The Sniper's Wife

Chapter 4

NYPD precinct houses generally come in two basic models: old, dating back to before Teddy Roosevelt and awkwardly retrofitted for almost everything, including electricity; and modern, meaning circa 1970, implying some up-to-date conveniences, but only in exchange for an architectural style as lacking in taste as the clothing of the same era. When Willy Kunkle had worked for the department, he'd been stationed at one of the old-timers, which, despite its many drawbacks, had appealed to him for its sheer sense of place. The huge, elaborately carved golden oak sergeant's desk in the entrance lobby, the wrought-iron and brass details throughout the building, and its solid stone appearance had all reminded him of the history and traditions that helped see the department through its rough times-and occasionally led it straight into them.

The Seventh Precinct house, however, had none of that. Of the modern era, made of red brick, and sharing its roof with a fire department ladder company, it was blandness personified, as creatively and sensitively designed as a security-minded high school or a low-profile prison. It was spacious, though, or a least bigger than many of its ancient brethren, and so had more room for its occupants to complain about.

One detail all these buildings shared, however, came back to Willy's memory before he was a half block from the front door: The parking was lousy. For some reason, none of the precincts were equipped with more than a minuscule number of designated spots, which meant anyone who wasn't in management double-parked on the street, pulled up onto the sidewalks, or otherwise caused enough of a problem that the precinct commander was constantly in meetings with irate neighborhood representatives.

Willy walked past car after haphazardly parked car with special plates thrown onto their dashboards before finally passing through the Seventh Precinct's front door. He was greeted with a familiar chorus of sights, sounds, and smells he doubted was much different from any one of the other seventy-five houses sprinkled across the city's five boroughs. The ringing phones, general milling population, and the institutional decor consisting of framed portraits of department leaders and motivational posters all brought him back to the very first day he'd entered this world, feeling awkward in his bulky new uniform. It was early enough in the day, in fact, that the morning patrol shift was still in the muster room across from the long, battered, pressed-wood sergeant's desk. Willy could see, through its broad doors, the uniformed assemblage facing the duty sergeant at his podium, taking notes as he read from a binder and pointed from time to time at a collection of glassed-in wall maps covered with variously colored pins-crime maps indicating current trends in the precinct.

"May I help you?" the receptionist asked him from her school-style desk.

He looked down at her as if she'd interrupted him in mid-dream. "I'm here to see Detective Ogden. My name's Kunkle."

She glanced at his left arm, its hand as usual stuffed into his trousers pocket. "Upstairs, second floor, third door on the right."

He glanced over her head at the activity at the long front desk, manned by an oversized, avuncular sergeant and his frazzled-looking aide. These were the precinct's air traffic controllers. They knew which prisoners were in holding, who was out on patrol and where, what weapons had been logged in for safekeeping, and a multitude of other details that helped keep the place running. They took messages, handled phone calls, assigned tasks throughout the building, and acted as human bulletin boards, all amid a din of colliding human voices. They were the keepers of the Patrol Guide, the bible of the uniformed cop, and knew its contents the way they knew their own family members, dispensing advice whenever called upon. The flow of officers and civilians alike in front of this desk, picking up or dropping off paperwork or just chatting briefly, was nonstop.

Upstairs, the noise was less of a commingled babble, being segregated into a series of offices extending off to both sides of the landing. He counted three doors on his right, walked past several stacks of old boxed case files, and stepped into an office with a cardboard sign labeled, "Detectives."

There he stopped, observing the scene before him. The room was moderately large, with a mismatched scattering of dented and scarred desks. The lighting was fluorescent, accompanied by some daylight through a row of high, smudged windows. The floors were damaged and worn linoleum, the painted cinderblock walls plastered with charts, rows of clipboards, more framed photographs and posters, and multiple bulletin boards, all attempting to hide a paint job of queasy industrial green. The air was filled with ringing phones, general conversation, and, in an almost incongruous throwback to a previous era, the sound of typewriters. As in the hallway outside, there were boxes piled everywhere: along the walls, under the windows, between doors. The place looked like a moving company on a lunch break, except he knew from past experience that few of these boxes had been moved in years.

There were five men sitting at the odd assortment of desks in the middle of the floor, none of whom paid him any attention.

"Help you?" a voice asked from his right.

He turned and saw a civilian employee sitting at a workstation equipped with the room's most modern computer.

"Yeah. I'm looking for Detective Ogden."

The computer operator called out to a man working near one of the windows-tall, broad-shouldered, with close-cropped gray hair, looking comfortable enough that the entire precinct house might have been built around him. Ogden was speaking quietly on the phone, reading from an open file before him. He glanced up, saw the assistant point to Willy with raised eyebrows, and waved Willy over, gesturing to the wooden chair beside his desk. One of its slats was missing.

