As Salazar approached the bench to continue her argument, a chair suddenly scraped back. A flurry of movement began behind her.
Morgan, no longer calm and patient, had leaped to his feet. He approached the bench, eyes wide and anxious behind the thick glass in his spectacles.
“Your honor, your honor. I beg the court’s indulgence. I’d like to request a brief recess. It’s an emergency.”
Jo Salazar turned, mouth open in surprise at the interruption.
“Mis-ter Morgan.” The judge leaned forward to scrutinize him, eyes narrowed. “Are you in violation of my strict policy on electronic devices? Must I remind you again that when you appear before me, I am your only emergency.” She placed her right hand over her ample bosom. Her words speeded up, increasing in volume as she spoke. “I demand your full and total attention. How do you think I could possibly manage my caseload and this courtroom if every lawyer, defendant, and witness who appears before me is granted time to conduct their social, personal, and business lives on cell phones and beepers, leaving me to await their pleasure?”
“No, your honor. I apologize, your honor. I apologize.” Morgan babbled frantically. “Just this one time, I promise. Please. Your honor?”
“Five minutes,” the judge snapped.
The public defender babbled in gratitude as he backpedaled hastily toward the door.
Her honor glanced at Salazar, who shrugged sympathetically. The new crop of young lawyers could be so totally rude and self-absorbed.
The judge swept imperiously off the bench, secretly pleased because she had to pee anyway.
Jo Salazar made her way to the far end of the crowded corridor that resembled a teeming street in Calcutta. No question which 911 call she would answer first.
“Hey, what’s going on? I was in a bond hearing in front of Featherstone.”
“Jo, thank God.” Riley hunched over the phone in her office. “Have you talked to your boss?”
“He called when you did.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“What do you think? Duh? I called you first. What’s going on? Spit it out, I have to be back in court in four, no, three minutes.”
“I need a huge favor. Alex was at our staff meeting this morning. I’ll explain later. Something came up. Remember the serial killings that Stone connected last year?”
“The one where the FBI assembled the task force?”
“Right.”
“I mentioned some progress in the case. He wanted to know who we’ve been coordinating with in your office.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Sorry. I threw in your name. Had to. You’re the only one who’d back me up. Stone hasn’t got anything tangible enough to share with an ASA. He just noted some similarities in the crime scenes that may lead to future clues about the killer’s identity—that’s it, nothing concrete.”
“Still, Alex is gonna be pissed that I didn’t keep him informed. You know how he likes to be kept in the loop, especially when it comes to your unit.”
“Say it’s still vague, but might hold some promise, that you told Stone to come back when he had something more concrete.”
“I’ll cover you.”
“Thanks, Jo. You were right. I’ll tell the guys to drop that Terrell thing I forced on them. And you were on the mark about Alex. He’s out to get me and my unit.”
“Brought it on yourself, kid. A few little tumbles in the sack, the ignoranus probably would’ve found himself a new obsession. But oh, no, you had to smack him down and kick him to the curb. See what happens when you have scruples?”
“Who knew he’d turn out to be the most powerful man in Miami–Dade County?”
“And he never guessed you’d turn out to be who you are. He’s forgetting the cardinal rule for an ambitious man: Be nice to people on the way up, because you’ll meet them again on the way down. He’ll get his.”
“Hope we live to see it.”
Jo called her boss. “You rang, sir?” she chirped cheerfully. “I was trapped in Featherstone’s court and couldn’t get out—you know her policy.”
She assured him that there had been no major legal questions in Stone’s case, promised to keep him informed, and hurried back to courtroom 12.
Tom Morgan stood outside.
“Everything okay, Tom?” she asked, concern in her voice. “Is it time?”
He shook his head, bewildered.
“It was a nine-one-one message to call home, but it must have been a mistake. A wrong number.”
“Don’t worry.” She patted his shoulder. “It has to be any minute now. What is she, nine and a half months’ pregnant? Tell Marie I said to hang in there, the first one never arrives on schedule. We better get back inside before the judge does or she’ll hold us both in contempt.”
