“Natasha fired him,” Ross said. “I should have done it myself, but she insisted on taking care of it. She hated the way he’d pruned the royal poincianas, said it looked like they’d been attacked by vandals with chain-saws. Actually it looked like they’d grow back fine and the fellow did an otherwise outstanding job. But my wife’s a perfectionist. She called him Nelson the tree slayer and said he had to go.”
The retired tycoon kept files on all household employees, including copies of their driver’s licenses.
Life would be so much simpler if all homeowners were so thorough, Riley thought, radioing dispatch to broadcast a BOLO for Nelson’s van. “Homicide needs to talk to him about a possible missing person.”
Moments later she was startled when the dispatcher reported the van involved in a traffic stop.
“They’ve got him pulled over,” she told Ross.
Riley was about to ask that the driver be detained until she got there, but her radio emitted a long, high-pitched emergency signal. Transmissions were halted. The air cleared. Staccato reports of an exchange of gunfire. Unit 333 breathlessly requesting backup.
“Tell him to hold his fire!” Riley broke in. “There may be a kidnap victim in that van! All units hold your fire!”
Responding officers had spotted the van. A chase was now in progress, headed due west. Patrol was cautioned to use restraint because of the possible hostage.
“I’m going with you!” Ross insisted.
“Sir.” Riley touched him arm. “It would be best if you wait here. If she’s not with him, Mrs. Ross may call or come home. You want to be here if she does. If we find her, I promise I’ll send someone for you.”
Tears in his eyes, Ross nodded, unable to speak.
Riley literally ran to her car.
A police helicopter had picked up the van headed out the Tamiami Trail.
He would drive across the entire state, to the Gulf of Mexico, if he had to, Nelson thought. He was alone, against all odds, all for love. He would show them a real man. He would show Natasha. She would see he was willing to die for love. She would beg him to come back to her.
Half a dozen patrol cars trailed behind him, their numbers growing, lights flashing, sirens wailing. But nobody was shooting at him.
A good sign. They knew he was not at fault. He was no criminal. Perhaps Natasha had already told them that. The slow-speed chase crossed Krome Avenue headed west. The city began to fall away. Endless sky stretched out across the Everglades on either side. The brightness hurt his eyes. He could almost hear the asphalt sizzle as it withered in the heat from a relentless sun. It was then that he noticed, as he approached the Miccosukee Indian village, that his gas gauge read empty.
Impossible. It had been three-quarters full. One of that policeman’s gunshots must have hit the gas tank.
Why now? Why, Natasha? Why? He wept aloud, then gritted his teeth. More choppers beat the air overhead. He wondered if they would drop bombs on him from the sky.
This was war. He was a soldier of love, he would never surrender. They would never stop him. A combination gas station, souvenir stand, and convenience store lay up ahead. He saw signs for airboat rides into the Everglades.
Empty airboats were parked alongside the convenience store. He could steal one and flee deep into the Glades, where they would never find him. Like an Indian, he could outwit, outwait, and outsmart them. He was unafraid of darkness, alligators, or snakes. But, he thought, it is mosquito season. The swampy sawgrass swarmed with dense clouds of small, ferocious Everglades mosquitoes.
He would take the convenience store instead, hold hostages until they brought his Natasha to him, to beg him for forgiveness. The police were ridiculously slow, he thought. They were afraid. They knew what they were up against, that the forces of true love cannot be denied. They seemed so slow that had his gas tank not been leaking, he would have had time enough to roll up to the pumps, fill the tank, and be gone. But not quite. As the van sputtered and slowed down, they began to close in like hawks cornering a rabbit. The van died. It rolled to a stop about two hundred feet from the store.
Nelson did not hesitate. He leaped out, gun in hand. Ignoring the sirens, the lights, and the shouts to stop, he sprinted into the store.
The few customers inside scattered. He intended to hold them all hostage, but they showed no respect. They ran away, scrambling out the front door when they saw his gun.
All but Trudy Tiger, standing behind the counter in her authentic, colorful native Indian costume.
