Killer Heat (29 page)

“Aren't you taking the bridge?” It would be a faster way to get
to my apartment than either of the tunnels that crossed into
Midtown and Lower Manhattan.

“No backseat driving, Coop. We've got one more stop. That last
java wired me up.”

“Have mercy, man. Vickee's going to board me in the hound hotel
before this case is over.” Mercer tried to straighten out his arms,
stretching to wake himself up, but there wasn't enough room in the
car. “Where to?”

“It's summertime, isn't it? And you guys have hardly been to the
beach.”

“Slow down and let me out,” I said. “I'd rather walk. I want to
go home. Why do I have the feeling I'm not going to enjoy
this?”

“Anything I offer you is better than going home to an empty bed.
There'll be no pleasant dreams with that image of Mr. Rasheed
dancing in your brain.”

“I take it you're planning to rap on Jimmy Dylan's door,” Mercer
said. “You've got the address?”

“It's the one Kiernan gave me when I booked him.”

“Seriously, Mike. I'm out of this car the minute you slow down.
He's got a lawyer, damn it,” I said.

“He's also got a father and lots of little siblings.”

We had left the turnpike and were on the Goethals Bridge, about
to cut across Staten Island and over the massive Verrazano to loop
onto the Belt Parkway.

“Mike's not wrong,” Mercer said, turning his head to talk to me.
“Jimmy Dylan's got more problems than he can handle. You think he
lost control at the squad the other night. He opens his paper
tomorrow and reads that his boy is linked to a convicted rapist? To
the murders of three women?”

“A convicted rapist who happens to be a black man? He'll thank
me for coming to tell him myself.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Breezy Point is not only private, it's also lily-white. I don't
think social diversity is Jimmy Dylan's strong suit.”

“I'll be waiting in the car with you, Alex,” Mercer said. “I'd
probably be about as welcome as one of Wilson Rasheed's black
bears.”

Thirty-five minutes later, we went through the toll plaza on the
Marine Parkway Bridge, the gateway to Rockaway Beach.

Mike drove slowly, pausing at each corner in the quiet
community, looking for street names. There were small groups of
teenagers walking along the roadway, talking and laughing,
oblivious to the rain, and several locals out with their dogs. It
was shortly after midnight and lights were still on in many of the
homes.

We turned off at Beach 221st Street, near the Surf Club, and
Mike looked for numbers on the houses.

“That's it,” he said. “That big old rambling job, right on the
water.”

Three houses stood side by side, facing the ocean. Two of them
were well lighted, upstairs and down, including the one in the
middle of the cluster, to which Mike was pointing.

He got out of the car and walked down a path bordered by huge
hydrangeas. I couldn't see or hear anything, but Mercer and I
figured that when Mike didn't return he'd been admitted to the
house.

“The water looks mighty rough,” Mercer said, turning on the
radio to check the track of the rainstorm that had been predicted
for the next day. “Hope that damn thing blows out to sea instead of
hitting us.”

“They downgraded it from a hurricane, didn't they?”

“That's the last I heard.”

We were talking through the case with each other when a screen
door slammed on the back porch. Two girls who appeared to be
teenagers came out together, and a man's voice called after
them.

“Shauna? Damn it, girl, get back in here.”

“I'm just walking Erin home, Dad. I'll be right back.”

Mercer and I watched as they passed in front of our parked car.
The one called Erin removed a joint from her pants pocket, lighted
it, and then passed it to Shauna, who took a few drags before they
resumed their walk.

They continued on their way until they were out of sight, but
the distinctive sweet smell of the marijuana wafted through the car
window in the heavy night air.

A few minutes later, Shauna came back down the street by
herself, the hood of her rain jacket drawn tightly around her face.
She stopped in the driveway behind her house for a few more tokes
before going back in.

“Take a shot at her, Alex. You've got nothing to lose.”

I hesitated for several seconds, then opened the car door. When
I shut it behind me, the girl turned her head to check me out and
threw her cigarette to the ground.

“Shauna Dylan?”

She didn't move, but she didn't answer either.

“Are you Shauna Dylan?”

