You Only Die Twice

by Edna Buchanan

  “The case wasn’t ours,” he said. “But I gotta find out in a hurry. Gotta build me a file. Think you could slip me copies of all the stories that ran in the News?”

  “Sure,” I said. “No problem.” Providing old news clips to cops is not newsroom policy, but it isn’t police policy to personally deliver tips on murder cases to reporters in the dead of night. Life is a two-way street.

  “I’ll have them for you first thing in the morning,” I promised, as he rose to leave. “Get some sleep and eat something.” I smoothed the lapels of his wrinkled jacket as he stood in the doorway. “Wear a shirt that looks good on TV, just in case. But try not to talk to any other reporters until you have to. Jeez, I hope we don’t get beat on this.”

  He looked perplexed. “What kinda shirt looks good on TV?”

  “Blue. Light blue.”

  “Hell, I don’t even know if I got me a clean shirt, much less a clean blue shirt.”

  “Sorry, I don’t do laundry.”

  “See ya, kid,” he said, his face close enough for me to smell the whiskey on his breath.

  He was several steps away when I called after him.

  “Emery?”

  He turned.

  “This is no practical joke, right? You didn’t make this one up, did you?”

  “Kid, I’m flattered you should think I’m that creative.”

  “Sorry. Shoulda known better.”

  Warm milk usually makes me drowsy but I was already wired as I dressed, even before I swallowed that first sip of lethally powerful black Cuban coffee. I took a mug full with me, knowing the News cafeteria was closed and the stuff spewed by the coffee machine undrinkable.

  Moonlight glinted off dark water as I speeded west across the causeway. The glittering city skyline beckoned as my spirits soared on the high that comes when you know that you alone have the story everybody will want. She had a name now, but the woman in the water still hid her secrets. The mystery that had swirled and eddied around her from the start had become darker and more intriguing. I wondered what was it like for a man to lose ten years and nearly his life for a murder that never took place—until now.

  I parked the T-Bird in the shadows beneath the News building and let myself in the heavy back door. Caught by the wind, it slammed like a gunshot behind me. The dark, deserted lobby was as cold and forbidding as my thoughts. The only elevator operating overnight seemed slower and more sluggish than ever. My footsteps echoed down the hall. The newsroom was empty, the library locked. I could pull up the old stories on my computer terminal, but I wanted to see the hard copies, the headlines, the pictures and the faces in them.

  I fumbled in the receptionist’s desk, searching for the key. Suddenly I froze, aware I was being watched.

  “Hold it right there!”

  A figure stepped from the shadows behind me. A boyish security guard, fingering his mace canister, his lanky body tense. He was a stranger.

  “Hi.” I breathed again in relief. “I need a key to the library. You have a set, right?”

  “Who might you be, ma’am?”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I work here. That’s my desk over there. The messy one, with all the papers on top. Who are you?”

  “Rooney D. Thomas, ma’am. News security. May I see your photo ID?”

  Impatiently, I dug it from my purse. He scrutinized the card, eyes moving to my face and back to the photo; then he focused on the small print.

  “Britt Montero!” He looked elated. “Why didn’t you say so? My fiancée is a friend of yours!”

  “Who?” I asked, uncertainly.

  “Angel. Angel Oliver.”

  Lord, no, I thought. I had met Angel, a welfare mother of seven, when she was charged with her baby daughter’s death. Doctors later discovered that a rare congenital defect had killed her and Angel was cleared, but not before her ex-husband brokered a hit on her with a homicidal teenage gang. Life was a death-defying experience every time our paths crossed. Twice we narrowly escaped being shot. The woman nearly got me killed. No matter how well-meaning, she was a headache looking for a host. Last time we spoke, she had completed a work training program and had been thrilled to tell me she’d landed a job as a News advertising department secretary, once her new baby arrived. This must be the father.

  “Oh,” I said. “I thought you were in the navy,” then bit my tongue. Was he the same man? Or some new fiancé?

