Killer Heat

TWENTY

Bart Hinson asked one of the other troopers to lead the way, with Mercer behind him, minding the cracked stone paths that once connected the buildings.

I said to Mike, "That doesn't account for Amber Bristol. There's nothing we know about her that has any military connection."

"Full speed ahead, Coop. Two out of three with a West Point nexus.

Let's work this one through."

"We learned this morning that Cadet Wade was on the women's crew team," Bart said. "Every time they practiced it took her right past the island. Can't say she ever stopped here, but it would be hard to row by without becoming curious."

Bart stopped beneath a small archway. The cracks in the structure overhead stretched out in all directions like an endless succession of spider webs.

"Here's where the body was when I got called in last night," he said, pointing to a place just beyond the stone overhang. "Her bare feet were right there, and the rest of her sort of that way, lengthwise, all covered up."

The familiar chalk outline of urban policing wouldn't have worked in this setting. Bart pulled a Polaroid photo out of his pocket and handed it to Mike. "Can you make it out?"

All the colors were muted. The dark material of the blanket blurred against the brush around it. Connie Wade's skin, lighter than Mercer's, was barely visible through the weeds.

Mike stooped to examine the ground around the site, pulling apart tall grasses to look for traces of anything that might be useful in the investigation. It was impossible to know whether this part of the scene had been trampled by the killer or by the troopers who'd been called in after the body was found.

"What's your bet? Killed somewhere else or right here?" Mercer asked.

"I'm thinking she was alive when she got to the island. Probably handcuffed and gagged, and forced to walk up here from the landing.

I don't think a kid with all her smarts would volunteer to explore this place with a complete stranger," Bart said. "He'd have to be awfully strong to have carried her from a boat."

"Facial trauma?"

The trooper took a deep breath before he answered. "I can show you those pictures, too. The commandant from the academy couldn't even recognize her."

Mike stood up, looking around the rough landscape. "You got a guess at a weapon?"

"My men carted off a few dozen of these chunks of rock to the lab.

Her face was probably crushed by one of them."

"Were any of them around the body?"

"They're everywhere here. That's why the whole thing is off-limits.

State officials have been worried about lawsuits if pieces fall on trespassers' heads. I never imagined one of Bannerman's building blocks might be used in a homicide."

Weathered and worn, the castle towers looked like oversized chess pieces that had broken apart and shattered as they landed on the hard, rocky surface of the island.

"Blood?"

Bart shook his head. "Nothing obvious. Nothing spattered around that we could see. But there's so much blood on the inside of the blanket that he may already have had the girl covered up when he finished her off."

"I guess it's too early to know about DNA," I said.

"The lab tech went over the body with a Wood's lamp before they bagged her. No external signs of seminal fluid," he said, referring to the ultraviolet light used to reveal the presence of semen on skin. "The autopsy will tell us more. How about your other cases?"

"No semen in either one," I said.

Mike was walking away from us, shading his eyes from the glare.

"Is there a particular place for boats to land? Can you track a route to this spot?"

"The original dock Bannerman put in has been reinforced, just for caretaking purposes. The rest of the island is too rocky to risk. I'd say our man most likely came ashore there."

Mike was off to the side of the trail. "Something's been dragged through here."

"I'm sorry to say we've made it tougher on ourselves-and for you," Bart said, following him. "Our crime scene guys brought their equipment in this way. Probably obliterated whatever marks the killer made getting the Wade girl from water's edge to where he left her." Indoor sites-the neat confines of a residential apartment or an office building-presented far fewer challenges to investigators. There were usually obvious perimeters to the start of the violence and the exit of the perpetrator. Here, nature and the elements seized control of the setting.

"Should we come with you?" I asked Mike.

Mercer had started off in the opposite direction.

Mike waved me on. "Gotta keep her close, Bart. You could give Coop two canteens and a compass and it still might take her a week to find her way out of Central Park."

They were twenty feet ahead of me and I traipsed off to catch up.

To the left, my peripheral vision picked up something moving quickly out of my way in the brush. I froze in my tracks.

"Hurry up," Mike said.

I couldn't move.

"What is it?" Mike asked, as Bart Hinson came back to escort me. "Probably a black rat snake," he said, offering his arm. "They eat blonds?"

"Bullfrogs, mostly. That's why they like it here. They're diurnal.

Great daylight hunters, and very fast."

"And extremely long," I said, still frightened by the appearance of the satiny black reptile slithering away.

"Poisonous?" Mike asked.

"No. But you'll see lots of them around. They'll come out to bask on the rocks if the sun gets stronger."

Mike turned away and I grasped Bart's arm as I forced myself to keep moving. Birds circled overhead-harmless, I was sure, but now I imagined they were vultures. Everything on the island looked ominous.

From the river, I could hear the noise of motorboats and jet skis. It was the only sign that we were anywhere near civilization. For more than an hour, the caretaker and several of the troopers stayed close to Mike, who was going over every foot of the trail from the old wooden dock back toward the castle. From time to time, he would bend to point out debris-pieces of candy wrapper impaled on the tip of a branch or an empty soda can that was wedged between rocks. He insisted that every item be picked up, tagged, vouchered, and sent to the lab. Odds were that none of this related to Wade's killer, but that was a chance Mike Chapman never took.

The clouds thickened, the humidity rose, and the mosquitoes proved themselves pros at getting underneath my clothing. When Mike was convinced that the painstaking work was being done to his standards by the troopers, he led us in search of Mercer.

I stood beside Mike in the doorway of the main entrance. The roof had long ago caved in, so although daylight revealed the baronial hall, the collapsed boulders and beams made it impossible to walk very far inside.

From the distance, I heard a sharp yell-and then Mercer calling Mike's name.

"Over there," Bart said, as we went back. "They're in the powder house."

Beyond the six-story castle and the arsenal was one of the smaller structures. It appeared as though fire had ravaged it years earlier, and as we ran to the entrance, I could see what was left of the rear wall, blackened and charred at its fringes.

One of the young troopers had slipped through a piece of flooring.

With a panicked expression on his face, he was struggling to keep a grip on Mercer's powerful arm and stop himself from plunging into whatever basement was below.

Mike and Bart rushed to the edge of the broken planks and helped lift the officer back up onto solid footing.

"You okay?" Mike asked.

"I'll be fine, but it's all rotted out," the trooper said.

Bart stooped to examine the wood. "This place was gutted ages ago. A whole load of ammo blew up inside. But I'm thinking these boards don't match the rest of the old planks in here."

"Give us some light," Mike said to the caretaker, who had run in at the sound of the commotion.

Mercer leaned over and peered in. "Well, well. I think we've found ourselves a little bunker here."

He held on to the surrounding planks and dangled one of his feet into the open space.

"Where the hell are you going?" Mike shouted.

"Some kind of makeshift steps," Mercer said, counting them off for us as he moved slowly down. "One, two, three, four of them. Now I'm standing on dirt. I'm in."

Mike handed the flashlight to him and Mercer ducked down to examine the space. Seconds later, his head reappeared.

"All the comforts of home," Mercer said. "If you like living in a black hole.