Shadows

by Edna Buchanan

  “He came by to see me later, Sonny. He wanted to get ahead, thought maybe he could work on the case hisself. The homicide detectives weren’t too smart, to blame robbers, he said. He thought they were wrong. But they didn’t want his help, resented anything he tried to do.

  “After we talked a few times, I told him about what happened that summer in Mississippi. I didn’t know the name of the man who had called, but I knew he said he was from the Justice Department. Ray Glover and me both wondered if it was true or if he was one of the policemen who did the killing, still stalking the witnesses years later. Officer Glover was real excited, said he’d find out. But somethin’ went wrong. He said he’d been warned. People didn’t believe him and he had to get out of Miami. Said he was gonna stay on the case. Said if he could just solve it, he’d get his badge back, be able to work anyplace he wanted.

  “He moved a lot but always let me know where. Then he stopped calling. I had a bad feeling after a while and called him. Katie, his girlfriend, cried like a baby. Tol’ me he was dead. Poor thing said she didn’t know what to do. Do nothing, I told her. Just mind your business and stay alive. Life is always the best choice. That’s what I learned from it all. I learned it the hard way.”

  “You should have told me all this before, Gran.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped you. It would only have made you hate.”

  “She’s right,” Ash said. “The time was never right. But it is now. What goes around comes around.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “The mother pushed her off that roof. She just didn’t do it physically,” Burch told K. C. Riley. “If you could file murder charges for driving another person to suicide, I’da arrested her myself.”

  “How many victims will this case claim in the end?” Arms folded, Riley paced her office where the team had gathered.

  Burch and Nazario had gone straight from the airport to the station. Riley told them that while they were gone Stokoe had passed the polygraph with flying colors.

  “We know now who those babies weren’t,” she said. “They were unrelated to the Nolans. They were apparently full term and healthy, umbilical cords gone, their little navels healed or healing. They were well fed and ranged in age from newborn to nearly a month old.

  “That means seven sets of parents out there somewhere. Fourteen people, to say nothing of grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, neighbors, and obstetricians. One infant might be lost and forgotten—not seven.” She stopped pacing, sat down at her desk, and stared at the detectives.

  “The fault lies with us. We’re missing something. I want to send you guys away again, back to Miami, 1961. What was happening in this city? In the world around it? There has to be something obvious that we haven’t put together.”

  “Sure, a time machine would come in handy,” Burch said, “but we don’t have one.”

  “Yes, we do,” Riley said. “It’s sitting right over there on the bay. They call it a newspaper. Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s history.

  “Burch and Nazario, go over there first thing in the morning. Start reading the Miami News for the summer of ’sixty-one—on microfilm, microfiche, in a computer database, or whatever the hell other way you can access it. Read the stories, the ads, the features, the editorials, even the goddamned letters to the editor! Learn about the mayor, the crime trends, the movers and shakers, who was in trouble, who wasn’t. Total immersion. I want you to come back knowing more about 1961 than you do about last year.”

  “We already checked the logs for that year, looking for an MO or a pattern,” Burch protested. “Nothing looked related.”

  “Something was,” she said. “Those infants didn’t fall out of a spaceship. Miami was so much smaller then. Take notes, use your imagination. Sweet-talk somebody at the paper into letting you into their files. You all have reporters you whisper secrets to once in a while. Call in your favors. Didn’t you have a reporter friend, Stone?”

  “No way. I don’t talk to that woman.”

  “Swell,” Burch said, jet-lagged and annoyed. “You stonewall the press every chance you get, kick reporters to the curb, alienate them and their bosses, and now you want us to ask them for favors?”

  “Yeah,” Riley said. “Ain’t life a bitch?

  “We could subscribe to their online service, but I don’t think it goes back that far, and it would cost us. Unfortunately, we already blew our budget on your little cross-country sightseeing trip. Airfare, hotels, meals, and your little jaunt to the Alamo. So go make nice with the press, tell them I’m an evil bitch and forced you into it, tell them I’m a pain in your ass, too.”

  “That ain’t no lie.” Corso grinned.

  “Dammit,” Burch said later. “The son of a bitch did it again. Corso hears us mention seeing the Alamo and runs back to tell Riley. Son of a bitch. Like we didn’t do nothing but sightsee out there.”

  “I hear you,” Stone said.

  “Does it all the time. She asked me how I liked Feng Shui the other day. He blabbed to her about that, too. What’s your beef with Corso?” Burch asked. “I been seeing how you two don’t hit it off either.”

  “How can I respect a white guy who calls me dawg or homie?” Stone said. “Who greets me with ‘Wazup’? And calls my apartment a crib? Is he trying to be black? Is he having an identity crisis or what? The man’s a weak genetic link.”

  “Damn straight,” Burch fumed. “I’d like to muzzle that son of a bitch. He’s a spy. That’s what he’s always doing in Riley’s office, spilling his guts, gossiping. She loves it; it’s a way to keep tabs on us.

  “At least you’re making excellent progress,” he told Stone. “Keep doing what you’re doing in your case and yell if you need help. First thing tomorrow, me and Nazario take a ride in the time machine.”