"Thanks," Willy muttered, and crossed the room, noticing as he did so the flickered glances of the men he passed, taking inventory.

A tiny glimmer of gold from Ogden's sport coat caught Willy's eye as he sat down: a small lapel pin in the shape of a brontosaurus. Willy studied the other officer more carefully, thinking back to Joe Gunther in Vermont.

That pin identified Ward Ogden as a "dinosaur," one of an elite few, the NYPD version of a Knight of the Round Table-skilled, battle-scarred, savvy, with an elephantine memory and enviable contacts. Dinosaurs were career detectives, classified First Grade and thus pulling down a lieutenant's salary, but preferring to stay on the streets, catching cases, and given those rare pins by their respectful peers. For the most part, they were older, nearing retirement, had often gone to the academy with people who were now chiefs and sometimes even the commissioner, and were the most seasoned of what the detective bureau could offer. But they were more than that. It wasn't just age that made a dinosaur. There was a mystique behind the lapel pin. These people had true bearing within the department. They'd successfully closed headline cases, sometimes several of them, with dignity and grace, paying homage to all who'd helped them, and avoiding the publicity that their more politically minded, upwardly mobile brethren so eagerly courted. Dinosaurs, like the brontosauruses chosen to symbolize them, were quiet giants.

More cynically, Willy also knew, a helpful dinosaur was worth money in the bank, while the pissed-off version would make staying in New York a waste of time.

Ogden hung up the phone and stuck out his hand to shake Willy's. "Detective Kunkle?"

Willy was surprised. "How'd you know?"

Ogden laughed. "Lucky guess. I'm Ward Ogden. Thanks for coming by. I'm sorry for your loss. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

Willy shook his head. "No, thanks. Had one already."

Ogden pointed his chin at the mug on his desk. "Smart man. I drink way too much of the stuff. My wife, Maria, says it'll be the end of me in the long run. Probably right, too, although I tell her she hangs around doctors too much. She's a nurse. When did you get in?"

Willy proceeded carefully. "Last night. I didn't want to waste time."

Ogden understood. "So, you've been by Bellevue already?"

Willy watched the other man's eyes, looking for what he might be after. In this kind of conversation, a man with Ogden's experience didn't ask questions he didn't have the answers to, especially when they were already part of the record somewhere. No more than he had to rely on any "lucky guess" to know who Willy was. Willy decided to call him on it and establish a bit of his own credibility.

"Just like it says in their report."

Ogden smiled slightly. "What's it like being a cop in Vermont?"

"Not so intense. We get to spend more time on our cases. The press covers each and every one, though, the money's lousy, and turf's still a big deal."

Ogden nodded. "Yeah. I guess every homicide is front page news-everybody wants a piece of it."

"Every homicide, every robbery, damn near every fender bender." Willy had questions, too, and he dearly wanted the answers, but for once in his life, he was going to let the other party lead the dance.

Ogden sat back in his chair. "Well, more to the point, I was sorry to be the one to break the news of your ex-wife's death. That must have been a shock."

Willy kept it short and honest. "Yes, it was."

"Had you two kept in touch at all?"

"No. It wasn't the friendliest of breakups." He wondered why he'd volunteered that bit. It was none of Ogden's business.

"That's too bad. Marriage and cops are a tough mix."

"You been divorced?"

The older man looked at him before responding, and Willy realized he'd broken an unstated ground rule. This was not a level playing field, despite the professional courtesy.

"How long ago was that?" Ogden asked.

Willy felt himself bristling on the inside, and felt doubly angry. Ever so gently, Ogden was pushing him around. Successfully.

He tried the same approach of a minute ago. "Like it says in the divorce papers you have: twelve years."

Ogden looked solicitous. "I apologize, Detective Kunkle. Is this a sore subject?"

Normally, Willy would have called the man an asshole and walked out of the room. But that was partly the point of the question. Ogden was taking his measure.

Willy took a deep breath and admitted, "I was a drunk back then. I hit her once. And that was the end of it. She was right to leave. I was a loser."

Ogden shook his head gently. "You've quit drinking, you were wounded on duty, and now you're on a topnotch squad. Could be you're being a little tough on yourself."

It was meant as a compliment, even though it confirmed that Ogden had checked him out. But there was more to Willy's past than what was available through a computer check and some phone calls. And that gap made Willy think resentfully of Joe Gunther again, the man who'd had more to do with Willy's upward mobility than he believed he had himself.

"Could be Vermont's like a cop version of kindergarten," he blurted out resentfully. "Doesn't take a wizard to get ahead. Even a gimpy drunk can do it."

