Cold Case Squad

by Edna Buchanan

  She cocked her head expectantly.

  Nazario leaned forward, watching her intently. “It’s been suggested that Charles Terrell’s death was no accident.”

  “Suicide? I don’t believe—” She blinked, her narrowing green eyes suddenly shrewd. “The insurance company is behind this, isn’t it? Because they paid double indemnity for accidental death and wouldn’t have to pay at all for suicide. Isn’t there a statute of limitations? Can they just come back after all these years?”

  “Probably not. But there is no statute of limitations on first-degree murder,” Burch said. “We’re trying to determine if his death might have been homicide.”

  “Homicide?” She looked confused. “That’s not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Or maybe…” Her expression morphed into something sly. “His ex-wife,” she said triumphantly. “April murdered him! She’s the type. Definitely! She hated him for leaving. You should have heard her when she found out about us. Charles kept promising to tell her, but never did. She had to face it, sooner or later, so I left him a message on their home answering machine about our plans for a night out. I knew she’d hear it. She showed up and made a scene. What a bitch! She’s definitely the type.” Natasha nodded, her expression certain. “Didn’t want the divorce, but wanted child support big time.”

  “What would she have to gain?” Nazario asked.

  “Everything!” Natasha said, eyes wide with surprise that he’d even asked. “Revenge. Payback. The oldest motives in the world. If Charles was murdered, that woman did it.”

  She sprang up, pacing back and forth. “It was all such a shock. I realized when it happened that the only way to survive is to look out for number one. You can’t count on anything, or anybody, in this world, and nothing beats money in the bank.”

  She wheeled and stopped, struck by a new idea, in front of a romantic painting of a young and luminous Romeo and Juliet embracing in a garden.

  “Has she remarried?” Natasha demanded.

  “I don’t believe so,” Burch said.

  “Too bad, because if she killed Charles and has any assets, I could sue her, couldn’t I? A wrongful death action?” Dead serious now, she had even stopped sneaking peeks at the stock quotes.

  “That’s something you’d have to discuss with your lawyer,” Burch said.

  Natasha didn’t recall any other enemies or threats to Terrell, she said. There had been a small problem with the weight-reduction clinics. “An unfortunate incident. They went bankrupt to avoid a lawsuit. A woman on the program died suddenly. No proof the pills or the diet caused it. But there were children. The husband sued. You know how people are,” Natasha said, “always after the fast buck.”

  Burch almost spit up his coffee. Was the woman familiar with the word irony?

  She could not recall anything suspicious on the day Charles died, but took Burch’s business card and said she’d call if she did.

  “One more thing,” Nazario said, as they stepped out the door. “The champagne you and Charles drank that last night. You said that was unusual for him. What did he usually drink?”

  “Nothing. Charles rarely drank. The man was practically a teetotaler. He was a physical fitness freak. He might join everyone in a wedding toast or on New Year’s Eve, but other than that, he never drank.”

  “Due to a health problem?”

  “No. His personality. He was a control freak. He always had to be in full control of his faculties.”

  Still in the doorway, they watched a chauffeured limo roll sedately up the driveway.

  “Here comes my husband now.” Natasha smiled.

  The uniformed driver opened the door for the lone occupant, a white-haired gentlemen who ambled up the front walk, using a cane.

  The bridegroom was home from his doctor’s appointment.

  Milo Ross glanced up and waved. Then he disappeared into the garage, where an elevator apparently whisked him upstairs. Moments later he emerged from a side hall.

  “Hello, sweetheart.” She lifted her face for a kiss, which he dutifully planted on her cheek.

  She introduced him to the detectives. The happy couple stood arm in arm in the doorway and watched them drive off.

  The landscape truck was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  Nelson pounded the steering wheel in frustration as the big green truck bounced over the narrow bridge to his next job at Brickell Point. Those men were police. Were they checking up on Natasha for her rich old husband?

  Was she in danger? She had not seemed upset or afraid. She had faced them, eyes flashing, bold and defiant. What brío, what fire and spirit in that woman. Although he did not understand the words she whispered, crooned, and sometimes cried out when they made love, he knew their meaning. He had never heard such words, but he knew they meant that they would be together. Love is a universal language.

