by Archer Mayor
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 Willy 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 attitude 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 brass, 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 assuming 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 space. “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 Willy 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.
Gunther was once again feeling uneasy about their status. “Detective, I’m sorry if we’ve suddenly become a pain in the neck. I didn’t know your whip was going to throw this back in your lap.”
Ogden seemed unconcerned. “Call me Ward. And he’s just covering his butt. If it is a ground ball, it’ll pan out that way again pretty fast, and if your pal Willy is on to something, then we’ll have him to thank later. It’s not a big deal.” He then smiled and added, “But come to think of it, since the two of you are sitting around with nothing to do except complicate my life, I might have you help me out. That way, you’ll know I didn’t blow you off, and I’ll have two extra heads looking at this.” He glanced over his shoulder at Torres’s window. “But that’s strictly unofficial, okay? Unless or until something crops up.”
Both Sammie and Joe nodded without comment. Ogden rose to his feet, a thin file in his hand. “Take your coffee. We’ll move this to the interview room.”
The room in question actually looked like a catchall, with a rickety table in the middle, a small fridge and a microwave in one corner beside a narrow counter, the ubiquitous pile of more boxes lining one wall, and a bank of padlocked miniature metal lockers for the officers’ personal property.
Ogden took a paper tow
el from above the counter and wiped the tabletop clean of some mysterious puddles. “Okay,” he finally said, laying the folder on the table and pulling out two folding metal chairs. “That’s the Mary Kunkle case file, from soup to nuts. Take a look and tell me what you think. I have to make a couple of phone calls, but I’ll be right back.”
Joe and Sammie sat side by side and scrutinized the contents of the file together, occasionally pointing out details to each other, generally just reading quietly or studying the many photographs. They were just finishing up when Ogden returned.
He sat opposite them. “What do you think?”
Sammie Martens was about to start up, but Gunther spoke first. “Sorry. I was wondering if we could add one last request to this. Could we go to the scene? See it for ourselves?”
Sammie looked at him, but Ogden simply smiled and began gathering up the paperwork. “No problem. I would’ve done the same in your shoes. We’ll go in my car.”
The drive to Mary’s apartment took no more than ten minutes. Not bothering with a protracted search for an open spot, Ogden double-parked beside a car which was facing a fire hydrant zone, thereby allowing its driver a way to get out on his own. He laughed at Sammie’s cool appraisal of the gesture and explained, “People think we can just throw a plate on the dash and get free parking wherever we want,” Ogden explained. “That’s true a lot of the time, but if we’re blocking a hydrant or a bus zone, we get ticketed like everybody else, and we have to plead the summons with the boss and do all the usual paperwork. I even got towed once when I was inside a building working a case. Took me all day to get the car out of hock.”
They’d all three been walking while Ogden aired these woes, so as he finished, they were standing before the dreary, stained facade of Mary’s apartment building. Ogden pushed the super’s doorbell in the lobby and waited until José Rivera appeared, wiping his hands with a rag.
His face fell as he recognized who it was. “Oh, Detective. Not again. I thought this thing was over.”
Ogden smiled at him. “The fat lady hasn’t sung yet, Mr. Rivera. Sorry. Could you let us in?”
Rivera turned heavily and plodded away into the gloom of the building’s interior. “Follow me.”
They climbed the stairs to Mary’s floor and came to a halt before the taped door. Ogden reached out and touched the white warning label at the spot where Willy had sliced it earlier.
He hadn’t said a word before Rivera cut in, “Don’t blame me. That was you guys. You too cheap to use new tape, it ain’t my problem.”
Ogden patted him on the back. “Relax, Mr. Rivera. Nobody’s busting your chops here. Was this the guy with the bum arm?”
Rivera eyed him suspiciously, as if this were a trick question. “So?”
“So nothing. It’s all right. I just wanted to know.”
The super’s expression softened. “Yeah. It was him. And tell him I appreciate whatever he did in there, too. That was a first. It went down good with the neighbors, too. I been through this routine before with you people, and he’s the first to clean up after himself. I don’t know why you can’t make that policy, instead of letting a place smell like a sewer till nobody can live on the same floor. It’s a sanitation thing, you know? You screw me over and then the health people’re all over me for somethin’ I can’t do nuthin’ about.”
Ogden had already opened the door and waved the other two inside while Rivera was venting. Now he gave the super’s shoulder one last pat, said, “It’s okay. I’ll let him know,” and closed the door.
He smiled apologetically at his guests. “They don’t see us face-to-face too often. I guess they have to get it off their chests when they can.”
Sammie was looking perplexed. “What was he talking about, anyhow?”
Ogden tapped the side of his nose. “No stench…. In fact, it smells pretty good. The first time we were here, it was getting ripe. She’d been there awhile and she’d messed herself before dying.” He moved past them as they stood in the tiny kitchen and glanced over the living room. “Yeah. Willy did a Spic and Span. Didn’t do the scene much good, but, like the super said, made it more bearable. Sometimes a scene stays rank for months till some bureaucrat in our department clears the last of the paperwork.”
