“We thought maybe he was a cop.”
“I’ve pretty much ruled that out.” I hesitated and then added, “My personal guess-off the record-is that we’re dealing with someone who either thinks the publicity will throw us off track, or who needs the limelight for his own self-gratification. I think we’re sniffing around the edges of something pretty significant here, Stan.”
“Damn,” he muttered. “When will you clue me in?”
“Soon as I can-no bullshit.”
He slipped back into his hard-bitten role, like an actor stepping on stage. “I can hardly wait,” he said, and hung up.
Unable to get back to sleep, I returned to the office to deal with several days’ worth of paperwork. The squad room was empty. Everyone had either gone home or was in the field.
Since almost before I could remember, the quiet of an after-hours office was a meditative tonic for me. It gave me an air traffic controller’s view of the world I inhabited-not just the investigations I was working on personally, but bits and pieces of every case currently active in the squad. It supplied me with a sense, however artificial, of being in control.
Nevertheless, by almost ten p.m. I was sick of the paper shuffling.
In truth, my timing was calculated. Sometimes, when in a jam, I had found it helpful to revisit the scene of a crime at the same time of day it had occurred. I therefore got into my cold-stiffened car and drove west toward the Skyview Nursing Home.
The neighborhood around the home was illuminated by periodic street lamps, so I instinctively cut my lights as I entered it, preserving the sense of stealth that might’ve been used had last night’s killer been an intruder.
I was amused, if not surprised, to discover I wasn’t the only one acting out theories. Parked under the last streetlamp, facing the Skyview’s front entrance, was Willy Kunkle’s car, a small plume of exhaust trailing from its muffler. I cut my engine and rolled to a stop as silently as a shadow, settling some ten feet behind him.
It hadn’t been my intention to actually sneak up on him, even after my stealthy approach, but seeing the back of his head, still motionlessly facing forward after I’d quietly emerged from my car, I was bitten by pure gratuitous impulse. Kunkle was a man who took everything and everyone head-on, with no apologies or mercy. He was so assertively in your face, so stridently claiming control at all times, that I couldn’t resist exploiting this one instance of vulnerability.
With no plan in mind, I silently crept forward. I wasn’t moved to smack a snowball against the glass, or pound on the door with my fist, like some of the others would have done in a heartbeat. Merely appearing by his side and bidding him good evening seemed good enough, since I knew the effect would be the same.
But I ended up being the one caught off guard. The reason he’d pulled up under the light, and that I’d been allowed my covert opportunity, was that Willy Kunkle was hard at work. Spread across the steering wheel, held in place by two small spring clips, was a broad, flat artist’s pad, and appearing across its surface, under Willy’s confidently held pencil, was a fanciful rendering of the scene before us-a snow-draped building, half lit by a streetlamp, huddled up against a looming black mass of hills that blended into a star-filled sky. It was beautiful-at once detailed and impressionistic, realistically capturing the night-clad nursing home, and yet endowing it with a grace and charm that escaped the clinical eye.
My astonishment was absolute. I forgot the cold, and my earlier intentions. All was wiped away by this glimpse of a curmudgeon’s heart. Hopefulness, serenity, and insight poured from his pencil as they refused to in his everyday life, and with obviously practiced ease. The clips on the steering wheel were evidence this was a long-standing habit. I had often thought he had to have an outlet to keep his inner core quiet, something he could call his own. That it turned out to be so utterly out of character made me feel at a loss.
I had never felt myself such a trespasser and now wished I had warned him of my approach, giving him time to protect his privacy. Moving twice as furtively, I tried to slip away.
But I’d lingered too long. Responding to some territorial instinct, Willy suddenly turned and caught sight of my shadow. His reaction was startling, frantic, and terrifying, leaving me rooted in place with my hands held up in instinctive surrender. He moved in a blur, slipping from my line of sight, knocking the pad from its perch, sending it sailing to the floor, and reappearing through the half-opened door, crouched behind the very wide barrel of a.357 Magnum.
“You fucking asshole,” he hissed at me through clenched teeth.
“Relax, Willy,” I said calmly, seriously.
“How long you been there?” The gun had not moved-a telling oversight.
“Just got here,” I lied. “What’re you so twitchy about?”
The gun vanished, the door swung wider, and he got out of the car, closing it behind him with his hip. “You’re no cop if you have to ask that.”
It was a typical comment-melodramatic, wrong-headed, and hurtful-which I just as typically ignored. But given my newfound knowledge-and his lingering doubts-I felt entitled to return with a veiled warning shot. “I don’t have as much to hide as you do.”
His eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”
“Nothing.” I glanced toward the building and changed the subject. “It’s almost ten. I take it that’s what you were waiting for.”
When he answered, his words were no softer, but his tone had been muted several notches. My generosity, however roundabout, had been acknowledged. “I thought you said I was running this one.”
“With as much help as you can get.”
He quickly moved into a self-serving compromise. “How ’bout we split up, then? You take the bottom, I take the top.”
Sawyer had been killed on the second floor. I accepted without hesitation.
The only unlocked door at this hour was the front entrance, opening onto the lobby with the guard’s alcove off to one side. He was sitting there now and asked if he could help us. We both showed our badges, and Willy left for the stairwell.
We watched him go, the guard scratching his head. “What’s wrong with his arm? He bust it or something?”
“It’s permanently disabled-sniper bullet, years ago.”
His eyebrows shot up. “And he’s a cop?”
I didn’t bother confirming the obvious. “What’re your hours?” I asked him.
“Ten to six. I just got on… Little early tonight-had to drop off the wife. Other car’s in the shop.”
“You were on last night?”
He suddenly looked uneasy. “Yeah, but I never heard a thing and I didn’t take a nap, like that other guy said-the one who came to my house.”
I didn’t inquire who that had been. I would’ve asked the same question. “What happens when you have to pee?”
He gestured with his thumb. “It’s around the corner, but I lock the front door. It’s a deadbolt, so nobody can get in or out.”
I looked at the telltale bulge of a pack of cigarettes in the left breast pocket of his uniform shirt, and at the “Absolutely No Smoking” sign stuck to the wall behind him.
“You have a flashlight I can borrow?” I asked. Mystified, he handed over a long, black, metal brain-basher. “Be right back,” I told him and left the building. Between the front entrance and the curb was a short, well-shoveled walkway bordered by hedges on both sides. I played the light along where the bushes met the cement until I found what I was looking for-a five-inch-wide gap, leading off into the gloom. Stepping through it, I followed a narrow footpath along the wall for some twenty feet, to the far side of a darkened bay window. There, the path ended at a well-trampled four-foot-wide circle shielded from view by several tall plants. Around the edges of the circle were a dozen dead cigarette butts, all of the same brand.
I cupped my eyes with my hands and pressed my face against the window. Dimly, I could make out a room with several desks in it, with all the earmarks of a business office.