Killer Heat

ELEVEN

A phalanx of police cars was parked along a dead-end street not far from the Belt Parkway. Huge spotlights rigged atop Emergency Service vehicles brightened the area as the late-summer twilight descended on the city. Cordoned off beyond the last patrol cars were the vans of camera crews from local news channels.

I couldn't see the water of Jamaica Bay, but I could smell the salty sea that was only hundreds of feet away, where the marshy stretch of land bordered on an inlet.

Mike led Mercer and me onto the path that had been trampled in the tall grasses by the first-response teams that had recovered the body. Crime scene tape was wrapped around the lone telephone pole on the side of the road and draped loosely over the bushes. We followed its yellow plastic trail

What brings you to the sticks, Chapman? A pudgy red-faced man, not quite as tall as Mercer's six foot six, waddled toward us. It was hard to walk in the muck without lifting one's feet above it with each step, and his extra weight made his movements even harder

Somebody has to make sure you get it right this time. Dickie Draper, this is Alex Cooper. I think you know Mercer."

"Pleased to meet you," he said, removing a small aerosol can from his pants pocket and spritzing it around his head. "You could survive a gunshot wound to the head out here and these frigging mosquitoes would still kill you with West Nile."

"The Huff girl, that's how she died? A gunshot wound?"

"Nah. I'm just saying, you don't have this kind of real estate in Manhattan. You need safari gear to survive out here."

Draper lifted his feet, one at a time, and made an about-face. "Where's the girl?" Mike called after him.

"At the morgue," he said with a wave of the hand. "Had to get her out of here before the press ghouls overran us."

Rising above the brown tips of the reeds, off in the distance, I could see rows of uniformed cops. There were dozens of them, walking in two lines perpendicular to each other, arm's length apart, flashlights in hand. They formed grids, combing the wild landscape for clues, in this unpopulated area east of the parkway and west of Kennedy Airport. "You want to tell us about it?" Mike said.

Dickie Draper looked like he had twenty years of experience or more under his imitation alligator belt. "You got a need to know, or you just slumming?"

"Paul Battaglia assigned the investigation to me when Elise went missing. I've interviewed some of her friends, which may be helpful to your guys. And I'd also like to be able to give my boss a report tonight.

I know he's been talking to her father since she disappeared." Draper took another step away from us. "CPL 20.40. We got a body, we got the case."

"You're quoting the criminal procedure law to Coop?" Mike said.

"Maybe if the bar association has a prom this year, you two can take each other. Talk the law. Recite CPL passages."

"I don't want your case, Detective," I said. "It's obvious, unless you've already got a suspect, that this one has to be worked from both ends. Elise was last seen by her friends in Manhattan, and no matter where she was actually murdered, I realize the fact that her body is here gives you jurisdiction."

"Mr. Raynes will be by in an hour," Draper said. "He's made it clear he wants the ink on this one, okay?"

"Even if it means hauling himself off a bar stool to get it?" Mike said. "I'm impressed."

The rivalry between the district attorneys of New York and Kings County had been long-standing. Battaglia's prestige was unparalleled, both for the many violent crimes that he vigorously prosecuted and for the innovative methods he undertook to police the white-collar community. Jerry Raynes had been in office for almost as long but had never achieved the same prominence. Both men had six hundred lawyers to do the heavy lifting, but Raynes constantly struggled for press coverage to further his political ambitions.

"I didn't say he'd be sober, did I? I just said he'd be here," Draper answered, looking up at a low-flying 747. "And I don't think he's looking to share the stage with Battaglia."

"How'd she die, Dickie?" Mike asked.

"Looks like a blow to the front of the head. Three or four of them, maybe. Blunt force trauma. Maybe bashed in with a rock or a brick." Mike and I exchanged glances.

"Badly decomposed?"

"Not so bad as you'd think," Draper said, swatting the side of his neck. "Especially with all these bloodsuckers around. She was wrapped up in a blanket-olive green, old army style. It's back at the station house. Red hair all over it, clumps of it. All that red hair is how come we could ID her so fast."

"Is there a label on the blanket? Something to trace?"

"Partial. There's some really faded writing. I got it in my notes."

"Any sign of sexual assault?" Mercer asked.

"The kid was naked, there was duct tape covering her mouth, and there were marks on her breast-scratches or bites. We won't know about DNA till the ME does the internal exam."

The last piece of the sun-a glowing red ball-was setting behind us. Like clockwork, jumbo jets passed overhead every few minutes on their way to the landing strips.

"Who found Elise?" I asked. "Why would anyone be out here?"

"Raynes is gonna offer an award to the caller at the press conference tonight. Whoever was sniffing around this place didn't want to leave his name. Got in a car and drove to a diner more than a mile away, but directed us right to the spot."