The ferret snarled out loud when he saw his attorney and the prosecutor smiling and chatting together as they walked back into the courtroom.
Chapter Eleven
Burch rode in the tow truck taking his Blazer to Downtown Automotive. Nazario picked him up.
“Damnedest thing. It stopped dead at the causeway toll booth,” Burch said, “like it was outta gas, but I still had half a tank.
“Almost had to arrest the son of a bitch behind me. An SOB in an SUV. Talk about road rage. Didn’t back off till I flashed my badge. I’m sick of this shit. It was hot as hell out there.”
“Think your true love struck again?” Nazario asked, as they hurtled south on North Miami Avenue in an unmarked Homicide unit.
Burch glared. “Nah. These things happen. Cars crap out. Shit happens. Jesus, be careful!”
Face placid, one elbow out the window, Nazario veered out of the path of a lumbering Metro bus.
“Slow down, will ya? What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Don’t worry, Sarge.” Nazario sounded hurt. “I’ll get you there in one piece. Riley’s already in. Saw her barreling into her office, cursing at her cell phone as I was leaving.”
“Looks like this is gonna be one helluva day.”
“What d’ya get?” Stone greeted them from a computer terminal in the Cold Case corner of the homicide office.
“Shoulda been there. Shoulda seen the widow. A monstruo.” Nazario gave a long, low whistle.
“Guess what she’s doing when we show up?” Burch said.
“You mean who she’s doing,” Nazario said.
“Banging the gardener in a cabana. Broad daylight. She’s the bomb and doesn’t care who knows it. Did you notice,” he said to Nazario, “how her clothes all unwrap, that little bathing suit skirt, her dress? That ain’t no coincidence.”
“Who the hell is she?” Stone said. “That’s what I want to know. I’ve been trying to pull up her past. Her first marriage license application lists a POB of Davenport, Iowa. The second time she gave her place of birth as Preston, Iowa.”
“Maybe it’s a suburb.” Burch shrugged.
“Third time it was Mason City, Idaho, a whole different state. Didn’t apply for a Social Security card until 1990, here in Miami. No history anywhere in Iowa—or Idaho. No background anywhere until she walks into Terrell’s drugstore. Ran the prints from her shoplifting busts through AFIS. Nothing came back. It’s like she just dropped outta the sky.”
“Natasha Tucker Terrell Asher Streeter Ross,” Nazario said. “A mouthful for somebody without a past.”
“Not exactly a criminal mastermind.” Stone displayed a printout. “Get this, Sarge. At Neiman Marcus she gets busted for stealing buttons.”
“Buttons?” Burch said.
“Yep. Apparently she dug the gold buttons on some fancy designer suit. Didn’t buy the suit, a little Chanel number, price tag forty-two hundred dollars—”
“Jeez, worth more than my first three cars put together,” Nazario said.
“—but liked the buttons enough to whip out a little blade and slice them all off the jacket and the cuffs. Twenty-two buttons. They catch the whole thing on surveillance camer
a. When security stops her and finds them in her bag she’s shocked. How’d they get in there? Threatens to sue. The judge reduced it to a misdemeanor and let her make restitution.
“At Saks, it was lingerie. Panties.”
“Sounds right,” Burch said. “She probably goes through ’em pretty fast. Lotsa wear and tear.”
“Embroidered silk scanties, six pair, priced at—get ready for this—a hundred and sixty-five to two hundred and eighty-nine bucks apiece. That’s more than Naz’s good suit.”
“Go to hell, you wish you looked so good.”
“Said she planned to pay, but popped outside first, for just a sec, to see if her driver was waiting. Said security stopped her before she could go back inside and ante up. Security says they prosecuted because she was a repeater. They’d caught her stealing see-through nighties. Gave her a pass the first time, with a warning to stay out of the store.”
“She has a chauffeur who waits while she steals undies? I’m impressed,” Nazario said.
