The Sniper's Wife Part 12

"We don't allow people back here," he said, almost apologetically.

w.i.l.l.y fell apart. He began laughing so hard, he had to put his gun on the counter to wipe the tears from his eyes. He laughed until his stomach hurt, flooded with images of Mary, of Dewey, and of the jungle flashbacks, of himself wedged into a corner of the holding cell, of a thousand images he'd spent years bottling up. Even in the middle of this bizarre and spontaneous release, he knew, as if he were standing outside of himself, that he was close to cracking up.

As if fully aware of this, Riley gently reached out and dropped a newspaper over w.i.l.l.y's exposed gun before stowing his own back under the counter.

He waited until w.i.l.l.y had recovered from the worst of his fit. "You okay?" he asked quietly, his eyes still watchful.

w.i.l.l.y held up a hand. "Yeah, yeah. Been an interesting day. h.e.l.l of a few days, for that matter."

Riley pointed at the limp arm. "You get that in country?"

w.i.l.l.y straightened, took a deep breath, and ran his hand across his face. "Nah. Got it later, back where it was safe. I never got a scratch over there."

Riley gave him a half smile. "I can see that."

w.i.l.l.y retrieved his gun and backed out from behind the counter. "Nate tell you about me?"

"Told me you cut him slack when he needed it. I didn't need telling you been in 'Nam."

"You, too, huh?"

Riley's response was a long, drawn-out, "Yeah."

w.i.l.l.y didn't bother going on. He sensed Riley was no more p.r.o.ne than he was to indulging in old stories and secret handshakes. Theirs was a shared nightmare that didn't need resurrecting.

"So, what about Nate? Last I saw him, we were both being busted at some bar."

Riley's expression didn't change. "He told me about that. Why'd they grab you?"

"Resisting." w.i.l.l.y patted his jacket pocket where he kept his gun. "Had to skip upstairs to hide a few things. They just let me out. He get off?"

Riley nodded. "Didn't have nuthin' on him."

w.i.l.l.y smiled. "Straight and narrow. He's probably the only good deed I ever did in my life. I need to finish a conversation we were having."

"That may be," Riley told him, "but I ain't seen him since right after that happened. What'd you tell him to do?"

"I didn't tell him anything. I just asked if he'd check something out for me."

"Like what?"

w.i.l.l.y didn't see what he had to lose, certainly with this man. "My ex-wife OD'd on some junk named Diablo, only she was downtown and that s.h.i.t comes from up around here. Nate was going to look into why."

Riley looked suddenly very tired. His kind eyes turned old and his gaze dropped to the countertop. "Old Nate musta thought the world of you," he said, almost in a whisper.

A sick feeling rose up from w.i.l.l.y's stomach. Piece by piece, he felt he was losing chunks of himself, one day at a time. "What's happened to him?"

"I don't know, man. But he shoulda been in touch by now. Most of the time, I could set my watch by Nate. I been worried about him all day."

w.i.l.l.y stepped over to the window and absentmindedly looked at the street outside, the pa.s.sing pedestrians barely registering in his conscious mind.

After a long pause, he turned and asked Riley, "Ever hear of a dealer named Marcus? Works on 145th."

Riley made a face. "Along with a hundred others. You think he makes this Diablo?"

"Not according to my source. But he probably knows who does."

Riley knew what he was thinking. "So, the Great White Hope tracks the dude down and makes this a movie with a happy ending?"

"Up yours."

"Hey, I won't be the one paying the price. What you think you're going to accomplish finding this guy? What're you going to do then?"

"What do you care?"

"I don't, not about you. But Nate's my friend, and I'd like to find out where he is before you go shootin' up the neighborhood and maybe gettin' him killed."

Loner though he was, w.i.l.l.y was enough of a pragmatist to recognize the value of what Riley had just implied: He would be a local guide to the neighborhood and its residents, if only so far as determining Nathan Lee's whereabouts. On his own, w.i.l.l.y knew, a white, out-of-town, one-armed cop probably wasn't going to get far.

"You'll help me?" he asked.

"More like I'll keep an eye on you while I'm doin' what I need to do," Riley answered.

w.i.l.l.y looked at the man's size and steadiness, and remembered the way he'd handled that shotgun.

"Whatever," he agreed.

Joe Gunther glanced down at his pager. "d.a.m.n." He looked up at Ward Ogden. "Could I use your phone?"

Ogden gave him a questioning glance but pointed to the phone on the desk.

Gunther dialed the number given him by the Legal Aid lawyer that morning. It was now nightfall.

"This is Joe Gunther. Did you try calling my pager today?"

He waited while Sammie Martens watched him, her expression revealing she'd already sensed what had happened.

After listening for a few minutes, he said, "Thanks. Sorry. I didn't mean to leave you in the lurch," and hung up.

He tapped the pager clipped to his belt. "Batteries died. I just noticed it. There was a schedule change and w.i.l.l.y's hearing was moved to today. He's back on the street. So much for keeping tabs on him." He gave them both a resigned smile. "I guess Murphy's lurking as usual."

