Cold Case Squad

by Edna Buchanan

  “Meanwhile Miami has fewer trees than ninety percent of American cities,” Stan said. “That’s the reason it’s so damn hot. All the concrete and asphalt.”

  “They may regret cutting those trees down,” Nazario said. “Santería worshipers believe that the kapok and baobobs house spirits who will bring harm to those who destroy them.”

  “Hope so,” Stan said. “That same builder’s putting up another concrete monster around the corner.”

  “Did you notice the color of this one?” Joan wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know if any of you detectives ever changed a diaper, but it’s the same color as baby poop. Who on earth would paint a house that shade?”

  “People with more money than sense.” Her husband let go of the drape, which fell gracefully back into place.

  “Who lives there now?” Stone asked.

  “Good question,” Stan said. “Latinos bought it two years ago, and to tell you the truth, I couldn’t even tell you their names or what they look like. They drive in. They drive out. Their SUVs all have dark-tinted windows. In a neighborhood where we all used to know each other and all the kids, dogs, cats, and kissing cousins by first name.”

  “You ever hear from Terrell’s widow?” Burch inquired.

  Joan shook her head. “Natasha remarried, I think, a man who was in business with her late husband. Terrell was a pharmacist, you know, owned that big corner drugstore on Coral Way. The place had been there forever, a landmark. They had the best soda fountain.”

  “It’s gone, too,” Stan said.

  “Natasha sold the business as well,” Joan said. “They put up a high-rise bank building on the site.”

  “That second husband,” Stone said, “that would be a Martin Asher?”

  “Sounds familiar,” Joan said. “Hope you don’t mind me asking, but why are you looking into the fire again after all these years?”

  “We’re checking out a report that it might not have been an accident,” Burch said.

  “Oh my God! Murder? Stan, did you hear that?” She turned to her husband, excited. “Honey, imagine. A murder mystery right on our block!”

  “It’s only a routine inquiry,” Stone said quickly.

  “How did the Terrells get along?” Nazario asked. “How well did you know them?”

  “They hadn’t been here long,” Joan said, her voice animated as she led them into the comfortable living room. “They were newlyweds, she was pregnant when they moved in. It was his second marriage. He had an ex-wife—and kids. The children sometimes came for a weekend. Poor things. One was about Vanessa’s age. They came over here to play a few times.

  “I got the impression that their stepmother wasn’t too crazy about them. Natasha was young. The most gorgeous thing you ever saw.”

  Stan nodded solemnly.

  “She liked to be the center of attention,” Joan went on. “Didn’t want to share the spotlight. The two of them had a couple of big blow-ups.

  “Whoops.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Wrong choice of words. But you couldn’t help but hear the arguments. Once when he tried to leave during a fight, she ran out after him and threw herself across the hood of his car.”

  “The day he died,” Stan said solemnly, “the fellow came over here and asked to borrow a line wrench. Never did get the thing back. Part of a matching set. Said he was working on his Thunderbird. I’d never seen him work on the car before. I told him to bring his kids over to Ryan’s party later, but he said it wasn’t his weekend for visitation.”

  “See anybody else over there that day?” Stone asked.

  Joan shook her head. “I was way involved in the party. I mean, it was absolute bedlam here, two dozen kids and not much help.”

  “Where was the party?” Stone asked. “Here inside the house, your backyard…?”

  “No, out front in the shade under the trees. The kids saw it all,” Joan said.

  “Traumatized.” Stan nodded grimly. “For life.”

  “Take any snapshots?” Nazario asked.

  Joan shook her head. “Who had time?”

  Nazario tucked his notebook back into his jacket pocket. Stone checked his watch. Burch got to his feet, hoping to wrap this up today. How much more would it take to convince Riley that there was nothing to find?

  “I was too busy shooting the video.”

  The detectives exchanged glances.

  “You have a tape?” they chorused.

  She cocked her head. “Probably in Ryan’s room with all the others—unless he taped a rock music concert over it. I’ll see if I can find it, and him. He won’t want to miss this. He always says it was the biggest birthday blast he ever had. I’ll be right back.”

