Cold Case Squad

by Edna Buchanan

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  Also by Edna Buchanan

  The Ice Maiden

  You Only Die Twice

  Garden of Evil

  Margin of Error

  Act of Betrayal

  Suitable for Framing

  Miami, It’s Murder

  Contents Under Pressure

  Pulse

  Never Let Them See You Cry

  Nobody Lives Forever

  The Corpse Had a Familiar Face

  Carr: Five Years of Rape and Murder

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  Rockefeller Center

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Edna Buchanan

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Designed by Dana Sloan

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Buchanan, Edna.

  Cold case squad : a novel / Edna Buchanan.

  p. cm.

  1. Police—Florida—Miami—Fiction. 2. Miami (Fla.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.U324C57 2004

  813’52—dc22

  2004044992

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-6290-3

  ISBN-10: 0-7432-6290-5

  FOR RENEE TUROLLA,

  world traveler, free spirit, true friend and sister

  There is nothing covered up that will not be uncovered, nothing hidden that will not be made known.

  —LUKE 12:2

  Prologue, Part One

  FOUR A.M., MAY 23, 1992

  Long legged and nearly naked, the reclining woman stared into the night, her huge eyes blank and soulless, her long hair barely covering her voluptuous breasts.

  She saw everything, and nothing.

  The deserted street was dark.

  Her expression never changed as the sleek car on the street below turned left into a Dumpster-lined alley and crept to a halt. The driver killed the lights. He and another man in dark clothes emerged and quietly approached a steel-plated door. The passenger carried a small suitcase.

  In this silent hour before dawn, they could hear the sea pounding the sandy shore four hundred yards away and smell the salt in the air. The driver punched the buzzer beside the door as his passenger nervously scanned the street outside. He looked up at the reclining woman, who smiled seductively.

  “Yeah?” The static-distorted voice was almost a bark.

  “It’s me,” the driver said.

  “About time.”

  “Sorry about that. You know how it is.”

  “Who the hell’s that with you?”

  “My cousin, from out of town. I want you to meet him.”

  The buzzer sounded, locks disengaged. The driver swung the door open and gestured for his companion to follow.

  On the stairs, the driver appeared preternaturally calm, his steps light as his companion stumbled hesitantly along behind him.

  The nervous man reacted at the sound of a second buzzer that unlocked a heavy door at the top of the stairs.

  A handsome, muscular man in his late thirties sprang up to greet them with such enthusiasm that his thick, padded leather chair continued to rock behind his massive mahogany desk.

  His face was pink-cheeked, his eyes and hair dark and shiny. His watch was Rolex, his suit expensive, his winking pinky ring a diamond. He clenched a fine, unlit cigar between his teeth.

  “Hey, hey, Buddy.” He playfully punched his visitor’s shoulder, caught him in a hearty bear hug, then stepped back to scrutinize the stranger.

  “Who’s this, your cousin? He could be your fucking brother. I see the family resemblance.”

  “Meet my cousin Michael.”

  “So,” Chris said, “didn’t know you had a cousin.” He turned to the stranger, “Me and your cousin Buddy, we go way back, all the way to high school.”

  Chris shook Michael’s hand. “So which side a the family you from?”

  The stranger hesitated.

  “My father’s,” Buddy said quickly. “His father was my father’s brother.”

  “So where you from?”

  Michael licked his lips and glanced at Buddy before replying. “Milwaukee,” he said.

  Chris’s hooded eyes became thoughtful and he returned to sit behind his desk. A top drawer was slightly open, just a few inches. “Did you bring what I asked for?”

  “Don’t I always?” Buddy jerked his head toward the suitcase on the floor beside Michael. “How’s about I fix you two a drink first?”

  Chris nodded. “Sure.”

  “I’ll get it, don’t get up.” With the familiarity of a man who had been there many times, Buddy moved smoothly behind the desk to the custom, built-in bar. “The usual, Chris?”

