The Sniper's Wife Part 11

Gunther wandered the length of the alley, his eyes running along where the wall met the pavement. He found behind a Dumpster a bas.e.m.e.nt 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 bypa.s.sed 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 Circ.u.mstances 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 p.r.o.ne 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 bas.e.m.e.nt window. "Officially, not yet." He tapped the side of his head. "But up here, absolutely. Let's take a tour of the bas.e.m.e.nt."

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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sortment 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 s.h.i.t? 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 s.h.i.ts the bed, no one else loses out."

Ogden pointed at an a.s.semblage 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 t.i.tantic 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 b.i.t.c.h 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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."

Chapter 13.

w.i.l.l.y Kunkle looked around carefully before setting foot on the dark roof. Now that he was not being chased, he could better appreciate the view, and was surprised at how close Yankee Stadium appeared across the Harlem River, glowing like an oversized alien saucer waiting to pick up a spare load of discarded humans. What with the gloomy, featureless water tower looming overhead and the complete darkness of the roof before him, w.i.l.l.y felt he was taking in the stadium and the millions of surrounding city lights as from a black hole-that he could see the entire world, and that it had no idea he was even alive.

It was a feeling he'd known more than once in his life.

He walked cautiously toward the far foot of the tower, the one most lost in the shadows, his senses attuned to any unusual sounds or movements. He felt he was back in enemy country up here, as out of place as he'd been in 'Nam. There, he'd also spent many nights in close proximity to the unknown, sometimes so quietly that he hadn't dared to brush away mosquitoes that were drawing blood from his face. In those days, the enemy had often been so nearby, they had filled his nostrils. In his mind only, as a sort of meditation, he'd even imagined coordinating his heartbeat with theirs, not just to broaden the scope of his own silence, but perhaps-subconsciously-so that when he quietly stopped that other heart with his knife, his own could mimic its continuing beat.

There had been times, out there, lethal and alone, so isolated and removed from his feelings that he could barely feel pain, that he'd actually thought in those terms, of hearts beating in unison like those of lovers in poems.

Which had made stopping them as he had, time and again, a curious experience initially, and eventually a debilitating one. In the long run, he'd lost interest in thinking about such things. Or perhaps, given his own heart's condition, he'd lost the ability to match its beat to anyone else's.

He pa.s.sed under the water tower, groping in the gloom, bent double and feeling the ground before him, when suddenly he heard a soft voice. He froze, waiting, his mouth half open to quiet his breathing, his eyes avoiding any bright pinpoints of light so his pupils could adjust to the darkest corners of the roof.

The voice continued, almost a whisper, close to an atonal chant. Now totally and instinctively back in combat mode, w.i.l.l.y moved forward, retrieved his belongings from under the tar-paper flap without a sound, and homed in on the source of the chanting. He found it after drifting like a shadow pushed by the breeze to the edge of the roof beyond the tower. There, he found a young man with his baseball cap turned backward, sitting atop the low parapet, his legs dangling over the side. Beside him was a plastic bag of powder and an a.s.sortment of drug paraphernalia. He was talking to himself in a low, regularly cadenced voice, as if reciting a mantra. Heartbeat-toheartbeat once more, w.i.l.l.y Kunkle stood behind him, six inches away, and clearly heard that the young man was merely mouthing the lines from a rap song, without inflection or enthusiasm.

w.i.l.l.y looked down at the back of the head near his right hand, remembering the things he'd been capable of so long ago, the things both his hands had once done, virtually without thought, and willfully without self-reproach.

Half the rush from those situations, however, had nothing to do with the acts of violence terminating them. In some ways, w.i.l.l.y had seen the killing as a letdown- messy, occasionally smelly-a disappointment, given all the intensity leading up to it. The truly curious joy had come before, in the psychic dominance preceding the final act. It had come from the knowledge that while he could have dispatched his target, he hadn't quite yet, and had thus extended the man's life. Most importantly, he'd given himself the power to choose, if for only a moment.

Just like now.

He watched the man manipulate his lethal tools, preparing to give himself an injection, so close that his hands could have been w.i.l.l.y's own. w.i.l.l.y wondered about how many times Mary had done this same thing, quietly prepared herself as others might make a ham sandwich, her antic.i.p.ation rising for the lift the drug would soon give her.

As the young addict tied the rubber tourniquet around his arm, his elbow almost struck w.i.l.l.y in the leg, and yet w.i.l.l.y still stood as quietly as the water tower over them, watching, absorbing, remembering, imagining.