  He felt hurt at how abruptly he had been dismissed. When the old man died, they would be together. Para siempre. Forever. Perhaps sooner, if his plans worked out.

  When trimming the hibiscus hedges at the Douglas Gardens Home for the Aged, he had first seen the physical therapists in their smocks and spotless white shoes caring for patients, leading them through their exercise and rehabilitation. The grateful patients fought through pain and weakness to please their therapists. A noble occupation. Something about it fascinated him. He knew now, more than ever, that he must pursue it. For a woman like Natasha, a man needed a profession with respect, one where he did not drive a truck that smelled of fertilizer and pesticide, where he did not always have dirt beneath his fingernails. She didn’t seem to mind that, in fact she seemed to revel in it, but he knew if he had a more respectable profession she would look up to him. He had to work on his English. He had to do everything in his power to impress her. He imagined himself at the dinner table with her someday in that grand house on the water.

  There were problems, of course. His wife, Lourdes, and the children, in their small apartment in Little Havana. He wished now that he had not paid the smuggler all that money to bring them to Miami from Cuba. It had taken all of his savings and more, and his business was still small, but growing. But how was he to know that this rich and beautiful gringa would fall in love with him? The ways of true love are unpredictable and never easy.

  He was surprised at first that Natasha had stopped paying the monthly bills for his landscaping and lawn maintenance after they began having sex. But he understood it would not seem right to accept money from her now that they were lovers. And she had promised to recommend his work to wealthy friends. This new job, he believed, was entirely due to her recommendation. It proved she loved him and wanted him to succeed so they could be together. He might not have much money now but, he thought, I am a millionaire of love.

  He arrived at the nearly finished forty-story luxury condominium apartment building, a towering shaft in a lush green park for which he was responsible. The posh two-story penthouses in the sky had sweeping spiral staircases, lofty rotundas, and private terraces that he would fashion into exotic tropical gardens. The San Souci Towers was nearly finished. Owners would move in within ninety days. The terrace gardens, with baby orchids and passion flowers in bloom, were to be ready for their arrival. He walked through the unfinished marble lobby, still thick with dust. Tarps and blue protective plastic shrouded the installations for the front desk, security, the valet staff and concierge. Heavy brown paper crisscrossed the lobby in paths, to protect the marble floors from the feet of the construction workers.

  Nelson activated the high-speed elevator that whisked him to penthouse four. Security was so sophisticated that each resident would be issued a remote, a sensor programmed to open the elevator doors at their floor only. Without the remote the elevators would descend nonstop to the lobby. But going up, no door would open on any floor without the proper signal. Nelson had his own remote now, programmed to grant him access to the entire building for his work.

  When the owners m
oved in, the remote had to be returned and all the codes and signals changed. Nelson was amazed that people lived like this. His own protection, his security, was the rusting .45 caliber automatic in his glove compartment. But someday he, too, would live like this, he and the beautiful Natasha. He had never had a woman like her before. She was all he thought about now, her silky skin, her bright green eyes, her elegance and passion. He wished he could pay the smugglers to spirit his wife and children back to Cuba, but he knew they would refuse to go. They liked Miami, its designer jeans, its television, and its supermarkets. Perhaps he could go to the man in Hialeah to see how much it would cost to smuggle his family back to the island, by force if necessary.

  The smuggler was crossing the Florida Straits anyway, his boat empty until his return trip. Why not?

  For every problem, he told himself, there is a solution. Nothing must stand in the way of true love.

  Chapter Eight

  The kayak skittered into the water like an eight-foot alligator splashing off a canal bank. K. C. Riley adjusted her life jacket, swung gracefully down the dockside ladder, and settled into the one-seater. She felt more comfortable on the water than anywhere else in this restless and mercurial city. Water welcomed her and soothed her soul. She had always been drawn to it. Even more so now. The ancient bay gleamed and glittered as though lit from within. She used to think she could see the future by gazing into its shadows, swirls, and reflections. Now all she saw was the past.

