The Ice Maiden

by Edna Buchanan

  “You raised them all?” I said.

  She nodded, the Bible on her lap now. “But Andre—that boy was never right again. I tried to get ’im help, but he was always in trouble.”

  “You must have been the only good influence in his life.” I reached for the worn hand resting on the Bible. “You had no control over all that damaged him before he came to you. Or the peer pressure—you know, the boys he ran with.

  “Who,” I asked, pencil poised, heart skipping a beat, “were his buddies back when he was a boy, maybe sixteen, seventeen?”

  Ida Sweeting searched my eyes for a long moment. “Andre didn’t make friends in school,” she said slowly. “Didn’t like physical education, any kinda sports or swimmin’. Said everybody stared at his scars in the shower. Called ’im names, like Lizard Man and Monster. Same thing with girls. I tried to tell ’im we all carry some kinda scars, whether people can see ’em or not. But he dropped out, wouldn’t listen. Not much point in ’im stayin’ in school, cuz I couldn’t make him go most times anyway. It was after that when he started makin’ friends, boys from the project where we were livin’. But I knew they were trouble.”

  “Who were they?”

  “A boy used to call hisself Mad Dog and his cousin Parvin. Cubby Wells was another one. In trouble, one thing after another.”

  “What’s Mad Dog’s real name?”

  “I think—” The front door opened and a young woman, her hair braided in a wild array of beribboned cornrows, maneuvered a stroller and two little girls inside. One was about three, the other looked to be five.

  She saw me and did a double take.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. She wore a T-shirt, jeans, and an attitude.

  “Britt Montero. I’m a reporter for the Mia—”

  “A reporter? Mama?” she pleaded, wheeling to face the older woman. “What you doing talking to a reporter?”

  “She’s asking about your cousin Andre—”

  “You have a lot of nerve showing up here!” the younger woman said, refocusing on me. “You the one wrote that story? Didn’t anybody ever teach you to show respect for the dead?”

  “Did you object to something in the story?” I asked. “If there were any factual errors, we—”

  “That bullshit ’bout all his arrests! The man’s not even cold in his grave, and the auntie who raised him has to read all that shit in the newspaper? Then they repeat it on TV! Over and over again,” she said, raising her voice. “Way you wrote it made it look like he deserved what happened. You hear what Reverend Earl Wright axed on TV? ‘Since when do they execute people for burglary?’ Since when you get capital punishment for that? You don’t know anything about Andre!”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said. “To find out.”

  “You did enough already!” she said bitterly. “You better get the hell out of here before I kick your scrawny white ass!”

  The two little girls watched wide-eyed as their shouting mother shook her finger at me. So did I.

  “Lakisha,” the older woman entreated.

  She turned on her mother. “Why did you let her in here?”

  “I’m sorry,” I told Ida Sweeting, and rose to leave.

  “You better be!” Lakisha screeched, as the smaller girl screwed up her face and began to cry. “You be a lot sorrier, I catch you bothering me or my family again!” In my face, full of fury and outrage, she herded me unceremoniously out the door, slamming it hard behind me. Not the first time I’d been cursed at, threatened, or given the boot—and certainly not the last—but I regretted Lakisha’s lousy timing. Just as I was getting somewhere. Damn.

  She continued to shout, her voice carrying down the hall as I trudged to the stairwell. Ida Sweeting had known a lifetime of grief, and I regretted bringing her even a moment’s more.

  Mad Dog, his cousin Parvin, and Cubby Wells, I thought. Not much, but it was something. I called to bounce them off Craig Burch as I drove back downtown.

  Ryan was at his desk, directly behind mine.

  “Britt?” he said softly, as I checked my messages. “My name is on your story.”

  “I saw,” I said crisply.

  “How did that happen?”

  “An unsolved mystery,” I said.

  “Well, it’s a great story,” he said. “I’ve had nothing but compliments all morning.”

  Villanueva stopped by my desk minutes later, dark eyes perplexed, the A-section in his hand. “I thought you wrote this.” His big voice turned heads.

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Ryan piped up, face flushed.

