Love Kills

by Edna Buchanan

  It was a smooth transition, switching gears from a deeply personal matter back to business without a blink. He had to hand it to her. Probably too good for Kendall McDonald. What had the guy been thinking?

  “Spencer York’s fifteen minutes of fame in the press might have attracted new clients,” she said. “More loving fathers eager to have their kids snatched by a lunatic who would Mace and knock down their mothers in front of them. He needed money to survive and to finance his legal defense. Despite his arrest, he probably wouldn’t have turned down a job. Maybe he tried a snatch that went bad.”

  “Jeez,” Burch said. “As a parent, I can’t imagine what those guys were thinking.”

  “You don’t have to be a parent,” she said sharply, “to imagine the trauma to those kids.” She chewed her upper lip and stared at him accusingly as she toyed with a metal paperweight in the shape of a hand grenade. “And the mothers. Imagine what they thought, seeing that nutcase escape with their children.”

  “It’d make anybody crazy,” Burch said quickly. “York claimed he snatched more than two hundred kids over the years.”

  “Which means that any twelve-year-old he took five years earlier would have been old enough to fire a gun by the time he was killed,” she said.

  “Hell, we see fourteen-year-olds shooting people every day. Some are better marksmen than cops you and I both know.”

  “It certainly widens the suspect pool,” she said.

  “Funny,” he said. “Usually, the richer the murder victim, the more suspects there are. Money always makes people want you dead. But this guy was dirt poor and everybody still wanted to kill him.”

  “We have our work cut out for us.”

  “Montero’s writing a story. When news that York’s dead hits the street, it may shake something loose.”

  “Don’t count on it,” she said. “Input from the reading public might help once in a blue moon, but nothing beats solid detective work. Say hello to Connie for me. How are the kids?”

  “Good. Great. This case makes me want to go home and hug ’em all. You know that me and Connie have had our ups and downs through the years, even separated for a while, came thisclose to a split,” he said, demonstrating with his thumb and index finger. “Now we’re good, but even if things had gone south, I still can’t fathom how anybody could hire York. Can you believe that Corso thinks the Custody Crusader wasn’t all that bad, even had some good ideas?” Burch shook his head as he turned to leave.

  “What do you expect?” Riley said. “He’s stuck on stupid, a longtime nominee for jerkhood.”

  Burch glanced back after punching the elevator button. Riley had picked up the framed photo of herself with Major McDonald. He paused, hoping to see her fling it into her wastepaper basket. She didn’t. He sighed as the doors yawned open.

  Pete Nazario didn’t go right home. Instead, he swung by the home of Colin Dyson, the founder and former president of Fathers First.

  Dyson operated an insurance agency and lived in a well-landscaped Mediterranean-style corner home in upscale Miami Shores. Expensive cars—a midnight-blue Jaguar sedan and a pearl-gray BMW convertible—sat in the driveway.

  The man who answered the door was husky, dark-haired, and middle-aged, with ferociously shaggy eyebrows. He wore shirtsleeves, dress slacks, and a gold Rolex. He held a half-empty glass.

  Nazario smelled liquor on his breath, but the man wasn’t drunk. The detective introduced himself, flashed his badge, and asked for Colin Dyson.

  “What now?” the man barked impatiently.

  “Colin Dyson?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  Nazario handed the man his card. “Are you Colin Dyson, former president of Fathers First?”

  A wary flame flickered in the coal-black eyes beneath the shaggy unibrow. The man slipped quickly out onto the shadowy porch, just as a woman’s voice inside sang out, “Who is it, honey?”

  “Nobody. A salesman,” he called back sharply, and closed the door firmly behind him.

  “The group disbanded six–seven years ago,” Dyson said. He shrugged, but his voice was tight, eyes intense.

  Nazario blinked. The man’s demeanor had escalated from guarded to hostile in a heartbeat. He clearly had no intention of inviting the detective inside for a chat.

  “We need some information,” Nazario said.

  “About what?” The tone was arrogant.

  “The night Spencer York, the Custody Crusader, spoke to your organization.”

  Dyson stared at the detective for a long moment, full lips parted, his expression odd. “That was a long time ago.”

  Nazario nodded in agreement. “Nine years. I’m with the Cold Case Squad.”

  The woman called out again, from just inside the door. “Dy? Who’s out there?”

