The lobby was quieter than during their first visit, but the scrutiny they received upon entering was just as cursory. They mentioned to the receptionist that they were headed up to the detective bureau, and without looking up, she said fine and once again gave them directions.

They found Ward Ogden at his desk, on the phone and taking notes on a piece of paper, a file folder open before him. He caught sight of them standing in the doorway and motioned them toward the interview room they'd used before. Beyond him, behind the inward-facing gla.s.s window, his Whip, the lieutenant they'd met on their first visit, was hard at work stabbing at the keys on a computer. They quickly and quietly tucked into their hiding place.

Ogden joined them several minutes later, holding the same piece of paper in his hand, along with the file folder. "That was the medical examiner's office," he announced. "There was definitely something organic under her nails-they think skin-and they're guessing she scratched somebody shortly before she died. They walk the straight and narrow over there, so they won't commit themselves to a connection between her death and that finding, but as far as I'm concerned, this clinches it as a murder case. They'll be running what they found for a DNA sample, in case we get lucky with a suspect. You find your friend Kunkle?"

He asked this as he sat down at the small, battlescarred table with them.

"Nope," Gunther admitted. "Went up to Mount Kisco to see his brother, and just got back from Brooklyn, where we talked to a friend of his named Andy Liptak. Both of them had seen him recently, but neither knows where he is now. Until he calls us or draws attention to himself again, we're at a dead end. How 'bout you?"

"Andy Liptak, huh?" Ogden asked, raising his eyebrows and writing the name down. "Small world.... As for us, it's too early to say anything for sure," he said, glancing at the contents of the folder before him. "But this is what we've got so far." He interrupted himself briefly and looked up. "By the way, I brought in a partner on this-standard procedure and something I would've done from the start if I hadn't had you two around. His name is Jim Berhle. He's downstairs right now digging through some files. He's up to date about you two, so you don't need to tiptoe around him, and he knows not to brag about you in front of the bra.s.s. Just so you know."

He returned to scrutinizing his file, adding as he read, "Told you about the sc.r.a.pings. They also did a v.a.g.i.n.al swab-that came up negative. Nothing to add about the injection site, but they did find subcutaneous bruising to her upper arms where she may have been held down. She died too soon for a bruising to surface. Jim's been working the computer like a dog, checking all the data banks from Social Security to Welfare to Parole and Probation to anyone else he can think of. Mary Kunkle managed to duck all the relevant ones of those, as far as we can find, which is incredibly unusual, and therefore a negative finding of note-"

"Telling you what?" Gunther quickly asked before he moved on.

Ogden placed his finger on the page he'd been consulting and glanced up. "On the surface? That she was never busted, never hit bottom so she had to ask for a.s.sistance, was never stopped for a motor vehicle violation, never entered a methadone clinic. Under the surface, it tells me that she had some kind of support system in place, even during the rough times. What do you think of the two gentlemen you interviewed today?"

"Both could qualify," Joe admitted.

Sammie agreed. "w.i.l.l.y's brother has the emotional wherewithal and Liptak's got the money. Neither one of them fessed up, though. Now that she's dead and we're asking why, they both may be acting dumb."

"Or covering their tracks," Ogden murmured, returning to his paperwork. "We talked to her neighbors in the building and next door," he continued, "and couldn't add anything to what we already knew. The p.a.w.nshops I haven't done yet, since we don't know what might be missing. I did call our Homeless Outreach people and got a few names, but the only b.u.m I actually talked to didn't see anything notable. I had the trash compactor in her building torn apart and found a pair of coveralls that I ran by Mrs. Goldblum from across the alley. She said they looked right for the guy she saw working on the fire escape, so I'm having them checked by the crime lab. If we're lucky, the guy sweated and left us some DNA in the armpits. But I didn't find a key cutter or any tools.

"That," he added, straightening up and rubbing his eyes, "suggests to me that he left the building dressed differently but still carrying the stuff he entered with, so I had Jim go up and down the block to see if any stores or buildings had surveillance cameras overlooking the street, maybe aimed through the display window beyond the cash register or something. The best one he found was an ATM video that took a shot of every customer. That still ain't much, though-leaves a lot of gaps. He's still checking it, but nothing yet."

"What about Mary's phone records?" Sammie asked.

