Killer Heat (33 page)

Door after door opened without resistance. There was nothing
left inside, no furniture at all, but the men went into every one
of the dozens of rooms, looking for signs of habitation in any of
the spaces. I waited in front of the motel, under cover of the
entrance, scouring the grounds that spread in either direction.

Mike's frustration was obvious. “Hurry up, Mercer. Let's go into
each of these houses,” he said, retracing our steps to Nolan Park.
“Can't tell if the windows were broken in the storm or by vandals
before it. You do the ones on the west side and I'll take the east.
Coop, plant yourself on a front porch right in the middle and don't
move.”

There were almost twenty of the old buildings framing the park.
The men disappeared into the two houses that formed a V at the
highest point in the row, and I took shelter six doors down,
hanging on to a pillar to stabilize myself against the strong
gusts.

Windows rattled behind me, and as Mike and Mercer made their way
from basements to attics down the row of houses, I could hear doors
slamming and heavy footsteps pounding the floorboards.

The men were fifty feet beyond me now, and Mike waved for me to
catch up with them. They were headed back in the direction of
Russell Leamer's office. I ran behind them, slowed by the water
that squished out of my sneakers as though I were jogging on a
treadmill made of sponge.

Leamer opened the door and we pushed one another inside.

“Any calls from my boss?” Mike asked.

“None.”

“You got word on the storm? On getting the ferry back?”

“The eye just seems to be stalled right off the coast,
Detective.”

“We were here on Saturday, Mr. Leamer. There were locked doors
inside Castle Williams. We need your keys for those padlocks.”

“I-uh-I can't. There's nothing in those cells.”

“Give me the keys,” Mike said. He raised his voice and he jabbed
his finger at Leamer's chest.

Leamer turned to his desk. He fingered a key in his hand but
hesitated to open the drawer. “If I've got the only keys to these
locked spaces, then how could anyone else-”

“We're dealing with a killer who's got a history of burglary,
okay? Don't ask me to explain things, just do whatever I tell you.
You're coming with me, and I want to know why the cells are kept
locked.”

“In Castle Williams?”

“Yeah.”

“Because they're in such bad shape it would be dangerous to let
visitors in. There's just junk inside. Old furniture, folding
chairs for events that we hold here. Nothing of value.”

“C'mon. First stop,” Mike said to Leamer.

“Troy Rasheed is so used to prison, so comfortable behind bars,
it's a good idea he might be in one,” Mercer said. “Go ahead. Take
Alex with you. I'll stay near the office.”

I didn't want us to split up. “Let's just leave the phone,
okay?”

“I need you with us, Coop. Mercer's fine.”

I shook off the rain, ready to go out into the storm with Mike
and Russell Leamer, who was slowly putting on his slicker and large
hat.

“The walkway's flooded,” Leamer said. “We've got to take the
road.”

The river had continued to surge over the old seawall and the
only way we could get back to the fortress was on higher
ground.

Mike and I jogged along in tandem while Leamer, slowed by his
long raincoat, lagged behind.

When we reached the deep archway that led into the prison, Mike
waited for Leamer to take us inside. Now, in complete darkness, the
three circular tiers of cells looked like the hellholes they were
refitted to be during the Civil War.

“Where?” Mike shouted at Leamer.

We had tried these cell doors on Saturday. Now Mike was ready to
tear through the entire prison again.

Leamer held out two keys on a chain. “These open everything in
here.”

Mike unhooked one from the chain.

“Coop, you take him and start on the top. Anything locked, open
it up and look.”

I couldn't move. Huge waves were pounding against the lowest row
of casement openings. Water was pouring onto the earthen ground
floor of the dank building, and it looked like it wouldn't be long
until it was partially submerged.

“Upstairs, kid,” Mike shouted at me. “The faster you move, the
faster we're out of here.”

I followed Leamer into the staircase and up to the third tier.
He opened the doors that were locked and shone a flashlight, but
there was nothing at all inside.