  Before heading home, Nazario called Kiki to say she was right about Captain Cliff Nolan, and to make a dinner date for the following night.

  “I often do research at the News,” she told him when he mentioned their mission. “My friend Onnie works in the library and I sometimes help reporters with historic background. Maybe I can help.”

  The first sign of trouble Nazario saw when he pulled into the driveway at Casa de Luna was the lights ablaze in his small upstairs apartment as well as in the big house.

  He let himself in and surprised Fleur, who was applying makeup from lots of little pots, vials, tubes, and bottles she had spread out across his bathroom counter.

  Women’s dresses, most of them shiny, metallic, or glittery, crammed his closet, along with sparkly stiletto heels.

  “Hi, honey,” she chirped. “You’re back.”

  “Yeah.” He put down his overnight bag. “I thought you’d have your own place by now.”

  “What do you think?” She spun around, the light reflecting off the paillettes on her shimmery dress.

  “Nice.” She did look beautiful.

  “Or do you like this one better?” She held a silky red dress up in front of her.

  “You’ve been shopping?” he said hopefully.

  She regarded him fondly, then picked up a lip brush. “Not exactly. I have to work for a while before I do that.”

  “So where did all this girly stuff come from?” he asked, as though he didn’t know.

  “I had to borrow some of Shelly’s clothes,” she said.

  “That’s not good,” he said.

  “We always shared clothes when we were roommates.”

  “Yeah, but she’s your father’s roommate now.”

  “If she’s got my father, I’m entitled to wear her Versaces and Guccis.”

  “Are they dry-cleanable?” he asked mournfully. “They sound expensive.”

  “She’s got so many, she’ll never miss them,” she assured him.

  “You promised me, Fleur. You said you’d have another place to stay by now.”

  “It’s not like I haven’t been trying. It’s just taking a little bit longer than I thought. I’ve got a job, I’m
working tonight. You should have called, sweetie. I would have had dinner ready.”

  He frowned. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to. Why don’t you sit down and relax?” She put her hands on his shoulders. He smelled liquor on her breath.

  She turned to the stove, a bit wobbly on her high heels.

  “If you’re gonna cook, wouldn’t it be safer to take off that dress?” He wondered how much it cost.

  “Okay,” she sang out. “Unzip me.” She backed up to him, hips thrust to one side.

  He fumbled with the zipper. When it was partway down, the label was exposed. The word Paris confirmed his worst fears.

  As he gently eased the zipper down the rest of the way, she reached back, took his hands, and guided them to her breasts.

  “Fleur, don’t do this to me,” he pleaded. “I’m tired, frustrated, and horny. Just don’t.”

  She giggled. “You know you want to.”

  He stepped away. “I’m serious.”

  She reached back and unfastened her lacy push-up bra.

  “No way,” he said.

  She pouted, rehooked it, and zipped up her dress. “Okay, I’ll just make you dinner. I still have time before I have to go to work.”

  She insisted, stirring something in a huge steaming pot on the stove as he tried to find room to unpack his toiletries among all her things in the bathroom.

  She offered him an appetizer.

  Carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower arranged around a puddle of sauce on a silver tray that looked like the real thing and he did not recognize as belonging in his apartment.

  He dipped a carrot in the sauce and nearly broke a tooth.

  “What is this?” he asked, then saw the empty frozen-food cartons in the sink.

  “This is nice, Fleur. But I don’t think frozen vegetables are…”

  She was slapping the bottom of a Heinz ketchup bottle, pouring it over a bowl of undercooked pasta.

  “Spaghetti?” she offered proudly.

  Relieved when she left for work, he cleaned up the mess, threw the pasta in the garbage, and went to bed.

  CHAPTER 22

  Ray Glover was murdered. Every expert who saw the file agreed. The driver who hit him had backed over his body more than once.

  “No surprise,” Ashton Banks said. Stone had taken the reports to Riley’s office, where the two women were meeting with Assistant State Attorney Jo Salazar.

  “Our experts concur, as well. We subpoenaed personnel records for the suspects. They were all still on the job at the Bigby Police Department but didn’t work the day Glover was killed, the day before, or the day after.

  “Officers Ron John Cooper, Ernest Lee Evans, and his son, Wesley, who had joined his father on the department by then, all took vacation days. To go hunting, they said.”

  “What about—” Stone said.

  “We checked that, too,” she said, eyes soft. “They were also missing from work the week your parents were killed. Took vacation days, to go hunting.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Stone said, his voice hollow. “It’s true. They did it. I kind of hoped it wouldn’t be cops.”

  “We’ll get them this time,” Banks said.

  “Damn straight,” Riley said.

  Ashton Banks wanted to taste Miami’s famous Cuban food. Stone took her to Versailles in Little Havana. They drank mojitos and ate arroz con pollo.

  “I know why you like these.” She grinned, swirling the mint in her mojito.

  He ordered smooth, custardlike flan for dessert, with Cuban coffee.

  “Now, wait a minute.” She studied the menu and the cups on neighboring tables. “How many kinds of Cuban coffee are there? Does it come in different octanes? Do they use different beans?”

