“What you doing now, honey?”
“I’m at work.” She pouted.
“What work? Did you get a summer job?”
“The volunteer job, Daddy. Remember? I told you about it. Helping out at the homeless shelter, folding donated clothes, unpacking and sorting food donations.”
“But you didn’t say it meant night work. It’s after ten o’clock.”
“That’s only once a week and then Father Jeffries takes us all out for pizza. We’re almost ready to go now. I’ll be home by eleven-thirty.”
“Be careful driving, honey. Don’t forget to fasten your seat belt.” The thought of her driving home alone late at night makes me sick. What is Connie thinking?
“I love you, Daddy. Miss you.”
“Same here, sweetheart. See you soon.”
I hang up, feeling empty, wishing we had talked more. The homeless shelter is down near St. Luke’s Church, not the best neighborhood. She’s so young. Driving alone.
I pull out from the curb, roll slowly by the house again, and turn north, back to my temporary home. But a little detour and I find myself near St. Luke’s. The closest pizzeria is only a few blocks away. I see them inside through the plate-glass windows, half a dozen girls and two skinny boys along with Father Jeffries. Who the hell is he really?
I take his tag number when he leaves and make a mental note to check on whether he has a rap sheet. I hold my breath as Jenny and three other noisy kids pile into Connie’s car. Teens with teen passengers are among the highest-risk drivers. I am glad to see Jenny fasten her seat belt. I trail them as she drives the other kids home.
I spot her on her cell phone as she’s driving. She knows that’s forbidden. She rolls through a stop sign, head turned, talking to the kids in the backseat, and I cringe.
I’m about to slap the blue light on the dash and pull her over myself but can’t risk blowing my cover.
I follow her from house to house as she drops off her friends, then home. I watch from half a block away as she locks the car and darts inside. She disappears so quickly that I wonder if the front door was even locked. Maybe Connie heard the car in the driveway and opened it. Max never did bark. He’s worthless, useless, no protection.
I watch the house for more than an hour until, one by one, the lights go out and it’s dark.
I drive away thinking of Joy Terrell’s sad, sweet smile. Death was Charles Terrell’s perfect excuse for not being a good dad. What, I wonder, is my excuse?
Chapter Sixteen
“The French have a saying for it: Life has a way of always getting fucked up.” Martin Asher’s laugh had a melancholy ring as he described his past with Natasha.
The man was not what Burch expected. Still another unlikely match for Natasha. It seemed they all were. Short, swarthy, and pudgy, Asher wore what appeared to be a permanent five o’clock shadow and an expensive suit that looked as though he’d slept in it.
His office was in a modern ten-story building, one of a dozen in a busy light-industrial complex sprawled around a huge man-made lake stocked with tropical fish and swans. Employees could stroll, jog, or simply take in the view during breaks and lunch hours from promenades and park benches along the water.
A plain, pale-haired woman smiled from a family photo prominently displayed on Asher’s desk. Two small children were enfolded in her arms. A teenage girl sat next to them, her head on her mother’s shoulder. All resembled each other. Behind them stood a beautiful dark-haired girl who resembled none of them. Age nine or ten, she was a miniature version of Natasha, complete with attitude and a built-in pout. She stared at the camera with sly amusement.
Lots of luck with that one, Burch thought.
“The family?” He assumed that the Asher children were his, hers, and theirs.
Asher nodded. “The one in the back is Natasha’s and mine.”
“I can see the resemblance.”
“Ah, so you’ve met Natasha. We don’t communicate much anymore. She recently remarried. Again,” he said with regret.
He, too, had seemed apprehensive about a visit from a detective—until he learned what it was about.
“Hadn’t thought of Charles in years. Poor bastard. Loved the guy, loved to hang out with him. The man was a regular chick magnet. Take him to lunch, dinner, or for a drink and we’d have waitresses, barmaids, and cocktail waitresses all over us. And the guy didn’t even drink.”
“You and his widow got married pretty quick after the fire,” Burch noted.