  “What the hell’s going on?” the photographer asked.

  I shrugged. “Life is cheap and editors are treacherous,” I said. “Great picture, by the way.”

  Ryan answered his phone. “Hi, chief,” he said cheerfully. He shrugged as Villanueva and I turned to stare. “You’re welcome, glad you liked it.” He rolled his eyes at us. “Anytime, chief, your guys did a great job.”

  “The fire chief,” he announced, hanging up. “He loved the story.”

  Lottie arrived a short time later with the 411 from her buddies on the national desk. Gretchen had altered the story, but the front-page editor didn’t like her changes and had restored the original copy.

  Having a bad hair day, nearly frozen while being ignored by Sunny, given the boot by Andre Coney’s cousin, unappreciated by my editors and the world at large, my psyche already bruised and bleeding, it seemed a perfect time to call on K. C. Riley.

  We first met when I was a rookie reporter. K. C. had rescued her husky, seriously injured male partner by shooting his attacker in the knee. The headline writer had dubbed her a Hero Cop. Yet she’d reacted angrily to my story. How was I to know? Kathleen Constance Riley seemed a perfectly good moniker to me, and News style is to use full names rather than initials. But she took offense and warned me in no uncertain terms to never ever use her given name in print again.

  Like most female cops, K. C. Riley had to fight for rank and respect, but her macho attitude always struck me as over the top.

  I went to headquarters and called from the parking lot. Her secretary checked with Riley, who agreed to see me briefly, between meetings—in ten minutes. Her usual MO. Agree to an impossible appointment, forcing the reporter to risk death or dismemberment, desperately racing through traffic only to be—too late.

  “Great,” I said sweetly. “I’ll be there.” A PIO officer escorted me to my approved destination, no detours allowed. What would happen, I wondered, if I suddenly broke into a run? Would they lock down the station? Set off a terrorist alert? Call out the dogs to hunt me down?

  The Cold Case Squad’s small office—several desks, computer monitors, and three metal filing cabinets—was adjacent to Homicide on the fifth floor. The lieutenant’s glass-enclosed office on the north wall provided a view of Overtown, a rundown high-crime neighborhood sliced in two by the expressway.

  Neither Nazario, on the telephone, nor Stone, at a computer terminal, acknowledged me or my no-nonsense escort as we exited the elevator. The usual banter, good humor, and camaraderie that characterizes most detective bureaus was absent here.

  “How is the lieutenant today?” I asked the tiny middle-aged secretary. “In a good mood?”

  She rolled her eyes, then tapped gingerly on Riley’s door, standing aside, out of the line of fire, the same technique cops use when knocking on the front doors of deranged homicide suspects holed up with shotguns. I winked at her and breezed into the lion’s den.

  “Montero!” Riley checked her watch, startled by my prompt arrival. I smiled instinctively as our eyes connected. All cops’ lives are tough, but they’re far tougher for the women. I respect those who succeed at it.

  She cocked her head and motioned me to a chair without returning my smile. “Sit,” she ordered.

  Her straw-colored hair was shoulder length, with a slight natural wave. Tanned, fit, and sleek as a Thoroughbred, she didn’t have an extra ounce of weight on her ath
letic frame. Her cream-color blouse was crisp and sharply tailored, and she wore her gun at the waist of her fitted beige slacks. A matching jacket hung from the back of her chair.

  “So,” she said. “You’re planning a story about us.”

  “For the Sunday magazine.”

  “And to what do we owe this honor?” She lifted her eyebrows and regarded me the way she would a hostile suspect. “You won’t find any scandal in my unit.”

  “I don’t expect to,” I said. “The editor agrees that the Cold Case Squad’s success is a good story.”

  “I didn’t know you covered good news.”

  “Every chance I get,” I said deliberately. “Too bad there’s so little around here.”

  “Touché.” Her smile was ironic. “Given the current state of the department, you know the brass will buy anything that may improve our image. But you’ve written a lot of the stories that have made us look bad.”

