Cold Case Squad

by Edna Buchanan

  Mildred grew up in Muncie, Indiana, and was having adjustment problems. She had called him hysterically from her cell phone, hopelessly lost while driving. No one on the street, not even a letter carrier, spoke enough English to help.

  The woman had no sense of direction. He had explained Miami’s grid system to her a dozen times. “Think of St. Louis,” he’d said. “STL: streets, terraces, and lanes all run east and west. Then remember CPA: courts, places, and avenues. They go north and south. Simple.”

  But it was not simple. Demented city planners, brains fried by the sun or too many Cuba Libres, allowed for too many exceptions. There were all the dead ends at waterways, canals, railroad tracks, and the bay. There were too few through streets, the confusing distinctions between SE, SW, NE, and NW, and the fact that most Miami roadways have at least three names. Street signs use only one. The name on the sign almost never matched the one on the road maps.

  Her call had caught him in a crucial meeting with the mayor and city manager, huddled at a table in a dark corner of a Cuban restaurant in Little Havana. Both his bosses puffed thick black cigars. Bloated by the heavily spiced food, sinuses clogged by his allergies and the acrid cigar smoke, the chief had made the fatal mistake of answering his cell phone.

  He tried to smile casually at his macho bosses while listening to his wife sob.

  “Now try to remember,” he said patiently. “What did I tell you about St. Louis and CPA?”

  He was certain they heard her scream. “Don’t you patronize me, you son of a bitch!”

  He kept calm.

  “Okay, sweetheart, let’s figure this out. Tell me the name of the street you’re on right now.”

  “General Maximo Perez Way.”

  “Staff meeting in twenty minutes.” José’s pitted face peered around the door jamb. For God’s sake, the chief thought, the boy suffers from terminal acne. “Alexander Rodriguez, the state attorney, will be there.”

  Son of a bitch, the chief thought, and licked the Alka-Seltzer’s salty residue from his lips.

  “Call Joe Padron,” he told José. “Make sure he’s coming.”

  Padron, their best public information officer, could put a positive spin on anything. Cops could rape and pillage, and Padron could somehow portray them as heroes. He could compose press releases that kept facts murky, revealing nothing, yet the newshounds blindly accepted them. The man had a talent.

  José returned moments later. “Padron is out at a scene. Sixty-five-year-old lady and her four-year-old granddaughter shot in the cross-fire outside Miami Senior High. Our second school shooting this week.”

  “School hasn’t opened yet.”

  “Right,” José said. “They’re in summer session.”

  The chief frowned and dreaded September.

  “Fuck the old lady and the kid,” he shouted, head throbbing. “Get Padron’s ass in here now!”

  The budget was giving him fits. Every time unsubstantiated intelligence warned that terrorists had targeted Miami, he was forced to boost the department’s alert from yellow to orange. Each day on orange alert cost $5,000 in overtime for officers assigned to protect high-profile facilities, including the homes of the mayor and the city manager.

  The publicity always generated new threats, a vicious circle.

  The rank and file were close to mutiny because of the Miami News and their goddamn investigative piece exposing the practice of allowing police officers to drive their patrol cars home. The story had revealed the huge cost. Taxpayer groups were raising hell. The police union had won the take-home car perk, including free gas and maintenance, years ago. Patrol cars parked in officers’ driveways in residential areas would be deterrents and keep the neighborhoods safer. That was the premise. Unfortunately, as the goddamn News revealed, most cops refuse to live in crime-ridden Miami, America’s poorest city. So they commute in city cars to their homes in more affluent neighboring counties. The chief himself did not know until he read it in the newspaper that some of his officers lived as far as a hundred miles outside city limits, or that the soaring number of city cars involved in out-of-county traffic accidents was costing big bucks in injuries, damages, and lawsuits.

  Disgruntled cops and their unions would go to war if he tried to eliminate take-home cars. Once given, no perk can be taken away.

  Why did the blunders of prior administrations come back to bite him? And if the crime rate was down among civilians, why the hell was it accelerating among cops?