“I was afraid she’d change her mind. Look at me,” he said, pudgy arms outstretched. “You’ve seen her!”
“So you two must have had a little something going on the side before her husband’s untimely demise.”
Asher paused and licked his lips, as though debating how much to reveal. He leaned forward, his face grave. “Look, they had problems. It never would’ve lasted. Natasha requires a lot of attention, time, and care, like some exotic flower, and Charles…Well, Charles had other interests. She felt neglected.”
“So she naturally turned to you for comfort and advice?”
“Exactly!” Asher seemed pleased that the detective understood. “So after he died, it seemed only natural that we—”
“Where were you when Terrell was killed?”
“Look, I prefer to keep this between us.” His eyes darted furtively to the family photo, as though fearing that it might conceal a hidden microphone that would broadcast his words to those pictured there.
He lowered his voice. “At a motel on U.S. One down near Dadeland…”
“With…?”
“Natasha,” he whispered. “And the baby. I stayed for a couple hours after she left, watched a movie. Room was paid for, I figured I might as well. Look”—his voice took on a pleading quality—“I didn’t know she was gonna bring the kid. We used to get together there once or twice a week.”
“Did your pal Charles know?”
“No, but if he did, he wouldn’t have cared. He was doing his own thing.”
“So that made banging your buddy’s wife okay?” Burch asked mildly.
“Charles was serious about somebody he was seeing. I thought he was crazy. To have a wife like Natasha and be chasing some redhead, a stripper—I told him he was nuts.”
“Who was the redhead?”
Asher shrugged. “Can’t remember her name off the top of my head. You know, they never use real names anyway. They use stage names. I forget hers. But he called her Big Red. Tall, statuesque, beautiful woman, but a stripper, for God’s sake. And she was older than Natasha, in her thirties. Been around the block a few times. Did an act with a snake. I think it was a python, or a boa constrictor.” He grimaced. “Huge. Grotesque. The thing would wrap itself around her body.
“Big Red had legs up to here and a beautiful face, but kinda hard, brassy, laughed too loud. People would turn around and stare.”
If his description even approached accurate, Burch thought, it probably wasn’t her laugh that made people stare.
“Charles, he got a big kick out of her. Liked to show her off. Took me to see her dance, introduced us.”
“Where was that?” Burch leaned forward.
“Ummm, mighta been Heavenly Bodies, that big club used to be on Biscayne Boulevard at a hundred and sixty-third. But I couldn’t swear to it. She played the circuit, Fort Lauderdale, Key West, Miami Beach, all the strip joints.”
“Miami Beach?”
“Yeah. She was a headliner, I remember, at the Place Montmartre over on the beach. You know the one, used to have that huge sign on top, that big, blond reclining woman.”
“I remember it.” The hair on Burch’s arms stiffened and stood on end. “What became of Big Red once Charles was gone?”
Asher’s face scrunched into a horsey frown. “Haven’t heard a word about her in years. She wasn’t at the funeral. I’da noticed if she was there. It woulda been pretty brazen of ’er to show up.”
“Hey, a gal who strips on stage wit
h a boa constrictor, or even a python, ain’t no shrinking violet. If she’da wanted to pay her respects, a SWAT team probably couldn’ta kept her away.”
Asher shrugged. “She was crazy about him.”
“How stressed out was Charles about that wrongful death suit against the weight-loss clinics? He upset enough to want to disappear?”
“A terrible thing.” Asher averted his eyes and straightened the blotter on his desk. “The widower took aim at the wrong targets. Who could blame him? But it wasn’t our fault. Our lawyers had it under control. We took a financial beating, going bankrupt and all, but it coulda been a helluva lot worse.”
“Hypothetical question,” Burch said. “If Terrell hadn’t died, if the man was alive today, where do you think he’d be, Marty? What would Charles be doing?”
Asher’s padded shoulders rose nearly to his ears. “Who can say? Charles liked the good life, beautiful women, nice cars. The man never looked back or had any regrets, as far as I knew. Carpe diem. Seize the day. A guy like him, who knows? What do any of us know?”