  Burch sat down again. “How long have you two been married?”

  Stan paused for a moment. “Our twenty-second is coming up.”

  “Nice,” the detective said. “What’s your secret?”

  Stan hitched his shoulders. “Dumb luck, I guess. We were young, stayed the course, and that was it. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah,” Burch said. “But—”

  “I found it! I found it.” Joan danced down the stairs, waving a video cassette. Her son loomed behind her.

  Taller than his parents, he wore an oversized red T-shirt emblazoned with LINKIN PARK, blue jeans, and a silver stud in one ear.

  “He starts his junior year at FSU this fall,” his mother said proudly.

  “That day was so cool,” Ryan told the detectives. “My friends never forgot it. So weird. I wanted fireworks, so when it happened, I thought at first that they got them for me, that it was all part of the birthday trip.”

  “I’ll make popcorn.” Joan backed toward the kitchen. “It’ll just take a sec in the microwave. Don’t start the tape without me. We haven’t seen it in years. What does everybody want to drink?”

  They gathered around the blond wood entertainment center. Bowls of popcorn and half a dozen soft drinks on the coffee table. Nazario and Burch on the couch, Stone slouched in a leather chair. Stan, Joan, and Nipsy, the Jack Russell, shared the love seat. Ryan inserted the tape into the VCR and sprawled on the floor.

  The detectives watched silently.

  “Ohhhhh,” Joan crooned, as a golden retriever loped through a gaggle of children. “There’s Sookie. How I loved that dog. And look, look at Vanessa, she was only five then.”

  “Consuela looks so young,” Ryan said.

  “We all do,” Stan said. “I had more hair and less stomach.”

  “We have to show this to Consuela on Tuesday,” Joan said. “Look at you, honey!” She patted Stan’s knee. “Whatever happened to your chef’s hat?”

  “There’s HoHo!” Ryan said.

  “And the cake!” Joan laughed aloud. “The racquet, not the rocket! I forgot about that!”

  Stone leaned forward in his chair, wondering on some vague level why people were laughing. He slid onto the thick carpet next to Ryan. “Can you stop it? Back it up. There. More, more.”

  Ryan handed the remote to the detective.

  “Okay, what is that?” Stone asked.

  “What?” the Walkers chorused.

  “Passing on the street, in the background.”

  “That reddish blur?” Stan asked.

  “Right.”

  “Traffic of some sort. A car, I guess.” Stan chewed his popcorn thoughtfully. “We didn’t have much traffic on our street back then. What do you think, Joanie?”

  “Remember the Camachos? You know. Four doors down, in the old Tate house? Sissy, their teenager, had a red Mustang back then. That might have been her coming home.” She shrugged. “It could be anybody.”

  Stone flicked the remote and the tape resumed.

  “Look, look,” she cried. “There’s Lionel!”

  “Where?” Burch squinted at the tape. “Who’s Lionel?”

  “Right there. That’s him.” Joan gasped. “What’s he doing to Sookie? Look at Consuela trying to stop him!”

  “That boy
grew up right on this block,” Stan said proudly. “We should save this footage, Joanie. I always knew that kid would go places. This tape might be of historic value someday.”

  “Who is he?” Stone asked.

  “The next Bill Gates,” Joan said. “A millionaire by the time he was eighteen. Software. He invented a whole new computer language. Got a full scholarship to Princeton.”

  Ryan rolled his eyes.

  “What’s that?” Stone stopped the tape and rewound.

  “HoHo’s act,” Stan said.

  The clown waved a red silk scarf overhead like a banner.

  “Something else going by. Looks like it stopped for a minute,” Burch said. “Hard to tell between the trees, with all that glare from the sun.”

  They continued to watch.

  “Hey, there it is again.” Nazario leaned toward the screen.

  HoHo reached deep into his throat and dramatically withdrew the long red scarf.

  “Now watch this,” Ryan said. “Here it comes. The big baboomba!”