She’d been showing a schoolteacher from Chicago a pair of beaded moccasins and a rubber alligator made in Taiwan when her would-be customer fled.
Trudy blinked. Six months’ pregnant, hormones raging, she felt depressed, bloated, and sleepy.
Nelson ordered her not to move.
Stoic, she said nothing.
“I am a man!” Nelson raged. He ranted, pacing back and forth, stopping only to glare out the plate-glass windows at the police. He pounded his chest at the TV cameras and hoped Natasha was watching.
Trudy frowned.
Television choppers and mobile news vans had joined the chase. The SWAT team had already mobilized and was on the way.
Riley’s unmarked car arrived just behind Channel Seven. She strapped her bulletproof vest on over her blouse.
“Keep the press back!” she ordered. The van stood within shooting distance of the store. The small, dark puddle beneath it appeared to be gasoline. But if Natasha Ross was inside that van, wounded by police bullets, there was no time to waste.
“Cover me,” she told two young patrolmen. “He comes out with the gun in his hand, drop him.” She and a young cop named Victor darted to the back of Nelson’s van and forced open the dented, bullet-riddled doors. Riley took a deep breath. Only a wounded lawnmower, a nasty-looking machete, and half a dozen sacks of fertilizer.
And something blue. A silky dress. Torn.
“Where the hell is she?”
They slammed the doors and took cover.
A sergeant reported that all but one of the people in the store had escaped. The lone hostage was the pregnant clerk.
Cops with bullhorns ordered Nelson to come out. He shook his fists in response, spouted insults, and kicked over a display of Miccosukee dolls dressed in authentic costume.
Trudy squinted at the mess.
The SWAT team’s armored van arrived, SWAT Captain Billy Clayton in command.
Nelson laughed contemptuously and made rude gestures at them. An army of cowards, hiding behind trucks and cars, behind flak jackets and protective gear. He had the power.
He strutted and preened, performing for the television cameras, hoping Natasha could see him. He imagined what he must look like on camera and tried to emulate Tony Montana, the hero in Scarface, his favorite movie.
The phone rang.
“Bring Natasha here,” he demanded. “I must see her.”
After Nelson laughed at the hostage negotiator and hung up the telephone, Captain Clayton discussed a tear gas attack.
“The woman clerk is pregnant,” Riley protested, as half a dozen Miccosukee police officers appeared, accompanied by several tribal elders.
“We don’t need any help.” Captain Clayton waved them away. “Just step over there with the press, fellows, and stay out of the line of fire—”
“Take your people. Leave now,” the Miccosukee police chief said.
“Say again?” Captain Clayton cocked his head and grinned. Half a dozen more Miccosukee officers noisily arrived in airboats. Two pickup trucks pulled up with even more.
“You have no jurisdiction here,” the Indian said. “You must take your people and leave.”
“We have an armed fugitive inside. He’s holding a hostage,” Clayton sputtered.
“We will take care of it.”
“Like hell. This little powwow is over,” Clayton replied. “End of discussion.”
“We need to arrest the gunman unharmed,” Riley told the Micc
osukee police chief. “He may be the only person who knows the whereabouts of a kidnap victim. She may still be alive.”
The chief nodded solemnly. “We will take care of it.”
“But—”
“This,” one of the elders announced gravely, “is the sovereign Miccosukee nation. Your laws do not apply here. You were told to leave. Now you are criminally trespassing.”
Clayton quarreled with them as Riley stepped away to make a call.
“We have a situation here,” she told Leo Nathan, the city’s legal adviser.
“They’re absolutely right,” Nathan said. “The Miccosukee Reservation is exclusively federal jurisdiction. Nonfederal agents have no right to be there. If you can’t negotiate a quick and peaceful settlement, I’d advise you to leave.”
“Captain Clayton will not back down,” she whispered.
“Sit tight, I’ll notify Chief Granados.”
