Killer Heat (28 page)

The blade of a foot-long bayonet pierced the heart and was
impaled in the floorboard beneath the decomposing corpse of Troy
Rasheed's father.

FORTY-TWO

Wait outside, Coop,“ Mike said. ”It's raining. I'm better off
with you."

“Sarge, how fast can you get some men up here?”

“I have to drive back to town and call them in. The coroner,
too. No cell reception on the mountain. How long you figure he's
been dead?”

“Days,” Mike said. “Maybe a week or more.”

“Don't touch nothing. I'll get my investigators on it.”

“Right.” Mike rolled his eyes as Edenton gave instructions. He
saw more homicide scenes in a slow month than this sheriff's
office probably handled in several years. “You're in charge.
Edenton's stubby legs could barely make it over the hole on the
porch. ”Told you the damn place would be booby-trapped."

He bent over to pick up Mike's revolver and pass it back to
him.

Mike reholstered it on his belt and stooped to examine the
flooring with his flashlight. He blew on the end of one of the
boards and sawdust flew up and mixed with the falling rain.

“What's in the hole?” I asked.

Both Mike and Edenton directed their beams. “Bear traps, like I
figured,” the sergeant said proudly. “Lucky it stays so much cooler
up at this altitude. Wilson don't smell so bad as I'd expect.”

“Want to get a move on it, Sarge? And put out a stolen-vehicle
report on the jeep, will you? My boss'll want everybody in North
America looking for that one.”

Mike waited until Edenton was far enough out of range before he
turned his flashlight back into the room. Mercer was already
walking around the living area, gingerly testing each plank with
the ball of his foot before moving forward.

“Remind you of anything?” Mercer asked.

“The trap door on that little black hole up on Bannerman
Island,” Mike said. “Looks like a trick our boy learned from Papa.
Then he hoisted him on his own petard.”

Mike took a pair of latex gloves from his pants pocket. They
were part of his routine gear and he was always ready with them. He
tossed his spares to Mercer, then kneeled next to Wilson Rasheed's
body to do a superficial examination.

“I'm guessing that Troy came up here for some reason. He'd known
the place from his childhood. Maybe he wanted to see his father,
confront him about something. Maybe he wanted things that were
stored or hidden here.”

“Or had things he planned to hide,” Mercer said. “And maybe he
stole his father's jeep, but then how did he get to this part of
the world?”

“Think of the geography, Mercer,” Mike said. “If it was Troy who
killed Connie Wade and dumped her on Bannerman Island, then it was
Troy who used Kiernan's van to get her upstate. With Kiernan or
without him.”

“That's another question.”

“So he-or they-ditched the van in the woods, right? Troy's known
this spot since childhood. It's north Jersey, almost directly
across the river from where the van was dropped. He could have
hitched a ride, taken a bus, gotten himself to Colesville, and just
walked up the hill to pay a call on Dad.”

The entire time he talked, he was looking at Rasheed's
injuries-examining the man's head, pushing aside his bloodstained
shirt to expose the gaping wound in his chest.

“This is a beauty. Check it out, Mercer. Coop, stay where you
are, okay? You don't need to get any closer. And try not to look at
the guy either. It's bad for your health.”

Mercer stood on the other side of Rasheed's body. Mike had
obviously satisfied himself that there was nothing he could do
about his murder victim, but he was fascinated with the weapon that
protruded from the dead man's chest.

“What is it?” Mercer asked.

“See the markings? Prussian Army, 1890s, I'd say.”

“Hard to come by?”

“Exactly the kind of thing you could buy from a Bannerman's
catalog.”

Mike was pointing to the place where the handle of the deadly
sharp sword fitted into the socket of the gun barrel. “When
peasants in a little town engaged in a battle ran out of powder and
shot, they rammed their hunting knives into the muzzles of their
muskets to turn them into spears. A complete accident that changed
the course of warfare for hundreds of years,” Mike said. “Bayonne,
it was.”

“New Jersey?” I asked, thinking he meant the American
Revolution.

“Bayonne, France, kid. Bayonet.”

Mercer crossed the threshold into a second room and Mike called
after him. “What's in there?”