  “Right.”

  “What about you, Michael?”

  “Scotch, if you have it.”

  “Siddown,” Chris told him.

  Michael sat tentatively on the edge of a red plush sofa.

  Ice rattled into a heavy crystal glass.

  Buddy left the glass on the marble-topped bar, stepped two feet to Chris’s desk, and slid a 9mm silencer-equipped Luger out of a shoulder holster. As Chris turned to take the glass, Buddy shot him in the face at close range.

  Chris jerked back in his chair, his head at an awkward angle, mouth open in surprise at the geyser of blood spurting onto the front of his white shirt.

  It showered onto the desk blotter as he slumped sideways in his chair. Stepping back so he would not be spattered, Buddy stretched his arm full length and pumped another slug into the back of the convulsing man’s head.

  The spasms stopped.

  “Hated to do that, but it’s the way it’s gotta be,” Buddy said regretfully. He turned to Michael, who sat frozen on the red plush couch, eyes wide.

  “Come on, come on! It’s right over here.” Buddy opened the concealed bookcase safe, which was not locked.

  His shaken companion, still staring at the corpse, looked up and swallowed. Hands shaking, he opened the suitcase and removed a folded supersize duffel bag.

  “Fill ’em up! Fill ’em up!” Buddy demanded.

  Galvanized into action by the still-smoking gun in Buddy’s hand, Michael began to stuff cash into the suitcase.

  “How much you think is in here?” He looked in awe at the big bills stacked tightly on floor-to-ceiling shelves.

  “Maybe two million,” Buddy said calmly. “Make sure you pack it—” Both men’s eyes widened at a small explosion of sound, a toilet flushing in the next room.

  “You said nobody else would be here!” Michael’s whisper was ragged.

  The door to the private bathroom opened.

  “Honey? Chris, honey?”

  Smile tentative, she stepped into the room. A stripper from the club downstairs, the new girl.

  She looked young, still wearing her scanty work clothes, glittery pasties and a G-string. Sparkly angel dust accented her eyelids and décolletage.

  She approached them, shaky on strappy stiletto heels. One more step and she would see Chris, his blood spilling down the side of the chair, soaking into the thi
ck carpet.

  Buddy cursed. Who knew Chris would be indulging in his own private after-hours lap dance?

  “Bring her over here,” he told Michael.

  “Ma’am,” Michael said apologetically, and reached for her elbow. She took the fatal step, her painted face puzzled. She screamed, a high, shrill shriek.

  “Over here!” Buddy demanded, face flushed.

  Once she was dead, they filled the bags. When they were unable to cram another greenback into the duffel bag or the suitcase, Buddy yanked out a deep desk drawer, dumped the contents, and filled it with bills. He also removed the dead man’s gun from the slightly open top drawer.

  “What about the camera hooked up to that intercom?” Michael said.

  “Doesn’t record,” Buddy said confidently. “Nothing to worry about.”

  They took the night’s receipts, still stacked on the desk, put them in the safe, locked it, wiped down all they had touched, and left the way they came.

  Michael was hyperventilating, breathing hard and trembling. “You didn’t tell me—”

  “Be cool,” Buddy warned him, as they carried the bags down the stairs.

  The street was still deserted.

  Buddy dumped the cash out of the desk drawer into the trunk of their car. A block away he had Michael toss the wiped-down drawer and Chris’s gun into the backseat of an unlocked, beat-up Chevy convertible. As Michael darted back to the car, heart pounding, he looked up for a moment at the distant figure of the reclining woman, long yellow hair aglow in the warmth of neon. She stared back, her wet, red smile seductive.

  Prologue, Part Two

  LATER THAT DAY

  High-pitched screams and ear-splitting shrieks shattered the air. What must the neighbors think? Joan wondered.

  Grinning, she closed one eye and peered through the video camera’s viewfinder, slowly panning the front yard.