Ogden nodded agreeably. "Yup. Just getting there. We got a subpoena for them. That's some of what Jim's doing right now, running reverse checks on the numbers she called. We found w.i.l.l.y's brother right off, of course, it being long-distance-she called him a few times. I tried contacting you about that, but your pager's on the blink. Not that it mattered, since you found him anyway. It should all make interesting reading once Jim's done.

"Until then," he went on, extracting a sheet of paper from the file and laying it face up between them, "we have this, which may be nothing at all."

It was a subway map of the five boroughs, with several of the stations circled in red, accompanied by red numbers running anywhere from one to fifteen.

"Her Metro cards?" Gunther asked.

"Yeah. As w.i.l.l.y figured, our technical people had fun with them. When you run one of these cards through the entrance gate, it marks the date and the station. Course, we have no idea where each trip ended, but it still sets up a pattern of sorts."

Sammie pointed at the one station with a fifteen written next to it. "This the one closest to her home?"

"Right."

Joe saw one that immediately caught his eye. "Look. Four times at 135th Street, not all that far from where Bob goes to see his mother every week."

"It gets better," Ogden commented. "I ran that bag of heroin by the narcotics folks here. It's called Diablo, and 135th is near where it's circulated most. It's supposedly the trademark of some guy calling himself La Culebra, which means The Snake."

"Cute," Joe muttered. "I don't guess Mr. Snake would be too interested in a chat."

"I doubt it," Ogden agreed wryly, "but it's a big coincidence to overlook. On the other hand, that same subway stop also services a City College campus up there. It may be a stretch, but I've asked one of the local detectives to check the enrollment files, just for what-the-h.e.l.l."

"You talk with her co-workers and friends?" Sammie asked.

Ogden laughed. "Several of them, and found that w.i.l.l.y had been there already. He goes right after it, doesn't he?"

Neither one of them could argue the point, but Gunther asked, "Did he say anything to them that might tell us what he's up to?"

"Mary's old boss thought he was having a hard time accepting the accidental overdose scenario, but she didn't think he had any evidence proving otherwise. The other one-a friend and colleague of Mary's-was almost too p.i.s.sed off at him to even talk about it. Apparently he didn't fess up to being the infamous ex, and she didn't find that out till she talked with her boss later.

"But," he added, holding a finger up in the air, "there were a couple of things that came out of that conversation we should look into. And if they pan out, I want the NYPD to get full credit for having trained your guy to be as good as he is."

"You want the credit," Gunther replied, laughing, "we might give you the guy, too, if my bosses get sick enough of him. What were the couple of things?"

"First, he asked about boyfriends, specifically mentioned someone named Andy, which is why I lit up just then when you mentioned Liptak. Mary's girlfriend, Louisa Obregon, drew a blank there, but she did say Mary had been a bit of a party girl and that Obregon even met a couple of her dates. She couldn't remember their names, but they were ordinary-sounding like Bill or Dave."

"Or Bob," Joe said quietly.

Ogden smiled. "Thought you'd find this part interesting. I couldn't get any worthwhile descriptions, but flying a mug shot of Bob Kunkle under her nose couldn't hurt. The other two things she told me were just as interesting: One, she swore Mary was a speedball shooter when she last used. She'd shot heroin in the old days, but had moved to speedb.a.l.l.s exclusively and wouldn't have touched straight heroin with a pole, supposedly. Two, she said that w.i.l.l.y really got after her about the Re-Coop- asking who owned it, how was it financed, what was its real story-stuff like that."

"Interesting," Gunther said. "You look into any of that yet?"

Ogden shook his head. "Nope. We've already jammed a lot into a short time. I just haven't gotten to it."

"Maybe we can help. Some of this just requires breaking down data-noncomputer stuff-matching Metro stops to phone call addresses or credit card and sales receipts to various dates we have on hand, or even chasing down the incorporation records on the Re-Coop. Couldn't Sam and I do that while you and your partner do the street cop and computer work?"

Ogden didn't take two seconds to react. "Sure. I'll tuck you away somewhere upstairs. More than one case has been made that way. After losing so much time, we should be that lucky."

He stood up and began collecting his paperwork. Smiling at them as he did so, he added, "But I'm an optimist at heart. Ask anybody."

There was a knock on the door and one of Odgen's colleagues poked his head into the room. "Call for you, Ward. Guy named w.i.l.l.y Kunkle."