Ogden's expression didn't change, but his eyes stayed on Willy's, and Willy felt all the more foolish for his outburst. He wished he could go back outside and at least take a walk around the block to clear his head. Back home, he routinely took people apart during interrogations, while never laying a hand on them. He'd humiliate them, cajole them, embarrass them, almost pummel them with language. And here he was, rising to every bait Ogden put before him, including the ones Ogden wasn't aware of.

"What d'you have on Mary's death?" Willy finally asked, as much to move on as to get an answer.

Ogden's face softened. "The ME left a message for me. I got it this morning. They did the autopsy right after you ID'd the body. There's a detailed final protocol and a tox report that won't come through for weeks, but absent any signs of criminality there, they're confirming what we've thought all along: apparent heroin overdose."

Willy's jaw tightened. That wasn't enough for him-a couple of cops poking around, a late-night off-the-cuff one-liner from a medical examiner. It didn't fit what he'd found at the apartment, or, more importantly, what he'd felt spending the night there. But that wasn't anything he could admit, nor did he want anyone to know of his misgivings, for fear of being thrown out.

Still, if he didn't show at least part of his hand, he'd never get Ogden to do the same with what they'd collected. And that was something Willy really wanted to see.

"I saw her track marks," he said, trying to sound purely professional. "Except for the one that killed her, they all looked pretty old."

Ogden's eyebrows furrowed slightly. "That's not too surprising, is it? A lot of addicts overdose because they shoot the same load they did when they were regulars. Only their systems aren't used to it anymore."

That ran against Willy's professional instinct to always "think dirty." Even knowing what this man's workload must be, he found the comment conveniently pat. "I suppose."

Ogden sighed slightly. "The door was locked from the inside, the window, too. There was no sign of violence and nothing obvious missing. I know this is hard to face, but I think what we see here is what we got."

After a pause, still studying Willy's face, he added, "What're your plans?"

Willy didn't want to lie outright, but he hedged his bets with his phrasing. "I want to find out more about her life down here-what led her to it."

Ogden hesitated before asking, "There anything going on I should know about?"

"I don't know," Willy answered truthfully. "I need to talk to some of the people who knew her-if I can find out who they were." He then steered for safer waters, adding blandly, "I'm not arguing with your conclusions. She was a user. I just…well, you know…I feel pretty responsible."

That was truer than Ogden could know, but his choice of words had been kept simple for their manipulative effect. One thing about dinosaurs: In exchange for their experience and wisdom, they often lost the knee-jerk judgmental hard edge they might have had early on. Having seen damn near everything there was to see, they viewed their fellow humans in a more tolerant light. Willy was counting on Ward Ogden's sharing that outlook, and perhaps on his cutting him a little slack.

Ogden was apparently having the same internal debate. "You don't know any of her friends down here?" he asked.

"Nobody."

After another thoughtful pause, Ogden reached a conclusion. He stood up, motioning Willy to stay. "I have to go use the men's room for about fifteen minutes." He tapped on a closed file with his fingertip. "That's what we got on your wife. Make sure you don't give it a quick read while I'm gone."

He leaned forward slightly, resting one hand on the desktop so his face was inches from Willy's. "Don't do me dirt here, okay? This is cop-to-cop."

Willy matched his gaze. "You got it."

He waited until Ogden had left the room before reaching out and swiveling the file around right side up. No one else in the room was paying any attention, so he flipped it open and began to read.

First on top was the responding patrol officer's UF-61 complaint report. In dry, unimaginative prose, it told of Mary's ailing, elderly neighbor's calling to say that Mary hadn't knocked on her door in several days to share their ritual cup of morning coffee. Additionally, the super, Mr. Rivera, when told of the same concern, had pounded on Mary's door to no response, but had noticed a foul odor coming from the apartment. It was the super using his master key who let the officer in, where he found the decedent, an apparent overdose, dressed in her nightgown, lying on the couch, the needle she'd used still in her arm.

Beneath the UF-61 was Ogden's own DD-5, or follow-up report, commonly called a "pink" for its color.

Willy skimmed the pink before moving quickly on to the scene photos and sketches, feeling his face tighten as he saw Mary from every angle, harshly lit, grotesquely exposed, rendered disgusting and foul by her body's own reactions to the poison she'd injected. General shots of the apartment showed him most of what he'd seen last night, except that the shade was drawn in front of the window and the entire apartment looked neat and tidy, since the pictures predated the search.