  Alex Rodriguez would be at today’s staff meeting to discuss cooperation in the prosecution of the latest gaggle of street cops charged with planting throw-down guns beside people they’d shot. Others had recently been arrested for stealing drugs and money from evidence, beating hapless civilians, and extorting sex from women motorists.

  Other behavior, not criminal but just plain stupid, continued to generate negative headlines. Wrong house raids, the pepper spraying of tourists, and the one-legged suspect who outhopped half a dozen officers and got away.

  Couldn’t they make him look good? Just once?

  So far his prospects for a lucrative career as a consultant and expert witness, in demand as a talking head on Greta Van Susteren, CNN, and MSNBC, were looking less and less likely.

  He sighed. If only it wasn’t for the damn police impersonators, home invasion robbers wearing uniforms, handcuffs, and police paraphernalia bought from the same businesses that supplied the department. Some even bought surplus patrol cars. Distinguishing the real police officers from those who were not was impossible, except that the impersonators seemed better organized.

  He knew what would make him feel better, at least for a few hours. He missed Bunny. The last time his mistress had flown into town for a weekend, she had left furious after spending most of their long-planned tryst alone at their Miami Beach hideaway. Something Fidel said on Havana radio had set off impromptu civil disturbances in Miami, and the chief had spent the entire weekend pounding steamy pavement trying to placate the mayor, the city manager, the press, irate residents struck in traffic, and rabid city commissioners who further agitated the demonstrators.

  Why blockade expressway toll booths and Miami intersections to protest something said in Havana? Why couldn’t police apply a little attitude adjustment, then lock them up? Instead the offenders were considered patriots whose arrests would be politically incorrect.

  “I never promised to live in a foreign country.” His wife’s words echoed through his throbbing skull. None of their neighbors spoke English, and the social functions they attended were all with Hispanic city officials and politicians.

  Not easy for her, but what about him? He thought he’d seen it all, but crime was different here.

  The latest trend was “the unlicensed practitioner.” Unlicensed lawyers, contractors, doctors, dentists, and plastic surgeons all practicing chosen professions in which they were untrained. Self-described gynecologists conducting examinations on kitchen tables, plastic surgeons operating in cheap motel rooms. Why in God’s name did patients go to a dentist who performed root canals in his garage?

  In a raid last weekend his officers had arrested dozens of “dentists” caught taking dental impressions in the backseats of cars outside flea markets.

  He blew his nose and wondered if Cuban coffee was a hallucinogen.

  He shivered. The worst case was that of a woman who wanted a firmer, rounder butt. Her “plastic surgeon” injected her with silicone in a motel room. Unfortunately, it was the sort of silicone used to caulk bathtubs. She died and the prosecution called it murder.

  “They’re here,” José announced.

  The chief stepped into his private bathroom, splashed cold water on his face, dried it, and adjusted his cuffs. He preferred a business suit to a uniform, unlike one predecessor who had designed his own, heavy on the gold braid, with triple rows of medals, topped off by a tricornered Napoléon-like hat.

  Chief Granados strode confidently into the conference room, pleased to see Pad
ron present, his pen and yellow legal pad in front of him on the polished conference table.

  There were several assistant chiefs and a dozen other men and women in uniform already seated. So was State Attorney Alex Rodriguez. He looked absolutely Kennedyesque, with his classic profile, prematurely silver hair, custom-made suit, and red silk tie.

  Riley, the Cold Case lieutenant, arrived a moment after he did. She looked fit, tanned, and as sleek as a Thoroughbred, with not an extra ounce of weight on her athletic frame. Best-looking woman in the room, the chief thought, but always all business.

  What would these people think, he wondered, if they knew he was wearing pink briefs? It would be all over for him in this macho, testosterone-fueled department. He would never live it down. What if a sniper chose today to pick him off? Another good reason not to wear a uniform. It was like wearing a target. What if he stumbled in the lobby and smashed a kneecap? Paramedics would cut away his trousers in front of the troops. With his bad luck, he’d survive.