  “Discharged last month,” Rooney said, beaming. “Security work is just to tide me over till I land something better, but once Angel starts, it’ll be perfect. She’ll work days, I’ll work nights, and one of us will always be home with the kids.”

  She is really coming to the News, I thought dismally.

  “Has she had the baby yet?” I asked.

  “Any day now. I’m wearing a beeper.” He grinned and patted the device clipped to his belt. “We’re getting married right after the baby comes.”

  Traditionally, I thought, such events took place in reverse order, but who was I to be picky?

  “And how’s Harry?” I smiled in spite of myself. Angel’s son Harry, age five, was my favorite.

  “A great kid. Talks about you all the time,” he said. “Claims you carry candy in your purse.”

  “Listen,” I said urgently. “I’m working on a story and need to get into the library.”

  “Sure thing.” He dug in his pocket. “I’ve got the master key.” He dangled it enticingly in front of me, with a sort of crooked, goofy grin.

  “Let’s go,” I said briskly, “and bring the key to the copy machine, too.”

  While he warmed up the copier, I pulled the clip files on Robert Jeffrey Jordan, better known as R. J., and his beautiful wife, Kaithlin.

  Filed by date, the stories read like a novel. I would write the next chapter and hoped I’d get to write the ending, too. I sat at a librarian’s desk and started at the beginning.

  R. J. Jordan was the scion of a pioneer family that established South Florida’s first trading post on the Miami River before the turn of the last century. The Jordans bought pelts from the Indians who paddled downstream in canoes and sold supplies to early settlers. One hundred years later, the trading post had grown into a hugely successful department store chain that sprawled across seven southern states.

  R. J. was tall and handsome, a football hero and a party animal, according to the early clips: expelled from one prep school, suspended from another. A tragic teenage car crash had killed a passenger in his new Corvette and gravely injured four teens in a Camaro. Only R. J. walked away unscathed. He led a charmed life. Despite allegations of drinking and drag racing, he was never charged. He and several fraternity brothers also escaped accusations of a sexual nature against them after a wild party on the University of Miami campus.

  Everything the bad-boy darling of Miami society did, from piloting his own plane to mountain climbing to escorting Miss USA to the annual Miss Universe ball, made the newspapers.

  The most eligible of bachelors, he romanced beautiful and well-known women. His marriage broke countless hearts, although his young bride’s story warmed the cockles of the women’s-page writers. Kaithlin Warren first caught his eye when she worked part-time at Jordan’s cosmetics counter during the Christmas season. She was only sixteen, the child of a hard-working widow who had raised her alone in a modest apartment. R. J. was twice her age.

  Four years later their nuptials, the “wedding of the year,” took place at the picturesque Plymouth Congregational Church. A reception for three hundred followed at the swank Surf Club. Jordan’s prominent parents said they were thrilled and elated that he had settled down at last.

  The bride was radiant at the center of a group photo on the society page. R. J. smiled, rugged in a tux. The bride’s mother wore the only face without a smile. Severely dressed and clutching a crumpled handkerchief, Reva Warren looked older than R. J.’s parents, and her pained expression was that of somebody just kicked in the ankle. Tears, I thought. Only natural. My mot
her would weep in sheer relief if I ever married.

  Rooney startled me again, his awkward silhouette filling the doorway.

  “Machine’s all warmed up,” he said jauntily, and sat down across from me. “You should hear how excited the kids are ’bout the wedding. Harry wants to carry the rings. The twins are scattering rose petals, and Misty’s gonna be a bridesmaid. Won’t be a real big affair, but we want you to be there.”

  How can they keep it small? I wondered. Angel’s kids are a crowd.

  “Can you copy these clips for me, while I go through the rest? Two of each. Okay?”

  He hesitated, gray eyes uncertain. “One of my responsibilities is to prevent unauthorized persons from coming in after hours to use the copy machines. Am I authorized?”

  “Raise your right hand,” I said. “I’m deputizing you to officially assist me on a story.”

  “’Kay,” he said, doubtfully. “I’ll finish my rounds, just take five minutes, then I’ll be right back to help you out.”

