Killer Heat (23 page)

So you think Kiernan Dylan's Ruffles might actually be named for
this spit of sand out in the bay?“ Peterson asked. ”That would put
the noose a little tighter around the kid's neck."

“You'd have to have roots in the Rockaways-like the Dylans do-
to even be aware the island existed, I guess,” Draper said. "None
of you knew what I was talking about, did you?

“Sorry,” I said. “After last night, we were all putting
ourselves in a pub, not out on a sandbar. What is the place?”

“There was a time in the 1880s that Ruffle Bar was a resort, a
little community with about fifty homes, a boat club, and a fancy
hotel, the Skidmore House. Kids who lived there had to row back to
the Rockaways to go to school every day, so I know it's doable. The
locals did a thriving business in oystering.”

“What happened to it?”

“High tide, Alex. High tide and a couple of fierce hurricanes.
There are a lot of little islets in the bay-Ruffle Bar, Hog Island,
maybe a dozen others. What with erosion they all lost the battle
with nature. By the 1940s, there were just some fishing shacks and
squatters. Loo, you got a city map?”

Peterson stepped out and returned with a map that Draper
unfolded and spread out on the desk. Directly south of Manhattan,
just off the shore of Brooklyn, was Governors Island. The double
red line of the Belt Parkway circled the borough, and shooting off
it was a single artery-a highway and a bridge over the bay
waters-to the Rockaways, the peninsula that ended in the village of
Breezy Point.

Beyond that bridge, in the large body of water bounded by JFK
airport on the east and Floyd Bennett Field on the west, were more
than a dozen islands.

I ran my fingers over the unnamed pieces that looked like parts
of a jigsaw puzzle floating on the blue background of the bay.

“Sandbars, like Ruffle. The bigger ones are a wildlife refuge
now. They're all deserted. This one here,” he said, pointing to the
one closest to Breezy Point, “it's Ruffle Bar.”

“Give me a hypothetical,” Peterson said, using his cigarette
stub to light another one. “Say Kiernan Dylan meets up with
Huff.”

“Where?” Mercer asked. “What's your idea of where?”

“Who cares where? His joint, another joint. They wind up in his
van. He comes on to her and she says no.”

“I hate to tell you, Loo,” Mike said, “but Elise was the one
chasing after his ass.”

“That doesn't mean they didn't fight,” I said. “Maybe she wasn't
interested in a sexual encounter in the back of the van. Maybe he
wanted to do it one way and she wanted something else. Maybe her
idea of hooking up was different than his.”

“And I've already got them at the beach,” Peterson said.
“Something goes wrong out there. She gets hurt and then he
panics.”

Peterson was tracing his finger from the end of Breezy Point
back to the highway and around the bay to where Huff's body was
discovered in the marsh along the water's edge.

“None of this explains Amber Bristol,” Mercer said. “Or Connie
Wade. We've got to get this down and figure out our next move,
before he makes his.”

“I never thought I'd see the day I had to apologize to Dickie
Draper,” Mike said. “I'll give you your props, my man. If I had
known about the real Ruffle Bar when I was talking to Kiernan
Dylan, I might have spooked him into a little bit more
conversation.”

Mike picked up the receiver on Peterson's desk.

“Now what?” the lieutenant asked.

“Central Booking. If he hasn't been arraigned yet, maybe I can
take another shot at the kid on his way out.”

Behind Mike's back, I held up my hands in frustration and
mouthed an emphatic no to Peterson.

“He's got a lawyer now, Mike.” I let the lieutenant do the
talking. I knew Mike would take it better from him.

“Yeah, but the only thing he's been charged with is the ABC
violations. Maybe Shea will want to play with me. Just keeping my
options open.”

Mike talked into the phone. “Chapman. Manhattan North Homicide.
Checking on a prisoner named Kiernan Dylan.”

He listened to the answer, thanked the officer, and replaced the
receiver in the cradle. “He's docketed and all. But the cut on the
back of his head split open so they took him up to Bellevue to be
stitched. He jumps to the front of the line when he gets back.”

“You still dumb enough to do turban jobs, Chapman?” Draper said.
“Smack a guy around and have him in bandages before he sees the
judge?”

“His father did it for me.”

“You got no class.”