I could hear Mike clanging each of the cell doors below us and I
yelled to him. “All clear on three.”

Back down the steps to the middle tier, where the only locked
cubicles had a few piled-up chairs stored in them.

Leamer shone his light into each of the others as we made our
way around the perimeter.

“Stop!” I shouted abruptly. “What's in there?”

It was one of the open cells, one that Mercer had examined on
Saturday.

“Looks like-like,” Leamer pulled on the heavy iron door and we
walked in. “Like old canteens.”

The two canteens looked like something out of Frank Bannerman's
military catalog. Beneath one of them was a knife-an open
switchblade with six inches of rusty steel forming its sharp
point.

I picked up the items and ran past Leamer, down the staircase to
where Mike was completing his search of the ground floor.

He took the knife from me and closed it. Then shook the
canteens, one at a time, turning them upside down. The first was
bone dry, but a bit of water trickled from the second one.

“Park Service use anything like these?” Mike asked.

“No, no, we don't. There's no potable water on this island,”
Leamer said. “We bring it in by bottles.”

“So anybody planning an overnight visit might come prepared with
some of them?”

“We don't allow overnights.”

“Troy Rasheed's a guy who specializes in what isn't allowed,”
Mike said, turning slowly in place as he eyed the tiers around him
once more. “There must be a basement here, isn't there?”

Russell Leamer was watching the waves wash through the
casements, as uneasy as I was about them.

“Not in Castle Williams, Detective. It's too low, too close to
the water level.”

“But I thought there was a dungeon on the island. Most of the
military accounts from that period said there was a black
hole.”

Leamer took the other sets of keys from his pocket and jangled
them, searching for one to hand to Mike.

"That's in the Governor's House, Detective, on the eastern side
of the island. There's a dungeon where prisoners were kept in the
basement of the post headquarters. That's the black hole.

FIFTY

How fast can you move?" Mike asked the ranger.

The cobblestones had been made slippery by the rain. The three
of us took the back way along Colonels' Row, slowed by the slick
road surface, to get to the ivy-covered brick house that stood
separate from the officers' quarters.

Leamer was puffing as he walked, trying to explain what we were
going to find. "It was called the Governor's House when the British
held the island but not used by our military as a residence. It was
actually the place in which court-martials were held. Mike was
trying to move the older man along.

“And now?”

“It's in better shape than many of the buildings, furnished-for
ceremonial purposes-but nothing much has been done with it since
the coast guard left.”

“And the dungeon? Is it accessible?”

“I don't think so. I mean, I can't imagine anyone has tried to
use it. I've never seen it myself,” Leamer said. “You know, there
was also a tunnel below that building, according to legend.”

“For what?” Mike asked, impatient for Leamer to keep pace with
him.

“It was sealed up years ago. But when the British controlled the
island, the first governors in residence here built a tunnel below
Buttermilk Channel large enough for horses and a carriage so that
they could make their escape if war threatened.”

I had reached the hedges in front of the imposing mansion.
“Buttermilk Channel?”

“The spit of water that separates the island from Brooklyn,”
Mike said, waving his hand toward the rear of the house.

“So there's a way to get on and off this place without a ferry?”
I asked.

“So I'm told,” Leamer said. He mounted the staircase between two
white Romanesque columns and we waited behind him as he put one of
his keys in the lock.

I heard the click of the release and saw Leamer push on the
door, but it didn't open. He stepped away, fumbled with another
key, and tried again. No click. He was back to the first key.
Again, a click, but the door didn't budge.

Mike took the keys from Leamer's hand. He unlocked the door and
leaned his shoulder in to shove it, but there was no give.

“Something must be blocking it,” Leamer said.

“From the inside,” Mike said, finishing the ranger's
sentence.

Lightning lit up the sky and thunder growled at us. I hoped I
wasn't imagining that it was beginning to move away from
overhead.

Mike handed me the knife and one of the canteens, then vaulted
over the wrought-iron porch gate and raised his hand in front of
one of the double-hung windows, smashing the other canteen through
the glass. He broke a second and a third pane, reaching through the
hole and up to the latch that secured the window in place.

