Finally Gray straightened himself to stare at an apartment building, two blocks in the distance. He blinked deliberately several times, then lowered himself again to the scope. "I've found it."
Coates excitedly nudged Gray away from the scope, but after a moment of squinting into the eyepiece, he said, "Goddamnit, what am I looking for?"
"A hole in that window. On the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth floor."
"I see it."
"Your sniper was up there."
Coates raised himself. He pulled back his jacket and appeared to be reaching for his pistol. For an instant Gray thought the detective was going to crazily fire his handgun at the distant window.
Instead, Coates pulled out a cellular phone. "I'm going to call the crime-scene people." He hesitated, scratching his chin. He looked skeptically at Gray. "You positive that's his firing site?"
"It's where I would have fired from."
"We searched our asses off and missed this place," Pete Coates said as he followed the building superintendent down the hallway. The detective was moving quickly, almost running up the super's legs. "Makes us look like morons, I'll guarantee you that."
Gray was carrying the spotting scope and the compressed tripod.
As they hurried down the hall, Coates jabbed the super's shoulder with a finger. "You're telling me you thought this guy was into orgies?"
"Yes, sir." The super wore a blue blazer, washed-out jeans, and ankle-top Reeboks. His hair was tied with a rubber band in a short ponytail. He carried fifty or so keys on a ring. He ran his tongue over his lips. "What else was I to think? He had those mattresses delivered two and three at a time. Too many to sleep on, so I figure he's having a bunch of people over to get naked."
"You ever see the guy?" Coates asked.
"It was just a month sublease. I handled the paperwork. Did it through the mail. He paid up front."
Coates brushed by the superintendent and drew a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver from inside his jacket as they neared the end of the hall.
The superintendent found the right keys. "I'm paid to keep the halls clean and the furnace running. Guy wants to have a Crisco party with all his friends, it's all right by me."
Coates stepped to the other side of the door frame, under the exit sign.
Owen Gray stayed well back. "The chance of this guy being in there is nil."
"Then you stand with your belly in front of the door. Not me."
The detective held his revolver near his chin. He reached across to the door and hammered on it. After a moment he tried again.
"I don't hear anything." Coates jerked a thumb at the superintendent. "You open the door."
"I don't plan on dying in a burst of gunfire." The super tried to give the key ring to Gray.
Gray refused to take it. "That's one of my main principles, too."
The detective took the keys, gingerly inserted one into the dead bolt, and turned it. Then the doorknob key.
Coates lunged against the door. His bulk should have snapped it open. It gave only a few inches and he rebounded back into the hall. He charged again. The door moved slightly, grudgingly.
"What in hell? He got some furniture against the door?" The detective called, "Open up. Police."
He shoved again. With a soft scraping the door slowly opened.
Both hands on his revolver, Coates rushed into the apartment. The room was dim, with little daylight entering. The detective flicked on an overhead light.
"I'll be damned," Coates said. "Place looks like a drunk tank." His pistol still in front of him, he walked through a door into a bedroom.
As he stepped into the apartment, Gray almost tripped on the first mattress. The room's floor was covered with them, as were the walls. A mattress had also been secured to the inside of the door. The only furniture in the room was a cane chair and a folding table. Stacked on the table were several bulky books next to a Sony television set with a five-inch screen.
Coates returned from the bedroom, moving unsteadily over the mattresses. "Smell anything?"
Gray looked at him.
"Got to get the smell first," Coates said. "It dissipates fast once the doors are open. CSI will ask us about it. Put your hands in your pockets, will you, Owen."
"I'm not going to muck up your crime scene."
"Not on purpose. But you might pick your nose, get a dried flake of mucus under your fingernail, and later it might fall to the floor. Then CSI would find it, pick it up with tweezers, put it into a Baggie, and take it to the lab for analysis. They don't get the kick out of that you might imagine."
Gray lowered his scope and tripod to a mattress, then shoved his hands into his pockets.
The detective added, "Don't flush the toilet. Don't run water into a sink. Don't breathe on any surface. Don't pick your teeth. Don't scratch your head. Don't do anything."
Gray glanced above him. "He's even got mattresses on the ceiling." A bulb on a wire hung between two mattresses. "Twelve inch screws, right through the mattresses into the ceiling. Probably had to use plaster screw casings."
The living-room windows looked east down Duane Street. Mattresses leaned against the windows, blocking out the light. Only one window in the room had any exposed glass, an aperture a foot square, bordered on all sides by mattresses.
Coates asked, "Why did he bother with the mattresses? He could've fired, then raced out of the building."
"Yes, if he was only going to fire once. But he wanted the zero shot, which he probably did an hour or two before the reporters arrived, maybe a day or two. He didn't want a lot of sound because he was going to hang around after the first shot."
A circular hole had been cut into the glass. The opening was ten inches in diameter.
"The killer traced a pattern, maybe around a plate, with a glass cutter," Coates explained. "He used masking or duct tape to make sure the circle of glass didn't fall outside. He was here awhile and kept himself company with that television set."
Gray shook his head. "The TV means he was probably working alone and didn't have a spotter."
Coates looked at him.
"A rifleman can seldom see whether he hits his target," Gray went on. "The rifle kicks up and he can't quickly find the bull again. Sometimes dirt blows up at the target and other times there's a lot of confusion in the target area like there was on the courthouse steps."
"So what about the TV?"
"One of a spotter's jobs is to see if the target went down. The De Sallo courthouse steps interview was run live on the local TV stations, and the sniper would have known it. He fired the shot, then watched the results on his TV. Let me cross the room to the window to set up the tripod."
The detective nodded at Gray. "Watch your feet."
Gray gingerly moved to the window, sinking into the mattresses with each step. The opening in the window between mattresses was at Gray's chest level.
As he set up the tripod and attached the scope, Gray said, "He sat at the table and balanced the rifle on the books. He fired with the rifle's barrel well inside the room. The mattresses muffled the noise of the shot in all directions. Very little sound would have escaped out this hole in the glass. And we're on the twenty-fifth floor. No sound got down to the street."
"How do you know the barrel was inside the room?" Coates asked.
"There are powder particles on the window around the hole. Those crusty specks. You can see them without a microscope."
Coates ordered, "Don't touch the GSR." When Gray looked at him, he added, "Gunshot residue particles." He high-stepped over a mattress to the spotting scope. "So you can see De Sallo's position on the courthouse steps through the scope?"