  “It was news, Lieutenant. Not designed to make anybody look good or bad, just news. If something or somebody looked bad it’s because they were. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “That’s debatable,” she said. “You and I have butted heads enough times that you know exactly where I stand. My job is closing cases, not selling newspapers. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t be here right now. But it’s not up to me. The chief wants to cooperate, so that’s what I’m doing, one hundred percent.”

  “Great,” I said earnestly. “It’ll be a good read.”

  “I’ll settle for accurate,” she said, with an odd smile. “Since I’m the supervisor, I thought it strange that you didn’t come to me first.” She toyed with a metal paperweight in the shape of a hand grenade. “Why was I last to know?”

  Oh, shit, I thought, an ego thing. I hate it when women professionals act like men.

  “You know how the department is,” I said, a hint of exasperation in my voice. “They insist that everything go through PIO first. I assumed they’d call you.”

  “They did,” she said softly, “but not until after I heard it elsewhere.” She smiled slightly. “Kenny Mac—you know, Major McDonald—he happened to mention it.”

  Kenny Mac? Where did that alias come from? A pet name?

  “Oh, right,” I said. “I ran into him outside PIO and told him that Diaz planned to bounce it off the chief.”

  “Just don’t screw around with my unit, Montero.” She leaned forward, eyes intense. “My guys don’t need any heat, any problems generated by the press. This is the best team I’ve ever worked with. Dead files speak to them. If an old cold murder case still has a faint pulse, these guys can detect it. They can get into the minds of people they’ve never even met and do it better than anybody.”

  “They deserve the recognition,” I said.

  “Sure.” She sighed. “All I need is for my detectives to believe their own press, grow big heads, and turn into a buncha prima donnas.

  “But all right,” she said, as though resigned. She leaned back and gave me the spiel. “Unlike other units, time works in our favor. Frightened children have grown up, once-intimidated spouses are divorced, lives have changed, or there’s been a death. We look at letters, leads from other sources, and requests from victims’ families, and we evaluate old cases. Team members read the files, reread them, and then vote on which have the best potential for closure.”

  “How were the detectives selected?” I asked.

  “Each has his own story.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “I’m sure you already know most of them.”

  She pushed back her chair abruptly and stepped to the window to stare out over the bleak rooftops of Overtown. “Hard to believe anything good ever comes out of there. But that’s where Sam Stone grew up. Where you come from doesn’t mean shit.” She turned to face me. “What matters is who you really are.

  “He was hot for this job, wanted it bad. But they turned him down every time. Sure, he was a flashy patrolman, savvy and street-smart. But the brass said he was inexperienced, definitely not detective material. Everybody else up here had years of homicide experience.

  “After he gets turned down for the third time, he’s so pissed off on the way out that he rips an eight-year-old WANTED poster off the squad-room bulletin board. The damn poster had turned yellow. Hung there so long it left its outline on the board. The son-of-a-bitch in the picture was still wanted for murdering his wife. First degree. Man had a rap sheet longer than I am tall. For him, getting busted was a lifelong habit. How, Stone asks himself, could this asshole not be arrested in the eight years since he killed his wife? Something’s wrong here.

  “He calls Records. They show nothing in their computer, but the warrants division still shows he’s wanted. Evidently, nobody ever bothered to send a copy of the warrant to Records. Or if they did, somebody slipped up and never filed it.

  “Stone asks ID to transmit the man’s fingerprint classification to the FBI, asking if he’s been arrested anywhere since the murder. And guess what? The FBI responds with the news that the guy’s been arrested twenty-seven times under another name during the past eight years. Mostly minor; drunk driving, shoplifting, assault and battery. Most recent arrest? Six weeks ago, up in Ocala.”

  I took notes and watched her as she went on. K. C. Riley had always worn a world-weary veneer, as though shell-shocked and tempered by the brutality and tragedies encountered on the job. But she was different now, speaking freely, almost enthusiastically. Was it her current assignment—or a happier personal life?

  “Stone calls the Ocala police chief,” she was saying. “Says, ‘Here’s the real name of a man you arrested three months ago. We want him in Miami for murder,’ he says. ‘Think he might still be up there somewhere?’ The chief calls back an hour later. ‘We’ve got him for ya,’ he says. ‘Come and get him.’”