“Bedroom, sort of. Guy slept on a cot. Like an army cot.” He
paused for several seconds. “Come on in here.”

Mike took a few steps toward Mercer and I went after him. From
beside Mike, I could see clearly when he lifted his light. A drab
olive green blanket covered the narrow military bed on which Wilson
Rasheed once slept.

Mike ran his gloved hand around two corners of it until he found
the old McCallan Brothers label. “It doesn't get much better than
this, if you want to link Troy Rasheed to the bodies of Elise Huff
and Connie Wade. Let's just hope CSI Colesville doesn't screw this
scene up before we send reinforcements.”

Next to the cot was a stand that held a kerosene lamp. Mercer
stopped to light it. My eyes adjusted to the illumination and the
three of us took in the array of military gear that decorated the
walls and homemade pine shelves. Almost every inch of space had
photographs stuck in the wood with thumbtacks. Most of them showed
troops dressed and armed for combat in old wars. Also hanging were
medals of every sort, with torn and faded ribbons like those I had
seen at flea markets-the kind that always made me wonder why
relatives had ceased to care about some ancestral hero.

Mercer opened the only other door in the room. It was a small
closet with a single rod. The few items of clothing in it were
khakicolored shirts and pants and a camouflage jacket that had
fallen off its hanger. It had come to rest on a pile of green
blankets-maybe eight or ten-neatly folded and stacked on the floor.
Next to them, there must have been ten long guns-rifles and other
bayonets, standing on end against each other.

“There's got to be a kitchen,” Mike said, backtracking out of
the room. Mercer poked through the closet before he and I went off
after Mike.

On the far wall opposite the entrance to the cabin, another
opening led to a room at the back of the building. Mike had lighted
a second kerosene lamp and was exploring the equipment.

“He's only got a two-burner hot plate in here,” Mike said,
showing us Rasheed's collection of beat-up pots and pans and a
cabinet that held canned goods-soups, vegetables, fruits-and tins
of crackers. Sixpacks of beer were stacked against the wall and
packages of black licorice were on the countertop. There was a
small picnic table at which he must have taken his meals, and here
again the walls were covered with scenes of men in combat gear.

Mike pulled open drawers but there was nothing of interest in
any of them. Behind the table was a door with a window, and when he
held up the lamp we could see that it led to a yard behind the
house. He pushed it out.

Ten yards away was a tiny wooden structure. “That answers that
question,” Mike said. “Must be the outhouse.”

Mercer stood in the doorway and held one lamp overhead while
Mike checked out the footpath. He walked to the door and peered in.
“No surprises. A one-holer, with a flashlight on the floor next to
it. The body smells better than this place does.”

Mike let go of the door and, holding the lamp in front of him,
started off slowly circling the outhouse. The rain had picked up
and a strong wind was now blowing.

I heard something creaking and we all looked around. In the
limbs of one of the sturdy old trees farther away from us was a
tree house, like something made for a kid. Mike went toward the
tree and rested the light on the ground, reaching hand over hand on
the rope ladder. He got as far as the fourth rung when he called
out that the next two were missing, so he climbed down, leaving the
tree house to the men who would come after us.

Mike turned back to where Mercer and I were standing and, with
the light shining in our direction, stopped again. He crouched and
lifted the lamp, moving it back and forth in front of him.

“What do you see?” Mercer asked. “The ground's not even. Must be
some of Wilson's games.”

“Go slow, Mike.”

Mike got on all fours, standing the lamp beside him, while
Mercer held his light overhead. Inching forward, Mike began
clearing away a small mound of rocks and dirt. When he had
uncovered the edge of a hole in the ground, he looked around for
one of the fallen pine branches. He stuck a foot's length of it
downward and we each heard the jaws of a steel trap snap at the
wooden decoy.

Mike crawled a few feet to his left, cleared a second mound and
secured another pine bough. Again the fierce bite of a trap's
teeth.

Mike raised one knee and started to get up. “If Troy's papa laid
all these in around the property, the old boy was a real whack
job.”

Mercer's gaze was fixed on one of the dark holes as he took a
step closer. “What color's the trap, Mike? Hold your light up over
it.”

“It's black, man. It's-”

Now I could see something else shining from inside the hole.

