Killer Heat

THIRTY-ONE

Ifell asleep the minute I got into bed. I didn't awaken until three thirty in the afternoon, when Luc called from his home in Mougins, anxious to know why he hadn't been able to reach me the night before.

Now I regretted telling him so little about the case when we were together on Friday evening. I'd never imagined the developments would be so dramatic in the short time since we said good-bye in front of the Plaza Athénée. He renewed his offer for me to come to visit him at the end of the investigation, and I accepted, feeling an easing of the tension that had gripped me all weekend.

I showered and dressed and spent the last hours of the afternoon doing ordinary chores, routine things that would ground me after the intensity of the previous day. I rinsed out some lingerie in the bathroom sink, paid a stack of bills that had mounted on my desk, toasted an English muffin to snack on, and called my parents to let them know I was fine.

At six o'clock, Mercer called. He had finished the day at Governors Island, watching the reenactment rehearsal of the Civil War muster.

"All quiet on the military buff front."

"Many people show up?"

"More than seven hundred."

"I had no idea they'd draw that size. Any way to keep track of them?"

"This time, everyone had to sign in and show ID getting on the ferries to come over. There was a bit of a stampede getting folks off between four and five, but it looks like all the sightseers signed out."

"You hear anything from Mike?"

"I'm stopping by the squad now, on my way home. Peterson's setting up a daily briefing meeting, starting tonight at seven. I can stop for you on my way uptown."

"I'd like to be there." The door might not be open to me long. I worked well with the lieutenant and his team, but once the other borough commanders and trooper supervisors stepped into bigger roles during the coming weeks, I was likely to be shut out of daily police meetings. It was commonplace for many prosecutors in other offices to be a step behind the investigators, but Battaglia counted on our senior staff to partner with the NYPD as closely as possible.

On the ride uptown, Mercer told me about his day. He described the dozens of men, young and old, who dressed in antique military garb, armed with weapons from the Civil War period, and staged mock battles all over the historic grounds of the island.

"Any structure to it?" I asked.

"It's run by an arts foundation, so they know who the players are and what they're up to. But it's very chaotic, and no one has a clue about the spectators. They're just people who see ads in the paper or read about it online."

"And the costumes?"

"Everybody brings their own. Not my idea of a hobby, but it clearly drives a lot of these buffs. They were skirmishing everywhere, with bugle brigades and drum corps."

"No women?"

"Plenty of them. I'm not sure if General Hooker's followers were onboard, but there were some ladies in uniform and others doing quilting bees, handing out rations," Mercer said, shaking his head at the odd experience. "Just glad that nobody went AWOL."

The homicide squad room was a much busier place than when I had left it twelve hours earlier. There had been two murders in northern Manhattan during the night. A man who had slit his wife's throat with a machete because, he told the cops, she had burned his chicken wings was sleeping like a baby on the narrow wooden bench in the cell. Another guy, who had shot a rival drug dealer, was handcuffed to the handle of a desk drawer over against the window, fidgeting jumpily as though his last hit of crack cocaine was still coursing through his body.

Peterson waved us into his office when he saw Mercer and me. Mike was there, along with two of the best detectives from the Special Victims Unit, Ned Tacchi and Alan Vandomir, who had been added to the task force because of their expertise on serial rapists.

We greeted one another and took seats in the cramped room.

Mercer handed a sheaf of papers to Peterson. "Maybe you can have some copies made. You got a junior man on this, let him go through and do record checks on some of the names. It's the list of people who came over on the water taxis and ferries this morning."

Peterson laid the pile to the side of his desk and checked his watch. "I'll get somebody on it tomorrow, so long as nothing of interest happened today. Could you tell if the feds were paying any attention to a search of Governors Island? They say anything?"

"The feds were on to it big time. Must have had fifty guys-excuse me, Alex-men and women. They started as a grid up at the highest point, Fort Jay, at daybreak. Then they spread out and claimed to be searching every building. Had all they could do to keep the civil warriors from storming each of the structures they opened up. There was still a crew of them there when I left."

"Talk about the blind leading the blind-and the inept. If the feds found anything useful, they'd have to wait till a memo went up to the attorney general and back before they could get clearance to show it to us. They should have let us stay," Mike said. "And, Loo, Dickie Draper should be here any minute."

"Did you get any rest?" I asked him.

"Yup. I delivered Kiernan to Central Booking and went home for the afternoon. You miss me?"

"I just want to make sure you don't lose your edge. It's those constant jabs in my back that keep my spine so straight. Anything new?"

"Nope. Unless you count the phone calls. The tip line is ringing off the hook."

"Nothing useful?"

The cigarette dangled from Peterson's lips as he looked at a list on top of his in-box. "Fifty-three calls and three confessions. One from a guy in San Francisco who says he time travels to kill women. So far, the fruitcakes are in the lead."

Every one of these would be followed up in some fashion. It was rare that any of them proved to be of help, but the risk of ignoring them was too great for the department to take.

"I got a long shot for you, Loo," Mercer said.

"Throw it on the table."

"Tomorrow morning is the sentencing for Floyd Warren, the coldcase conviction that Alex got last week."

"Yeah, I saw the clips on that."

"I'm just thinking out loud-Alex, don't jump all over me, okay? Maybe we ask the judge to put that off a few days, so I can talk to Warren. Maybe make a deal to take some time off the top, if he cooperates."

"Now what do you possibly hope to get from Floyd Warren?"