“Look,” Peterson said, “Shea told you to call him, Mike. That's
the way we have to work it. We'll take it step by step. The
interview room is open now. Why don't you lay out all the stuff
we've got and split up the assignments for the week. If I have to
ask the commissioner to put a tail on Kiernan 24/7, I'll do
that.”

We spent the next two hours in the small windowless room, trying
to make sense of the facts we had and dividing tasks. I made a list
of items that needed to be subpoenaed-documents to be prepared by
me and signed by the foreman of the grand jury-that included cell
phone and Internet records for Kiernan Dylan. It grew longer with
every idea the detectives had.

“You ever do a sand analysis before?” Mercer asked. He would be
the contact person for the museum's expert.

“Yeah,” Draper said. “We got miles of beaches.”

“Does it take long? Is it reliable?”

“Piece of cake. The color varies, the texture can be smooth or
grainy, sometimes it's got rock or coral or particular shells in
it. You know how sometimes it sticks to your body, while in other
places the sand brushes off real easy?” Draper went on to detail
the distinctive features that would allow our witness to compare
the samples.

“Spare me the thought of Dickie sitting on the beach with sand
sticking to his crotch,” Mike whispered to me as he stood to
stretch.

Shortly before nine, when we were wrapping up the session,
Peterson came back to the room, bracing his back against the
doorjamb.

“Score one for the troopers,” he said, taking a long drag on his
cigarette. “They just found Dylan's white van.”

“Where at?” Draper asked.

“Hudson Highlands State Park, not far from Bannerman Island.
Ditched in the woods. License plate stripped off, but the VIN
number's a match.”

“Damn it,” Mike said, cracking his pencil in half. “I apologized
to Draper, I might as well eat it all and apologize to you, too,
Coop. I never should have jumped the gun collaring that kid.”

“Apology accepted,” I said. “As soon as we get some forensics
back from the lab, we'll make that call to Frankie Shea.”

“That'll be the state lab in Albany, Alex,” the lieutenant said.
“They get to do the workup on the van. Even the olive green blanket
that was balled up on the floor behind the rear seat.”

The news that another blanket had been found in Dylan's vehicle
galvanized all of us.

“Get a check on the arraignment, Mike,” Peterson went on.
“Tacchi, Vandomir-you guys okay to start to tail the kid from the
courthouse tonight? I'll have relief for you in the morning and
we'll keep on it till we see if there are prints or hair or
whatever in the van.”

Mike had flipped open his cell and was talking to the officer at
Central Booking again. “Chapman here. That Dylan kid, how long till
he sees the judge?”

He didn't like the answer he got. He pocketed the phone and
repeated it to us.

“Walked out the door forty-five minutes ago. ROR'd,” Mike said.
The judge had released him on his own recognizance, denying the
prosecutor's request to set bail. "Lock your doors, ladies. Mr.
Dylan's on the loose.

Mike drove me home on his way to his place, a cramped walkup
apartment not far from my high-rise that he nicknamed "the coffin.
I went upstairs alone and used the deadbolt and chain to lock up,
even though I had the luxury of two doormen on each of the three
shifts. Every twist in this case seemed creepier and creepier, and
the idea of a serial killer at large-spreading his victims' bodies
beyond the city like a growing cancer-was chilling.

I slept fitfully, leaving home later than usual because there
was no need to get Kerry Hastings to the courthouse much earlier
than her ten o'clock appearance before Judge Lamont. Before I left
my apartment to hail a cab, I called to tell her I was on my way
and would wait right in front of her hotel.

Mercer was going to meet us in my office. He had put too much
into this case not to see Floyd Warren through to his sentence. And
now he would try to pitch Kerry on the idea of using her rapist to
help us understand our killer's motive. It seemed senseless to me,
especially as the evidence against Dylan seemed to be mounting.

I could see Kerry under the awning of her hotel when my taxi
pulled up at nine fifteen, and I slid across behind the driver's
seat to let her in

Good morning. I guess I don't have to ask about your weekend.
The newspapers and television are full of it. I don't know how you
do it, Alex. Doesn't it ever get to you, all this violence and
pain? “Sure it does. But it's an awfully good feeling to be able to
try to do something about it, try to put people's lives back
together. Were you able to relax at all? ”It's beginning to sink in
now. I'm starting to feel like there is life after Floyd
Warren-that we've turned the tables on him at last."