Of the close-ups, he studied the shots of the locked window and door, the syringe dangling from her arm just below the rubber tubing she'd wrapped around her biceps, and the photograph of the plastic bag containing the heroin she'd used. Crudely stamped on its surface in red ink was a simple cartoon drawing of a devil, complete with horns, tail, pitchfork, and leering expression: the dealer's trademark, as relevant in the competitive urban drug world as any other advertisement. Willy didn't doubt that if he asked the right people about Little Devil or Red Devil or whatever name went with this symbol, he'd be directed to the proper outlet. He also knew that was about all he'd gain from the experience. Nevertheless, he pocketed one of the pictures of the bag.

Next in the file came the papers he'd been looking for: the divorce decree, tax forms, pay stubs, various bills, personal letters, and Mary's bank account. In fact, there wasn't much there. If the sum total of such documentation was any reflection of a person's standing in society, then Mary Kunkle barely had a toehold. There were only three letters, all recent, all from friends telling her about things of no interest to Willy. Her back account revealed that she had $228.34 in checking, her tax records showed her below the poverty level, and her pay stubs for a miserable amount came from the same place he'd seen in the background of the group photograph back in her apartment: the Re-Coop. There was no address book anywhere in the file, nor was there a date book or journal. And she had always had both in the past.

The phone bill was the last item and was just two pages long, largely made up of the arcane and slipperysounding fees and extra charges that always seemed to be there.

Willy glanced at it with no great care, mostly looking for an unusual prefix, either to someplace far away or to a 900 number that might indicate an interesting wrinkle in Mary's lifestyle.

Instead, he found several calls to a number in southern Westchester County-a number he didn't need to crossreference.

It belonged to his brother, Bob. Ward Ogden returned from checking some files down the hall-and using the bathroom so as not to be a total liar- and found the file where he'd left it. Willy Kunkle was gone.

"You see where the guy went who was sitting here?" he asked one of his colleagues.

The other man looked up from his paperwork, a phone wedged under his chin. "He left," he said vaguely, "not two minutes ago. Said to say thanks."

Ogden resumed his seat and tapped on the file with his fingertips. "Yeah, I bet," he said softly.

The phone next to him rang. "Ogden-detective squad."

"Detective, this is Joe Gunther." The voice on the other end was hollow and tinny-sounding, clearly on a speakerphone. "Special Agent Sammie Martens is on the line with me. We're with the Vermont Bureau of Investigation."

Ward Ogden knew where this was heading. "You looking for your boy Willy?"

The woman's voice he recognized from the day before. "Have you seen him?" she asked, clearly on edge.

"He just left," Ogden answered, his interest piqued. For an accidental overdose, Mary Kunkle was raising more dust than he was used to. Of course, most such victims weren't ex-wives of out-of-towner cops.

"What's he up to?" Gunther asked with a directness that made Ogden smile.

"Not sure I know. He ID'd his wife's remains last night and dropped by this morning to ask me what we had on her." He resisted saying more. Two things you learned in this department in particular: Never say, "I don't know," and never volunteer any more information than is strictly necessary.

"And what do you have, if that's okay to ask?"

"Same as I told you yesterday. Her apartment was locked from the inside and she was found with a needle in her arm. We're treating it as a ground ball."

The woman's voice came back on. "So, he's heading back?"

Ogden chose his phrasing carefully. "Could be. He was here and then he left. I didn't ask and he didn't say."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, which made Ogden show some pity. He was a little torn here, on one hand understanding their concern for a colleague, and on the other wondering why it was such a big deal.

"I got the feeling," he volunteered, "that he was at least going to talk to a few of her friends. He told me he wanted to find out why she'd done what she did."

"You make it sound like a suicide," Gunther suggested.

"There was no note," Ogden countered. "But you could say any overdose is a suicide. That's how I look at them."

"I see what you mean," Gunther agreed. "One last question: Do you know which friends Willy may be contacting?"

Ogden shook his head, even though no one could see it. "Not the slightest clue." He then asked what he thought would be an obvious question: "Why don't you ask him?"

Sammie Martens didn't make a sound, but Gunther actually laughed. "Detective, if you knew him better, you'd know the answer there. You want to find out anything about Willy Kunkle, he's the last one you ask. Thanks for your help."

"No problem," Ogden answered, and slowly replaced the receiver, seriously doubting this would be the last he'd hear about Mr. Kunkle. Joe Gunther pushed the off button on the side of the speakerphone and looked up at his younger colleague. Sammie Martens was scowling and staring at the floor.

"It's a natural reaction, Sam. He needs to talk to a few people. Find out what was going on in her life."

"I know that," she answered almost angrily. "It's just frustrating not knowing."

Gunther mulled that over a moment, carefully considering the person they were discussing before asking, "Not knowing what he's doing? Or what he will do?"

The questions were purely rhetorical, since they both knew the answers would not only defy convention, but possibly dictate Willy's survival.