“High class,” Burch said.
“The lingerie department is on the third floor. She took the goods two flights down on the escalator to exit the store. They said she was on her way into Tiffany’s when they caught up with her. Funny thing, they said before she left the store with the loot, she stopped to validate her parking card.”
“That’s our girl.” Burch shook his head. “Consistent as a heartbeat.”
“The store security guys remember her well.”
“Not surprising,” Burch said.
“First, she’s drop-dead gorgeous. Second, she never got rattled. Took the whole thing in stride. Lady shoplifters usually panic when they hear they’re going downtown. But she stayed cool as a cucumber. Third, and most memorable, they said, was when a female police officer frisked her. She wasn’t wearing any panties.”
“Ohhh, ’splains everything,” Burch said. “She needed ’em. Musta misplaced hers on the way over there.”
“Should’ve seen the shoes she was wearing,” Nazario told Stone.
“Wonder if she copped them, too.”
On each occasion, Stone said, Natasha carried credit cards and more than enough cash to pay for the stolen items.
“So what did your built-in shit detector say when you talked to her?” he asked Nazario. “Liar, liar, panties on fire?”
“Strange. Evasive as hell,” Nazario said. “Truth one second, lies the next.” He consulted his notebook. “Truthful about Iowa, lied about the farm. Charles a nondrinker? True. Nothing suspicious the day of the fire? A lie.”
“Those last two worry me. We got work to do,” Burch said.
“Maybe she wouldn’t recognize the truth if it bit her on the ass,” Nazario said. “Maybe she doesn’t know when she’s lying.”
“See, women like that make me appreciate Connie,” Burch said. “At least I always know where she’s coming from. This broad looks hot as hell but she’s cold as ice on the inside. Smart, too.”
“Not smart enough to steal and get away with it,” Stone said.
“Who knows how often she did?” Nazario said. “We only know how many times she got caught.”
“Her thing with money,” Burch said, “must go back to her childhood. Bet we find out she was born poor.”
“Or without a conscience,” Nazario said.
“Or with bad genes,” Stone said.
“Marries up every time.” Burch was thinking aloud. “Has a kid with each husband, a little souvenir from each marriage, to keep the poor schmucks hooked financially. She uses the kids, too. They’re all shipped out. You’d never know she was a mother.”
“Poor parenting isn’t a crime,” Stone said.
“This should cheer up the lieutenant,” Nazario said. “She likes being right.”
“Who doesn’t?”
Joe Padron hustled past, beelining for Riley’s office. “Hi, pal.” He waved enthusiastically and gave a cheerful thumbs-up.
“What the hell was that?” Burch said. “Who the hell was he ‘Hi, pal’-ing?”
“Stone, I think.”
“Not me,” Stone said.
Padron emerged from Riley’s office minutes later, still smiling. “See ya downstairs, pal.”
“You,” Burch said. “It was definitely you.”
“No way.” Stone shook his head and shrugged.
K. C. Riley hailed them from her door. “You, you, and you. In my office. Now.”
“She talking to us?” Stone said.
Nazario looked around. “Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”
“Uh-oh,” Burch said.
“Sit,” she said.
The detectives rolled two more chairs into her cramped office.
“We need to talk.”
Nazario rolled his eyes. “It’s never good news when a woman tells you that.”
“There’s good news and bad news,” she said. “The good news is, forget Terrell. I’ll talk to the ex-wife, get her the hell off your backs.”
Their reaction was not what she anticipated.
“What?” she demanded.
“You were right,” Burch said. “Something stinks about the Terrell case. We’re about to be all over it.”
Riley planted an elbow on her desk, dropped her forehead into her hand, and sighed. “Tell me.”
They filled her in at length.
“Damn…” She reached for the hand grenade on her desk as though it were a security blanket. “What’s the latest husband like?”
“Milo Ross. Stone was just checking him out.”
“He’s older than dirt,” Nazario said.