  “It’s not the beans,” he said, “it’s how it’s prepared. The sugar is mixed in right after the espresso is brewed. Colada is extra-thick espresso with no milk. It comes in tiny plastic cups for quick, nearly lethal caffeine jolts.

  “A cortadito is half espresso and half milk in a small cup. And then you have café con leche, warm milk and espresso in a big cup, more milk than coffee. Probably the safest for a beginner.”

  “Let’s try one of each,” she said. “I want to experience them all.”

  “Okay, Cold Case Girl, don’t come crying to me if you don’t sleep for a week.”

  Maybe it was the mojitos, the coffee, or the company. They talked nonstop. About everything, not just the case. Eventually Stone stopped talking and just watched her.

  “What are you thinking?”

  He shrugged.

  “Come on,” she coaxed.

  “That you’re really something.”

  “So are you.”

  She kissed his cheek at the hotel.

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “It’s good night.” She left him standing in the lobby.

  Stone returned to the station on a caffeine high, too hyper to go home. It was late and the public lot out front was nearly empty, so he parked there instead of in the police garage.

  The desk sergeant looked up from a report he was writing. “Stone! Somebody was just looking for you. A minute ago.” He glanced around the lobby. “He catch you on the way in?”

  “No, he leave a name?”

  “Nah. Just wanted to know if you were here, then asked what your hours were. Funny, because that’s when I looked up and saw you gettin’ outta your car in the parking lot. ‘You’re in luck,’ I told the guy. ‘Here he comes now.’ Went back to what I was doing. Where’d he go?”

  The lobby was empty. So was the parking lot.

  Stone shrugged. “If it’s important, he’ll be back.”

  He went to the fifth-floor homicide office. Most midnight-shift detectives were out at this hour. He liked being alone where he could think.

  The copy of Glover’s police identification photograph he had requested from Personnel was in his mailbox. Glover smiled confidently from his ID picture, proudly wearing the badge, the creases in his dark blue uniform pressed so sharp they could cut your eyes, trying the best he knew how to do the right thing. Stone smiled back.

  He clipped the photo to the front page of the Collier County accident file retrieved from the medical examiner. He had wanted to attach a photo of Glover as he remembered him to the front, to be seen before the pictures of a grotesquely crumpled corpse in the road and the grisly morgue shots that followed.

  He left a short time later, waved to the front desk sergeant, and headed to the parking lot. As he strode down the wide ramp to the pavement, a corner of the four-foot-high brick barrier wall disintegrated in front of him. He saw it explode before he heard the shot and saw the muzzle flash.

  Somebody was shooting at him. Stunned, he hit the ground and drew his own gun. Sprawled on the tiled floor of the ramp, he was showered by a rain of brick fragments. The muzzle flashes came from the overpass, a section of I-95 just before the off ramp. He had stashed his radio in his briefcase and fumbled to open it, keeping his head down as a slug slammed into the bulletproof glass door and ricocheted crazily.

  He fired back, in the direction of the flash. The desk sergeant ran out the front door, gun drawn.

  “Are you hit?”

  “No! Get down!” Stone shouted. “It’s from the overpass.”

  The sergeant was already on the radio.

  A final barrage, two, three, four shots, came as the few police officers in the station burst out of stairwells into the lobby and sirens converged.

  Then the unseen shooter was gone with the high-powered whine of an engine, merging into northbound traffic.

  “Shit, did anybody see him?” Stone sat on the tiled floor of the ramp, breathing hard, shattered bricks around him, his gun in his hands.

  Nobody had.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Do you want us to come in?” Burch said.

  “No, go work the time machine.” There was nothing they could do for Stone at the moment, Riley said. He was uninju
red and the gunman had vanished like a puff of smoke.

  “Christ. Think it’s related to his case?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” she said. “Something’s not kosher in Mississippi. I hate it when other agencies get involved. You don’t know who to trust.”

  Onnie in the News library set Burch and Nazario up to view old newspapers on microfilm and showed them how to access stories in the system.

  “Fleur didn’t come back before I left this morning, a good sign,” Nazario hopefully assured Burch. “She must be out looking for a place or hooking up with a new roommate.”

  The two plunged into old news on microfilm. Miami Beach was still a sleepy Southern resort city when Pierce Nolan was murdered. South Beach was populated almost entirely by senior citizens. Arthur Godfrey was broadcasting his radio show from the Kenilworth Hotel in Bal Harbour. The times, though about to change, seemed so innocent. JFK was president and many believed that RFK might succeed him one day. Martin Luther King Jr. was still alive and preaching. The future seemed limitless. Yuri Gagarin had kicked off the traces of gravity and become the first man to venture into space, followed closely by Alan Shepard, the first American, in his Freedom 7 spacecraft.

  Shadows of war hovered on the horizon. Young men were being drafted and sent to Vietnam. The Bay of Pigs invasion had failed that spring and the captured invaders remained Castro’s prisoners in Cuba.

  Miami housing was cheap, traffic was nil, and the land west of 57th Avenue and north of Flagler Street was sparsely populated and considered to be the swampy fringe of the Everglades.

  “Man,” Nazario said. “Look at these ads! In 1961 you could buy a house on the water for thirty thousand bucks.”