Until the source of this scrutiny reached for the plastic baggy. As he moved it from its resting place, the dim light from the surrounding city glimmered off its surface, and revealed the crude stamped image of a smiling devil.

In one smooth move, as fast and silent as a snake's, w.i.l.l.y reached out with his one hand, pulled the man back from his perch, dropped him onto his back, put a knee into his chest, and shoved his gun up against his nostrils, so that both his crossed eyes could clearly see what was menacing him.

"Be very, very quiet," w.i.l.l.y said, his mouth three inches from the young man's face. "If I even feel you twitch the wrong way, I will pull the trigger. Do you have any doubts about that? Nod yes or no."

The man's eyes were huge and white. But he gave his head a slight shake.

"What's your name?"

"Dewey." His breathing was coming in short, shallow gasps.

"I need to know where you got the Diablo, Dewey. Give me the name of your source."

"Who are you?"

w.i.l.l.y moved slightly, increasing the pressure both on Dewey's chest and against his nose with the gun. Dewey's eyes began to water.

"Wrong answer. I am not someone you can deal with. I will kill you in a heartbeat if you don't make me happy. Where did you get the Diablo?"

Dewey started hyperventilating, his body shaking and his hands slowly stiffening.

Once more with startling speed, w.i.l.l.y put the gun aside, grabbed the other man by his shirtfront, and hauled him in one clean jerk up to the top of the parapet, so that he balanced there on his back, with one arm and one leg dangling over the deserted street far below.

"I'm getting tired of this. You talk, or I push. That simple enough?"

Dewey was raving by now, thrashing and babbling and crying. It was all w.i.l.l.y could do to keep him from falling off on his own. In fact, he was about to dump him back on the roof and abandon him when Dewey suddenly blurted out, "It's Marcus, it's Marcus."

w.i.l.l.y shoved his face up close again. "What's Marcus? He sold you this s.h.i.t?"

"Yeah, yeah. It was Marcus, man."

"Marcus who? How do I find him?"

Dewey's fear notched up. "I don't know his last name. I swear it. I just know 'Marcus.' That's all. That's what they call him."

"Where's he hang?"

"Around 145th."

w.i.l.l.y made as if he were about to push him over. "Where, Dewey? That's a long street. Give me an address."

"There ain't no address, man. I swear. He's on the street."

"Meaning he doesn't make the stuff. I want to know who makes it, Dewey. You're being stupid here."

"Jesus Christ, man, how the f.u.c.k d'I know? I don't give a s.h.i.t who makes it."

That much rang true, w.i.l.l.y thought. "Describe Marcus to me."

"He's real tall, and skinny."

w.i.l.l.y waited before asking, "That's it?" He shoved him slightly, making the young man flail out in terror. "Stop jerking me around."

"Okay, okay," Dewey stammered. "Let's see. He's ... ah... tall. No, no. I mean, hold it. I said that. His hair. He's got spiky hair, and he wears a tight chain around his neck-silver, real shiny. And he's got a real bad scar down his right... no, wait... his left cheek. I think... no...I mean, that's all I can think of." He sounded on the verge of hysteria. "Is that okay? Please?"

w.i.l.l.y placed one foot on Dewey's chest to stabilize him, and leaned over to retrieve the baggy of heroin. He sprinkled its contents into the night air as Dewey softly moaned in consternation. Finally, he dropped the syringe onto the roof and crushed it underfoot.

He stepped back, retrieved his gun, and pocketed it. "A little advice from your fairy G.o.dmother. You got a real desire to live, Dewey. Think about that next time you want to shoot up."

Dewey merely covered his eyes with his hand.

Twenty minutes later, w.i.l.l.y Kunkle stepped into the small convenience store where he'd first met Nathan Lee. The large man he'd seen at the counter was still there, and gave him a blank-eyed stare as he entered. w.i.l.l.y recalled Lee's calling him Riley.

w.i.l.l.y checked both narrow aisles of the store for patrons. For the time being, they were alone.

"Seen Nate?" w.i.l.l.y asked.

"Nate who?"

w.i.l.l.y sighed. What a routine. New York, Vermont, it didn't seem to matter. Who? What? Don't know what you're talking about. Pain in the a.s.s.

Tired, stressed, longing for some answers, w.i.l.l.y yielded to a fit of impatience, pulling his weapon and circling the counter to shove it into the big man's gut. As he did so, however, he walked right into the working end of a sawed off, double-barreled shotgun, solidly held in one of Riley c.o.x's meaty hands.