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 towel 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 Jose 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."