I shifted in my seat and stared out the window as the driver
went back to the FDR Drive for the ride downtown. Kerry Hastings
wasn't a vindictive woman, but I didn't think she'd like the idea
that Mercer was about to propose.

“Do I need to tell you what I'm going to say to Judge
Lamont?”

“Only if you want to,” I said. Impact statements were a
relatively new phenomenon, a result of the advocacy movement of the
1980s, which expanded the rights of crime victims. I didn't have to
try to articulate what effect Kerry's night of terror had had on
the rest of her life-she would address Lamont directly, expressing
her own thoughts and emotions.

“I wrote it out. I'm sort of worried about breaking down.”

I smiled at her. “This part is so much easier. You'll do
fine.”

She handed me a copy of the words she intended to say and I
skimmed it as we cruised down the highway. “I ceased to be human
during the rape,” she wrote, after detailing the facts. The
thoughts she had during the occurrence of the crime were things she
was never allowed to speak at either trial. “I became prey to Floyd
Warren, who attacked me like a rabid beast.”

“Too strong?”

The cab veered from side to side as a livery driver cut into our
lane. “Take it easy,” I said to the driver. “We're not in a hurry,
okay?”

“Is it too much?”

“It's great. If I'd been half as descriptive to the jury, the
verdict would be overturned on appeal. People who don't understand
these crimes need to hear this.”

The driver made the turn off the highway under the Brooklyn
Bridge and began to wind through the streets of Chinatown that
would bring him behind the courthouse, around to the DA's office at
One Hogan Place.

We came to a full stop at the intersection of Baxter Street and
Hogan. I waved at a couple of colleagues crossing in front of us.
One of them spotted me through the open window and gave me a
thumbs-up, shouting out, “Nice win on that Warren case.”

The block was unusually short and narrow for the city. The
avenues on either end of it were restricted to one-way traffic, but
the only two doors on Hogan Place were the entrances to our
office-the south end of the vast criminal courthouse that fronted
on Centre Street-and the rear door of our satellite building across
the way.

The driver stopped the cab as I directed, and I leaned forward
to hand him the fare. Kerry unbuckled her seat belt and started to
get out.

She had one foot on the pavement and the other still in the cab
when we were rear-ended with enormous force. The taxi lurched
forward and my head slammed against the partition. Kerry screamed
as she fell out onto the ground and was dragged along for almost
fifteen feet, hanging on to the door, as the driver's foot hit the
gas instead of the brake.

Cops came running from every
direction, in uniform and plainclothes, throwing cardboard coffee
cups and brown paper bags filled with doughnuts and bagels to the
sidewalk as they dashed to Kerry Hastings's side. On any given day,
hundreds of officers were scheduled to appear in the DA's
office-to testify in old cases, to participate in trial prep of new
matters, to transport prisoners or bring them to be arraigned, and
to kibbitz with courthouse friends.

The cabdriver, sobbing, had stepped out and raised his hands
over his head. He was mumbling some kind of prayer in an
unintelligible dialect

It's fine,“ I told him. ”It's just an accident. I unbuckled my
belt and got out on my side to check on Kerry, who'd been
surrounded by detectives, two of whom were squatting, reassuring
her and checking her vital signs. Before I could get around the
tail of the cab, I realized that several cops had set out to chase
after the occupants of the car that had smashed into us.

Their guns were drawn and they were yelling at two young men
and one woman to stop. On the asphalt park behind the office,
scores of Asian children in a summer school gym class scattered as
the cops ran among them and dashed between their kickballs.

I got to my knees beside Kerry. The men who were comforting her
recognized me and moved back

I'll be fine,“ she said, closing her eyes as she winced in
pain. ”I've been through worse."

“We got a bus on the way, Miss Cooper,” one of the men said to
me. “I just called for an ambulance.”

There was blood all over Kerry's arm, and a large stain growing
on the fringes of her pants leg, which had ripped apart from her
thigh down to her ankle. She tried to put her scraped hands down on
the ground to boost herself up.

“Don't try to move, miss. Something may be broken.”