He seemed to take Willy’s violation in stride, removing a plastic jar from his overcoat pocket and holding it up. “At least, we won’t have to use these.”
Sammie reached out and took hold of the container.
“DOA crystals,” Ogden explained. “That’s what we call them. I think they look more like rabbit pellets. Open it and take a whiff.”
She did so, made a face, and passed them on to Gunther, who did likewise. “Christ,” he said, “talk about sweet.”
Ogden laughed. “Might be worse than what it’s supposed to hide. We usually spread them around the room in a few Styrofoam cups so they aren’t that concentrated, but they do the job.”
They all three moved into the living room, where Ogden once again opened the case file and spread it across the coffee table before them. “Okay, so you got your wish, Joe. This is it. You two see any problems with our conclusions?”
Ever wary, Gunther glanced at his face, but once more, all he could see was a helpful neutrality. Ogden, it was beginning to seem, was one of those rare birds: the ultimate professional. No matter the situation or the setback, he didn’t take the job personally. It was all about quality control, not who was right or wrong.
Gunther began gently nevertheless, wandering through the apartment as he spoke. “To start with, because of Willy’s neat-freak attack, I’m relying on the photographs for how the place looked before the search, but it seemed very clean and tidy for a junkie. Healthy food in the larder, a fully stocked and shiny bathroom.”
Ogden nodded. “I noticed that. On the other hand, the premise we’re working on—based on all her track marks being old except the lethal one—was that she’d been on the mend. She wasn’t supposed to be down and out and living like a rat in a box.”
Gunther paused by the TV set and picked up a small envelope. He handed it to Ogden with a wry smile. “It’s addressed to you. It’s Willy’s handwriting.”
Ogden opened the envelope and poured its contents out into his palm. There were the few crumpled receipts Willy had retrieved from the trash, and a thick wad of old Metro cards. An accompanying scrap of paper had the words, “Found this lying around. The Metro cards were wedged in the window. Figured you could put them to better use than me.”
Ogden shook his head. “Interesting guy.”
Gunther laughed. “That’s one word for him.”
“There was something else Sammie noticed from the photographs,” he continued, returning to the kitchen and the front door. “The locks here: There’s the regular one the super just opened to let us in, which I guess was locked when you first responded to the scene, and then the deadbolt, which can only be closed from inside.” He snapped it to as a test, its sharp click sounding like a slap.
Ogden understood the implied question. “And it wasn’t closed, as might be expected in the middle of the night.”
He moved next to Gunther and opened the door entirely, checking the other lock’s mechanism. “We really have three systems here,” he said. “One’s a spring lock, engaged when you just pull the door closed behind you. Then there’s a key-operated deadbolt, which Rivera opened at the same time he opened the spring lock. I noticed he turned the key twice. So, the keyless deadbolt’s redundant.”
He shut the door again and raised his eyebrows. “In the responding officer’s UF-61, he makes special mention that both the spring lock and the keyed deadbolt were closed. Could be she felt that was enough and never did use the backup deadbolt.”
To his own credit, Ogden followed his comment by bending over the keyless deadbolt to study it carefully. “On the other hand,” he added, “the knob does look good and shiny from repeated use.” He straightened. “Of course, I don’t know how long she was living h
ere, either. Might be her predecessor was less trusting.”
He moved back to the living room, where Sammie was doing a thorough search, and retrieved a photograph from the open file. “I did find out something else, by the way,” he confessed, holding the picture up. “While you were going over the file back at the office, I went next door to see the narcotics guys—our precinct is also headquarters for Manhattan South narcotics. I asked them if the devil symbol on the bag of heroin was local, and they said definitely not. It had to have come from outside the neighborhood.” He replaced the photo. “May not mean anything, but I thought it was interesting.”
“So’s this,” Gunther said from the kitchen. “Bring the file, would you?”
They both joined him, Sammie carrying what he’d requested. He pointed to the counter beside the sink. “You got a toaster oven and a microwave, right? One’s plugged in, the other’s not, freeing up the only easily accessible outlet in the room. Except, there’s nothing else around that can be plugged in.”
He answered the next obvious but unspoken question by plugging in the toaster oven and hitting the ON switch. It lit up and the metal coils inside slowly began to glow. No one said a word. He killed the toaster oven and removed the plug.
He reached out his hand. “Let me see.”
Sammie handed the file over and he extracted a picture of the counter, taken from their vantage point. He held it up before the real thing, so they could see the before and after. In both the photograph and in reality, the one plug was unplugged. Also, there was a barely noticeable residue on the counter, near its edge.
“See that?” Gunther asked, tapping the spot in the picture. “It’s still here.”
He pointed at it as it lay before them. Ogden bent over and turned his head to better see it in the overhead light. “It glistens,” he murmured. “Like gold dust.”