“How true,” the detective said.
“You’re wasting your time, Sergeant. The fire was a tragic accident, plain and simple. He wasn’t the kind of guy anybody would kill. Nobody murdered Charles Terrell.”
“I think you’re right,” Burch said. He paused for another look at the family portrait before leaving. “Nice family. You’re a lucky man.”
“Damn straight. I’m the luckiest man on earth that she took me back. The woman has a heart of gold. Believe me.”
“Took you back?”
“Oh yeah, Esther and I were married, with one kid, the oldest girl there, when Charles died…I had to fly down to Mexico for a quickie divorce so me and Natasha could get married.
“Two years later, Natasha and I crashed and burned when she found somebody else. My life was in the crapper and Esther took me back. Don’t know what I ever did to deserve a woman like her. Believe me, she’s salt of the earth. But”—his voice dropped and his eyes changed—“between you and me, after all she did to me, if Natasha walked in that door right now and said, ‘Hey, Marty, let’s go…’ ”
He heaved a deep sigh. “God help me…”
Chapter Seventeen
“I hated the guy, I hated them all. I would have killed them with my bare hands if I could have,” Sal Vasquez told Nazario.
“My Celia never did a bad thing in her life.” He sat in the back room of his shoe-repair shop, surrounded by shelves of luggage, shoes, and handbags all brought in for repair.
“We had three little kids, five, three, and one. It killed me. If it wasn’t for those kids, I’da done it. I would have killed them.”
“Who could blame you? You lost so much,” Nazario said.
“She had trouble losing weight after the last one. She was in his store, checking out the over-the-counter diet pills, when Terrell touts his program to her. She comes home all excited. Said she wanted to give me a size-six wife for our anniversary. Her goal was to lose twenty pounds by September fourteenth.
“She almost did it. She lost sixteen pounds by the middle of August, but she wasn’t feeling so good. I told her forget it. Stop the pills. You look great. But she wanted to stay on the program and meet her goal. She always kept her word. She thought I liked her the way she was when we met. I did. But I loved her the way she was, no matter how much she weighed.
“It was horrible. She went to bed that night right after the kids went to sleep. That was unusual, I shoulda known something was wrong, ’cuz we always stayed up to watch the late news together, then Johnny Carson’s monologue on The Tonight Show.
“She was sound asleep, like an angel, when I came to bed. I was careful not to wake her up. Something woke me about three A.M., a noise she was making, breathing funny, like snoring real loud. I turned on the light and asked if she was all right. I tried to help her sit up. Her eyes were open, she just looked at me but she couldn’t talk. Some foamy stuff came outta her mouth and nose. I was looking for the address book, for her doctor’s number, when she stopped breathing. Stopped. Just like that.
“I started yelling and screaming, trying to call nine-one-one. It woke up the kids and they were screaming. It was only a few minutes but it seemed like forever. Nobody came. I tried to give her CPR, then I just picked her up and carried her down to the car, screaming for the next-door neighbors to watch my kids. I took her to Baptist.
“I musta been driving eighty miles an hour, screaming all the way for Celia to wake up. I was crazy, scared I’d get lost in the dark and miss the turn to the hospital.
“The rescue squad arrived right after I left. My neighbors told them I’d taken off for the hospital. I nearly crashed into the emergency room entrance. The squad had called ahead and people were waiting. Medics came running out. They worked on her for forty-five minutes. Nothing. She was twenty-eight.
“I wanted them to pay, to keep them from killing anybody else. I hired a lawyer, but they had a better one and it didn’t work out for us.”
“Did you ever do anything else to retaliate against Charles Terrell, or anybody, for what happened?” Nazario asked.
“No,” Vasquez said. “No, I take that back. I did. I prayed to God for justice. I couldn’t forgive. When I saw in the newspaper that Terrell was killed, that the fires of hell had consumed him, I was glad. I would have lit the match gladly, but I didn’t have to, God did it for me.”