"Thanks, Freddy." Ogden waggled his eyebrows at the two Vermonters. "See?"

Chapter 17.

The subway dropped w.i.l.l.y Kunkle off at the Ess.e.x Street station, just shy of where Delancey begins ramping up to meet the Williamsburg Bridge on its leap across the East River. It's an impressive view and a true monument to engineering, especially superimposed over the Lower East Side backdrop. It's also a visual testament to the cars-over-people mentality born in the twentieth century's first half, when the already downtrodden, roughand-tumble neighborhood was furrowed up to make room for what, even at the time, was deemed a remarkably ugly bridge. It made of the whole area a fractious orchestra of brick and steel, poverty and history, mixed in with the bridge's contradictory, even incongruous promise of a way out. It had forever been a picture w.i.l.l.y could appreciate.

He continued walking toward the river on the northern sidewalk, intending to cut under the bridge at Ridge Street to the precinct house below. But the route had an extra benefit, offering up yet another telling symbol of the neighborhood-one reflecting the locals' ability to rally against the sheer weight of the city around them. It was an enclosed chicken ranch, complete with wire racks jammed with hundreds of red hens strutting around and pecking out of feed trays, all tucked behind the broad plate-gla.s.s windows of an otherwise conventional store. w.i.l.l.y pondered an ad that might accompany such counterintuitive offerings: "Manhatten Free-Range Chickens." This was definitely a town for the innovative.

It was dark by now, and w.i.l.l.y paused in the shadows under the bridge to look at the redbrick station house and consider his actions one last time. He and Riley c.o.x had wasted hours fruitlessly chasing down a match for the name Carlos Barzun had given him: Ron Cashman. They'd even tried calling every Cashman in the phone book. But in a town of so many millions, a good many of whom were less than eager to be located, they hadn't held out much hope. And along those lines, they hadn't been disappointed.

w.i.l.l.y's working out in the cold had just hit its first distinct disadvantage. He didn't have the resources, the equipment, or the manpower to conduct a search like the one he needed done.

The challenge, therefore, was to locate Ron Cashman using police help without losing control of the case, something his recent incarceration and attending mistrust was going to make that much more difficult.

Which is why he'd phoned Ogden a half hour ago.

He broke cover and headed for the Seventh, vowing to make it up as he went along, and hoping to get lucky.

As soon as he entered the detective bureau upstairs, he knew this might be more difficult then he'd thought- certainly more complicated. Both Joe Gunther and Sammie Martens were cl.u.s.tered around Ward Ogden's desk, drinking cups of sacrosanct coffee.

"Hey, w.i.l.l.y," Gunther said affably enough.

"Hey, yourself," he answered, watching Sammie.

Sammie merely looked at him, her expression closed.

"Pull up a chair, Mr. Kunkle," Ogden suggested, "and let's compare notes."

w.i.l.l.y instead parked one hip on the edge of an adjacent desk, so he was sitting with a slight height advantage over them all. "I doubt I have much to offer," he said, "seeing that I've spent most of my time in town behind bars." He suddenly gave his two colleagues closer scrutiny. "Why are you two still here, anyway?"

"I called the boss," Gunther explained. "Sam had vacation time coming, and I told him I was taking emergency grief leave-death in the family with complications. Not too far off."

"And he bought that?"

"I told him the death was the result of a murder."

In the sudden stillness, w.i.l.l.y heard the background clatter of a couple of old-fashioned typewriters and the ceaseless ringing of the phones slowly yield to a buzzing in his ears.

"Is that true?" he asked, his own words sounding distant.

"You surprised?" Gunther inquired doubtfully.

w.i.l.l.y felt a numbness spread throughout his body. Despite his dogged efforts of the past few days and his own nagging doubts verging on conviction, he suddenly realized that he'd still been holding out hope that Mary had perhaps died simply of the despair for which he so pointedly took responsibility. To think that she'd also been murdered compounded his loss, and, as unreasonable as he knew it to be, made him feel somehow doubly responsible for her death.

"I suspected as much," he said quietly, settling into the chair beside him. "I just wasn't a hundred percent sure."

"What made you suspicious?" Ogden asked, obviously keen to know anything he might have missed.

"I don't know," w.i.l.l.y answered vaguely. "It felt wrong. She'd been happy, planning ahead-looking to go back to school. And there were things at her apartment- a missing date book, no address book. She always had those, and they weren't in your file."