  Riley slid back behind her desk, her features alight with approval. “When Stone was rejected again, he didn’t punch the wall, hit the bars, go home to kick the dog. Instead he got motivated, decided ‘I’ll show them!’ and found that fugitive in less than two hours with a few phone calls. Not bad, huh? It got him the job.”

  “Great story,” I said. There I was, chatting civilly with K. C. Riley. I should have quit while I was ahead. “So the team members vote to take on a case?”

  “Right.”

  “Do you always support their decision?”

  She chewed the inside of her upper lip, as though deciding how to answer.

  “In almost every case, yes,” she said carefully. “But, as supervisor, I take responsibility for our productivity. I’m the one accountable. The buck stops with me.”

  I opened my mouth but caught the challenge in her eyes and abruptly swallowed my next question. So far, so good, I thought. Don’t spoil it now.

  “I’d like to talk to the detectives.”

  “Sure,” she said, eyes guarded. “Just don’t screw with us, Britt. We’re not playing games here.”

  “Right.” I smiled, got to my feet, and turned to leave. That’s when I saw several framed photographs atop a bookcase I had passed on the way in. One stood out.

  Two people aboard a boat. Blue sky above, liquid sky below. A K. C. Riley I had never seen before, sunshine in her hair, wearing cut-off shorts and a bathing-suit top. Laughing as she held up a puny grouper. The grinning man beside her, right hand on her shoulder, wore a Florida Marlins cap, one I had insisted he buy at a game one hot and sultry afternoon. I remembered the searing sun, the lush green field, and McDonald and me, intoxicated by the cheers of fans, the music, and each other. For a moment I forgot to breathe.

  K. C. Riley’s sharp eyes had followed mine. “The department’s annual fishing tournament,” she said. “I guess you can see—we didn’t win a trophy.”

  6

  “You look like you’ve been shot at and missed,” Stone said.

  “Or shit at and hit,” Burch said.

  “You sure know how to make a girl feel special.” I attempted a jaunty smile. “I’m fine. Y
our lieutenant was all giggles and grins, promised a hundred percent cooperation.”

  “Good.” Burch rubbed his hands together briskly. “Glad you two hit it off. Listen, those names you gave me paid off. Nothing so far on Cubby Wells, but Stone found an old field interrogation card on a Ronald Stokes, street name Mad Dog. Age and description fit. He and Coney got busted together twice, accomplices in old burglary cases.”

  “Bingo. He still around?”

  “In a matter of speaking.” The detectives exchanged glances. “He’s a guest at the Graybar motel, serving ten to twenty upstate. Guess what for?”

  “Sex offense?”

  “Rape and robbery.”

  “Jeez, Craig, you are gonna solve this one!”

  “We’ve got a helluva long road,” he cautioned, “but I have a good feeling. When I saw that body in the morgue, I knew in my gut this was it.”

  “Are you going up to talk to him?”

  He shrugged. “Not yet. Hell, he ain’t going anywhere. We know where to find him. With the lieutenant breathing down our necks, it’s tough to take half a day to drive up there right now.”

  I called Lottie, who said she’d join us, as Burch checked to confirm that Riley had left for the day. Then he dragged a bulky storage box from beneath his desk. “I’ve got three more like this one,” he said, lifting the lid. “More than a thousand typewritten pages, index cards on every one of the two hundred and fifty suspects we talked to in the Chance case.”

  “Today, this would all be computerized from the get-go,” Stone said, scowling. “Let’s ask Karen over in Intelligence to program the cards into a database that’s easy to cross-check.”

  “Yeah, she’s the best analyst we’ve got. Send ’em to her along with the names in the Meadows case,” Burch said, “that elderly widow, murdered in 1981. Clue her that they’re separate cases, but log ’em under the same number so Riley doesn’t pick up on it.”

  The detectives exchanged conspiratorial glances. Joe Corso had joined us, just returned from London where he’d been chasing down a suspect in an old bombing case, I’d been told.