They were back in the precinct house, back in the interview room, away from everyone else. Over the intervening hours, the initial bond between the two older men had solidified, and it was clear that Ward Ogden, given his elite status, was going to exploit it by keeping Joe and Sammie inside the loop, even though standard department protocol decreed otherwise. It was a development the two Vermont cops weren't about to tamper with. Whatever Ogden suggested at this point, they would do if they wanted to stick around.

Not that he'd been in any way domineering. In fact, up to now, while they'd been waiting for confirmations from CSU, Ogden had been putting his house in order, changing the status of this erstwhile "groundball investigation" to a homicide, reorganizing his schedule, clearing up or delegating some of his cases, and otherwise giving himself more room to move. Sammie and Joe had used the opportunity to study Mary's file more carefully and to take notes on what obvious avenues of investigation to pursue.

Now, however, there was a knock on the door and a uniformed officer stepped in to hand Ogden an envelope. After waiting for the young man to leave, Ogden opened the envelope and consulted its contents.

"Fax from CSU," he said. "They agree with our scenario. The fire escape was recently oiled, the grate over the bas.e.m.e.nt window tampered with, and the heating control was cranked way up within the last few days, they say here, 'enough to have caused considerable discomfort within the apartment,' and then returned to normal. They also confirm the metal shavings you found, Joe, are consistent with what a key cutter produces, but that's as far as they'll stick their necks out. Oh," he added, rereading the doc.u.ment before handing it over. "They also checked the window sash and found a recently killed spider along the groove, complete with torn web, indicating the window had been raised."

Joe Gunther tapped the case file with his finger. "We were going over the responding officer's report," he said, "and noticed that the old lady next door who called 911 mentioned how hot she'd been two nights previous to that. If you're right about how thin the walls are in that place, it could be Mary's apartment heat bled through to the neighbor's. That and the dated birth control pill dispenser give us a pretty good fix on the time of death."

Ogden glanced at the calendar on the wall. "Which would make it Tuesday night. By the way, I also called the morgue and told them to run a few extra tests on the body-fingernail sc.r.a.pings, v.a.g.i.n.al swabs, whatever they don't do for routine overdoses. Lucky thing w.i.l.l.y appeared when he did, or I would have released the body."

The dinosaur stood up and began pacing the tiny room, obviously building up steam. "Okay," he announced, "we're behind the eight ball on this, so some things'll be too cold to pursue. That still leaves us a ton to do. Some you can help with, others you'll have to stay away from. Most of the latter involves using the computers here, dealing with people like DMV, Social Security, Welfare, and others, or getting subpoenas for things like Mary's luds."

"What're those?" Sammie asked.

His answer came rapid-fire: "Her local phone calls, the ones that don't appear in the bill. Stands for 'local usage detail.' " He went back to thinking out loud. "Basically, we have three major areas of concentration: the technical, like forensics, those phone records, and the Metro cards; the internal, which means talking to the drug unit and combing through every nook and cranny in our files for any and all past arrests and whether anyone in Mary's building is on parole or has a record or ever filed a complaint with us; and the external, which covers everything from talking to her neighbors, friends, and co-workers, to dropping by local p.a.w.nshops in case something stolen was sold, to checking with the Homeless Outreach project to see what b.u.ms, if any, might have seen someone coming or going from the building that night. And that's just to begin with, unless something falls into our laps."

He snapped his fingers suddenly. "And we need to check the building's trash compactor. I noticed a trash chute on her floor. It should still be full-there's been a garbage strike all week."

"What can we do?" Joe asked.

Ogden stopped pacing. "Honestly? One of my biggest concerns is Kunkle. You know him, you know his style and habits. You could help me by finding him as fast as possible. I seriously doubt he's taking Circle Line tours or visiting the museums."

He placed his hands on the back of his chair to emphasize what he said next. "If he knows what we know, he's going to want to set things right. I don't blame him, but it could cause us all a world of hurt, including getting himself killed or s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the case so much that we can't nail the guy responsible."

Neither Joe nor Sammie doubted the likelihood of either possibility. They knew what w.i.l.l.y was like when he got his teeth into something.

"Get him off the street," Ogden reemphasized.

Gunther nodded once. "You got it."

Chapter 14.

w.i.l.l.y let Riley take the lead. They were in a high-rise- a cast-off, damaged monument to urban renewal, the likes of which dotted the city's landscape like smallpox. Cereal-box-shaped buildings with small windows often covered with plywood, overlooking abandoned concrete playgrounds that had only nestled children in the architect's imagination. The hard, open approaches to the building had been littered and devoid of life, with fragments of shattered gla.s.s that crunched underfoot. In the shadows beyond the harsh and sporadic lighting of the few still-functioning arc lamps, they'd heard people moving about, and the sounds of threatening murmurs. It had made w.i.l.l.y think of the jungle again, but not brought him back to it, for while this battlefield was just as ominous, it remained strange and remote-a wilderness cast in steel and brick, inhabited by warriors without hope or goal.

Riley had marched into it all with careful but confident familiarity, his long coat open, his hands empty and swinging by his sides, but exuding the message that w.i.l.l.y knew to be true, that he was carrying his shotgun in a sling under his arm. Riley was on familiar ground and accordingly prepared.