"It's just coming to me. Hear me out. All that talk yesterday about serial killers? They really are rare-compared to the guys Ned and Alan and I lock up every month. Here you got a serial rapist responsible for more than fifty crimes."

"Exactly. He should never see daylight again."

"But he never escalated to murder, did he?" Mercer continued. "He had that opportunity, over and over again. Vulnerable women, alone in their homes or cars-some of them, like Kerry Hastings, who struggled with him. He was armed with a weapon every single time. And yet he never killed one of them. No evidence was ever found to connect him to a homicide."

"Way to go," Mike said. "Ask him why. Work it from this end, Alex. What's the piece that's missing? What are we looking for in our guy that separates the thousands of violent sex offenders from the ones that move on to rape, and to torture, and then to murder their victims."

"Why not let me go forward with the sentence? Talk to him an hour later," I said. "You know you won't get anything from him. He's so hard-boiled."

Mercer leaned forward and put his hand on my knee. "Alex, there's nothing to lose. Suppose he's got a nugget to give us? Even the smallest hint of a reason? That's more than we have right now. I'm not talking about letting him walk. The real deal is that the man's going to be in jail for the rest of his life. Change the numbers a bit, shave off a few months, give him the illusion of a bargain."

I shook my head from side to side. "You think I'm going to suggest that to Kerry, after all she's been through for thirty-five years?"

"I'll deal with Kerry. I bet she'll understand it better than you do."

I looked from Ned to Alan, who spoke for both of them. "Give it a crack. The old guy was a pro. Mercer's right."

"If it's what you all think we should do, then I'm certainly not going to be stubborn."

"Bottle that for me, will you, guys?" Mike said. "I've known mules that were easier to coax than Coop."

"I'm picking up Kerry at her hotel in the morning, bringing her down by taxi," I said to Mercer. "Will you meet us at my office? Talk to her?"

The door opened as Mercer told me that he would. Dickie Draper entered sideways and tried to wedge himself behind Mercer's chair.

"Sorry I'm late, Loo. Got the beep while I was at the movies. Wasn't a breeze in the house, so I took the wife. Air-conditioning and Sharon Stone. Hard to beat."

"Hope you took a pass on the buttered popcorn," Mike said.

"Figured you'd have this all cleaned up by now, Chapman." Draper wiped the sweat off his jowls with his handkerchief.

"We've made a little progress, Dickie," Peterson said. "Tell him about your night at Ruffle Bar."

"Ruffle Bar? You should have called me. Now you're back in my territory."

Mike scratched his head. "You knew about it?"

"Sure."

"You didn't say anything? You didn't make the connection?"

"What connection?"

"Kiernan Dylan. Jimmy Dylan. Ruffle Bar. To your case, Dickie," Mike said, snapping his fingers in the fat detective's face. "Elise Huff."

"Jimmy Dylan? The barkeep? The Brazen Head?" Dickie said, referring to the information he'd been given in the meeting at One Police Plaza yesterday. "What's the clue I'm missing?"

There were puzzled expressions all around the room.

"Tell him what you did, Mike," Peterson said again.

"So, late last night we get a call from the First. Mercer, Coop, and I headed to the bar around midnight."

Draper laughed and interrupted Mike's narrative. "Somebody pulling your leg? It's been deserted for years."

"It's actually only been there a few months." Mike's annoyance was growing. He ran his fingers through his hair and frowned at Dickie. "Are we talking about the same thing?"

Dickie held out both hands, palms up, and slowly repeated the words, exaggerating the pronunciation. "Did you hear me good, Chapman? You said Ruffle Bar, am I right?"

"Yeah."

"You're asking me why I didn't tell you anything that I knew, and I'm just as stumped about why you didn't call me. You thinking someone was trying to get Huff's body to Ruffle Bar?" Dickie laughed again.

"She never got there."

"Well, of course she never got there. But thanks a lot if you can prove any link to the case. Sorry, Loo, but maybe I should have stayed for the second feature. You call me in for this?"

The lieutenant took over. "Jimmy Dylan's joint is uptown. Now he's opened one for his kid downtown. And to put this right in your territory, the Dylans own a house in Breezy Point. Dylan's son Kiernan- turns out he knew the Huff girl."

"She was trying to hook up with him the night she went missing," Mike said.

Draper paused for a moment. "I know Breezy Point real good. I'm thinking-"

"Let's get a sample of sand from the beach at Breezy," Peterson said. "Compare it to the sample you got from the blanket Huff was wrapped in. There must be a geologist at the Museum of Natural History who'll do that."

"The feebs have guys at Quantico who can analyze it-all the mineral deposits and stuff. They're good at that, Loo."

"Screw the feebs, Dickie. We'll get it done right in New York."

"I'm thinking what kind of screwball we got here," Draper said. "After all, maybe if he used a boat to get to Bannerman Island with that cadet's body-I mean, maybe he really was trying to take Elise Huff to Ruffle Bar. Maybe he's got a fishing boat on the water he was planning to use to get there. It's dead in the middle, between Breezy Point and where her body was found."

"What's in the middle?" Mike asked.

"Who's on first, Chapman?" Draper said, holding his forefinger in the air and moving it back and forth in front of his eyes. "Am I thinking too fast for you? I'm talking about Ruffle Bar."

"Dickie, it's in Manhattan. We were there last night."

"Then you oughta take a look out from Brooklyn with me, to Jamaica Bay."

"What have you got to show us?"

"Ruffle Bar, Chapman. You can see it from the bridge that connects the Belt Parkway over to Breezy Point. It's an abandoned island, not far from where Elise Huff got dumped.