The Sniper's Wife Part 9

"For his career? Don't know yet. Getting caught in a sweep is no big deal. He might have had a good excuse. It doesn't sound like he was drinking, so maybe he was running something down. But they mentioned flight and resisting arrest. Those might be problems. It wouldn't take much for our bosses to fire him, he's made himself so popular."

Sammie sensed a weariness in Gunther's voice, and understood-even if she wasn't much good at it herself- that there came a time when making allowances for someone wasn't in anyone's best interests any longer.

But she knew in her gut that this was not that time. Unfortunately, it also wasn't her choice to make.

Gunther was watching her with a small smile on his face.

"What?" she asked.

"Don't worry," he told her. "We'll make a quick field trip. Find out what he's been up to."

w.i.l.l.y Kunkle lay on his bed, his head propped up against a bunched-up pillow, staring at the ceiling. No longer alone in a small, dark cell, he was now someplace he considered far worse: in a huge barracks-style room, well lit with two opposing walls of windows, amid a serried legion of beds just like his own, each the tiny domain of an inmate just like himself. There were dozens and dozens of men here, bored, frustrated, restless, and full of the nervous need to talk, shout, throw things at one another, and get the ire of the few COs, or correctional officers, who watched them from a control booth at the head of the room.

He was on Rikers Island, which, with some nineteen thousand inmates, was touted as the largest penal colony in the world, depending on whom you believed. Mostly consisting of landfill, Rikers had over four hundred acres and hosted eleven different jails housing men, women, and juveniles. The facilities came in every conceivable shape, from open dorms like w.i.l.l.y's, for people accused of lesser crimes, to twenty-three-hour-per-day isolation cells designed for the truly out-of-control. All but a small percentage of these people were in fact inhabitants of a legal twilight zone, charged but not yet convicted of crimes that had yet to be adjudicated by New York's overworked, understaffed, around-the-clock court system. Some people had been living on the island for years, awaiting trial.

"Kunkle? You got a visitor."

He took his eyes off the ceiling and looked into the face of a tall, muscular Latino CO. "Who is it?"

The CO smiled broadly and quickly glanced over his shoulder. "Hey, Frank, he talks. English and everything."

Frank's distant voice floated overhead. "He tell you to get stuffed?"

The CO merely laughed and tapped w.i.l.l.y on his shoulder. "Come on. Get up."

w.i.l.l.y rose and turned to be cuffed, a gesture that had become second nature by now. He was then steered by the CO through a series of doors and long corridors, all ammonia-clean and shiny bright, feeling like a tiny particle in an industrialized intestinal tract, until he was finally delivered to a windowless beige room with a linoleum floor, filled with cramped gla.s.s-part.i.tioned cubicles.

Sitting next to a man who was clearly a Legal Aid lawyer was Joe Gunther.

Freed of his cuffs at the door, w.i.l.l.y settled opposite them at the small table, his feet almost tangling with theirs, and addressed Gunther directly, ignoring the lawyer and his outstretched hand. "Now I know why I tried to stay anonymous."

Gunther didn't take offense. If anything, the att.i.tude gave him hope that w.i.l.l.y was still functioning up to par. "Hi to you, too. And you almost got your wish. The AFIS took close to twenty-four hours to kick out your prints. You're a glitch wherever you go."

The lawyer tried a.s.serting himself. "Mr. Kunkle, I thought you'd like to know our strategy in dealing with all this."

w.i.l.l.y barely glanced at him. "Just do what you got to do." He asked Gunther, "Is Sammie here, too?"

"You think I could keep her away?"

w.i.l.l.y scowled. "s.h.i.t. As if I didn't have enough on my plate already."

"She wants to help, w.i.l.l.y, and it's pretty obvious you need it."

"I need it from him"-w.i.l.l.y pointed at the lawyer- "not from you two."

"He's here because of us. I talked to the DA and the cops. Sammie was a character reference. Like it or not, we're helping you out. But I want something in exchange."

"Why? I didn't ask for any favors."

