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 here, 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."
"Remind you of anything?" Gunther asked.
Sammie and Ogden looked at each other.
"Think of a hardware store," Gunther prompted.
Ogden's face lit up and he studied the dust again with renewed interest. "It's like the shavings left over from a key-making jig."
"That's why the outlet needed to be freed up," Joe Gunther agreed.
Chapter 12
Willy Kunkle sat in a corner of one of the holding pens tucked under the misdemeanor court at 100 Centre Street in Downtown Manhattan. The cell was about twenty-bytwenty and held some ten men who were waiting to be taken upstairs for their moment before the judge. One of them was sequestered in a small cubbyhole at the back, which had a barred window through which he could talk privately with his lawyer. Willy had been here two hours, watching his roommates intermingling in subtle hierarchical ways, and wondering if and when one of them might confront him to find out who he was and what he was in for. So far, no one had shown any interest in him.
He was a little nervous. After Joe and the lawyer had left him behind at Rikers, pending his court appearance the following day, Kunkle had been extracted from the general-population barracks where he'd been staying and put into isolation for his own protection, presumably because Gunther had confirmed that he was in fact a cop, and thus at risk among other prisoners who might be interested in moving up the food chain.
But right now was not the following day. It was only three hours after that meeting with Gunther. To his surprise, Kunkle had been taken from his cell, driven to 100 Centre Street, and placed in this cell. Almost afraid of jinxing what looked like an early release, he'd nevertheless asked one of the commanding COs if Joe Gunther had pulled more strings to speed up his processing. The answer had been that the DA was behind it and that Gunther couldn't be located, despite their efforts to do so, presumably because his pager was malfunctioning.
On the surface, this was good news. Willy had been expecting Joe and Sammie to be at his hearing and to then do everything possible to stop his returning to the streets. This latest development implied he was about to sneak out before they found him. But that was just an assumption. This system, with which he was all too familiar by now, did not usually pride itself on working ahead of schedule. Thus, the possibility lurked that something was amiss, and that he was about to be handed a nasty surprise.
"Kunkle?" a CO asked from the hallway outside, a clipboard in hand.
Willy rose to his feet. "That's me."
"Step out."
Watched by the others, Willy rose and did as he'd been asked. The CO took him by the arm and escorted him down the narrow hallway, up a cramped flight of windowless stairs, and to a door at the top. There, he pushed open the door and gave Willy a gentle shove in the small of his back.
Ready for anything by now, Willy found himself in a huge, vaulted, wood-paneled room full of people and voices, as big as a train station, it seemed to him, especially in comparison to the reduced quarters he'd just left.
It was the misdemeanor court, in full action. Architecturally just like the staid and impressive place so popularly featured on TV and in the movies, complete with a raised platform and ornate carved bench for the judge, along with other latter-century touches of decorative excess, but in fact a place reminiscent of old Bedlam. It was jammed with people: spectators, lawyers, court officers, stenographers, newspeople, and, looming above them all, a black-robed, efficient, and calm woman judge, who looked as comfortable here as if she'd been supervising a family dinner at home.
Willy froze in place, causing the CO to bump into him from behind.
"Keep moving-over there." An index finger appeared over his shoulder and indicated the same lawyer Willy had met a few hours earlier.
It was only then that Willy Kunkle realized that no one besides his lawyer even knew who he was or cared anything about him. Everyone else was there on other business. As he walked hesitantly to where his attorney awaited him, Willy began to differentiate the various groups cluttering the room. Apparently, in order to keep things moving quickly, the system encouraged defendants to be processed by the judge as on a production line, each equipped with a legal representative, a prosecutor, and perhaps a few others, and each variously awaiting his or her turn, pleading the case, discussing some postjudgment deal with the appropriate bodies, or simply filling in paperwork at the court secretary's desk.
The lawyer quickly shook Willy's hand without making eye contact, his attention distracted by the contents of his open briefcase. "We're up in a few minutes. Like I explained at Rikers, this is an arraignment and a sentencing both. Just stay quiet, look at the judge, be respectful, and follow instructions. It'll be over before you know it."
It was over almost that fast. His name and case number were announced, the judge asked both sides what they wanted, the prosecution and Willy's Legal Aid rep traded facts about the circumstances, the character references, the otherwise clean record, and ended up presenting the one option they wanted the judge to take, which she did summarily. Before Willy had a chance to carefully study the faces of the people responsible for his fate, he was told he could go. The whole thing had taken mere minutes.
He was out on the street shortly thereafter, feeling like he'd just been teletransported there, the product of some weird commingling of Star Trek and The Twilight Zone.