“Yeah. And you're the police, aren't you?” She wiped her eyes
with the back of her hand and I could see that she had been
crying.

“I'm not a cop. I'm with the DA's office. And yes, I'm here with
Detective Chapman.”

“Well, Kiernan's not home, if that's what you've come for.”

“I'm glad to hear that, actually.”

“Right,” she said. She was steadying herself with the handrail
on the steps, twisting her body to look at me, as though she was
stoned or had been drinking too much. “You're totally full of shit.
You've wrecked Kiernan's life, you know. You've wrecked his life
over what? My father's mad as all hell at him, he won't let my
mother come back from Ireland till all this stuff in the newspapers
calms down, and everything they've both put into Ruffles will be
gone. Completely gone.”

She was crying now, reaching down with one hand to lower herself
onto the top step of the porch, beneath the roof that shielded her
from the rain. I took a couple of steps in her direction.

“Stay away from me, okay? I don't even have a family anymore.
The detective thinks Kiernan's a murderer and now my mother's
threatening to leave my father because she's so mortified about
that-that whore. We're all sick over this, and Frank Shea won't
even tell my dad where Kiernan's gone. Now I'm glad. I don't want
him to come back here so you can try to make a fool out of him
again.”

Shauna pulled herself up to walk to the back door of the
house.

“You reek of marijuana, Shauna. Unless your father doesn't mind
that.”

She stopped in place, swaying a bit from side to side. She
sniffed a few times, first the air and then her hands. “You gonna
lock me up, too? You gonna lock me up 'cause I'm wasted-'cause my
whole family is falling apart?”

“I didn't want my friend to arrest your brother on Saturday. We
had a big fight about it, too.”

She eyed me warily now.

“We really didn't come here to talk to Kiernan tonight. Mike
Chapman wanted to tell your father some things we found out today.
About somebody else. About a man Kiernan knows who may have killed
the three women who've disappeared.”

Shauna smiled despite herself. “Like he wants to apologize, this
detective?”

There was no need to tell her that Mike didn't view it quite
that way.

“He wants to explain what's going on to your father,” I said.
“Would you mind sitting with me on the steps for a couple of
minutes, till they're done? Let me get out of the rain?”

She sniffed her fingers again and then sat down beside me.

“How old are you, Shauna?”

“Nineteen. What's the difference?”

“What do you do?”

“I'm gonna be a sophomore at college. Going back next week,
after Labor Day, if my father lets me with all this going on.”

“Have you spent much time at Ruffles?” I asked.

“My father won't hear of it. I'd catch hell for it, 'cause of my
age. The boys do it all right, but somehow it's different with my
sisters and me.”

I got it. Let everybody else's kids get loaded. Take their money
and send them out into the night with any guy who'll pay the tab.
But keep your own child out of harm's way.

“Are you and Kiernan close?”

“Sure we are. We're all close.”

“I want you to tell him something, Shauna. I want you to-”

“I don't know where he is. None of us do.”

“He's got a cell phone, hasn't he? Or you can tell Frank Shea to
get a message to him.”

She stared straight ahead, listening to me but not making any
promises.

“He didn't kill those girls, Shauna. I know that and Detective
Chapman knows that. We weren't sure about it on Saturday night, but
we're certain now,” I said. “You've got to tell him that before he
does something foolish.”

“Like what?”

Desperate people, Mike liked to remind me, did desperate things.
“Like go to Ireland, where you've got family, instead of resolving
these things with the police. Like hurt himself, even
accidentally.”

Shauna closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“When I asked you if you've spent any time at Ruffles, you told
me your father doesn't let you go there. That's not exactly an
answer to my question, is it?” I asked. “You've been there, haven't
you?”

She looked away from me. “Do you know the guys who work
there?”

She wouldn't even meet me halfway. “Charlie. You know Charlie,
don't you?”

“Yeah.” There was a slight inflection in her voice, as though
she was surprised I knew the bartender's name.

“How about Troy?”

No answer.

“Have you met a guy named Troy, Shauna? He's one of the
bouncers.”

