Killer Heat

TWENTY-FIVE

Iwas trying to keep up with Mercer, who was trailing behind Mike. He had turned right at the top of the hill and was leading us on the uneven cobblestone path that paralleled the seawall along the edge of the island.

"Think military, Mercer. I'll tell you everything I remember about this place and see if that gives you any ideas, okay?"

A light drizzle began to fall. Off to our right, the river's water darkened and swirled. To our left was a low brick building more than a city block long.

"What's that?" Mercer asked. "Built as an arsenal."

"Like Bannerman?" I asked.

"This one was done by the government in the early 1800s. Held all the arms and ammo for army posts on the entire Atlantic coast," Mike said, jogging up to the building to peek in several windows. "Closed up pretty tight. When the army shut down, this became administrative offices. Looks like it's still in use and too near the ferry landing to be a viable hiding place."

The three of us kept up our fast-paced march, moving out into a wide open space with stunning views of Staten Island and New Jersey that made the strategic setting of this forgotten island crystal clear to me. The wind gusted and I held on to the metal fence that bordered the water, just below my feet.

"Can you see why this island was so coveted by every military leader who saw it?" Mike asked, sweeping his arm in a large semicircle across the vista. "It's the single most important vantage point for the protection of New York Harbor."

"We're below Manhattan," I said, looking back at the most perfect view of the mist-covered skyline. "We're south of it."

"Get yourself a map, Coop," Mike said, shaking his head. "The Lower Bay is beyond Brooklyn. This is the world's busiest harbor and Governors Island controls the access to the entire thing. And to New Jersey's coastline as well. The Dutch practically stole this from the Indians to build a fort here to keep all comers away, even before they settled on the mainland. Fort Amsterdam. Henry Hudson and his Half Moon were the first Europeans to discover it, in 1609. It was Pagganck to the Indians, Nooten Island to the Dutch. Full of nut trees-that's what the Indians had going for them. Quiet little place before the Europeans arrived."

"Then the Dutch lost it to the British?" Mercer asked.

"In 1664. The Big Apple became New York, and this island wound up as the home of His Majesty's governors, till the British military had the brainstorm to use it as a base during the French and Indian Wars. "Like I said, it was Washington who sent the first thousand men here, under General Israel Putnam, 1776. But the British army whipped George's troops in the Battle of Brooklyn-the earliest engagement of the American army with British forces. Most war theorists think if their navy had attacked this little island, the British could have ended the Revolution right then. But the tides were too strong and the weather was too nasty for an invasion here. So Washington's men destroyed their own cannons and retreated, leaving this place to the British, till their occupation of New York City ended in 1783."

I lifted my collar against the wind and light rain and started to turn away.

Mike stepped behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, pointing off in the distance. "But by 1800, Washington had convinced the government to take control of this harbor, along with Bedloe's Island-see it over there? That's where the Statue of Liberty is now, and that's Ellis Island, off in the distance. Over there is Castle Clinton, on the Battery. His plan was to use each of these points around this critically important harbor to build a defense system to protect against for eign invasion."

Mercer got it now. "So there were forts on every one of them."

"Exactly. At the base of Liberty was Fort Hood, and Ellis Island used to be Fort Gibson."

My eyes followed his finger. "Then there's Castle Clinton, on the Battery, named for one of New York's governors, DeWitt Clinton. See, only one story tall? The government ran out of money, so they never completed it. Now turn around."

Behind us was a massive red sandstone fortress, a great circular watchtower looming over the bay from the northwest corner of the island, three stories high with a huge parapet at the top.

"The jewel in the coastal defense crown," Mike said. "Castle Williams."

"Who was Williams?" I asked.

"Who's it named for?"

"Jonathan Williams. The guy who designed this fort. He was also the first superintendent of West Point."

"Add that to your list. Another little West Point factoid that might play into the others." Mercer walked away and was standing at the entrance to Castle Williams. "The gate is open," he said to us, and we followed after him.

The grounds of the building were trim and well kept. At regular intervals around the seemingly impenetrable sandstone walls, there were three columns of casement windows, twenty-six rows of them ringing the building. The largest ones were nearest to the ground, getting smaller toward the top. Each had been fitted with cannons, the tips of some still visible as we approached.

Mercer entered the castle first and led us through its thick, dank walls into the middle of the fort, which had no roof. It was shaped like a giant horseshoe, with its solid front facing the rocky shoal and a small opening to its rear. I turned in place, looking up at the three tiers of galleries and the parapet above them, which housed a cluster of gi ant black cannons, still poised over the waters of the bay. Mercer spotted the iron bars in the doorways of the rooms that fronted the courtyard. He went over to one and pulled on the modern padlock that was looped around the old metal hinge.