"What is this here?"

"No-man's-land, stuck between some low-end housing projects,"

Draper said, gesturing off in the distance, "and the bay. You know Arlington Cemetery?"

"Sure."

"Well, this is where the Brooklyn mob likes to bury its dead. Hallowed ground to them. The Mafia has probably dumped more bodies here than we'll ever be able to find. It's the only marsh I can think of where you can go bird-watching and find big old Sicilian canaries wrapped in cement overcoats."

"Your guys pick up anything yet?" Mike asked. "Nope. Did I mention her hands and feet were tied?"

"Cuffed?"

"Not exactly. Plastic ties. That's the only thing we've got so far. Like one of them was caught up in the fabric of the blanket. There was some of her hair stuck to the tape, too."

Bound. Undoubtedly tortured. Killed.

"How far back off the roadway was the body?" Mike asked. "Thirty feet, at least. Somebody had the confidence to park at the side of the road and carry the girl all the way to this drop."

"And you think she's been out here for a few days?"

"Hey, everybody has to be somewhere. She's certainly been dead for a while."

"Have you had any other squeals like this?" Mike asked. "Brooklyn SVU's lookin' for a phony livery cabdriver picking up teenage girls. Taping their mouths and binding their hands. Rapes them but lets them go alive."

"Could be the others never struggled and this one did," Mercer said. "Huff was out bouncing with her friends. Where are your witnesses from in the livery case?"

"All started out in Queens, the opposite direction," Draper said.

"Three of them."

"No open homicides?"

"Nothing close." Draper made a circle in the mud and started back toward his car. "This stuff is for the young pups. I'm outta here."

"We've got a dump job in the South," Mike said.

"Any of this ring a bell?"

"Blunt force. Restraints. Not a fresh kill, either. Naked-and the guy cleaned up after himself pretty well."

"DNA?"

"Nothing by the time the docs got to her."

"A little early to be thinking serial," Draper said.

The FBI tagged serial killers-a term coined in the 1970s-as those who had committed three murders over an extended period of time, with cooling-off periods in between, during which their other actions seemed to be normal.

"I guess that's how you do it in Brooklyn, Dickie. Just sit back and wait for a third body to show up. Beats working for a living. I'm not saying it's the same guy yet, but maybe you haven't seen the end of us." Dickie Draper was breathing heavily from the exertion of the short walk. He opened the door of his unmarked car and sat in the passenger seat. Rolling down the window, he passed a handful of Polaroid photos out to Mike and me.

The last friend to have seen Elise Huff alive had taken a snapshot with her cell phone just hours before they parted ways. I had downloaded the close-up, which showed Elise's laughing eyes and big smile, and tacked it to my bulletin board. I had studied the picture, and I knew her face.

There was no mistaking that the body was Elise, despite the grotesque injuries. Now both eyes were swollen and discolored, the nose appeared broken and twisted to one side, and blood was caked over the crown of her head, which seemed to have been splintered like a broken lightbulb. Two overheads, a profile from each side, and long shots of the battered body lying against the drab green cloth that had covered her were Draper's unofficial record of the scene. Tomorrow, in the morgue, after she'd been cleaned up, she would be posed for 8 × 10 glossies in the room where her autopsy would be performed.

"The 911 call came in at 5:08 p.m.," Dickie Draper said, flipping open his pad. He thumbed through several pages before handing out another Polaroid that was clipped to the paper. "Here's your clue, Sherlock. Run with it."

Half of a short white label was still affixed to a corner of the blanket with tight, tiny stitches. The other ragged edge looked like it had been torn off over time. The lettering had faded and I could barely make out a word.

"Give me your flashlight, Dickie," Mike said.

He shined the beam at the photograph and I read aloud what was left of the maker's name. "There are three letters, the end of a longer word, obviously," I said. "L, A, N-before the abbreviation 'Bros.' "

"Hey, Chapman, did I tell you about the sand?"

"What sand?"

"On the blanket. There was a lot of sand clumped on it. Maybe this scumbag was into picnics at the beach."

I looked down at the muddy rims of our shoes, then up at the horizon.

"Not here, Ms. Cooper. But you oughta come back for a swim some afternoon. We got some nice beaches in Brooklyn," Draper said. "Now why don't you tell me what you know about this Huff girl?" I started to fill in some information about her background and her disappearance.

He looked over my head at the flashing lights that signaled the arrival of a high-ranking official.

"That'll be the district attorney pulling in," Draper said, reaching into his pocket for a glassine envelope as he picked up my hand. He shook some sand into my palm. "See this? You've got nothing like it in Manhattan, young lady. You tell Mr. Battaglia to stick to the pavement.

Mr. Raynes and me, we're on the job.