Mike crawled a few feet to his left, cleared a second mound and secured another pine bough. Again the fierce bite of a trap's teeth.
Mike raised one knee and started to get up. "If Troy's papa laid all these in around the property, the old boy was a real whack job."
Mercer's gaze was fixed on one of the dark holes as he took a step closer. "What color's the trap, Mike? Hold your light up over it."
"It's black, man. It's-"
Now I could see something else shining from inside the hole.
"Quick, Coop. The guy's got soup cans up to the ceiling," Mike said. "Find me a ladle in the kitchen. Find me something with a long handle."
I pointed my flashlight inside and went over to open a drawer, but there were no utensils in it bigger than a tablespoon. I pulled on the handle of a cupboard and beside the filthy mop and ragged broom stood three long swords. It was too late to worry about fingerprints at this point, and I yanked at the grip of one so hard that the others fell to the floor.
"The best I could do," I said, slipping past Mercer to kneel beside Mike.
He lowered the sword practically to its hilt and brought up a white cotton jacket with epaulets and shiny gold buttons that had caught Mercer's light just moments ago.
"Amber Bristol," I said. "The outfit she was wearing the night she disappeared.
FORTY-THREE
Within an hour, Edenton had assembled four of his deputies and the county coroner on Wilson Rasheed's property. By the time they got there, Mike had used the tip of the sword to hook and retrieve more than a dozen articles of clothing and a cache of sex toys wrapped inside them that we presumed belonged to Amber Bristol.
Then Edenton led us down the mountain, stopping at his office so that Mike could call Lieutenant Peterson before we got on the road. Commissioner Scully, Peterson told Mike, had gone public that evening with a statement about Troy Rasheed's being sought as a "person of interest" in the murders of three women. The morning papers would lead with that story, by which time Peterson expected the superintendent at Kearny would be forced to give out the most current photograph taken of the now-homeless prisoner before his release.
Edenton accepted Peterson's offer to send an NYPD crime scene team familiar with the evidence in the earlier murder cases to process the bizarre little home and its surroundings. Rasheed's body would be removed to the morgue that night, the cabin would be secured by the deputies, tarps would cover the holes Mike had discovered, and a complete search of the property by experienced investigators would begin at daybreak.
I made my calls from the backseat of the car as we headed to the highway, fueled with fresh cups of coffee from the sheriff's kitchenette. I left a message for Frank Shea, telling him it was urgent I meet with him on Tuesday about Kiernan Dylan. And I gave a complete update to Tim Spindlis
Spineless giving you a hard time?" Mike asked. "Sounded like a cross-examination."
"Tim's trying to get himself up to speed. Battaglia's going to make a decision about whether to cut his vacation short and come back from England on Wednesday. I'm to be in Tim's office at two for a conference call-with all the facts, if not the suspect in tow."
"I didn't think this was an election year. I guess headlines is headlines and if you're the DA you gotta get 'em when you can. It isn't every day a serial killer rips through town. The PC has his mug in front of every camera, so I guess Battaglia wants to stick his great big Roman nose in, too."
"What are you going to do about Frank Shea?" Mercer asked. "He's not going to want to come to the table, Alex. Saturday night's fiasco with Kiernan, the closing of the bar, Jimmy Dylan's affair with Amber Bristol-and now it's all over the news that the bouncer at Ruffles is a sexual predator?"
I rubbed my eyes. "I'll think more clearly tomorrow. I've got to be able to convince Shea that we need Troy Rasheed's employment application-what name he used, what address he gave."
"Coop, we don't even know what the relationship is between Kiernan and Troy. Kiernan admitted to us that he cleaned out Amber's apartment himself. And now we find some of her things at Rasheed's father's house," Mike said. "If the Dylans have been paying him off the books, chances are they never bothered with the State Liquor Authority and a proper record check. I bet they just hoped that strong, scarylooking creep would show up at the right time every night to keep the rowdy twerps in line."
I remembered the look of disgust on Kiernan's face when he claimed to us he had thrown out some of Amber's "weird, freaky stuff." He and Rasheed appeared to have nothing in common on the surface, but something had linked them both to the deaths of two young women who disappeared on a single weekend in August.
The late hour and steady downpour seemed to lighten the traffic, and it was close to midnight when I saw the first signs for the George Washington Bridge. Mike was cruising at eighty now, southbound on the Jersey Turnpike.
"Aren't you taking the bridge?" It would be a faster way to get to my apartment than either of the tunnels that crossed into Midtown and Lower Manhattan.
"No backseat driving, Coop. We've got one more stop. That last java wired me up."
"Have mercy, man. Vickee's going to board me in the hound hotel before this case is over." Mercer tried to straighten out his arms, stretching to wake himself up, but there wasn't enough room in the car. "Where to?"
"It's summertime, isn't it? And you guys have hardly been to the beach."
"Slow down and let me out," I said. "I'd rather walk. I want to go home. Why do I have the feeling I'm not going to enjoy this?"
"Anything I offer you is better than going home to an empty bed. There'll be no pleasant dreams with that image of Mr. Rasheed dancing in your brain."
"I take it you're planning to rap on Jimmy Dylan's door," Mercer said. "You've got the address?"
"It's the one Kiernan gave me when I booked him."
"Seriously, Mike. I'm out of this car the minute you slow down. He's got a lawyer, damn it," I said.
"He's also got a father and lots of little siblings."
We had left the turnpike and were on the Goethals Bridge, about to cut across Staten Island and over the massive Verrazano to loop onto the Belt Parkway.
"Mike's not wrong," Mercer said, turning his head to talk to me. "Jimmy Dylan's got more problems than he can handle. You think he lost control at the squad the other night. He opens his paper tomorrow and reads that his boy is linked to a convicted rapist? To the murders of three women?"
"A convicted rapist who happens to be a black man? He'll thank me for coming to tell him myself."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked.
"Breezy Point is not only private, it's also lily-white. I don't think social diversity is Jimmy Dylan's strong suit."
"I'll be waiting in the car with you, Alex," Mercer said. "I'd probably be about as welcome as one of Wilson Rasheed's black bears."
Thirty-five minutes later, we went through the toll plaza on the Marine Parkway Bridge, the gateway to Rockaway Beach.
Mike drove slowly, pausing at each corner in the quiet community, looking for street names. There were small groups of teenagers walking along the roadway, talking and laughing, oblivious to the rain, and several locals out with their dogs. It was shortly after midnight and lights were still on in many of the homes.
We turned off at Beach 221st Street, near the Surf Club, and Mike looked for numbers on the houses.
"That's it," he said. "That big old rambling job, right on the water."
Three houses stood side by side, facing the ocean. Two of them were well lighted, upstairs and down, including the one in the middle of the cluster, to which Mike was pointing.