He was finding it helpful to talk. "You also have three letters. That may be all there was, but she used to be a pack rat with those, and the birth control pills and her girlfriend both told me she had men in her life. I got the feeling someone had sanitized things, probably one of them."

"Was the girlfriend Louisa Obregon?"

"Yeah. The Re-Coop director gave me her name."

"And she told you about Mary wanting to go to school?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Ogden chose his words carefully, still unsure of w.i.l.l.y's trustworthiness. "We heard she might've visited the CCNY campus in Harlem."

w.i.l.l.y shrugged. "Maybe. Obregon didn't say." The proximity of that campus to La Culebra's neighborhood wasn't lost on him. But he, like Ogden, was keeping his own counsel for the moment.

A couple of detectives entered the squad room, laughing. Ogden rose without fanfare and quietly suggested the four of them retreat to their familiar, more private lair.

Once the door was closed behind them, and they'd settled into new seats, Joe Gunther commented to w.i.l.l.y, "Obregon mentioned you'd asked her about the ReCoop-how it's run, funded, who's behind it. What made you so curious? You smell something there?"

w.i.l.l.y answered truthfully. "Not particularly. It just seemed pretty ritzy to me, given where it is, and I was surprised Mary could just walk in off the street and get in. Most of these places have waiting lists a mile long. Made me wonder, is all. I never checked it out."

He was by now fully recovered from his earlier shock, and returned to the topic that had stimulated it, asking the New York detective, "Since we're playing twenty questions, why're you so convinced she was murdered, 'specially after you almost shelved the case?"

It hadn't been diplomatically worded, but Ogden apparently had Joe Gunther's talent for forbearance. "Thank your fearless leader. He saw what we missed."

For the next twenty minutes, Ogden and Gunther briefed w.i.l.l.y on their theories, with Gunther going beyond the dinosaur's reluctance and telling w.i.l.l.y exactly what they were investigating. Gunther knew as Ogden didn't the extent of his renegade colleague's abilities and dedication, but he was also fully aware that had it not been for Ogden's status and the fact that they'd hit it off, none of the Vermont team would have stayed in this building, much less become an integral part of the investigation.

w.i.l.l.y, for his part, didn't press for details. In fact, he was more interested in extracting information they wouldn't know anything about.

"So basically," he said once he'd been brought up to date, "you're crunching numbers and pounding the pavement, hoping to get lucky."

"You know how it goes," Gunther agreed, having noticed that Sammie Martens hadn't said a word so far.

"Sure," w.i.l.l.y conceded, and played the card he'd arrived with. "Then maybe you should add the name Ron Cashman to the list. I heard he might know something, and I can't get a location on him."

Both old-timers studied him carefully. "What's his story?" Gunther asked.

w.i.l.l.y looked nonchalant, willing to share information, within limits. "I was chasing down the drug angle-Diablo?"

Ogden nodded. "Right, the uptown stuff. What'd you find out?"

"Nothing. My options were to poke around generally or ask the manufacturer directly if he knew Mary. The last approach seemed a little suicidal."

"That's what we were thinking earlier," Ogden admitted. "Did you find out who makes it?"

w.i.l.l.y feigned surprise. "You don't know that? I only heard the street name, La Culebra. Cashman's name came up as someone who'd done business with him from this part of the city. I thought it was both unusual and an interesting coincidence."

Ogden nodded and wrote the name down in his notepad.

w.i.l.l.y was suddenly struck by a thought. "Add Nathan Lee to that list, too, would you?"

"Why?"

Here he felt freer to be honest. "He's a friend of mine. Been helping me out-in fact, he was the one I was with in that bar-but he disappeared. I've been looking all over for him. I'm worried he got into a jam. I checked his apartment, his friends. He's vanished. Black guy, midsixties-maybe older-small and wiry."

Ogden watched him carefully. "What kind of business is he in?"

"Hustling. Nothing big time. He makes ends meet. I met him when I was on the beat and cut him some slack. He never forgot it."

Ogden got to his feet. "Let me add these to Jim's list. He's already staring at a computer. I'll be right back."

He left the room. There was an uncomfortable silence before Gunther rose, too, and said, "I gotta go to the bathroom," and followed Ogden's example.

After he'd left, the silence remained. w.i.l.l.y stared at his shoes. Sammie stared at him.