"You got 'em anyhow, and the biggest one is that you get to keep your job. The DA could've dropped the resisting arrest charge from the get-go, which is what's really hanging you up right now, but since the arresting cop was so p.i.s.sed off, mostly because you put them all through a chase, the DA wants to do a little face-saving to appease the boys in blue. Your lawyer here will play his role, the DA'll do the same, and the judge'll have no other real choice but to kick you loose with time served. From our side, if you tell me what you were doing there, which I'm guessing had nothing to do with drinking, then I'll be able to clean your slate entirely with our bosses back in Vermont, and that'll be an end to it."

w.i.l.l.y pressed his lips together and didn't answer.

"Why were you there?" Gunther repeated.

"I was meeting a guy."

"What about?"

w.i.l.l.y struggled with the frustration boiling up inside him. He just wanted to get out of here so he could pick up where he'd left off. He didn't give a d.a.m.n about his job or the good graces of his superiors or fulfilling any deal with his Boy Scout boss.

"Joe," he finally said. "This is private, okay? I got busted on some chickens.h.i.t thing that doesn't have anything to do with anything. If my job's in trouble because of it, then the whole bunch of you are stupider than I thought. Just get me out and leave me alone. And tell Sammie to mind her own business."

"She feels she is."

w.i.l.l.y was beginning to feel hot, almost dizzy, the past twenty-four hours threatening to take him over by force. He pressed his hand against his forehead, fighting the urge to simply strike out in anger. "What is it with you people? You don't have the right to tell me what to do. Due process will get me out of this dump, and some excuse about vacation time or bereavement leave or whatever the h.e.l.l will get me off with the pencil pushers in Vermont. Or not-I don't give a s.h.i.t. Just leave me alone, okay?"

He shifted his attention to the lawyer at this point, fixing him with a furious stare. "Do your job. Don't feed me strategy. Just spring me out of here."

The lawyer looked from one of them to the other. Joe Gunther nodded slowly and rose to his feet. "You two go ahead. w.i.l.l.y, you should be out by tomorrow morning, maybe the afternoon if things get jammed up downtown. If you don't act like a jerk and all goes as planned, Sammie and I'll see you afterward." He paused and leaned on the tabletop, putting his face close to w.i.l.l.y's. "I know what you're doing down here. I know you're not going to take Mary's death at face value till you can prove it to yourself." He quickly held up a hand to stop w.i.l.l.y from responding and added, "I'd do the same thing in your place. Just remember one thing, though, okay? You're not alone, much as you might think you are. And if Mary's death was anything other than what they're saying, you're also not the only one who wants to set that right." He straightened and finished by saying, "You know my pager number. I'm a phone call away."

He left the room, crossed the hallway, and exited the building through a double-doored vestibule where one door had to be locked before the other could be unlocked. At the other end, he retrieved the ident.i.ty card he'd left with the CO there and went out to where he'd parked his car. There waiting for him was Sammie Martens.

"What happened?" she asked as soon as he'd slid in behind the wheel.

"For starters, you were right about not going in. He's wired so tight, his eyeb.a.l.l.s are bulging. But I think he'll play ball with the DA. He is up to something, though-he didn't argue when I implied he was investigating Mary's death. I just don't know what he's got, if anything."

Gunther started the engine and put the car into gear. "One thing's for sure, though: As soon as he's out, he's going back on the trail, and I'd love to know exactly what that means."

Chapter 11.

Ward Ogden rounded the corner from the hallway, sidestepped a cardboard box, and b.u.mped into two colleagues standing before the new coffee pool list, consisting of all those officers who pitched in to pay for the squad's current flow of caffeine. The coffee pool was an NYPD standard, since the department didn't supply this perk, and was frequently more often a topic of debate than the various reasons they all worked here. In fact, as Ogden stopped in order not to collide with them, he saw one of them finishing up a succinct piece of graffiti reading, "Martinez is a cheap f.u.c.k."

Ogden laughed. "Didn't pay again?"

