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.
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