“Quick, Coop. The guy's got soup cans up to the ceiling,” Mike
said. “Find me a ladle in the kitchen. Find me something with a
long handle.”

I pointed my flashlight inside and went over to open a drawer,
but there were no utensils in it bigger than a tablespoon. I pulled
on the handle of a cupboard and beside the filthy mop and ragged
broom stood three long swords. It was too late to worry about
fingerprints at this point, and I yanked at the grip of one so hard
that the others fell to the floor.

“The best I could do,” I said, slipping past Mercer to kneel
beside Mike.

He lowered the sword practically to its hilt and brought up a
white cotton jacket with epaulets and shiny gold buttons that had
caught Mercer's light just moments ago.

“Amber Bristol,” I said. "The outfit she was wearing the night
she disappeared.

FORTY-THREE

Within an hour, Edenton had assembled four of his deputies and
the county coroner on Wilson Rasheed's property. By the time they
got there, Mike had used the tip of the sword to hook and retrieve
more than a dozen articles of clothing and a cache of sex toys
wrapped inside them that we presumed belonged to Amber Bristol.

Then Edenton led us down the mountain, stopping at his office
so that Mike could call Lieutenant Peterson before we got on the
road. Commissioner Scully, Peterson told Mike, had gone public that
evening with a statement about Troy Rasheed's being sought as a
“person of interest” in the murders of three women. The morning
papers would lead with that story, by which time Peterson expected
the superintendent at Kearny would be forced to give out the most
current photograph taken of the now-homeless prisoner before his
release.

Edenton accepted Peterson's offer to send an NYPD crime scene
team familiar with the evidence in the earlier murder cases to
process the bizarre little home and its surroundings. Rasheed's
body would be removed to the morgue that night, the cabin would be
secured by the deputies, tarps would cover the holes Mike had
discovered, and a complete search of the property by experienced
investigators would begin at daybreak.

I made my calls from the backseat of the car as we headed to
the highway, fueled with fresh cups of coffee from the sheriff's
kitchenette. I left a message for Frank Shea, telling him it was
urgent I meet with him on Tuesday about Kiernan Dylan. And I gave a
complete update to Tim Spindlis

Spineless giving you a hard time?“ Mike asked. ”Sounded like a
cross-examination."

“Tim's trying to get himself up to speed. Battaglia's going to
make a decision about whether to cut his vacation short and come
back from England on Wednesday. I'm to be in Tim's office at two
for a conference call-with all the facts, if not the suspect in
tow.”

“I didn't think this was an election year. I guess headlines is
headlines and if you're the DA you gotta get 'em when you can. It
isn't every day a serial killer rips through town. The PC has his
mug in front of every camera, so I guess Battaglia wants to stick
his great big Roman nose in, too.”

“What are you going to do about Frank Shea?” Mercer asked. “He's
not going to want to come to the table, Alex. Saturday night's
fiasco with Kiernan, the closing of the bar, Jimmy Dylan's affair
with Amber Bristol-and now it's all over the news that the bouncer
at Ruffles is a sexual predator?”

I rubbed my eyes. “I'll think more clearly tomorrow. I've got to
be able to convince Shea that we need Troy Rasheed's employment
application-what name he used, what address he gave.”

“Coop, we don't even know what the relationship is between
Kiernan and Troy. Kiernan admitted to us that he cleaned out
Amber's apartment himself. And now we find some of her things at
Rasheed's father's house,” Mike said. “If the Dylans have been
paying him off the books, chances are they never bothered with the
State Liquor Authority and a proper record check. I bet they just
hoped that strong, scarylooking creep would show up at the right
time every night to keep the rowdy twerps in line.”

I remembered the look of disgust on Kiernan's face when he
claimed to us he had thrown out some of Amber's “weird, freaky
stuff.” He and Rasheed appeared to have nothing in common on the
surface, but something had linked them both to the deaths of two
young women who disappeared on a single weekend in August.

The late hour and steady downpour seemed to lighten the traffic,
and it was close to midnight when I saw the first signs for the
George Washington Bridge. Mike was cruising at eighty now,
southbound on the Jersey Turnpike.