The writer shook his head sourly. "Says he kicked the habit, 'cept I saw him drinking some an hour ago. Looked like a kid caught smoking in the john, for Christ's sake."

The other man jerked his thumb toward the squad room. "You got guests, by the way. Out-of-town fuzz."

Surprised, Ogden stepped past them and entered the room to see an older man and a much younger, wiry woman both sitting by his desk. The man rose as Ogden approached.

"Detective Ogden? Joe Gunther and Sammie Martens. We're from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation."

Ogden shook their hands. "Colleagues of w.i.l.l.y Kunkle?" he asked, waving them back to their seats and sitting down himself. "Didn't we speak on the phone?"

"Good memory," Gunther commented.

Ogden maintained a friendly, seemingly relaxed demeanor, but Gunther could see the guardedness in his eyes.

"We don't see too many people from Vermont, especially cops. Three of you must be a pretty big percentage of the total."

Gunther laughed. "Only a thousand of us-true enough."

Ogden nodded, looking amused. "Wow. We have over forty times that just in the five boroughs." After one of those miniature but detectably awkward pauses, he added, "So, what brings you down? Your guy find something?"

The phrasing caught Gunther's ear. "Was there something to find?"

Ogden smiled thinly, the look in his eyes spreading across most of his face. "We didn't think so."

He didn't say anything more, making his question about why they were there hang in the air between them.

Gunther was the first to address it. Sammie had obviously chosen to let the two old warhorses feel each other out on their own. "He's into a bit of trouble-got picked up in a sweep in an after-hours bar."

Ogden recalled w.i.l.l.y's admission to being an alcoholic. "Drinking?" he asked.

Gunther shook his head. "Not according to him, and not from what I just saw when I visited him at Rikers. He claims he was talking to someone, I think about how his wife died."

Ward Ogden returned to his original topic of interest. "So, you came down because he got busted, or because you think there's something we missed?"

Gunther could almost feel the thin ice under his feet. Ogden looked like a straight shooter, and from the little Gunther had been able to find out beforehand, he was a veritable legend in his own time. Gunther had already noticed the tiny gold brontosaurus on the other man's lapel, and knew of the weight it implied. To p.i.s.s off one of these "dinosaurs" would be the end of whatever cooperation he might have been hoping for.

On the other hand, being a bit of a dinosaur himself, he also knew an alliance with one of them carried considerable weight.

As a result, he smiled at Ogden's loaded question and answered truthfully, "I don't think you missed anything. I'm not even sure w.i.l.l.y thinks so-he's carrying a lot of guilt about how his ex ended up-but one of the reasons I've lived with his att.i.tude all these years is that he has instincts you don't see too often, and they're usually right. Right now, I'd say we're only down here to keep an eye on him."

"Unless something develops."

Gunther looked him straight in the eyes. "Stranger things have happened."

To his credit, Ogden returned the smile and nodded. "True enough. That having been said, though, I'm going to kick you upstairs before this conversation goes any further. We watch our backs in this department, and for good reason. I might have been willing to share a few details with Mr. Kunkle, cop-to-cop, but not with his bra.s.s, and not without a blessing from the Whip."

They looked at him blankly. He laughed. "Sorry. It's what we old-timers call the squad commander. You'll have to get used to some of that around here. Almost as bad as the Pentagon with all our jargon."

Gunther shook his head, amused. "It's okay, and if meeting the Whip means we get to work with you afterward, you got a deal."

Ward Ogden stood up and made a self-deprecating gesture. "We'll see what can be arranged. Follow me."

They didn't go far. At the back of the room was an office with one of those ubiquitous interior windows designed so the inhabitant can keep an eye on what's going on among the troops. With a quick knock on the open door, Ogden steered the two of them across the threshold to face a man in his mid-thirties with slicked-back black hair and a taste for expensive clothes.

"Boss, these are Special Agents Joe Gunther and Sammie Martens of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. This is our squad commander, Lieutenant Miguel Torres. I should add that Mr. Gunther is also the Bureau's field force commander."