Now they were inside the building, surrounded by the turbulence of neglect and anger. The stench of urine and rot permeated the air, the walls and floor were scarred, broken, and stained, and as covered with scrawled insignia as the interior of a jail cell. Distant screams and shouting echoed down the sepia-lit hallways.

They took the stairs, Riley not even bothering to see if the elevator worked, not just because it probably didn't, but also because elevators were dead-end boxes from which escape in a crisis was highly unlikely.

Several flights up, in a corridor similar to the one they'd entered, Riley turned right and strode an enormous distance, still not reaching the end, but coming to a door that was open by just a crack.

Instinctively, Riley flattened himself against the wall to one side of the door, as w.i.l.l.y did opposite him. Both men had their weapons out, all pretense at discretion gone.

Riley tapped on the door with his shotgun barrel. "Yo, Nate. You in there? It's Riley."

The sounds around them continued. The silence from inside the apartment did the same. w.i.l.l.y saw down the hall another door open slightly and then immediately close, followed by the loud click of a lock falling to.

"Nate. Come to the door."

After another pause, Riley used his gun to push the door back on its hinges, but remained out of sight. A small amount of light fell out onto the floor.

Riley made eye contact with w.i.l.l.y, held up three fingers, motioned to the right and left, and then folded each finger back into his fist in an inaudible countdown. At zero, they both swung through the door, w.i.l.l.y cutting to the right and Riley to the left. There they froze, ready to fire from crouching positions, but confronted only with a single shabby, empty room that looked like a tornado had recently ripped through it.

Again, communicating with hand signals, the two men spread out and checked the closet, behind and beneath the furniture, and looked into the bathroom. Nate wasn't home.

w.i.l.l.y holstered his pistol and closed the front door for privacy's sake. "He always this tidy or are we supposed to read something here?" he asked.

Riley was standing in the middle of the room. "Nah. This has been tossed something good."

Out of habit, w.i.l.l.y began poking around, looking for anything that might clarify what had happened. "What else did Nate say to you last time you saw him?" he asked rhetorically.

But Riley wasn't interested. "Gee, he told me he was going to get killed and who was going to do it. Must've slipped my mind."

w.i.l.l.y stared at him. "What's your problem? We don't even know he's been hurt."

Riley looked at him contemptuously. "Oh, right. They're holding him for ransom-his life for the Rolls. What the f.u.c.k you think was going to happen, asking him to poke his nose into drug business? You might as well have pulled the trigger yourself, the way I see it."

w.i.l.l.y's instinctive, angry denial was entirely fueled by guilt. "The way you see it is your problem. I came to him asking advice. Is it my fault he thought he owed me?"

Riley clenched his fist in frustration, and for a split second w.i.l.l.y wasn't sure the big man might not take a swing at him, which w.i.l.l.y would not have ducked. But then he turned on his heel, walked to the cracked window, and stared out at the night sky, letting out a heavy sigh after a long hesitation.

"He saw you as a turning point," he said, speaking to his own reflection in the gla.s.s. "Used to call you his crossroads. I been hearing about you for years, like you were some G.o.dd.a.m.n saint."

He turned to face w.i.l.l.y. "Then you show up, some half-nuts, scrawny cripple, and you get him screwed to the wall in no time flat. If that's what saints do, I'd just as soon pa.s.s."

w.i.l.l.y had nothing to say.

Riley seemed to pick up on the emotional riot occurring behind the silence, though, and reluctantly tried easing him off the hook. "I guess you're right," he admitted. "Nate was a big boy, and he knew how to stay out of trouble. You're just the only one I can blame."

w.i.l.l.y was looking at the floor, lost in thought. At that, he glanced up. "I'm good for it," he said.

But Riley wasn't having that, either. He slipped his shotgun back under his coat and turned on a few more lights. "Wallow all you want. I'd just as soon nail the a.s.shole who did this. And if we're lucky, there's something around here that might give us a lead."

Joe Gunther stepped off the commuter train onto the platform and looked around. Across the parking lot, the village of Mount Kisco, New York, spread out to the right and left, a bustling, upscale, redbrick town with a seemingly bulletproof look of security about it. Most of the cars he saw going past were the rolling equivalent of a year's salary.

"Wow," Sammie muttered. "Suburbia."

"High-end suburbia. Big distinction."

"And Bob Kunkle can afford to live here? Must be doing all right."

"He doesn't live here, Sam. He works here."

"Ah, right," she said. "Big distinction number two."

They crossed the parking lot, squinting against the bright morning sun. The train trip north had been leisurely and pleasant, since they'd been running against the commuter flow, and the village seemed equally peaceful, temporarily empty of most of its high-power residents. Gunther was struck with how, even in these modern times, most of the people he saw shopping or strolling along the street were wealthy-looking women, the only men being shopkeepers, a road crew, or the odd man in uniform, from a cop to a UPS driver. It was like taking a trip back to the fifties, albeit accompanied by a herd of modern SUVs.

"His store's on the main drag," Gunther explained, heading that way. "When I phoned him last night, he said to look for a London wannabe."