  A bouquet of bright balloons bobbed above the mailbox, marking the party’s location. Two picnic tables adorned with festive paper tablecloths stood in the shade of a huge black olive tree. The paper plates, napkins, and party favors were all in red, white, and blue rocket ship patterns. A sweating galvanized copper tub held soda cans and juice cartons nestled in an icy slush. Puffy white clouds sailed across a serene blue sky above while happy chaos reigned below.

  HoHo the Clown twisted squeaky balloons into animal shapes as a rent-a-pony, led by a handler wearing a Stetson and cowboy boots, plodded docilely around the circular old Chicago brick driveway. “Giddeup! Giddeup!” bawled the rider, an impatient third grader.

  The loudest shrieks came from children rebounding wildly off the bright, inflatable walls of the rented Bounce House. They sprang and ricocheted off the floors and even the ceiling in daredevil imitations of superheroes, Olympic gymnasts, and human flies.

  Joan focused on her husband. Red-faced and perspiring, he manned the grill, an unruly shock of curly dark hair plastered across his forehead. Stan wore sunglasses, oven mitts, a bib apron over his GRILL SERGEANT T-shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts as he flipped burgers and plump hot dogs that sputtered juice into the fire.

  Stan winked at her and the camera, then addressed the crush of party-ers around him. “How many want burgers? Two, three, that’s four. How many want cheese on their burgers? Okay. How many hot dogs?”

  “Both. I want both,” Lionel demanded. The husky eight-year-old was built like a gap-toothed pit bull with freckles.

  “Coming right up!” Stan adjusted his chef ’s hat to a jaunty angle.

  Lionel screwed up his face in disdain. “My dad doesn’t do it that way.”

  “Who invited Lionel?” Stan muttered to his wife. “You know he’s a troublemaker. His own mother calls him Lying Hell.”

  “Sssshhh. Honey.” Joan rolled her eyes and lowered her voice. “He might hear you. Sally’s my best friend.”

  “But she doesn’t call her son Lying Hell for nothing. Look.” He cut his eyes at Lionel, who was up to his dimpled elbows in a huge bowl of Cheez Doodles.

  “Just keep an eye on him,” Joan urged. “I already briefed Consuela, if she ever gets here.” She checked her watch. “Where’d you put the cake?”

  “On the pantry counter, still in the box from the Cuban bakery. You sure it’s safe to feed them more sugar?”

  As though on cue, Ryan, the birthday boy, scrambled around the side of the house. In hot pursuit were Sookie, the golden retriever, and half a dozen guests. Half of Ryan’s face was painted blue, his legs churned, his cardboard crown was askew.

  Joan focused on her firstborn on the occasion of his eighth birthday. It seemed only yesterday that she was being rushed into surgery for an emergency C-section. Could it really be eight years? Given his exuberance, no one would ever guess that last night Ryan had fretted, pouted, even threatened to boycott his own party. He wanted fireworks. For days he had nagged, pleaded, and cajoled. His third-grade buddies expected fireworks, he’d argued. He intended to be an astronaut, speeding in swaths of fire across the galaxy. His party theme was rockets. He wanted fireworks.

  His five-year-old sister’s birthday theme had been The Little Mermaid. Her party favors, he pointed out, included real live goldfish in clear water-filled plastic bags. “She always gets everything she wants,” he’d howled.

  Joan and Stan had nearly caved. A boy is only eight once. But with memories of the barbecue debacle involving Lionel last Fourth of July, it was not going to happen.

  Ryan would be king for a day, with a crown, a clown, a rocket-shaped cake—but fireworks? No. Not even a sparkler.

  Consuela materialized and helped Joan refill bowls of chips and Cheez Doodles. Half-empty sodas and half-eaten food were everywhere.

  Stan served up Lionel’s hot dog and burger with a flourish.

  “Eewwuuh. What’s that?” The child poked a grubby finger at the cheese.