With a surprised look on his face, Torres rose from his feet and shook hands. "Vermont? Boy, you're a long way from home. Must be important. Have a seat. You want some coffee?"

When they both said yes, Ward Ogden moved to the door and purposefully motioned to one of the detectives he'd been chatting with earlier for two cups of coffee, fully cognizant of what he was setting in motion. As squad commander, Torres made a point of chipping into the coffee pool, but only for what he drank on his own. Ogden knew the rest of them would soon be grousing that the lieutenant was overstepping his allotment-almost as big a sin as not paying at all. It was one of the trivialities of squad life Ogden could never resist toying with.

After seeing them all seated comfortably and equipped with their coffee, Torres leaned back in his chair and asked, predictably enough, "You just down here seeing how the other half lives?"

Ogden answered on their behalf, and Gunther noticed immediately the respectful way in which Torres paid attention to what his nominal subordinate had to say.

"Remember that overdose we had a few days ago? Woman with the needle still in her arm, all the windows and doors locked? Name was Kunkle?"

Torres was nodding, encouraging Ogden to continue.

"Turns out her ex-husband works for the VBI, and had to come down to identify the body, which he did a couple of nights ago. After that, he dropped by the precinct to ask me for more details. I gave him what I could, which wasn't much, and he went on his way. Now I've just been told we picked him up during a routine bar sweep and put him in Rikers."

Torres made a face. "Ouch. Sorry about that."

Gunther shrugged. "Wrong place, wrong time. He shouldn't have been there."

"The point is," Ogden resumed, "that he wasn't there getting a shot. We think he was interviewing someone about how his wife died."

"Who?" Torres asked, reasonably enough.

"We don't know," Joe Gunther answered. "I dropped by Rikers earlier to tell him I'd talked to the DA and to ask him the same question. He tends to be a little cagey when he's first digging into something, so I didn't get far, but it's pretty clear he's doing some checking."

Torres digested that for a moment, his expression showing no happiness. "Where was he when he got busted?"

There was a telling pause. "Washington Heights," Sammie answered quietly, causing everyone in the room to look at her. She smiled slightly and explained to Gunther, "I got out of the car when we were at Rikers. I guess having an out-of-town cop in jail was something to talk about, so I listened."

Torres turned to Ogden. "And I'm a.s.suming his wife died in our precinct?"

His detective nodded wordlessly.

His elbows on the arms of his chair, Torres tapped his fingertips against his chin and stared into middle s.p.a.ce. "I'm not really good at head games, Agent Gunther," he finally said.

"Call me Joe-makes me sound like a fed."

Torres fixed him with his gaze. "All right, but what I'm saying is, I think something's going on here that's not being owned up to."

"That may be," Gunther conceded, "but then it's w.i.l.l.y who's got the answers, not us."

Torres shook his head. "I'm not so sure. Look at it from my side: some cop gets his wife dead in the city, comes down to ID her, and then pokes around to find out why she died, even though we don't see the mystery. In the process, he gets tagged for a minor rap it looks like he'll recover from. Then, out of the blue, he gets not one but two fellow detectives, including a boss, to come to the rescue, even though, from what I understand, he doesn't like the attention. Is that about right?"

Gunther responded carefully. "From your vantage point, yes. What you wouldn't be expected to know is the nature of the people involved, and the past history we all share."

Torres sighed heavily. "Boy. I don't like this." He looked over to his trusted dinosaur for help. "Ward, this is your case. You're the one who put it to bed. Are we comfortable with this? I need to know if we maybe screwed up, or if we got some nutso grieving cop out there who won't accept reality and is going to cause us problems."

Ogden didn't seem the least perturbed that the case he'd signed off on might in fact have been closed prematurely. Impressing Gunther with his evenhandedness, he merely shrugged and said, "I'll take another look at it."

That seemed to be all Torres wanted to hear. "Show our guests the usual courtesies and let me know what you find."

Ward Ogden led Sammie Martens and Joe Gunther back to his desk and motioned them into the chairs they'd occupied earlier.