  He greeted the upturned faces, thinking he’d call and ask Mildred to pick up a dozen pair of the silky jockey shorts he liked. Remembering her last words that morning, he decided to buy them himself on the way home. He simply had to make it through the day without a major injury. Murphy’s law worried him. What were his odds? Why were his briefs pink? Had Mildred done it deliberately? Did she suspect he was cheating?

  “How are the shooting victims, Joe?”

  “The kid?” He pointed thumbs down. “The grandmother?” He waggled his hand. “Might make it.”

  “Outrageous.” The chief ’s square jaw jutted in indignation. “I want all our resources on this. Hopefully our people can effect a quick arrest and bring the family closure to this tragic situation.” He hoped it would be in time to broadcast the perp walk on the news at eleven.

  Rodriguez gave his usual status report on cooperation between the department and his office and the number of cases pending. He also named the members of his staff assigned to prosecute the throw-down cops.

  The chief promised his “full support.”

  The state attorney saluted all and rose to leave. His eyes swept the room, lingering on K. C. Riley, who ignored him.

  “The T word is killing us,” said the chief, as he opened their preliminary budget discussions.

  Rodriguez paused at the door. The chief wondered where the state attorney had his hair cut. The silver fox had to be aiming for higher office.

  “In times like these, Chief, if you don’t mind the suggestion. You have to be brutal. If this was my department, I’d pare down or eliminate specialized squads that don’t produce major results. Redistributing the manpower will make the most of your resources.”

  Riley stiffened in her chair.

  “I’ve said that all along,” agreed Hector Diaz, the major in charge of SIS, the strategic information section.

  Here it comes, Riley thought. Diaz, you fat pig, you son of a bitch. Your unit is secure because Miami’s politicians need spies to compile intelligence on their rivals. Jo Salazar was right. Alex still had a hard-on for her.

  She lifted her chin, smiling serenely, glad she’d worn her navy blue power blazer with the Brooks Brothers pinstriped shirt that cost too much.

  “If you mean my unit,” she said pleasantly, “that would be a serious mistake. The department hasn’t had many success stories lately. You may recall the Sunday News magazine piece that featured the Cold Case Squad. We had nothing but positive reactions. The public appreciates that no victim is forgotten, that no killer can ever stop looking over his shoulder. They like knowing that, sooner or later, justice can and will prevail.

  “We’re just four detectives and a sergeant, no significant manpower drain. And they are the best at what they do. Dead files speak to them. If an old, cold murder case has even a faint pulse, they can detect it. They get into the minds of people they’ve never even met and do it better than anybody. Departments around the country have modeled similar units after ours. If anything, our team deserves more recognition and support.”

  “Maybe I’m missing something,” Rodriguez said smoothly. “I’m unaware of any prosecutable cases brought to my office by your detectives recently. Is there something I don’t know about?”

  “Yes,” Riley said, eyes cold.

  The chief tugged at his chin. Was that stubble? He had just shaved, for God’s sake. What was it those Queer Eye guys on TV said: A clean, close shave makes it look like a man is at least trying. What was the other thing? Something about ear hair. His right hand moved involuntarily to check.

  “Well put, Lieutenant.” The chief tugged thoughtfully on his earlobe. “But our current budgetary constraints—”

  “The department is in woeful need of good press,” she said quickly. “Good national press. My detectives are making headway on a major case.”

  Every face in the room looked expectant.

  “You may remember that Detective Stone was temporarily detached to work with an FBI task force on murders that he was able to link as the work of an unidentified serial killer?”

  “That task force was abandoned some time ago,” Rodriguez said impatiently, “due to a priority we all face, specifically national security.”

  Riley ignored him and spoke directly to the chief. “Detective Stone has continued to pursue the cases and has uncovered new leads missed by the FBI. If we nail this case, we’ll be closing homicides in seven other states across the nation.”

  Padron scribbled notes. “Stone,” he said, looking up. “Isn’t he the black guy?”