  She paddled, inhaling deeply, swaying from side to side. Her favorite hours on the water were predusk and dawn. This late weekday summer afternoon meant fewer tourists, personal watercraft, and go-fast boats.

  She let the rhythm of her movements block out the concerns and clutter of the job. Unruly cops, imminent budget cuts, and threats to her unit’s very existence all paled beside the chief reason she’d fled the office.

  Kathleen Constance Riley was accustomed to tragedy and sudden death in all its forms. She watched autopsies, had supervised the rape squad, and stood shoulder to shoulder with other cops on the front lines at riots and disasters. Trouble was her business, human sorrow part of the job. Her emotions had never betrayed her. Until now.

  Even when she knew a victim personally, she took command, knew the immediate priorities. Saw what needed to be done and did it, wrapped in her own professional cloak of invincibility. That was her mission, her salvation. A woman on the job must reveal no weakness. No one had ever seen her cry.

  But the graphic photos of a dead stranger had shaken her to the core. In her mind’s eye, those charred remains had morphed into someone else, another life extinguished in a fiery burst of light. She took a deep breath. Out here she felt Kendall McDonald’s presence more than anywhere.

  Mirror-bright water reflected mountains of startlingly pink cumulonimbus clouds adrift across a golden horizon. She glided across the crystal-clear bay, propelled by gentle currents. Small fish darted in the shallow water, just a few feet deep. Her moving shadow interrupted a small brown nurse shark stalking its prey through swaying sea grass. The long, lethal tail of a startled stingray whipped the surface as the creature wheeled and fled at incredible speed.

  Riley paddled a familiar route, alert for yachts, power boats, and Jet Skiers. She and McDonald had kayaked here often, murmuring to each other, laughing and joking, their voices carrying across the water.

  They’d always skirt the shoreline in water too shallow for bigger boats so the reckless speed freaks would run aground before running over them. Sandy scars left by propellers were all too visible in the sea grass and coral. She carried a small air horn in the mesh pocket of her life jacket to warn off power boaters who came too close.

  She cleared the island’s east end, slightly out of breath and giddy with anticipation. There it was, their favorite landmark. Inexplicable tears stung her eyes. Towering against endless sky, it was a house never lived in, yet alive with ghosts. Their whispers swirled in the southeast breeze off the sea.

  She had picnicked at the foot of Cape Florida’s lighthouse as a child. She and Kendall McDonald had chased each other up and down its narrow staircase as youngsters. He’d painted their initials high on its brick exterior as a teenager. The letters remained intertwined there for years, until the lighthouse was cleaned up, the graffiti erased.

  Tequesta Indians fished and hunted along the same sandy stretch thousands of years ago. The campfires of ancient tribesmen still flickered in her imagination. Juan Ponce de Léon explored this very beach during his sixteenth-century quest for the Fountain of Youth.

  The infamous Black Caesar camped there later, followed by more pirates—“salvage” wreckers who torched huge bonfires to lure rich Spanish merchant ships onto the reefs, where they were swarmed, looted, and sunk.

  Much later came the Secret Service, political entourages, and antiwar protesters. Riley and McDonald were still children when President Richard Nixon made Key Biscayne the site of his winter White House.

  The President schemed with his aides, advisers, and banker buddy Bebe Rebozo on the same beach, pacing in the long-vanished footsteps of ancient Indians, explorers, pirates, thieves, and wreckers. All of them were gone now.

  So was McDonald.

  They had once investigated a murder here. A pair of lovers had sipped wine and reclined on a blanket beneath the towering silver-blue Australian pines, lulled by the sounds of the surf, within sight of the historic lighthouse.

  The tryst ended badly, as so many do in Miami.

  When he drowsed, she removed the pièce de résistance from her picnic basket: a .38 revolver. She shot him in the head at close range, then turned the gun on herself.

  McDonald was then a homicide sergeant and Riley a rookie detective. She stood at that dreamy, seaside death scene, listened to an eerie wind whistle through the dark shadows of the pines, and thought that this was not a bad place to die.