She looked up at the cop. “I think it's just a lot of cuts and
bruises. I didn't let go of the door because I was afraid I'd wind
up under the wheels.”

“I'll wait with her,” I said. “Would you go into the lobby and
tell the security officer to call my secretary? Ask her to send
Mercer Wallace down here, please.”

A crowd had gathered along the length of the block-prosecutors,
defense attorneys, civilian witnesses, support staff. I could see
that the front end of the old green Plymouth that had hit us was
completely crumpled, and beyond the car, I could hear the commotion
of all the onlookers watching the chase.

I felt a strong hand on my shoulder, and then a familiar voice
spoke to me. “I never thought I'd be offering myself as a witness
for the prosecution, Alex. The kid that hit you must have been
going forty miles an hour. How's your head?”

Justin Feldman was one of the best lawyers in New York. We had
crossed swords occasionally, but most of his work was in the
federal courthouse one block away, with corporate clients who
relied on his great expertise in securities litigation.

“I'm fine, Justin. Lucky I was belted in. That car came out of
nowhere.”

“Actually, it didn't,” he said, pointing to the empty parking
space at the corner of the street, where our cabbie had made the
turn into the block. "I was on my way down Baxter Street, coming
from federal court. Those kids picked a pretty dumb place to pull a
stunt like this, but your cab passed by, made a full stop right in
front of them-it would have been hard to miss you-when the driver
floored it and crashed right into you. It sounded like sirens were
close by. Within seconds, an ambulance pulled in the wrong way,
stopping nose to nose against the cab.

The attendants jogged over to Kerry's side as I stood up and we
all moved back so they could make an initial determination about
her condition.

Mercer came through the revolving door of the building and
greeted Justin and me. “What's happening?”

“An accident. They're checking Kerry out now.”

“She's being generous,” Justin said, as Mercer got close to the
EMTs so that Kerry could see he was there. She smiled when he
caught her eye.

A cheer went up from the crowd. The five or six cops who had
taken off after the occupants of the car were coming back in our
direction. Two of them had someone by the arm. I could see only the
dark hair-heads bowed-of the male and female who were being pulled
along by the officers.

The courthouse crowd, including defendants on their way to
calendar dates and hearings, was boisterous, and a handful of
uniformed court officers were trying to clear a path for the
cops.

I turned back to Kerry. The medics were helping her to her feet,
telling Mercer that it didn't appear anything was broken.

“We're going to take you over to the hospital, okay?” one of
them asked her. “Let the docs clean you up, maybe give you a
tetanus shot in case any of these scrapes came from the metal on
the cab.”

“I'll come for the ride,” I said. “I'd like to keep her
company.”

Mercer took Kerry's hand. “I've got her. You get to work.”

“What's everyone shouting about?” Kerry asked. “Haven't they
ever seen an accident before?”

“The driver fled the scene,” Mercer said. “It's not only stupid,
it's against the law.”

“Please don't make me testify at another trial,” Kerry said,
looking at me as she started to limp toward the ambulance. “And
don't start that sentencing till we get back here. I want the judge
to listen to me.”

Justin Feldman steered my elbow toward the entrance as Kerry and
Mercer walked away. “Why don't you get out of this crush? Go on up
to your office,” he said, his quiet elegance a sharp contrast to
the rowdiness of the spectators lingering on Hogan Place.

I climbed the three steps and stopped to look back.

A heavyset black teenager wrapped in a layered chain collar of
bling with matching gold caps on his front teeth called out to the
young woman who was being marched to the building between two cops.
“Hey, shortie! I'll see your ass after court. I'll teach you how to
run, mama! I'll teach you good.”

Half of the onlookers cheered again, while the girl shouted a
stream of obscenities at him in Spanish.

Her cohort was a few paces behind her, being pulled along by two
other plainclothes officers. I was about to push the revolving door
to go inside, when he picked up his head-clearly angered by the
situation and the fact that she was rising to the bait-to tell her
to keep her mouth shut.

“Callate la boca, puta!”

We locked eyes and a wave of nausea bubbled in my stomach. The
young man threw his head back and laughed, exposing the tattoo on
his neck.

He was a Latin Prince, one of the leaders who had disrupted the
courtroom during Kerry Hastings's trial.