Riley rejoined Clayton, who pointed a warning finger at the Miccosukee elder. “Outta my way, Chief,” he said. “We’re going in.”
“Arrest them,” the dignified elder said calmly. He had had enough. His tribe was still immersed in long-standing feuds and lawsuits with outside government. The state had not lived up to its legal agreement to reduce Everglades pollution levels. A new U.S. Army Corps of Engineers crusade to protect the Cape Sable seaside sparrow by diverting the freshwater flow was sure to doom the roseate spoonbill, a dazzling pink wading bird, and the Everglades kite and harm all of northeastern Florida Bay. Weeks earlier construction workers digging trenches for state power lines had unearthed an Indian burial ground. Legally, a work stoppage is required so archaeologists can investigate and protect the site. Instead, the contractor had his men hastily pour cement over the human bones, skulls, and artifacts and continue their work. Now this…
“You and your officers are under arrest for criminal trespass,” the Miccosukee police chief informed Clayton.
“No! You’re under arrest for obstructing justice!” Clayton roared, as TV cameras rolled.
Nelson shouted insults, paced, waved his arms, and made obscene gestures, as the situation outside escalated. He sensed he was losing his audience. If only he had a TV set, he would know what was happening.
Riley talked to Nathan again. “Do something,” she whispered. “The Miccosukee police and the SWAT team are arresting each other.”
“The cavalry’s on the way,” he said.
K. C. Riley’s heart sank. This wouldn’t help find Natasha.
Nelson found Trudy Tiger’s transistor radio behind the counter. According to the all-news station, Miami’s mayor, the city manager, the police chief, his PIO officer, and their legal advisers were all racing to the scene of a tense standoff at the Miccosukee Indian Reservation.
Nelson screamed in triumph. The mayor himself would bring Natasha to him! He did a macho strut back and forth in plain view of the police. He felt invincible. Arms raised in victory, he shouted triumphantly at them, challenging them to send their best and bravest to try to take him. He did bumps and grinds in their direction, humiliating them in front of the cameras, laughing aloud at his own bravado.
But, as Miami police and the Miccosukee Nation faced off outside, Trudy Tiger grew tired of waiting.
She grasped the ballpeen hammer she kept beneath the counter for just such an occasion and plodded up behind Nelson. He bellowed at police, flapping his arms like a chicken and making chicken noises at them.
Clutching the hammer in both hands, Trudy swung and slammed the side of his head so hard that brain matter hit the wall. Irritated by the mess, she swung and hit him again as he fell.
“Slow everybody down. It’s resolved,” Riley radioed, as medics bundled Nelson into a rescue helicopter. She flew with him to the Ryder Trauma Center and held his hand, hoping, even though he was bleeding from the ears, nose, and mouth, to ask him a question.
Chapter Thirty
He watched from his car across the street as she knelt in the yard beside the wooden cottage snipping leaves from an herb garden.
Look how stiffly she moves, he thought, watching her struggle to stand when she had finished. She was one of them. Alone, aged, and lonely. He had seen her speak to strangers at the market and buy only enough food that she could comfortably carry.
Ending her pain by providing the final passage that returned her to dust would serve two purposes. Perhaps this time he would do it perfectly and his mother would forgive him when the messiah came. At last mechilah, forgiveness.
He would try again to atone for what he had failed to do when he was called upon. And it would bring bad mazel to the detective, for all he had said and done, the lies he told on television and in the newspaper, the lack of respect, when he knew nothing. Detective Stone had brought the evil eye upon himself. But is it truly deserved? he asked himself, trying to remain objective. Or was it because something about Stone’s arrogance had awakened the yetzer hara, the evil impulse, in him?
He watched the old woman cling to the railing as she slowly climbed the stairs. Her life had not been easy. But neither had his. After his humiliation, his loss, and the ridicule he endured, he had studied and studied, read the Torah, worked hard. He still did. So diligent was he that he now held a position of trust and importance. The chief mashgiach, the overseer of the overseers, he demanded excellence and exacting enforcement of all the rituals. Religious laws must not be broken. The other, lesser mashgiachim feared his inspections, cringed at his reports, chafed at his demands. But they must be perfect in their observance of the rules, the laws, the rituals. Nothing less than perfection was acceptable.
