'Will do. Light a fire and Coop'll roast you some marshmallows. It's one of the few culinary chores I think she can handle.'
Mike saluted the sergeant and started off slowly, walking on the right tire track. Mercer was just a few steps behind him.
Edenton seemed embarrassed by his decision to stay back with me. A minute or two later, he opened the rear of his SUV and took out a shotgun, checking to make sure it was loaded. 'I'd better give them a hand. You want to sit in the car and lock the doors?'
There was an eerie stillness in the woods around me. 'I'll follow you.'
We walked for at least five minutes, and although Mike and Mercer could not have been more than fifty yards in front of us, it was impossible to see them.
I stopped short when I heard Mike's voice call out Wilson Rasheed's name.
'Are we close to the cabin?' I asked Edenton.
He swept his light around the foliage. 'Should be. I can't pick up any reflectors from the back of the jeep.'
'Mr. Rasheed. My name is Chapman. NYPD,' Mike was shouting now, and I pressed Edenton's back to move him ahead. 'I'm here with some other detectives. We've come to help you, sir, so I'm going to approach your door and knock on it.'
I could see Mercer's large frame outlined in the haze by the sergeant's flashlight. Edenton stepped over the hump in the middle of the roadway to the left track, and I advanced closer behind Mercer.
'Where's Mike? Did you lose him?'
'Right up ahead,' he said, lifting the light. 'See the door?'
I added the beam of my flashlight to the others and could make out the shape of a primitive log cabin. There was no sign of a car close to the place. Mike was standing on the porch, to the side of the front door. There were no lights from within the small structure and no sound except the buzzing of mosquitoes and black flies around my head.
Mike rapped on the door several times. No noise, no response.
He turned around so that his back was against the building. He pocketed the flashlight and drew his gun in his right hand, reaching out to lift the latch with his left. The door opened and swung in, banging several times against an interior wall.
'Give me some light.'
Mercer took two steps forward.
Mike swiveled around, and as his right foot landed squarely in front of the door the plank beneath him cracked in half. His foot disappeared into the hole it made, and his gun bounced off the steps as he dropped it in order to grab on to the jamb to keep from falling into the crevice.
Mercer was there with three giant steps, crossing over the hole into the entrance of the shack, supporting Mike under the armpit with one of his enormous hands.
Mike clung to Mercer with both arms and disappeared from my sight into the blackness of the entryway. I started forward before Edenton could, letting my light guide me behind Mercer and taking a big step to avoid the hole Mike had almost fallen into.
Mercer stopped me, bracing me at arm's length. 'Stay back, Alex. It's bad.'
Edenton came up behind me and shone his flashlight into the room. 'My God,' he said. 'It's Wilson.'
The body was laid out on the floor on its back, spread-eagle, the skull crushed, probably by the large rock that rested next to one ear.
The blade of a foot-long bayonet pierced the heart and was impaled in the floorboard beneath the decomposing corpse of Troy Rasheed's father.
FORTY-TWO
Wait outside, Coop,' Mike said. 'It's raining. I'm better off with you.'
'Sarge, how fast can you get some men up here?'
'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
