"You got it."
This time it was Gunther's and Sammie's turn to sidle up next to Ogden and scrutinize what had caught his eye.
"Mr. Rivera, could you come here for a sec?"
The super reluctantly approached them. "What?"
Ogden pointed at what looked like a small steering wheel. "What's that for?"
"Heat."
Sammie looked at him in surprise. "The apartments don't have thermostats?"
Rivera laughed. "Not from around here, are you? You know what a bunch of junkies and drunks do when you give 'em a thermostat? They run you outta business, that's what. No way. We fix the temperature from down here. Even the fancier buildings do that. We keep 'em warm enough, even if they do bitch now and then."
Gunther could imagine the conversations there, and figured that "now and then" probably accounted for the entire winter.
"Which way do you turn the wheel to make things hotter upstairs?"
Rivera made to demonstrate the technique, but Ogden caught his hand in midmotion. "Don't touch anything, Mr. Rivera. Just tell me how it works."
"Clockwise. All the way. Makes the place hotter'n a bastard."
Ogden nodded. "Great. Thanks. Do me a favor, would you? Go upstairs and tell one of the police officers in that apartment that we need a detective down here."
Rivera scowled. "Look, I been real useful to you, but I got a job, you know? I can't-"
"You want us out of here as fast as possible, right?" Ogden asked.
Rivera shook his head angrily and moved toward the door. "All right, all right."
They heard him cursing under his breath as he picked his way back toward the basement door.
"What did you find?" Sammie asked the New York detective after Rivera had moved out of earshot.
Ogden motioned her closer to the hand wheel. "Take a look, and compare it to the others next to it."
She quickly saw what he had, that the surface of the metal, dusty and grimy everywhere else, had been wiped clean on this one, presumably to remove any fingerprints.
"The CSU people ought to be able to tell us which direction it was moved last."
She looked up at him questioningly, unable as yet to connect the dots as apparently he had.
Joe Gunther, however, was right up to speed. "It goes to the locked window and the key cutter's dust, Sam. How do you kill someone and make it look accidental? Best way I know is to make sure everything's locked from the inside. We're guessing whoever's been lurking around here made a key in the kitchen using Mary's original to lock the door behind him. The trick is to explain how he got in in the first place."
"He could have knocked on the door," Ogden picked up, "but in this town, that's risky. Too many nosy neighbors and too many thin walls. Plus, around here you don't let somebody in you don't know."
"We looked at the window," Gunther resumed, "and found it was too stiff to jimmy from the outside, so the only alternative, as unlikely as it seems, was to somehow get the occupant to open the window on her own."
The light went on over Sammie's head. "So, you crank up the heat and gain access up the pre-oiled fire escape and through the open window, any small sounds being masked by the fan she probably had running as well."
"Bingo," said Ogden with a smile. "Not that any of that happened, but it sure looks good."
"An official CUPPI?" Gunther asked him.
The smile faded from Ogden's face. "We'll need the lab to confirm all this." He waved his hand at the apartment utility controls. "And we'll have to run some interviews, but I think we're already beyond the CUPPI stage. My gut tells me we're into a murder investigation now- one I promise in particular to see through to the end."
Chapter 13
Willy Kunkle looked around carefully before setting foot on the dark roof. Now that he was not being chased, he could better appreciate the view, and was surprised at how close Yankee Stadium appeared across the Harlem River, glowing like an oversized alien saucer waiting to pick up a spare load of discarded humans. What with the gloomy, featureless water tower looming overhead and the complete darkness of the roof before him, Willy felt he was taking in the stadium and the millions of surrounding city lights as from a black hole-that he could see the entire world, and that it had no idea he was even alive.
It was a feeling he'd known more than once in his life.
He walked cautiously toward the far foot of the tower, the one most lost in the shadows, his senses attuned to any unusual sounds or movements. He felt he was back in enemy country up here, as out of place as he'd been in 'Nam. There, he'd also spent many nights in close proximity to the unknown, sometimes so quietly that he hadn't dared to brush away mosquitoes that were drawing blood from his face. In those days, the enemy had often been so nearby, they had filled his nostrils. In his mind only, as a sort of meditation, he'd even imagined coordinating his heartbeat with theirs, not just to broaden the scope of his own silence, but perhaps-subconsciously-so that when he quietly stopped that other heart with his knife, his own could mimic its continuing beat.
There had been times, out there, lethal and alone, so isolated and removed from his feelings that he could barely feel pain, that he'd actually thought in those terms, of hearts beating in unison like those of lovers in poems.
Which had made stopping them as he had, time and again, a curious experience initially, and eventually a debilitating one. In the long run, he'd lost interest in thinking about such things. Or perhaps, given his own heart's condition, he'd lost the ability to match its beat to anyone else's.
He passed under the water tower, groping in the gloom, bent double and feeling the ground before him, when suddenly he heard a soft voice. He froze, waiting, his mouth half open to quiet his breathing, his eyes avoiding any bright pinpoints of light so his pupils could adjust to the darkest corners of the roof.
The voice continued, almost a whisper, close to an atonal chant. Now totally and instinctively back in combat mode, Willy moved forward, retrieved his belongings from under the tar-paper flap without a sound, and homed in on the source of the chanting. He found it after drifting like a shadow pushed by the breeze to the edge of the roof beyond the tower. There, he found a young man with his baseball cap turned backward, sitting atop the low parapet, his legs dangling over the side. Beside him was a plastic bag of powder and an assortment of drug paraphernalia. He was talking to himself in a low, regularly cadenced voice, as if reciting a mantra. Heartbeat-toheartbeat once more, Willy Kunkle stood behind him, six inches away, and clearly heard that the young man was merely mouthing the lines from a rap song, without inflection or enthusiasm.
Willy looked down at the back of the head near his right hand, remembering the things he'd been capable of so long ago, the things both his hands had once done, virtually without thought, and willfully without self-reproach.
Half the rush from those situations, however, had nothing to do with the acts of violence terminating them. In some ways, Willy had seen the killing as a letdown- messy, occasionally smelly-a disappointment, given all the intensity leading up to it. The truly curious joy had come before, in the psychic dominance preceding the final act. It had come from the knowledge that while he could have dispatched his target, he hadn't quite yet, and had thus extended the man's life. Most importantly, he'd given himself the power to choose, if for only a moment.
Just like now.
He watched the man manipulate his lethal tools, preparing to give himself an injection, so close that his hands could have been Willy's own. Willy wondered about how many times Mary had done this same thing, quietly prepared herself as others might make a ham sandwich, her anticipation rising for the lift the drug would soon give her.