Killer Heat

EIGHTEEN

Forty-two minutes later, having traded in my evening clothes for sneakers, jeans, and a cotton sweater, I was waiting with Mike for Mercer at the Thirty-fourth Street heliport.

There were clouds moving in over the East River, and Mike kept glancing up at them. He was a nervous flier, especially in small planes and choppers

Fifty-five miles north of here," Mike said to Joe Galiano, one of the Aviation Unit's crack pilots. "How long is that going to take, Sarge? "I should have you down in twenty minutes. The craft was a brand-new Bell 412-one of seven for which the NYPD paid ten million dollars each. In the aftermath of 9/11, the faster, more powerful equipment had been purchased to enable hightech surveillance and serve as effective counterterrorism tools.

Today, it would be the fastest way to get up the Hudson to the place where the twenty-year-old victim's body had been discovered the previous afternoon

It's an island, Sarge. It's a piece of rock in the middle of the river.

How the hell are you going to land?"

"I got six acres to work with, Chapman. And the local cops are try ing to clear the weeds to give me a pad right now," Galiano said, patting the side of his blue and white flying machine. "I've put cops on project rooftops with this baby. Worse that happens is that I hover low and drop you three out."

Mike was biting his lip. "The weather going to hold?" Aviation was an elite unit founded in 1929 as the world's first airborne division in law enforcement. Its officers, with good reason, had more than the usual cop swagger.

"I'd expect a little chop. But these things are more stable than fixed wing, so don't let your knuckles get too white," Galiano said. "Here's Wallace. Let's get her up."

"What's the name of this place?" I asked.

"Pollepel Island."

"I've never heard of it."

"You've seen it."

"What do you know that I don't?"

"When's the last time you took the train to Albany?" Mike asked, as Mercer shook hands with Galiano.

"In May." There were frequent legislative meetings in the state capital, and Battaglia had appointed me to serve in his place on the review committee for sex crimes and domestic violence.

"Just beyond Cold Spring, there's a castle that sits out in the river.

The Breakneck Ridge station stop on Metro North is right above it."

"I know exactly where you mean. I've seen it dozens of times. It looks like an enormous old fortress. Who's the girl? What was she doing there?" I asked. "And what does this have to do with us?" Mike looked at his notepad. "Connie Wade. Twenty years old, like I told you. African-American. She was about to start her third year at West Point."

"She must have been a very talented kid. It's fiercely competitive to get in there." I knew that candidates were evaluated not only on academic ability but on leadership potential and physical attributes.

They needed a nomination from a member of Congress or the Department of the Army. I could only imagine the qualities and strengths that had commended Connie Wade for such an honor.

"Yeah. Another heartbreaker. Smart girl and a great athlete. Originally from Indiana. Had ten days' leave to go home for her sister's wedding last weekend. Disappeared on Wednesday, on her way back through the city. Never got to the Point."

I settled into the backseat of the chopper, next to Mike. Mercer was in front with Sergeant Galiano. While Galiano checked the controls, Mike gave us the rest of the facts explaining why he was called. "The island's deserted. Has been for thirty years. The castle's decayed and the whole place is supposed to look like an overgrown jungle. The state owns it now."

"How would anybody get there?" Mercer asked.

"Boat's the only way. Kayaks, speedboats, canoes. Cops tell me tree huggers and paddle-pulling exercise nuts like to poke around out there, even though it's off-limits till the building can be restored. It's a thousand feet offshore."

"It's not far from West Point either, then."

"Spitting distance, upriver," Mike said, putting his pad away as he fastened his seat belt. "During the Revolution, soldiers used Pollepel as a base to try to stop the British from getting any farther north. They sunk a few hundred logs with iron spikes in their tips underwater to sabotage enemy ships. It was an old medieval defense. How's my French, Coop? Chevaux-de-frise."

I did a double take, wondering if he had any way to know about Luc.

"So you've been there," Mercer said.

"Nope. But the island's history is right up my alley. This is not quite the way I wanted to see it."

"You're going to have to put your headsets on," Galiano said.

"They're miked up, so you'll be able to hear and talk to each other." The rotors started to spin and the big bird vibrated as we prepared to take off.

"Two nature lovers were hiking around late in the day. They were looking for frigging snakes, if you can believe that. Found Wade's body, just outside the entrance to the main building, 'cause they saw one slithering over what turned out to be her foot. That's the only part of her skin that was visible."

Mercer leaned forward. "What makes them think-?"