  “Cheese. You wanted cheese,” Stan said pleasantly.

  “You don’t have bleu cheese?”

  “Nope, only American.”

  His freckled nose wrinkled.

  “Right.” Stan tossed another burger on the grill. “I’ll fix you one without cheese.”

  Before he could reach for the boy’s plate, Lionel was feeding his cheeseburger and hot dog to the golden retriever.

  “Sookie likes it.” Lionel beamed a cherubic smile, then frowned at the fresh burger Stan offered.

  “My father doesn’t do it that way.” Sookie’s plumed tail began to wag expectantly.

  “Oh?” Stan’s eyebrows arched.

  “No. He puts the catsup on both sides of the bun first, then the hamburger.” Lionel folded his arms and scowled.

  “Here, Lionel, you can do the honors.”

  Lionel reached for the catsup bottle and scrutinized the label, his expression sour. “You don’t have Heinz?”

  Stan bared his teeth and made an evil monster face.

  Lionel fled.

  Blue-green horseflies dive-bombed the baked beans. Joan waved them away, eager to finish feeding the kids before the semitropical sun fried their little brains. Some of the smaller ones already glowed pink despite slathers of sunscreen. She hurried inside for the pièce de résistance.

  In the cool quiet of the pantry, she savored the moment away from the clamor. Comforting rows of canned goods and food cartons stood like soldiers at attention, arranged precisely by date on plastic-lined shelves. Humming “Happy Birthday,” she opened the pristine white box from the Cuban bakery—and gasped.

  Screams had elevated to an even higher pitch at party central. Lionel had discovered the box of matches intended to light the candles. Striking them one by one, he was throwing the flaring matches at little girls who fled shrieking.

  “Stop that, Lionel!” Joan snatched away the box and confronted her husband. “I thought you were watching him!”

  “I’m just trying to get them to sit down for HoHo’s magic tricks—and watch the grill at the same time.” Stan’s long-suffering expression was that of an ov
erburdened and misunderstood man.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” He removed his chef ’s hat and mopped his forehead.

  “The cake.” She studied him. The moment was tense. “Did you happen to check it when you picked it up?” The words were ominous.

  “No,” he said cautiously. “I still had to pick up the balloons and the hot dogs. The box was tied up and ready. Our name was on it. I have the receipt.”

  “Follow me.” She sounded close to tears. “Why can’t anything ever be just right?” She steered him into the pantry. “I described it twice. They said they understood. A rocket, I told them, with ‘Happy Birthday to Ryan, Future Astronaut.’ ”

  “Right.” Stan nodded.

  She lifted the lid, wrists curled as though unveiling a snake.

  The words spun out in sugary blue frosting were correct: “Happy Birthday to Ryan, Future Astronaut.”

  But the cake was not rocket-shaped.

  “A racquet,” Stan finally said. “It’s a tennis racquet.”

  “Thank you,” Joan said. “I guess I’m not losing my mind.”

  They laughed and clung to each other until their eyes watered.

  “We should get out there,” she said, wiping her face on his sleeve. “Before Lionel kills the dog or burns the house to the ground.”

  “You don’t think he’d really hurt Sookie, do you?”

  “One never knows, though nothing can top this.”

  Most of the children were seated on the lawn watching HoHo’s repertoire of tricks. Lionel was tying a dachshund-shaped balloon to Sookie’s collar as though expecting it to lift the big, affable dog into the air à la Mary Poppins.

  Consuela, short and compact in her white uniform, gently placed the birthday cake center front on the picnic table, then stepped back to scrutinize it. She cocked her head, puzzled, then shrugged. Long ago she’d stopped trying to understand the people who employed her. She tucked the matchbox in her pocket and turned to see what Lionel was up to now.

  The boy had actually paused to watch HoHo. The clown displayed an empty glass. With a flourish, he filled it with water from a plastic pitcher. Suddenly he upended the glass. Not a drop spilled.