  Cheers, applause. A loud whoosh.

  “Fireworks!” A glowing eight-year-old Ryan, arms raised in jubilation, birthday crown askew.

  Jerky camera movements. Smoke and flame. An explosion, empty sky, treetops, a pony bolting, a man chasing after him. Chunks of burning wreckage falling like meteors. Sookie scrambling, tail between her legs.

  Car and house alarms wailing. Flames, orange and red against brilliant blue sky. Pudgy legs churning. Stan sprinting. Children screaming. The screen went dark as the camera hit the ground.

  “I dropped it,” Joan said in a voice thin with remembrance. “Or threw it down. I can’t remember which.”

  The room stayed quiet for a moment.

  “Should have kept shooting, Mom. You could have sold it to America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

  “You’re a sick kid,” his father said.

  “Can we borrow the tape?” Burch asked.

  “God bless Americans and their video cameras,” Nazario said in the car.

  “Nice people,” Burch said. “Real nice. Notice how they kept finishing each other’s sentences?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes you forget there are still families like that. We heading over to see the widow?”

  “Yeah. I gotta stop on the way to pick up cat food.”

  “I’ve got some personal business, too. Something I need to take care of,” Stone said. “For about an hour. Okay, Sarge?”

  “A little afternoon delight, huh? Oh, to be young and single. Just make sure you stay single. And stay by your radio.”

  They dropped him off at the police parking garage.

  “So the young stud has a sweet young thing waiting for him somewhere.”

  Nazario nodded. “Guy has a way with the women.”

  Chapter Five

  Stone used his own key. He knew she’d be in the bedroom.

  “Hey, where’s my girl?”

  She felt like a frail bird in his arms as they hugged.

  “Did you eat without me?”

  “No, I waited, jus doin’ a little mendin’ until you got yourself here.” A cotton skirt, its hem ripped, lay across the arm of her recliner.

  She seemed slightly unsteady on her feet, and he took her arm as they went into the kitchen of her tiny Overtown cottage.

  “Why aren’t you watching TV?”

  She waved away the idea, lips pursed. “All that soap opera foolishness? Everybody lyin’ to everybody else, everybody sleepin’ with everybody else, swappin’ husbands, tradin’ wives. Who cares ’bout that trash? And those crazy talk shows? Where do they find those poor white trash?”

  He grinned. “How about a movie? The History Channel or Animal Planet? I know you like that.”

  She looked away, headed for the stove.

  “Gran, you still have the cable, don’t you?”

  “Who needs four hundred channels? It costs too much. Somebody ’ud have to watch night and day to make it worth the money. I don’t watch that much, jes’ the news.”

  He looked exasperated. “But you don’t have to worry about the bill, Gran. I gave you the cable for your birthday, remember?”

  “You do too much already, Sonny. Shouldn’t spend money on me. You work too hard for it, you could do lots of other things with it.”

  She frowned in front of the old-fashioned four-burner gas stove. “You here for breakfast or supper, Sonny?”

  He tried not to be alarmed. A minor short-term memory lapse. That’s all it was. She still had total recall of events that took place forty years ago. If you misplace your keys, the doctor said, don’t worry. Worry when you find them but don’t remember what they’re for.

  “It’s lunch, Gran. I think you already fixed it. Something sure smells good.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Nodding, she opened the oven door. “I was jus’ keepin’ it warm.”

  His grandmother had always been the smartest, hardest-working, most resourceful woman he’d ever known. She didn’t let Sam get away with a thing while raising him. For a long time he’d really believed she had eyes in the back of her head.

  “Set down and read the newspaper, Sonny, and I’ll fix you a plate.”

  He took the still-folded Miami News and sat in the small living room. Years ago they’d shared the same old armchair as his grandmother told him stories and showed him yellowed photos: Overtown nightclub owners, businessmen with marceled burr cuts, and show business stars. Overtown was a mecca for black entertainers, top stars who sang, danced, and did comedy at fancy Miami Beach clubs and hotels but were not permitted to eat or sleep there. They all stayed in Overtown and starred in late-night performances at its lively clubs and theaters, in the days before the white establishment gutted the once-vibrant neighborhood to build the expressway. She’d shown him photos of a woman called Diamond Tooth Mary and of his great-aunt Marva, a well-known schoolteacher and church organist.