"Looks more like a jailhouse," he said.

There were at least a dozen such doors, and we took turns testing the locks on each as we moved around the large interior space.

"You got that right," Mike said. "By the middle of the nineteenth century, these fixed cannon positions had become pretty obsolete.

There were all kinds of artillery that was more mobile and had longer range, even on the ships. That's when the army set up the arsenal here and invented other uses for the island. Bet you didn't know that General Winfield Scott made this the headquarters of the entire U.S. Army in the 1840s before the Mexican War."

"I count on you for all things military," Mercer said.

"Well, during the Civil War, this fortress became a prison for Confederate soldiers. Some fifteen hundred of them crammed into these makeshift cells at a time, many of them awaiting execution on espionage charges. Executions that took place right in this very courtyard, so the other prisoners could watch. Our own little Devil's Island."

"Why here?" I asked.

" 'Cause there's no way out of this place, Coop. The walls are forty feet high and eight feet thick. The only exit is that once-barred gatehouse we came in through. If the rebels were successful at firing into Castle Williams from the water, the people that would be killed were their own comrades."

"Awfully bleak place," Mercer said, continuing to test each lock. "After the Civil War it became a military stockade."

"So this was to the East Coast what Leavenworth and Alcatraz were to the rest of the country? Right here in New York?" Mercer asked. "I never knew it."

"Where's your list, Coop?" Mike said.

I took a notepad and pen out of my pocket.

"We've got to find out who has the keys to these locks," he said.

"What's kept in here and when's the last time anyone's been in these cells."

Mercer had found the staircase that led to the upper tiers. I watched him climb and walk to the door of each pen, checking that the locks were secured.

"Anything open?" Mike asked. "Any sign of life?"

"Nope."

"You know, seeing these cells reminds me that somewhere on this island there was a black hole," Mike said.

"What do you mean? Like Pablo Posano's cell?" I said, thinking of my gang leader rapist, confined upstate with no outside communications allowed.

"Yeah. And like that bunker under the floorboards at Bannerman's house."

"Why do you call it a black hole?"

" 'Cause that's what the expression came from-long before astronomers figured that there were great voids in space, Coop. The black hole of Calcutta? In 1756, the nawab of Bengal threw hundreds of British soldiers in a dungeon, and half of them died there. I'm telling you, during the War of 1812, the most dangerous prisoners were kept in solitary confinement here on Governors Island, in what the troops called a black hole. Now we just have to find it."

Mercer emerged from the stairwell. "Every one of the cells is closed up tight. Let's move on."

We passed out through the thick walls of the entryway and onto a smooth black asphalt road that led away from the water, to the interior part of the island. There was still no sign of Russell Leamer or any of his reinforcements.

We were all conscious that the time was near for the mayor's press conference and that any information we might gather would come too late to be useful.

"On the right, that's the post hospital," Mike said.

We approached it together, climbing the imposing double staircase that led up to the front door of the elegant four-story brick building, so incongruous beside the old fortress just a couple of hundred yards away.

Mercer reached the top first and pulled repeatedly on the large brass door handles. "Locked. No give at all."

We were back down the steps in seconds and split up-I followed Mercer in a jog around the building-to check for broken windows or signs of entry, but there were none.

The main roadway veered to the left, and suddenly we were facing a magnificent tree-lined block of elegant brick mansions that could have been lifted out of Main Street in any prosperous small town in America. A beautiful grassy area and promenade surrounded the private homes. Elms and ginkgo trees bordered the structures like silent sentries.

"Colonels' Row," Mike said. "Built a century ago to improve the quality of life for the officers and their families who were stationed here."

The drizzle was steady now, and Mike ran up and down the paths and front steps of the first couple of houses while Mercer and I waited on the road for him.

"Damn it," he said. "I forgot how many of these homes were here.

We'll have to get some uniformed backup to get into every one of them during the next week."

"You don't think the guys from Night Watch checked this out, the morning after Amber's body was found?" I asked.

Mike looked at Mercer and shook his head. "I'm sure they gave it the once-over, but at that point there was no reason to think that the Battery Maritime Building was anything but an abandoned dumping ground for a dead girl."

While not pristine and certainly not lived in, the homes were fairly well maintained. It looked like with a fresh coat of paint and some basic landscaping, families could move back in and set up housekeeping almost at once.

"Why did they continue to build military housing here, even after the fortress was obsolete?" I asked, as Mike picked up his pace.