“He’s not lying,” Nazario told Stone and Burch at La Esquina de Tejas. “Guy lost his wife, hates Terrell and Asher, but he had nothing to do with it. Scratch him off the list.”
“The stripper,” Burch said, “she’s the key. If the son of a bitch is alive, what do you want to bet Big Red is with him or knows right where he’s at? I ran Big Red through known aliases but came up with nothing.”
“Probably just a pet name,” Nazario said. “I have a CI, a stripper. From when I worked narcotics. I’ll see if she’s got a line on Red. Those girls, they all know each other.”
“Good. And we’ve gotta pull up missing persons reports from ’ninety-two and look for one who mighta had a connection to Terrell. That’s gonna be tedious as shit.”
“Right,” Stone said. “I hate it when people are so quick to report somebody missing but forget to tell us when the happy wanderer turns up wearing a sheepish grin.”
“We can forget the missing finger.” Burch sighed. “If Terrell did fake his own death, he sure as hell wasn’t lucky enough to find a candidate who matched his general description and also happened to be missing the same finger.”
“You know what that means,” Stone said.
“He hacked it off himself, before burning up the body,” Nazario said. “A cold, scary guy. Wonder why he and Natasha didn’t work out? They seem so perfect for each other.”
Burch turned to Stone. “How’s Meadows coming?”
“How the hell can I even work on the case with all the media shit?” Stone said. “I thought we do it and that’s it. I show up today galvanized, energized. Dozens of messages waiting, but none are tips in my case. They’re all requests for more interviews! You believe that?”
“A star is born.” Nazario sipped his cortadito.
“Padron is lining up more radio and print interviews with reporters from the cities where there were killings. I can’t shake the guy.”
“Your new best friend,” Nazario said.
“I feel so phony, it’s a non-story—there’s no new developments,” Stone said. “The papers all say we’re closing in on the killer.”
“In Miami you can tell a lie at breakfast and it’s true by dinner,” Burch said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s the price of fame,” Nazario said. “Before you got here, Sarge, you shoulda seen, a buncha customers stood up and applauded when Stone came back from the men’s room.”
“Thought my fly was open,” Stone said. He grinned and leaned back in his chair.
His picture, with the chief and pro
minent politicians clearly in the background, was splashed five columns across the front of the morning paper displayed in big yellow news racks on every street corner.
“Your fifteen minutes won’t come cheap,” Burch said. “When they run in a pack, reporters go into a frenzy. They want your time, your attention, your whole goddamn life. And they raise holy hell if they don’t get it. Then they’ll turn on you, all of a sudden. Slam you for not accomplishing anything. The best way to deal with the press is to find a good reporter you can trust, build a relationship with that one, and avoid the pack.”
Stone sighed. “I tried ducking Padron. Didn’t answer his messages, but then he griped to the chief, who called Riley. She said to cooperate with PIO as long as it doesn’t compromise the case. Isn’t it compromised when I’m not working on it?
“The chief catches me in the lobby today, shakes my hand, and says, ‘Nice job.’ The man didn’t know I was alive until yesterday. Riley said he’s impressed.”
“You bet your ass he’s impressed,” Burch said. “You got your picture and his in the newspapers—without robbing, raping, or shooting anybody. You didn’t get arrested. You came across like a goddamn eagle scout. That’s a breath of fresh air in this outfit.”
Their cell phones sounded almost simultaneously.
“Uh-oh, Padron,” Stone said, and answered his.
“I feel left out,” Nazario said.
“Who the hell is this?” Burch was saying into his. “What are you, some kind of freak? You son of a bitch. You got the wrong goddamn number.” He hung up and shook his head. “Second one today. Musta got their lines crossed.”
He drained his coffee cup and pushed his chair back. “Gotta make a pit stop before we go get the Blazer.”
“Wait,” Nazario put a restraining hand on his arm. “Don’t go in there, Sarge.”
“What the hell you talking about?” Burch said.
“Hold on,” Stone told Padron. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” he said, one hand over the mouthpiece.
“You crazy? What’s going on?”
Cold Case Squad Page 14