"Blunt force trauma to the face and head. Start there. She was naked. Left at the scene at least twenty-four hours earlier. Wrapped in an old olive green blanket, just like Elise Huff," Mike said. "And there were handcuffs still on her wrists. They had to move her right out 'cause there's a lot of wildlife on the island."

"Why'd the locals have the good sense to call New York?" I asked. The helicopter rose off the pad, dipping its nose toward the water before lifting and turning to the north. Within seconds, we were directly over Roosevelt Island, about to clear the 59th Street Bridge, following the outline of Manhattan as it narrowed to Spuyten Duyvil, where the East River met the Hudson. Mercer pointed down at the remains of the deadhouse, the old smallpox hospital that had figured in one of our more challenging cases.

"They didn't," Mike said, answering my question. "But the commandant of the academy had the good sense to want to retrace the girl's steps. She was in Manhattan the day she went missing. Never showed up at Port Authority, so far as they could tell, for the bus ride back to school. Missing Persons routed the call over to us late last night."

Mike was clutching the back of Mercer's seat, barely able to look out the sides of the chopper, which were all glass, as we continued our noisy ride along the Palisades.

"No clothes at the scene again?"

"Not a shred."

"Anybody know how she was dressed?" I asked.

"She had to travel in uniform," Mike said. "Gray cadet jacket, white pants. Only way to get the military discount."

I thought of Arthur Huff and his West Point ring.

"You know the ring that Elise Huff was supposed to have been wearing?" I said, reminding Mike about my conversation with Elise's father. "That's a strange coincidence. I wonder if this victim had one of those, too."

"You know I don't believe in coincidence, Coop," Mike said.

"They've designated a colonel to be liaison to the investigation. Spoke to him this morning and asked him whether he thought there was any significance to Huff's ring. Says they stopped making them before this Wade kid was born, and she didn't have any relatives who'd gone to the school. Unlikely she had a ring like that."

Twelve minutes later, Sergeant Galiano told us to look off to the left. "The United States Military Academy. Damn impressive site." Mike braced himself and looked out at the magnificent campus below. I knew he had visited the Point countless times, out of his fascination with American history. Many of his heroes-Grant, Pershing, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Denman, and Patton-had been educated here, and occasional trips to its museum of military treasures added to his storehouse of knowledge.

"George Washington picked the spot himself," Mike said. "Considered it one of the most critical positions on the American continent."

"Why?" I asked.

The Hudson took a sharp S-shaped curve just above the hilltop setting of the original fortifications.

" 'Cause you could control all the river traffic from this place. South to New York, north to New England, and west to the Great Lakes. The Brits would have split the colonies in half-right down there-if Benedict Arnold had succeeded in giving the Point away, like he tried."

"Here's your rock," Galiano said. "Pollepel Island."

On the right side of the river, not far above West Point, the turrets of an enormous castle rose above the dense green growth that covered the ground.

Galiano swooped his bird close in on the south side and started to circle to the west of the abandoned ruin.

Mike gripped the seat back even tighter. He looked out the window, and I knew he was trying to see where Galiano would put down the chopper. "Hey, Sarge," he said, "I didn't bring the rosary beads."

"I'd say it's a little bit like Walt Disney meets Stephen King. Give me a minute."

As we hovered at the north end of the island I noted four or five more buildings, mostly roofless, smaller than the six-story castle that soared above the gray waters of the Hudson.

"There," Mercer said, pointing down through the glass bubble of the helicopter's nose. "Check it out. State police and army craft, off to the east."

On the edge of the rocky shore, there was a small cluster of boats.

Like the NYPD's emergency rescue craft, they had large initials on their tops and sides, for identification by other agencies approaching by air or sea.

Several men in windbreakers marked with orange neon sleeve reflectors were waving their arms at Galiano.

"Got it," he said. "There's a clearing on the southeast. That'll do me fine."

Mike closed his eyes and pulled his seat belt tighter. The chopper continued around the far side of the structures, banking as it made the final approach. It hovered again, swaying from side to side as Galiano took great care to avoid the surrounding trees and center on the only flat strip of land we had seen.

The big machine hit the ground with a thud, and we waited for the powerful rotors to come to a stop.

I could see the tops of the ruined castle and the thick tangle of weeds and vines that had swallowed the buildings' foundations. "It looks like we've traveled back in time," I said. "To another century."

"To a ghost island, Coop. That's what this place is," Mike said.

"Maybe we got some new ghosts now.