“Legit,” Stone said. “Big bucks. Retired CEO. Bailed out of his Fortune Five Hundred company with a golden parachute fifteen years ago. Age seventy-nine. One of the richest men in Florida, maybe in the U.S. Natasha pulled off a real Anna Nicole.”
“ ’Cept she’s way better looking,” Nazario said. “That big blonde is scary.”
“Whoever heard of an Iowa farm girl named Natasha?” Riley’s brow crinkled.
“Ross seems in relatively good shape, unless she kills him with sex,” Burch said. “He came home from a doctor’s appointment while we were there. Probably got a scrip for the little blue pills. He’s gotta be on Viagra.”
“Maybe at that age he just likes to look at her,” Nazario said.
“Sure, and the pope smokes dope.”
“I copied the Walkers’ birthday party video to return to the family. The original’s at the lab,” Stone said. “Powers thinks he can enhance the tape for a better look at traffic across the street around the time of the fire. At least one, possibly two, suspicious vehicles. A make and model or even a driver’s general description might help us out.”
“Tell me her story again,” Riley said, “about their night together before the fire.”
“You mean the sex, the champagne, the all-nighter?” Burch asked.
“Yeah. You say the marriage had problems?”
“He was staying out. Evasive. She thought he was seeing somebody, but didn’t know who,” Burch said.
“But that night, she said he was amazing.” Nazario raised his eyebrows. “Like the first time.”
Riley gave them a knowing smile.
“Goodbye sex.” She leaned back in her chair. “Kiss, kiss, boom, boom, bye-bye. When one sex partner knows it’s not happening again but the other doesn’t. He’s saying here’s something to remember me by. Thinks he’s being romantic or kind. Ego enhances his performance. When it dawns on her later, she’s furious or crushed…unless her ego is equally overinflated and the thought never even occurs to her. You guys know what I’m talking about.”
“Right.” Burch finally spoke up when nobody else did. “Not that I ever was the goodbye guy.” He paused. “But it mighta happened to me.”
“Sure,” Riley said. “Goodbye sex isn’t gender specific.”
“I’ll buy that,” Stone said. “Say Charles Terrell knew this was the last time they’d have sex. Was it becau
se he was about to dump her for somebody else? And then, before he could dump her, he accidentally caught fire?”
They exchanged skeptical glances.
“Or did he know he was gonna catch fire?” Nazario said.
“Or that somebody was?” Riley said.
“He might have felt threatened, knew somebody wanted to kill him,” Stone said. “You know, like soldiers going to war. The night before the big battle, everybody feels the need to get it on. A biological urge, survival of the species.”
“The son of a bitch is alive,” Burch said.
Riley sighed. “My other news is about a press conference this afternoon. Stone’s the star attraction. You,” she told him, “are taking the Meadows case public.”
“We can’t,” he protested in disbelief. “There is nothing we can release!”
“Right.” Burch looked incredulous. “You gotta be shitting us. No good reason for it. It ain’t like the public is clamoring for information. What’s the point?”
“I think the killer’s in Miami. I can feel it.” Stone shook his head. “He’d be tipped off. The FBI would be pissed off. They wanted it all kept quiet.”
“The press will convene at four, in the conference room adjacent to PIO,” Riley went on briskly, as though deaf to their objections. “Crime Stoppers will offer a five-thousand-dollar reward for information. You’ll ask for help from the public. Say nothing that will hurt the case. Try to make us look good. Don’t embarrass us.”
“No way!” Stone sprang to his feet. “I won’t do it.”
Riley got to her feet, eyes intense, the grenade gripped tightly in her right hand. “You will do it. That’s a direct order.” She tossed her head. “Look at the bright side, Stone. You wanted the opportunity to work full-time on Meadows. You’ve got it now.”
“But ask the public for tips and they inundate you with hundreds, a majority of ’em wacko, most, if not all, worthless.” Burch was red in the face. “But some poor asshole in this room will have to check out each and every one. You have to be careful what you ask for or it blows up in your face.”
Cold Case Squad Page 11