"My therapy consisted of counseling and a few modest medications."
The detective left the speed bag and walked to a rack of equipment on a wall. He donned a headguard and shoved his hands into sixteen-ounce gloves, brushing the Velcro straps across the wrists. Gray did the same. Coates left his spectacles on the wood bench. They bent through the ropes into the ring. They sparred lightly, bobbing and ducking, blocking most blows with their fists. Gray once determined that during the De Sallo investigation he and the detective had boxed over fifteen hundred rounds with each other. Their sparring had become choreography.
"Your file said you tried to zonk yourself," Coates said, breathing heavily. He launched a right jab that grazed the pad over Gray's ear. "How long did that urge last?"
Gray gestured, a nonresponse, letting Coates snap his head with another jab. "It never entered my drugged-up mind after that one time."
"You think it was your sniping that caused the depression?" The detective stepped back to wipe sweat off his forehead with the back of a glove.
"Hell, no." Gray's voice was too adamant. He sent a smooth combination at Coates, the left cross catching the detective in the ear. "I was a soldier."
"Ever been back to the hospital?"
"Not in ten years." Gray grinned baitingly, showing his mouthguard. "But — the strangest thing — all my dreams are still seen through crosshairs." Good effort, Gray thought. Making a small joke of the horror. He sounded fairly normal.
Coates came straight at Gray, throwing four jabs, then a right straight, finding Gray's nose. "One of your victims was a woman, I read."
"She was a Viet Cong major who had cut off the testicles of two Marines." Gray backstepped, his breath coming in gulps. "You could have done her, too, believe me. You know, Pete, you are out of character this morning, what with all this polite chat. No cracks about the loony bin."
"Not from this lovable guy."
"And this pleasant chat has a professional scent. You on the job right now?"
Coates jabbed, but Gray slipped it and found Coates's chin with a right. The big gloves resembled pillows, and the blows had little effect.
The detective said, "I'm trying to learn how a sniper thinks. You're the only one I've ever met. Thank God."
Sam Owl and the middleweight stepped to the ring. The fighter said, "Look at those two white pussies, Sam. For Christ sake, looks like the Michelin Man versus the Pillsbury Doughboy."
Without taking his eyes off Gray, Coates called, "I'll take care of you, Joe, once I'm done with this victim."
The middleweight chortled. His name was Joe Leonard, one of Sam Owl's promising youngsters. He had eighteen professional wins, twelve by KO, and no losses, and was ranked eighth in the country by Ring magazine.
Sam Owl said, "You two guys hurry up with your patty-cake. Bennie'll be here in a minute for Joe's workout and I want the ring free."
Bennie Jones, Brooklyn Golden Gloves welterweight champion for three years, had won his first six pro fights and was Leonard's regular sparring partner.
Owl led Leonard to a mat and lectured him about his crouch.
Gray jabbed and said, "I've got a plea-change hearing this afternoon and I want to hear the results of the lab work. Are you done interrogating me?"
Coates was huffing and dropping his guard, tiring. "Is our killer married, you think?"
Gray spread his gloves. "How would I know?"
"Is it possible for a woman to be married to a sniper?"
"It wasn't possible for Cathryn to be married to me." Gray jabbed lightly, catching Coates's forehead. Perspiration gathered in the folds of Gray's tracheotomy scar and pooled in the other shallow scars on his arms. Other puncture scare — purple and deep — stitched both of Gray's legs.
Leonard called, "Two marshmallows fighting, looks like."
"Shut the hell up, Joe, or I'll arrest you for impersonating a fighter," Coates called, backpedaling. Sweat ran down his face in steady rivulets. "So what happened?"
Gray moved in again, jabbing, finding Coates's chin twice with light jabs. "I was carrying too much freight. That was her term. Too much freight."
"From your sniping days?"
The telephone rang in Sam Owl's office, a cubbyhole near the locker room. Curled photographs of Owl and his fighters covered the office's walls. Owl walked across a mat toward the phone.
"I was up and down, a little wild maybe," Gray replied. "She thought it was an echo from the sniping. But she wasn't a psychiatrist, I told her."
"You've been divorced ten years, but it doesn't sound like you've worked her out of your system."
"Pete, if I want counseling I'll go back to the Veterans Hospital."
"I quit," Coates said, lowering his gloves. He slipped through the ropes. "Looks like I win again. Do you still love her?"
Gray smiled wanly, stepping through the ropes. "They don't teach questions like that at the NYPD detective school."
"One friend asking another."
"I did when she left, but that didn't stop her from leaving. Couple years ago Cathryn married a pediatrician and lives in the East Eighties. Has a maid. Probably belongs to a couple nice clubs. Has a weekend house in the Hamptons."
"Ever hear from her?"
"Not in years."
Gray pulled off his gloves and grabbed a towel from a table. He wiped his face. Coates pushed his glasses onto his face. They sat on a bench watching Joe Leonard shadowbox.
Gray draped the towel over his shoulder, then added, "I haven't even bumped into her on the street. But I've worked it out now. I've got a family. Three kids and Mrs. Orlando."
Coates laughed. "I'll bet those kids scare off your girlfriends."
"Yeah, something like that."
"You got a girlfriend?" Coates asked bluntly. He took out his mouthguard.
Gray raised an eyebrow. "You're not going to try to set me up with your sister, are you? I've met her and she looks too much like Casey Stengel for my tastes."
Coates went on. "I never heard you talk about anybody, no woman anxiously waiting for you while we were putting in those late nights on the Chinaman's case."
"I'll go out and find somebody today if that'll make you happy."
"Just trying to fill in my file on you." Coates stared at Gray a moment before changing the subject. "The lab report. The color on the red cartridge was indeed fingernail polish, manufactured by Maybelline. No help there."
Gray wiped his face again.
"And no fingerprints on the television or in the john or anywhere else." Coates pulled off his training shoes and rubbed his feet. "But the CSI guys found another shell in the sniper's apartment, the killer cartridge. It was against a seam of the mattress nearest the north wall, and was identical to the red shell but without the paint. Why would someone as talented as our sniper do something as stupid as leaving his spent cartridge behind?"
"Don't know."
"You leave yours, Owen?"
"When I didn't have time to look for them. Otherwise I always cleaned up."
"The spent cartridge was informative," Coates said. "In its computers the lab has the characteristic markings from over three thousand makes and models of firearms, markings from the mechanical action of loading, chambering, and firing the round and from extracting and ejecting the casing."
"And?"
"The lab looked at the number and direction of twist and the measurements of land and groove markings."
"Out with it," Gray demanded. "What kind of weapon?"
"An M1891/30 Mosin-Nagant."
"A Soviet sniper rifle." Gray moved his mouth as if tasting the information. "Why would the sniper use an inferior rifle when he could buy better equipment in any American gun shop?"
"Maybe he's a Russian and he likes his old rifle."