  He felt relaxed and at home in that room where his parents smiled from a picture frame on a shelf. Next to it was a photo of himself at age five. Wearing a navy blue suit, saddle shoes, and a tie, he peered uncertainly at the camera from in front of a vintage television set.

  His eyes wandered back to his parents’ faces, their smiles frozen in time, much the way he remembered them.

  His father had labored over the fire, barbecuing juicy ribs, pork chops, shrimp, and chicken, while his mother waited on customers at their tiny take-out restaurant.

  They worked side by side, thirteen hours a day, seven days a week.

  His parents would drop him off at school and go on to work. After school, Sam walked home, let himself in, and did his homework until his grandmother arrived from her housekeeping job in Miami Beach. She would stay until his parents came home at night.

  His mother said all the hard work was for the future. It would not be forever, she had assured him.

  She was right.

  He was eight years old when their future ended.

  They had been robbed twice before. His father bought a gun for protection. He kept it on a shelf over his barbecue stove.

  He never had a chance to reach for it the night it happened.

  Sam was working on his math at the kitchen table, hoping that the hard rain falling meant his parents would be home soon. Rain always made business slow. When the knock at the door came, he thought it might be them at first, but it was a policeman. His grandmother sent Sam to his room, but he ran back to her when he heard her scream.

  The policeman picked him up, held him in his arms, and said everything would be all right, as his grandmother wailed.

  The next time Sam saw his parents, they lay in matching caskets, side by side.

  He never forgot the policeman whose name he never knew. After Sam pinned on the badge, he watched for the man, certain he would still recognize him. But he apparently quit or retired, never knowing he had motivated Sam to follow him into the department. Sam worked hard, won honors in patrol, and persistently applied to join the Cold
Case Squad. When the time was right, after he had proven himself, built some seniority and respect, and had enough clout, he would persuade the team to pursue the case that had changed his life forever.

  “Hope you’re hungry, Sonny. Come set down while it’s hot.”

  She’d filled his plate with ham, sweet potatoes, collard greens, and pole beans. His iced tea was the way he liked it.

  “I’ll be by Saturday morning,” he told her, as he slathered sweet butter on a slab of warm cornbread. “Time to mow the lawn, take the coconuts off that palm tree. Shoulda done it sooner. It’s hurricane season. They’d be cannonballs in a storm.”

  She nodded. “I’ll fix you a nice breakfast Saturday. How is your case comin’, honey? The big one, ’bout all those women?”

  “Good, Gran. Coming along. Really good. But the lieutenant is driving us crazy. Sending us off on a wild-goose chase just when I start making some headway.”

  “What on earth is wrong with that woman?”

  “Long story, Gran.”

  She leaned forward, eyes bright. “Well, whacha got that’s new?”

  He put his fork down and grinned across the table at her.

  He and this tiny woman had been a team; when he was a child she took him everywhere. They rode buses all over Miami. Even to places where they weren’t wanted. They went to the Historical Museum, to South Beach’s Art Deco District, to old Coconut Grove, Orchard Villa, Lemon City, and other historic Miami neighborhoods. They went to the library and to Saturday afternoon matinees. They watched TV detectives—Charlie Chan, Sam Spade, and Sherlock Holmes—matching wits with the sleuths. She even took him to Miami Beach and taught him how to swim in the ocean. Back then he was the only child in his inner-city neighborhood who knew how to swim. Some grew up never having seen the ocean, just a short drive across the causeway.

  She always told him, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

  He didn’t know then what she meant by that. He knew now.

  “The killer stays with the bodies, I think, probably overnight. He puts them to bed and folds the bedclothes really tight at the bottom, military or hospital style. I think he cleans their kitchens and bedrooms. So far he’s killed on every day of the week but Saturday.”