If those from whom he demanded so much knew of his humiliation, knew that he himself had failed to perform the greatest mitzvah, the one the recipient can never return in kind…
If he could only do it perfectly this time, his mother would forgive him when they met again after the coming of the messiah. The sting of his shame was as painful now as it was then, so many years ago.
She had been sick for so long. Had lost weight, had found it increasingly difficult to walk. His younger siblings did not remember how their mother had looked before she was ill. Doctors came and went. His older sisters had whispered and wept. By six months after his bar mitzvah his mother had become someone he scarcely recognized.
The night they said she was a goses, a person at the brink of death, they called him to her room. It is a mitzvah to be present at the very end of a life. The room was crowded with relatives, the air so thick with grief and impending death that he could not breathe. The smells, the weeping of his sisters and his grandmother repelled him.
He hid trembling in the hallway, knowing what lay ahead.
He heard wailing and then the prayers.
Barukh atah Adonai, Dayan ha-emet.
His father came for him then, ushered him into the room, to the bedside. Unable to speak, he could not resist.
He was the firstborn son. His duty was clear.
He was to touch his mother, to close her blank eyes and gaping mouth.
He had never seen death up close before. She stared at the ceiling, her skin gray, her tiny body like a bundle of rags in a huge bed. He did not recognize her, could not bring himself to touch this dead stranger. His father lifted his hand, to place it gently over her eyes. Violently, he recoiled. He screamed and screamed, high-pitched cries like a woman, even though he was now a man. He rushed wildly from the room, shrieking down the stairs, hurling people and objects out of his path. Still shrieking out the front door and down the street. He ran and ran until his body was numb, his lungs bursting, and he no longer knew where he was. Then he fell to the ground and cried like a child. He finally returned home long after midnight only because he was alone, afraid, and had no other place to go.
He had spent his life from that day forward atoning for his failure, but he could never do enough, never do it right. His mother had demanded perfection from her firstborn son. That much she deserved. All he had wanted was to plea
se her. He could never forget the pain, the stigma, the stares, and the knowing looks that his weakness, his cowardice had brought upon him. If only he could do it over, relive the moment. He had tried, for the last twenty-five years, he had tried.
He watched the woman open her screen door and thought about her bedroom, where this time he would perform as required. He would do it all. He could close her eyes and mouth, recite the prayers, wash her naked body with warm water, cut her hair and nails. Beside him on the seat he had the fresh white linen sheet with which to cover her.
In his pocket, a small bag of earth from Israel. To be placed beneath her head, so when the messiah came and she was among the first to be resurrected, she and the others who had been alone with no one to perform these services would intervene with his mother, proving he had made teshuvah, repentance.
As he watched, the grandson arrived. He saw the detective look around, up and down the street. He knows nothing. No one could see him behind the tinted windows of the old station wagon. Again with the yellow toolbox. Out on the porch repairing a window frame. His constant repairs would not be enough to keep anyone out. But perhaps she did have someone to do for her. Perhaps the Angel of Death should pass her by. No, for him, she would open the door. And he would return her to dust.
Chapter Thirty-One
Milo Ross and Norma the maid identified the silky blue garment found in Nelson’s van as the dress Natasha was last seen wearing. But where was she?
There seemed little chance that Nelson, comatose and in intensive care, would be able to tell them anything. Ever.
“Think positive,” Riley told Ross. “The only thing Nelson said to the hostage negotiator was that he wanted to talk to Natasha. If he was telling the truth, she may be safe somewhere.”
“That animal,” Ross said bitterly. “If he’s harmed her…I want to offer a reward for her safe return. Do you think a hundred thousand dollars is enough?”
“That should get everybody’s attention,” Riley said.
“How do I announce it to the media?”
Cold Case Squad Page 21