  I sorted the stories I wanted for my file and for Rychek’s into a separate stack as I read. A business-page writer reported that the groom’s father, Conrad Jordan, had put R. J. in charge of the chain’s flagship downtown Miami store shortly after the wedding. He apparently hoped the responsibility would commit his son to the family enterprise.

  Instead, subsequent stories indicated, it seemed to be Kaithlin who developed a dedication to the business. At age twenty-five, she became the store manager.

  I remembered my mother’s praise for the woman’s business acumen, style, and panache. Kaithlin Jordan blossomed into a sleek and stunning executive with leadership qualities and a commitment to civic responsibility in subsequent stories and pictures. She founded a mentoring program to help inner-city single mothers get off welfare by teaching them skills, then sending them to job interviews attired in business suits donated by the store. She personally saw to it that they were provided with matching accessories and confidence-boosting cosmetic makeovers. Who knows what more she might have accomplished had her success not been cut short, along with her life.

  A gossip column item reported the first hint of trouble six years into the marriage, a trial separation while the couple “worked out their difficulties.” A Jordan’s spokesperson confirmed that Kaithlin would remain executive manager of the flagship store and continue to serve on the board of directors, along with both R. J. and his father.

  The marriage careened downhill. Kaithlin and her mother obtained restraining orders, alleging threats of physical violence. Soon after, R. J. was stopped for drunk driving, fought the cops, and was arrested. A gossip columnist reported that Kaithlin met with a well-known local divorce lawyer.

  A business-page writer broke the story about scandalous financial irregularities at the flagship Jordan’s. If it was embezzlement, it was big: three million dollars unaccounted for. R. J. and Kaithlin had been questioned, as was the chief financial officer he had hired and other executives.

  Then Kaithlin Jordan vanished. Her mother and her best friend reported her missing on a Sunday night, February 17, 1991. The circumstances were ominous.

  R. J. and Kaithlin had flown off together for a romantic weekend getaway, an apparent attempt at reconciliation. He was at the controls of his twin-engine Beechcraft King Air, their destination the Daytona 500. NASCAR races seemed an unusual choice for a romantic reunion, particularly after the couple’s storybook Parisian honeymoon, but there is no accounting for taste, and R. J. always felt the need for speed. Racing was a passion.

  Kaithlin’s mother and Amy Hastings, the missing woman’s best friend since kindergarten, said Kaithlin had expressed doubts about the trip but still hoped to salvage their six-year marriage. Kaithlin called Amy that Sunday. She said R. J. was angry, violent, and out of control. The trip had been a terrible mistake. All she wanted was to go home to Miami “in one piece.” Amy offered to drive the 250 miles to Daytona to rescue her friend, she said, but Kaithlin declined, saying she’d be all right.

  But she was weeping an hour later in a call to her mother. She sounded frightened. “R. J. wants to kill me!” Her mother tried to calm her but they were abruptly cut off. Terrified, unable to recall the name of the motel, the desperate mother dialed 911. Told to contact the proper jurisdiction, she phoned Daytona police, who left her on hold. Eventually, after being transferred from number to number, she was advised to call again if she did not hear from her daughter by Monday.

  The couple had planned to return to Miami that night. The mother called Opa-Locka Airport. R. J.’s mechanic said the Beechcraft had landed an hour earlier. R. J. had already gone. Kaithlin? He hadn’t seen her.

  Reva Warren finally reached R. J. at home that night. When she asked for her daughter, her son-in-law lashed out with a string of epithets, she said, and slammed down the telephone.

  She called police again.

  The next morning, the Daytona police checked the motel room occupied by Kaithlin and R. J. and made an ominous discovery. A shattered mirror. Signs of a struggle. The telephone ripped out of the wall. Bloodstained bedclothes and a missing shower curtain.

  The prosecution later hypothesized that Kaithlin, dead or fatally injured, was wrapped in the shower curtain, concealed in the trunk of R. J.’s rental car, and driven to the airport hangar where his plane waited.