  “It’s the first homicide we’ve had out here,” a veteran, no-nonsense crime scene technician announced, glancing up from his clipboard.

  In sync, as always, she and McDonald had exchanged knowing smiles. Wrong, McDonald told the tech, then explained a much older case.

  Irate Indians had attacked the lighthouse 160 years earlier, at the outbreak of the second Seminole War. The lighthouse keeper and his assistant scrambled up into the tower, sawed away the wooden stairs, and barricaded themselves inside. The Indians tried to burn them out. Their fire ignited oil barrels stored in the tower’s base. The heat of the flames forced the trapped men out onto a high narrow ledge that ringed the tower.

  Indian sharpshooters killed the assistant. The lighthouse keeper was wounded twice. Believing it to be his final act on earth, he hurled a keg of gunpowder down into the fiery shaft, hoping to take a few Indians with him.

  To his surprise, he survived. Many of the Indians didn’t. The gigantic explosion generated outward, extinguishing the flames. The surviving Indians fled, some on fire and screaming.

  The crew of a passing schooner miles out at sea heard the explosion and rescued the lighthouse keeper a day later.

  Like the other doomed lovers, K. C. Riley and McDonald would often lie on the soft needle beds beneath the silver-tipped pines. They talked about the lighthouse keeper, swearing his spirit still survived on Miami’s steamy and unpredictable streets. Residents made that clear during the record-breaking crime wave of the eighties. Miamians, always an unruly bunch, fought back with axes, knives, baseball bats, guns, and machetes. Furious and fed up with crime, they took no prisoners. They killed more criminals than the police.

  Sometimes street justice is the only true justice.

  K. C. Riley’s small craft bobbed in the surf as she gazed at the lighthouse, the beach, and the state park beyond. The huge pines were gone, all fallen like jackstraws to Hurricane Andrew in ’92. Apartment and office towers rise, trees and presidents fall; only the lighthouse had withstood time, angry seas, hungry tides, and half a hundred hurricanes since 1900. The lone constant, sh
e thought, a nail holding past and future together in an ever-changing city that forgets people and its own history too quickly. Daydreams of the past are a comfort when the present is painful and there is no future.

  The wind freshened. Lightning pirouetted like a drunken ballerina across purpling clouds and a sky the color of regret. The sun sank as though controlled by a dimmer switch, and she knew she’d lingered too long.

  “Did you know you made me stronger and better?” she cried. He had to hear her. But her only answer was the rumble of thunder and a series of wild, threatening lightning strikes. She clipped her safety light to her vest and pushed the button. The small red flasher pulsated like a heartbeat as she turned back, paddling against the changing current as the wind grew stronger. At home in flatwater canoes and whitewater kayaks, she felt no fear. Gritting her teeth and grunting, she dug deep with the paddle, barely able to maintain forward motion for the first hundred yards. The wind showed no signs of switching direction.

  Dark anvil-shaped clouds roiled toward her. Paddling furiously, she winced at a blinding lightning strike nearby. Cracks of thunder like rifle shots split the sky. The heavens rumbled and crashed in deafening crescendos as through the gods were scoring simultaneous strikes in a giant bowling alley.

  “I dare you,” she screamed into the wind. “Do it! I don’t care. Take me!”

  The wind shrieked back, but she couldn’t make out the words.

  Rain pelted her face, mingling with tears as the boat ramp came into sight.

  She struggled hand-over-hand up the ladder against a drenching downpour. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, dragged the forty-five-pound kayak up onto the dock, then wrestled it onto the car rack. She secured it and collapsed, breathless, in the front seat. Soaked and shivering, she wished she had a drink.

  Rain cascaded like Victoria Falls down the windshield of the Rodeo as she slowly drove home, the visibility nearly zero. She sprinted to the front door, slipping and skidding on wet grass and mud. As she fumbled with the key, a tall, hooded shadow loomed suddenly among the hanging spider plants on the rain-slick patio and rushed toward her. Riley wheeled, startled, mind flashing on the gun still beneath her car seat.