The old frame was swollen from the heat and humidity, so Mike
had to play with it for several minutes to raise it up. He brushed
away the chunks of glass and raised himself onto the sash, through
the opening. I watched as I put the switchblade in the rear pocket
of my jeans. When I looked up again, Mike had vanished inside the
Governor's House.

Russell Leamer was backing off the porch. He wasn't sure what
was happening, but he didn't want to be a party to it. It sounded
like Mike was moving something heavy out of the way. I could hear
it scraping across the floor.

When he opened the door to let us in, he had his gun in his
hand. Leamer groaned.

“Give her your flashlight,” Mike said to the ranger. “Go back to
your office and send Mercer up here as fast as you can possibly go.
Ask him to call the lieutenant first and tell him we've got a
situation on the island, got it? Get somebody airborne.”

“What kind of situation?” Leamer whined.

“He'll understand me. And you, Coop, glue yourself to my ass,
okay?”

Leamer took off immediately. I stepped over the threshold,
around the massive mahogany table that someone had put in place to
block the door.

“Hold that light up,” Mike said.

He started to walk from the entrance through a formal parlor,
the walls of which were decorated with an assortment of antique
military weapons. Portraits of bearded officers from another age
were hung over the fireplace between the windows, and heavy gold
drapes, faded from decades of exposure, still framed most of the
windows.

Mike held out his arm to slow me down while he turned the corner
into the next room. He motioned for me to join him. I had the same
nerve-wracked feeling I had experienced at the shooting range, that
someone would dart out from behind a door and fire at Mike before
he could defend himself-and me.

But there was only a succession of musty office suites,
handsomely furnished and all seemingly undisturbed. At the very
rear of the house, overlooking the narrow channel that separated
the island from Brooklyn, the interior silence was broken as Mike's
foot crunched down onto more shards of glass.

He didn't have to speak. I could see, too, that the pane closest
to the handle of the back door had been broken and that someone had
knocked it in, as if to gain entry from this side of the mansion.
When the break-in had occurred, and whether the burglar was still
anywhere around, was impossible to tell.

Mike and I crossed the small room, emerging into a larger
office, clearly the centerpiece of the house. An enormous colored
map of the island as it looked in colonial times hung over the
mantel.

Mike was looking for doors now, for a way to get into the
basement of the old building. We found the central staircase that
led up to the second floor, but that was of little interest to him.
He wanted to go belowground.

He tapped the wooden boards behind the staircase, rapping every
ten or twelve inches, until we both heard a hollow noise. There was
an elaborate panel in the wainscoting that ran through the entire
house, and Mike played with the raised carvings on it until he
found what he was looking for. A piece of wood lifted up, revealing
a keyhole.

I tried to steady the light on his hand as he sorted the keys.
There were three-one for the front door and two others that were
marked with the initials for Governor's House.

On his second attempt, the door opened. We both stood perfectly
still for almost a minute, waiting to hear if there was any noise
below. Nothing.

Mike turned to me and whispered, “Stay up here.”

“I can't.”

“What do you mean, you can't, Coop? Stay here.”

Thunder clapped outside the house. The storm hadn't moved as far
as I thought.

“Glue, Detective Chapman. It's hopeless. I'm with you.”

One side of Mike's mouth twitched, but he wouldn't give me a
full smile. “Hold the light over my shoulder.”

He grabbed the banister with his left hand and tested each plank
before he put his weight down on the old wooden steps. One at a
time, I descended behind him-first one flight, then around a
landing that twisted to the basement.

Halfway to the bottom, I could see that the fetid room was
partially flooded. It wasn't surprising, since it was so far below
the level of the house, adjacent to the channel.

Mike stopped a step or two above the floor. It was obvious in
the flashlight's beam that the surging water had come through a
small pair of windows that were set into the floor, probably the
only source of light and ventilation in this dreadful room.