Yielding to the evidence, he walked with Sammie the short distance to their destination. Immediately to their left, the trash-clotted stone base of the noisy, graffitiladen Williamsburg Bridge loomed overhead on its way to Brooklyn across the river. In his admitted limited experience, Joe Gunther had never been to a New York precinct house that wasn't located within similarly bleak environs. As one wizened cop had once put it to him, that way the commute to round up business was kept at a minimum.
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 glass 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 brass. Just so you know."
He returned to scrutinizing his file, adding as he read, "Told you about the scrapings. They also did a vaginal 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 assistance, 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. "Willy'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 pawnshops 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 bum 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 Willy'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 Willy 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-hell."
"You talk with her co-workers and friends?" Sammie asked.
Ogden laughed. "Several of them, and found that Willy 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 pissed 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.