"I have to drive back to town and call them in. The coroner, too. No cell reception on the mountain. How long you figure he's been dead?"
"Days," Mike said. "Maybe a week or more."
"Don't touch nothing. I'll get my investigators on it."
"Right." Mike rolled his eyes as Edenton gave instructions. He saw more homicide scenes in a slow month than this sheriff's office probably handled in several years. "You're in charge. Edenton's stubby legs could barely make it over the hole on the porch. "Told you the damn place would be booby-trapped."
He bent over to pick up Mike's revolver and pass it back to him.
Mike reholstered it on his belt and stooped to examine the flooring with his flashlight. He blew on the end of one of the boards and sawdust flew up and mixed with the falling rain.
"What's in the hole?" I asked.
Both Mike and Edenton directed their beams. "Bear traps, like I figured," the sergeant said proudly. "Lucky it stays so much cooler up at this altitude. Wilson don't smell so bad as I'd expect."
"Want to get a move on it, Sarge? And put out a stolen-vehicle report on the jeep, will you? My boss'll want everybody in North America looking for that one."
Mike waited until Edenton was far enough out of range before he turned his flashlight back into the room. Mercer was already walking around the living area, gingerly testing each plank with the ball of his foot before moving forward.
"Remind you of anything?" Mercer asked.
"The trap door on that little black hole up on Bannerman Island," Mike said. "Looks like a trick our boy learned from Papa. Then he hoisted him on his own petard."
Mike took a pair of latex gloves from his pants pocket. They were part of his routine gear and he was always ready with them. He tossed his spares to Mercer, then kneeled next to Wilson Rasheed's body to do a superficial examination.
"I'm guessing that Troy came up here for some reason. He'd known the place from his childhood. Maybe he wanted to see his father, confront him about something. Maybe he wanted things that were stored or hidden here."
"Or had things he planned to hide," Mercer said. "And maybe he stole his father's jeep, but then how did he get to this part of the world?"
"Think of the geography, Mercer," Mike said. "If it was Troy who killed Connie Wade and dumped her on Bannerman Island, then it was Troy who used Kiernan's van to get her upstate. With Kiernan or without him."
"That's another question."
"So he-or they-ditched the van in the woods, right? Troy's known this spot since childhood. It's north Jersey, almost directly across the river from where the van was dropped. He could have hitched a ride, taken a bus, gotten himself to Colesville, and just walked up the hill to pay a call on Dad."
The entire time he talked, he was looking at Rasheed's injuries-examining the man's head, pushing aside his bloodstained shirt to expose the gaping wound in his chest.
"This is a beauty. Check it out, Mercer. Coop, stay where you are, okay? You don't need to get any closer. And try not to look at the guy either. It's bad for your health."
Mercer stood on the other side of Rasheed's body. Mike had obviously satisfied himself that there was nothing he could do about his murder victim, but he was fascinated with the weapon that protruded from the dead man's chest.
"What is it?" Mercer asked.
"See the markings? Prussian Army, 1890s, I'd say."
"Hard to come by?"
"Exactly the kind of thing you could buy from a Bannerman's catalog."
Mike was pointing to the place where the handle of the deadly sharp sword fitted into the socket of the gun barrel. "When peasants in a little town engaged in a battle ran out of powder and shot, they rammed their hunting knives into the muzzles of their muskets to turn them into spears. A complete accident that changed the course of warfare for hundreds of years," Mike said. "Bayonne, it was."
"New Jersey?" I asked, thinking he meant the American Revolution.
"Bayonne, France, kid. Bayonet."
Mercer crossed the threshold into a second room and Mike called after him. "What's in there?"
"Bedroom, sort of. Guy slept on a cot. Like an army cot." He paused for several seconds. "Come on in here."
Mike took a few steps toward Mercer and I went after him. From beside Mike, I could see clearly when he lifted his light. A drab olive green blanket covered the narrow military bed on which Wilson Rasheed once slept.
Mike ran his gloved hand around two corners of it until he found the old McCallan Brothers label. "It doesn't get much better than this, if you want to link Troy Rasheed to the bodies of Elise Huff and Connie Wade. Let's just hope CSI Colesville doesn't screw this scene up before we send reinforcements."
Next to the cot was a stand that held a kerosene lamp. Mercer stopped to light it. My eyes adjusted to the illumination and the three of us took in the array of military gear that decorated the walls and homemade pine shelves. Almost every inch of space had photographs stuck in the wood with thumbtacks. Most of them showed troops dressed and armed for combat in old wars. Also hanging were medals of every sort, with torn and faded ribbons like those I had seen at flea markets-the kind that always made me wonder why relatives had ceased to care about some ancestral hero.
Mercer opened the only other door in the room. It was a small closet with a single rod. The few items of clothing in it were khakicolored shirts and pants and a camouflage jacket that had fallen off its hanger. It had come to rest on a pile of green blankets-maybe eight or ten-neatly folded and stacked on the floor. Next to them, there must have been ten long guns-rifles and other bayonets, standing on end against each other.
"There's got to be a kitchen," Mike said, backtracking out of the room. Mercer poked through the closet before he and I went off after Mike.
On the far wall opposite the entrance to the cabin, another opening led to a room at the back of the building. Mike had lighted a second kerosene lamp and was exploring the equipment.
"He's only got a two-burner hot plate in here," Mike said, showing us Rasheed's collection of beat-up pots and pans and a cabinet that held canned goods-soups, vegetables, fruits-and tins of crackers. Sixpacks of beer were stacked against the wall and packages of black licorice were on the countertop. There was a small picnic table at which he must have taken his meals, and here again the walls were covered with scenes of men in combat gear.
Mike pulled open drawers but there was nothing of interest in any of them. Behind the table was a door with a window, and when he held up the lamp we could see that it led to a yard behind the house. He pushed it out.
Ten yards away was a tiny wooden structure. "That answers that question," Mike said. "Must be the outhouse."
Mercer stood in the doorway and held one lamp overhead while Mike checked out the footpath. He walked to the door and peered in. "No surprises. A one-holer, with a flashlight on the floor next to it. The body smells better than this place does."
Mike let go of the door and, holding the lamp in front of him, started off slowly circling the outhouse. The rain had picked up and a strong wind was now blowing.
I heard something creaking and we all looked around. In the limbs of one of the sturdy old trees farther away from us was a tree house, like something made for a kid. Mike went toward the tree and rested the light on the ground, reaching hand over hand on the rope ladder. He got as far as the fourth rung when he called out that the next two were missing, so he climbed down, leaving the tree house to the men who would come after us.
Mike turned back to where Mercer and I were standing and, with the light shining in our direction, stopped again. He crouched and lifted the lamp, moving it back and forth in front of him.
"What do you see?" Mercer asked. "The ground's not even. Must be some of Wilson's games."
"Go slow, Mike."
Mike got on all fours, standing the lamp beside him, while Mercer held his light overhead. Inching forward, Mike began clearing away a small mound of rocks and dirt. When he had uncovered the edge of a hole in the ground, he looked around for one of the fallen pine branches. He stuck a foot's length of it downward and we each heard the jaws of a steel trap snap at the wooden decoy.