  If she was aboard, dead or alive, when he took off from Daytona, she was not when he landed in Miami. Airport witnesses, including his own mechanic, said R. J. arrived solo. He was upset, they said, and had stalked off, carrying only a single suitcase.

  Police found traces of blood on the fuselage. Hounded by police and reporters, R. J. insisted the weekend was peaceful, the marriage patched up. He denied quarreling; the scratches on his face and arms had been accidentally inflicted by Kaithlin’s fingernails as they’d wrestled playfully.

  Kaithlin had left the plane to buy soft drinks from a vending machine as they were about to take off for Miami, he explained. She never came back. Impatient, he went to find her. Even had her paged, he said. When she did not respond, he flew home, alone and furious.

  Kaithlin’s luggage, name tags inside, was found the next day, broken open alongside U.S. 9 west of Cape Canaveral. Her scattered belongings, torn and bloodstained, were identified by her mother and her friend Amy.

  R. J. reluctantly conceded to police that he lied initially. They had quarreled, but she was fine when she left for the sodas. Police found no record that Kaithlin had been paged at the airport. Under siege, R. J. admitted he lied about that, too. But he never hurt her, he insisted; she just walked off. Detectives computed the time between takeoff in R. J.’s Beechcraft, with a range of a thousand miles and a cruising speed of 175 mph, and his Miami arrival, then plotted the areas over which he could have flown. Unfortunately they included Ocala National Forest, a thousand miles of ocean, the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, and the vast reaches of Lake Okeechobee. R. J. had filed no flight plan. Police aircraft equipped with heat sensors designed to detect decomposing human remains flew low over the forest. The Coast Guard was alerted that the body might have been dumped at sea. Authorities in more than a dozen counties between Daytona and Miami-Dade launched a major search for a body.

  “Hell, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” a detective said in one story. “He could have landed on any back road or at any ranch or farmland airstrip and put her in a shallow grave.”

  As the furor mounted, R. J.’s parents issued a statement. Their son’s marriage had “hit a rough spot, which all couples experience at one point or another, but he would never harm Kaithlin, whom we all love dearly.” They offered a $50,000 reward for her safe return. In public they proclaimed R. J.’s innocence, in private they hired South Florida’s best criminal defense attorney.

  “On advice of counsel” R. J. refused to speak to police any further. He’d made too many damning admissions already. But he did talk to the press. His attempt at damage control backfired when his tempe
r surfaced. Swearing he had not harmed his missing wife, he departed from his lawyered script to send her a message.

  “Stop playing these childish games,” he snarled, “and come the hell home!” He glared into the camera lights and refused to answer questions. He looked strained, scared, and guilty as hell in the accompanying photo.

  Women’s groups boycotted Jordan’s and the women she mentored demonstrated at the downtown store, chanting “Justice for Kaithlin Jordan!”

  When hope of finding her body faded, police and prosecutors took their case to a Volusia County grand jury. Jurors promptly indicted R. J. on first-degree murder charges. Police watched his plane and caught R. J. attempting to take off at midnight. In his duffel bag was $75,000 in cash, his passport, and a handgun.

  Held without bond, he sat in a Volusia County jail cell for five months before trial. Though prosecutors warned they would seek the death penalty, R. J. refused a deal, a guilty plea in exchange for a life sentence. Insisting he was being railroaded, he trusted a jury with his life.

  Our daily trial coverage was reported by Howie Janowitz, who was still with the News today. He had captured all the drama, the color, the detail.

  Jury selection experts hired by the defense apparently considered R. J.’s charm and dark good looks appealing to women. They accepted eight, along with four men and two alternates.

  Eunice Jordan, R. J.’s elegant mother, wore high-fashion black to court every day. The victim’s mother, red-eyed, fingernails chewed to the quick, had to be warned frequently by the judge to control her emotions.

  A powerful witness, Reva Warren focused a malevolent stare on the defendant as she described R. J.’s abuse of her daughter and what happened when she tried to intervene.

  “He threatened to kill us both,” she wept on the stand.