“That's how much you know. You cops think you know everything
about Kiernan 'cause you went to Ruffles once. It's such a joke.
There's nobody called Troy, okay?”

“He'd be new. Started this summer, maybe the end of July or the
beginning of this month.”

“You can tell my father I've been to Ruffles, okay? I don't care
what he does to me. It can't get any worse than this. But I'm
telling you I was at the bar last week, with my brother Danny and
my friend Erin,” Shauna said, pointing down the street. “There
isn't any Troy. I'd know if there was.”

“Did you see the picture of Kiernan in the paper this morning?”
I said reluctantly, knowing the perp walk image would revive her
hostility.

“Did I see it? Hello? I mean everyone we know saw it.”

“There's a man standing behind Kiernan, over the shoulder of one
of the detectives. He was working the door on Saturday night,” I
said. “He's in his forties, a tall black man with a thick scar on
the side of his neck, and tattoos-tattoos with initials all up and
down his arms.”

Shauna was dripping with sarcasm now, pleased to show that she
knew more than Mike and I did. “Why? The detective wants to
apologize to him, too? For thinking he's Troy somebody or
other? Well, he's not Troy. There is no Troy at Ruffles. His name
is Wilson.”

“Wilson.” I thought of the body we had discovered tonight.
Wilson Rasheed. “You've met him?”

“That's who my friends had to ask for to get in. I mean, I've
seen him there the last couple of weeks. It's not like he's my
buddy. Wilson and Hank. They're the guys on the door. You ask for
them, you show them one of Kiernan's cards, and you get in.”

“Wilson-that's his first name or last?”

“Now why would I know that? Just Wilson is all anybody called
him.”

A perfect alias to adopt, whether Troy's father was dead or
alive when he first borrowed the name. Wilson was unlikely to come
down from his cabin any time soon, had no way to be contacted by
authorities while he was holed up, and had no criminal record if
anyone were to do a name check.

“Tomorrow morning, Shauna, there'll be pictures of Wilson in the
newspaper. Only his real name is Troy Rasheed, and he's the guy
we're looking for. We just came from the place his father lives-his
name was Wilson-and he's been killed, too.”

The girl was listening now, looking at my face.

“You can wait till the morning and read it in the newspapers or
check it out online, or you can believe what I'm telling you and
try to call Frank Shea-or Kiernan-right now. We need Kiernan's
help. We need any little bit of information he has about Troy-the
complete name he was using, where he said he was living, whether he
had access to a car of any kind, all-”

“What's in it for my brother?”

“I'm handling one of the murder cases. I can work a deal on the
problems he's facing about Ruffles. I can probably-”

“Probably? Well, that really sucks. You expect Kiernan to help
you and maybe you're going to do something for him?
Maybe?”

“It's not entirely up to me, Shauna. There's a judge, of
course,” I said, and there was also the fact that I couldn't get a
handle on why Kiernan Dylan had admitted cleaning out Amber
Bristol's apartment. There'd be no guarantees until he explained
that fact to us.

We both started at the sound of a door slamming. Mike was
walking along the hydrangea-lined path toward the car, and from
within the house I could hear Jimmy Dylan shouting. “Shauna? You
upstairs already?”

“In a minute, Dad.”

She got to her feet and I did, too. I took a card from the
pocket of my pants and handed it to her. “Don't wait until morning,
I'm begging you. Kiernan's best chance to help himself is in the
next few hours, before everybody sees Troy's picture.”

Shauna took the card with my cell number as well as my office
phone and read my name aloud. “Alexandra Cooper.”

“There's no reason for Kiernan to be protecting this guy. Troy's
killed at least four people these last few weeks, including his own
father. He's in too much of a frenzy to stop himself. It's likely
to be someone just like you he'll hurt-a young woman with her whole
life ahead of her.”

“Now you're blaming Kiernan for protecting a man he hardly
knows?” she said, stuck on my first sentence, turning toward the
back door of the house. “That's so stupid.”

“Kiernan told us about my victim, Shauna. Connected himself to
her after she disappeared. If he's been covering something up for
Troy Rasheed, it'll go better for him if he explains that to us
sooner rather than later.”