos there was still movement, and it was pretty obvious something was definitely in motion now.

That indefinable something was a major help to Gunther's and Ogden's cause. Rather than going headhunting to lay blame, everyone knew the order of the day was to find the two missing officers and to help them if possible.

In that pursuit, the previous plan of waiting until the banks opened in order to peruse Andy Liptak's finances was scrapped in favor of a far more aggressive strategy. Now they would round up every known associate from the information they'd gathered, and grill them until something surfaced. Also, alerts were put out on Willy Kunkle's car and on anyone resembling him, Sammie, or Andy Liptak.

Joe Gunther at last found himself out in the cold. Ward Ogden told him privately to go back to his hotel room and wait by the phone.

For Gunther, a company man, the request was hardly news. Nevertheless, it would result in one of the most anxious nights of his career. Willy Kunkle arrived at the Castle Island address just as the dawn was defining the ruler-straight line where the Atlantic Ocean met the sky. The house was a traditional New England monstrosity with a huge wraparound porch, a castle's worth of dormers, turrets, and stainedglass windows, and a lawn running down to the water and deserving of a Kennedy touch football game.

It was also as dark as a tomb. The high-end silver SUV was parked alone at the end of the drive, tucked under a broad portico to keep it safe from the elements.

Willy drove by the place and killed his engine on the edge of the road, knowing it wouldn't be long before either some rental cop or the real McCoy would notice it and call it in. While not literally a closed compound, Castle Island had all the trappings of one.

Not that he cared. He knew he hadn't passed the BMW on the drive north, which implied that Liptak had ended up somewhere other than this address. The time factor that had pushed Willy this far at breakneck speed was narrowing fast, he sensed. Liptak's grabbing of Sammie had been purely impulsive, the spontaneous slipping of an extra card up his sleeve. But now that he'd had time to reflect, he knew that in fact the reverse was true: Kidnapping a cop could only bring him more trouble.

He'd have to kill her or dump her as quickly as possible, so Willy didn't have time to worry that his own activities might be flagrantly illegal.

He ran across the broad lawn in a crouch, although aside from the possibility of a dog's coming at him, he wasn't much concerned with being spotted. In fact, as his reckless momentum took over, he sprang up the porch steps two at a time, shifted his alignment to favor his good shoulder, and simply continued right on through the glass front door, half falling into the lobby amid a galaxy of flying shards. Staggering, he pulled his backup gun out as he continued up the oversized staircase ahead of him, figuring that wherever Andy's blond girlfriend might be, it was probably in an upstairs bedroom overlooking the water.

His choice of doors at the top proved only half right, however, but it was the half that turned out to be a lifesaver. He burst into an empty bedroom, cut through an adjoining bathroom, and into the master bedroom beyond, just as the disheveled, half-dressed woman on the bed fired a wild, preemptive round with a shotgun at the room's front door. Willy saw her in profile in the enormous muzzle flash, covered the distance between them in four long strides, and simply took her out from the side like a linebacker, sending them both flying off the far end of the king-sized bed.

Willy rolled as he landed, taking the woman with him, and ended up on top of her, his knees pinning her arms, staring down into her startled wide-eyed face.

He slapped her once, hard. "Where's Andy?"

She screamed out in pain. "Oh, please. Please. Don't hurt me. If you want money, I'll show you where it is. But-"

He slapped her again, hoping to build on her panic to get what he was after. "Listen to me. I want to know where Andy is."

She was still trying to hide her face from his attacks. "Oh, please don't. Please-"

He shoved his face to within inches of hers and repeated slowly, "Tell me where Andy is and I disappear. Right now."

She blinked a couple of times. "Andy? He's coming up. He'll be here soon… with a lot of men," she added as an afterthought.

Willy raised his hand and she cowered, her legs scrabbling beneath him as if that might help her escape.

"He's not in New York," Willy said, "he's not coming here, and he's running for cover. Where would he go?"

Her answer was startling: "The prison."

Willy stared at her. "What?"

"The prison at the Portsmouth Navy Yard. He's renovating it. Took it over from a developer who ran out of money. He spends a lot of time there. He called me on my car phone a few hours ago and told me he'd be going there first. I don't know why, but that's why he said he'd be late. He told me not to go there."

Willy straightened and took his knees off her arms. "Roll over."

Her face crumpled up in fear once again. "Oh, no. What're you going to do?"

Willy scowled at her. "Jesus, lady. Put it in park. Roll over. Hands behind your back. Now."

She did as she'd been told. He pulled off the silk belt she had looped around her pajama shorts and tied her hands together. He then looped the free end several times around the bed's foot and secured it there to keep her from crawling to where she might cut herself free.

"Thanks," he then said, and left her lying on her face. Back in New York, Joe Gunther got the phone call he'd been waiting for all night.

"Joe, it's Ward. We're taking a Customs chopper up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Liptak's got a place near there-someplace named Castle Island."

"I know it. Very fancy neighborhood. What makes you think he's there?"

"I'm not sure we do, but your boy Willy does. His car was spotted abandoned near the house. You want to come along? This being your people, Phil Panatello has no problem with it."

"Of course I do," Gunther answered. "You have local liaison up there?"

Ogden hesitated. "Not yet. I don't think so."

"Contact Janet Scott of the Portsmouth PD. She'll do what needs to be done. One of the good guys."

"Got it. Here are the directions for getting to the chopper."