Mike dismissed me. "It has nothing to do with the government."
"But you said the state owns it."
"That's only been the last thirty years," Bart said. He swept his arm around the bizarre vista. "This was all the folly of one man, Alex. A privately owned island, bought in 1900 by a complete eccentric named Frank Bannerman."
"And he built this-this…?"
"It's supposed to look like an ancestral family castle back in Scotland, complete with drawbridges and a moat. But you're right to call it a fortress. The arsenal-that's the second-largest building here-was one of the biggest munitions warehouses in America. Nations went to war a century ago outfitted entirely by Frank Bannerman, from his crazy island outpost."
"You know about this guy, Mike?" Mercer asked.
"My aunt Eunice had a cellar full of Bannerman's catalogs. Probably still does. Uncle Brendan had been collecting them since he was a kid."
Mike's military interests had been fueled by his father's oldest brother, who had landed at Normandy.
"What was Bannerman doing up here?" Mercer asked.
"The family emigrated from Scotland to New York in the 1850s, right after he was born," said Bart. "At the end of the Civil War, young Frank started buying up tons of military goods-surplus equipment- that the government was auctioning off. He purchased everything from scrap metal and bayonets to ships that the navy wanted to unload, figuring he could sell them to whatever government went to war next."
"He had all the weapons and ammunition stored in offices downtown, on Broadway," Mike said.
"Till after the Spanish-American War. Bannerman purchased 90 percent of all the military hardware and black powder when that conflict ended, but it was so dangerously explosive that the city demanded he move it out. In 1900, he bought this island and moved everything up our way," Bart said. "Designed all the buildings himself."
"Did he live here?" I asked.
"That castle," Bart said, pointing at the enormous structure with four rounded towers and crenellated peaks, "was built to be a house for his family. See how there's not a right angle anywhere on it? The guy was a master of detail."
"And people actually bought this stuff from a private individual?"
"He outfitted entire regiments in World War I-turning a handsome profit off our own government" Bart said. "Sold something like a hundred thousand saddles, rifles, uniforms, and about twenty million cartridges to the Russians for their war against Japan a century ago."
"Everybody from Buffalo Bill to the silent film directors bought their gear from Bannerman's," Mike added. "Bayonets and muskets, spurs and torpedoes-all straight out of the catalog. You know the commemorative cannons you see in town squares all over America? I bet more than half of them were sold right off this island."
"There's got to be some kind of connection between Elise Huff, with her West Point ring, and Connie Wade, a cadet whose body was brought out to this arsenal, practically within sight of the academy. How come you and Bart know so much about Frank Bannerman and I never heard of him?"
" 'Cause little girls read Nancy Drew while little boys studied the pictures in these catalogs. They were still being published when I was a teenager."
"Does he have any descendants? Anyone who still has access here?" I asked.
"Nope. End of the line."
Mike was animated now, telling Bart and Mercer about his uncle Brendan's collections. "He used to buy things from Bannerman's that came packed in their original crates, and my aunt Eunice saved them just that way. He had these kepis-"
"Kepis?" I asked.
"Hats. The kind soldiers wore in the Civil War. Paid something like seventy-five cents apiece for them."
"Sounds like an army-navy store," Mercer said.
"The very first one. Bannerman sold relics from Admiral Perry's Arctic expedition and weapons from the Battle of Yorktown. Put your hands on one of those catalogs, Coop, and I'll tell you what else you'll find," Mike said, snapping his finger at me as an idea came to him.
"What?"
"Let's get that label from the olive green blanket that Elise Huff's body was wrapped in. See if there's anything like it on the one that was covering Connie Wade yesterday-or have the lab compare the fibers. Could be from the same stock. Could be our killer's a military buff gone AWOL.
TWENTY
Bart Hinson asked one of the other troopers to lead the way, with Mercer behind him, minding the cracked stone paths that once connected the buildings.
I said to Mike, "That doesn't account for Amber Bristol. There's nothing we know about her that has any military connection."
"Full speed ahead, Coop. Two out of three with a West Point nexus.
Let's work this one through."
"We learned this morning that Cadet Wade was on the women's crew team," Bart said. "Every time they practiced it took her right past the island. Can't say she ever stopped here, but it would be hard to row by without becoming curious."
Bart stopped beneath a small archway. The cracks in the structure overhead stretched out in all directions like an endless succession of spider webs.
"Here's where the body was when I got called in last night," he said, pointing to a place just beyond the stone overhang. "Her bare feet were right there, and the rest of her sort of that way, lengthwise, all covered up."
The familiar chalk outline of urban policing wouldn't have worked in this setting. Bart pulled a Polaroid photo out of his pocket and handed it to Mike. "Can you make it out?"
All the colors were muted. The dark material of the blanket blurred against the brush around it. Connie Wade's skin, lighter than Mercer's, was barely visible through the weeds.
Mike stooped to examine the ground around the site, pulling apart tall grasses to look for traces of anything that might be useful in the investigation. It was impossible to know whether this part of the scene had been trampled by the killer or by the troopers who'd been called in after the body was found.
"What's your bet? Killed somewhere else or right here?" Mercer asked.
"I'm thinking she was alive when she got to the island. Probably handcuffed and gagged, and forced to walk up here from the landing.
I don't think a kid with all her smarts would volunteer to explore this place with a complete stranger," Bart said. "He'd have to be awfully strong to have carried her from a boat."
"Facial trauma?"
The trooper took a deep breath before he answered. "I can show you those pictures, too. The commandant from the academy couldn't even recognize her."
Mike stood up, looking around the rough landscape. "You got a guess at a weapon?"
"My men carted off a few dozen of these chunks of rock to the lab.
Her face was probably crushed by one of them."
"Were any of them around the body?"
"They're everywhere here. That's why the whole thing is off-limits.
State officials have been worried about lawsuits if pieces fall on trespassers' heads. I never imagined one of Bannerman's building blocks might be used in a homicide."
Weathered and worn, the castle towers looked like oversized chess pieces that had broken apart and shattered as they landed on the hard, rocky surface of the island.
"Blood?"
Bart shook his head. "Nothing obvious. Nothing spattered around that we could see. But there's so much blood on the inside of the blanket that he may already have had the girl covered up when he finished her off."
"I guess it's too early to know about DNA," I said.
"The lab tech went over the body with a Wood's lamp before they bagged her. No external signs of seminal fluid," he said, referring to the ultraviolet light used to reveal the presence of semen on skin. "The autopsy will tell us more. How about your other cases?"
"No semen in either one," I said.
Mike was walking away from us, shading his eyes from the glare.
"Is there a particular place for boats to land? Can you track a route to this spot?"
"The original dock Bannerman put in has been reinforced, just for caretaking purposes. The rest of the island is too rocky to risk. I'd say our man most likely came ashore there."