  “Right,” Riley said. “An excellent detective who grew up here, just a few blocks away. Proof that something good can come out of Overtown.”

  “Great story,” Padron crowed. “A minority hometown boy. I can sell that. Yeah. Ya got a composite of the killer? The press eats that stuff up. It’ll take some of the heat off the arrest stories.”

  The chief brightened.

  Riley backed off. “I don’t think we’re ready to go public. We don’t want to tip off the suspect.”

  “What’s to tip? He knows he’s been killing people for years,” Padron said. “Could be time to go public. Ask them for tips. Can’t hurt. The victims are elderly, right? The most vulnerable among us. Everybody’s got a mother or a grandmother. It’ll give potential victims a heads-up. It’ll make the news in every city where this guy has killed. We’d have national coverage.”

  “Joe might have something there,” the chief said.

  “Reporters love serial killer stories,” Padron said. “Our lone, home-grown detective, hot on the trail. I like it. I like it.”

  The state attorney checked his watch and frowned. “Odd that I’m unaware of it. You have been coordinating this case with an ASA, haven’t you, Lieutenant? That is standard operating procedure.”

  “Of course,” Riley said. “Assistant State Attorney Jo Salazar.”

  Rodriguez spun out of the room without another word.

  “Salazar,” Major Kelly, the vice commander, said. “She’s good.” The others nodded.

  “We should schedule a news conference,” the chief said.

  “The sooner the better,” Padron added.

  Riley bit her lip. “I’ll speak to the detective.”

  She smiled confidently at the chief and promised to get back to Padron within the hour.

  She kept smiling until the elevator door closed behind her.

  “Oh, shit,” she muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Chapter Ten

  K. C. Riley bolted from the elevator punching the buttons on her cell phone. Out in the open the cellular signals flew free and connected. “Come on, come on,” she pleaded as it rang. “Answer, answer, answer!”

  As she paced the courtroom of Circuit Court Judge Ellen Featherstone, indignantly arguing against bond for an HVO, a habitual violent offender, Jo Salazar felt her belly jiggle.

  Before realizing it was her cell phone on vibrate, she assumed the sensation was bad vibes e
manating from the defendant. He leaned forward, watching her intently, wearing the same weaselly expression as her seven-year-old daughter’s pet ferret. Not fair, she thought. The ferret was more trustworthy and honest.

  As the judge studied a defense motion before her, Jo surreptitiously checked the tiny phone clipped to her waistband. She recognized the number. The message: 911.

  Almost instantly, it vibrated again. She recognized a second number. Her boss. Same message.

  What new hells were these? Could they be related?

  She returned to the prosecution table, unclipped the phone, and slipped it into her open briefcase, unseen.

  “I have another point of law here, your honor.” She peered into the yawning briefcase as though in search of a document. Her gold bracelets jangled as she pretended to rifle through files, while actually punching in Tom Morgan’s beeper number. She prayed that Morgan, like her, ignored the judge’s hard-and-fast rule that during appearances in her courtroom, all attorneys were to turn off their beepers and cell phones.

  Assistant Public Defender Morgan sat alert and protective at his client’s side. Not too close, however. His client, accused of kidnaping, assault, and sexual battery, was subject to sudden violent outbursts, and even his own lawyer, though he would never admit it, was afraid of him.

  Studious and dedicated, Morgan blinked innocently through his owlish glasses, hands folded in front of him, waiting to object to Salazar’s new point of law—if she ever found it. The ferret smiled at the prosecutor’s obvious disorganization.

  Morgan was ready to fight to the death to free his client on bond. If only he could succeed, he would probably never have to see the man again. He would surely flee the jurisdiction, probably back to his native Honduras.

  “I’m sorry, your honor,” Salazar said, clearly embarrassed. “I seem to have misplaced that particular document, but in truth it isn’t necessary in order to establish that the defendant is a definite flight risk and a danger to the community. Under Florida Statute 775.084, he faces a minimum mandatory of fifteen years.” Her hand snaked back into the briefcase and pushed the SEND button.