"Because this little island played a part in every single war America fought until the army closed the place down. The Revolution, the Seminole War, the war with Mexico, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War." He was spitting out the names faster than he could walk. "It was a major embarkation point of American troops during World War I, and even the most important New York induction center in World War II."

Opposite the far end of Colonels' Row was another massive brick building, fronting on the south end of the historic property. "Liggett Hall," Mike said. "Designed by one of New York's most famous architectural firms-McKim, Mead and White. Built to house an entire regiment-more than a thousand troops."

The dead quiet of the island was broken by the sound of a siren wailing in the distance. "Where's that coming from, do you think?" Mike laughed dismissively. "Maybe the feds ferried over in full force. C'mon. Let's get a sense of what's got to be done before they get in my face."

He cut across the roadway, beginning to huff a bit as we jogged up a slight incline.

Then he stopped to get his bearings, leaning on the vertical bars of a tremendous old navigation buoy about twenty feet high. "Down there is the South Battery. It faces on the narrow waterway that separates Governors Island from Brooklyn. Its bell was meant to keep enemy ships out of Buttermilk Channel, on the back side of the island."

The sound of the siren seemed to be getting closer.

"Come this way," Mike said, waving me off the roadway. Adjacent to the buoy, I passed the entrance to a small white shingled building, a Roman Catholic church named Our Lady Star of the Sea. This island outpost had all the makings of a small village. But across the way was an entirely jarring structure. It was of more recent vintage, and the dilapidated sign on top of the structure said SU- PER 8 MOTEL.

Mike and Mercer loped straight past the eyesore, and seconds later I was standing at the edge of another beautifully laid-out park, with a huge central green. Around it were a dozen wood houses, much older than the brick mansions of Colonels' Row. Each of them was painted a pale yellow with white trim, and each had a yard dotted with horse chestnut and maple trees

Nolan Park," Mike said. "The oldest houses on the island. These are where the generals were quartered. Ulysses S. Grant himself. And what they called the Governor's House is right up there, too. The sirens were drowning out Mike's voice.

"The highest point," he said, lifting his arm to show us, "that's Fort Jay, the original island fortress, built starting in the late eighteenth century, complete with a moat."

As we started to climb the hill, a shiny red fire truck barreled off the roadway and blocked our ascent. From behind our position, two black vans pulled up and eight men in dark suits and sunglasses- agents, no doubt-spilled out and walked toward us.

"Who's Chapman?" the lead man asked.

Mike raised his hands in the air. "Got me, man. Walking on National Park grass, right? Felony or misdemeanor? But I swear we haven't picked any flowers."

The two firemen-the island's only permanent residents-laughed as they watched the encounter from the cab of their truck.

"I'm Avery. Steve Avery, FBI. You seen enough?"

"Actually, I was hoping to buy a ticket for the twilight tour," Mike said. "The one that gets us inside the buildings before sunset. I think the mayor would kind of like us to."

"Well, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District hasn't put them on sale yet. Tell Battaglia to get in line. Besides, there really won't be much of a sunset tonight."

"The federal prosecutor is-?"

"National Park. National Monument up there," Avery said, pointing at Fort Jay. The dark clouds overhead were thickening. "One West Point cadet dead. And you guys haven't been able to figure it out, have you? So we're gonna put the three of you back on that boat, sail you over to America, and let you get on with your work, Detective Chapman. We'll check out the island and spare everybody any hysteria before tomorrow's event. It's a big fund-raising day for the island restoration project, and nobody wants to spoil that."

"My tax dollars at work with you guys in charge of security. I feel better already."

"Now why don't you get yourselves into one of the vans and we'll give you a proper send-off at the ferry?"

Mike turned and whispered to me out of the side of his mouth. "Give him your beautiful whites, Coop. Shake those blond curls. Lay on the charm."

I stepped forward and put on my best smile. "I'm Alexandra Cooper. I work for Paul Battaglia. It would make so much more sense if we put a team together and got this done before there's any more trouble. It's not crazy to think our perp may have been on Governors Island, at some point. That there may be something to help us identify him-maybe something that he left behind-if he was using this place around the time he killed Amber Bristol. Why don't we do it that way?"

"Because the sandbox isn't big enough to hold Battaglia this time. Your boss has grabbed too many cases from the U.S. attorney, and he doesn't seem to like anybody else sharing the spotlight with him."

"We really have a jump start on you guys, so you might as well let us help," I said, pushing a damp clump of hair out of my eyes, as drops of rain rolled down my neck.

"I hate to tell you you're all wet, Ms. Cooper," Avery said, returning my smile. "But you really are all wet.