Dickie held out both hands, palms up, and slowly repeated the words, exaggerating the pronunciation. "Did you hear me good, Chapman? You said Ruffle Bar, am I right?"

"Yeah."

"You're asking me why I didn't tell you anything that I knew, and I'm just as stumped about why you didn't call me. You thinking someone was trying to get Huff's body to Ruffle Bar?" Dickie laughed again.

"She never got there."

"Well, of course she never got there. But thanks a lot if you can prove any link to the case. Sorry, Loo, but maybe I should have stayed for the second feature. You call me in for this?"

The lieutenant took over. "Jimmy Dylan's joint is uptown. Now he's opened one for his kid downtown. And to put this right in your territory, the Dylans own a house in Breezy Point. Dylan's son Kiernan- turns out he knew the Huff girl."

"She was trying to hook up with him the night she went missing," Mike said.

Draper paused for a moment. "I know Breezy Point real good. I'm thinking-"

"Let's get a sample of sand from the beach at Breezy," Peterson said. "Compare it to the sample you got from the blanket Huff was wrapped in. There must be a geologist at the Museum of Natural History who'll do that."

"The feebs have guys at Quantico who can analyze it-all the mineral deposits and stuff. They're good at that, Loo."

"Screw the feebs, Dickie. We'll get it done right in New York."

"I'm thinking what kind of screwball we got here," Draper said. "After all, maybe if he used a boat to get to Bannerman Island with that cadet's body-I mean, maybe he really was trying to take Elise Huff to Ruffle Bar. Maybe he's got a fishing boat on the water he was planning to use to get there. It's dead in the middle, between Breezy Point and where her body was found."

"What's in the middle?" Mike asked.

"Who's on first, Chapman?" Draper said, holding his forefinger in the air and moving it back and forth in front of his eyes. "Am I thinking too fast for you? I'm talking about Ruffle Bar."

"Dickie, it's in Manhattan. We were there last night."

"Then you oughta take a look out from Brooklyn with me, to Jamaica Bay."

"What have you got to show us?"

"Ruffle Bar, Chapman. You can see it from the bridge that connects the Belt Parkway over to Breezy Point. It's an abandoned island, not far from where Elise Huff got dumped.

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.