  Her voice galvanized him into action. “I’m not talking to you without a lawyer. Get the hell off my property.” Dyson spat out the words and ducked back into the house. The heavy door slammed so hard that Nazario’s ears rang. He heard the deadbolt’s quick metallic snap and then the woman’s querulous voice.

  Nazario picked up his card, which Dyson had dropped, slid it under the door, and returned to his car, parked out front. He saw the drapes inside move as someone watched him settle into the driver’s seat.

  He turned the key in the ignition and drove away. Slowly, he circled the block, then parked down the street. Twelve minutes later, Dyson left home in a hurry, slamming the front door behind him.

  The big man stood for a moment as though sniffing the air. He scanned his surroundings and, satisfied that he wasn’t being watched, tore out of the driveway in the Jaguar. He didn’t slow down at all for the stop sign at the end of the block.

  Nazario followed, staying several car lengths back as Dyson cut off other motorists, swerved from lane to lane without signaling, and accelerated through intersections as traffic signals changed.

  “Dios mío,” the detective murmured. Even he, known for driving as though he were being chased by the devil, found it difficult to keep Dyson in sight.

  He was game. He would have followed right through the last red light that Dyson ran, but had to hit the brakes to avoid T-boning a huge elongated intercity bus that had lumbered into the intersection.

  Nazario stood on the brakes. They came so close to colliding that he could see the horrified expressions on passengers’ faces as they saw his oncoming car skidding toward them, brakes screeching.

  He feared he’d lost Dyson, but then he spotted the Jaguar parked in a space outside a small commercial building just west of Biscayne Boulevard: GOLD AND GRAY, ATTORNEYS AT LAW.

  Nazario smiled.

  He smiled all the way home to Casa de Luna. The annual property taxes on this multimillion-dollar chunk of Miami Beach real estate exceeded his yearly income, but he was a lucky man. Wealthy residents, fond of traveling but concerned about home security, sometimes offer a policeman free lodging in the servants’ quarters, guest cottage, or garage apartment. The owner enjoys peace of mind and the policeman a rent-free place to stay.

  As the historic old mansions disappear, falling to high-rises, hotels, and loft apartments, such offers are increasingly rare and coveted by cops who are divorced, or separated—as Burch was, when he first occupied this sanctuary—or single, like Nazario. When Burch and Connie reconciled, Nazario inherited the digs at Casa de Luna.

  He rode herd on the landscaper, the twice-a-week maid, the car washer, and the pool man. Should a hurricane threaten, his job was to secure the premises. Each night he checked the house, the alarm system, and the doors and windows. Not long ago he also wound up riding herd on the owner’s sad, bad, errant daughter, Fleur. A small price to pay for this retreat.

  Casa de Luna, old Spanish-style architecture, elegant and graceful, with bubbling fountains, lavish gardens, and a pristine infinity-edge pool, was built in the 1920s but had since been renovated, updated, restored, and refurbished, inside and out, no expense spared.

  The ow
ner, W. P. Adair, Wall Street–rich, robust, and full of life for a man in his sixties, was currently traveling in Europe with a young trophy wife, his third or fourth, a knockout named Shelley.

  Nazario parked his car in the fragrant shadows of the long driveway, drank in the salty breeze off the sea, just across the Intracoastal Waterway and Collins Avenue, and climbed the stairs to the apartment above the four-car garage.

  Some might think it small—it had originally been built for a live-in housekeeper—but it was actually larger and more comfortable than many places the detective had lived.

  Not bad for a Pedro Pan kid who arrived alone on a flight from Cuba. He never saw his parents again and spent the rest of his childhood shuttled between orphanages and foster homes all over the country before finding his way back to Miami as a young man. He never had, or required, many possessions. He was accustomed to living simply. And this was by far the best place he’d ever lived.

  Not bad.

  He thought about Colin Dyson, racing to his lawyer’s office in his big Jaguar, and smiled again.

  Tonight he felt richer than W. P. Adair.

  “Sounds like we got lucky.” Lieutenant K. C. Riley wore a wide grin at the morning briefing.

  “The guy’s guilty of something,” Corso said.

  “Dyson has a record,” Stone reported from his computer terminal. “Domestic battery, traffic, and a DUI. No major felonies.”

  “Not yet,” Corso said, cheerfully rubbing his hands.

  “His lawyer just called.” Nazario hung up the phone. “He’s bringing Dyson in.”

  “You were right, Pete,” K. C. Riley murmured, when Dyson and his lawyer, Franklin Gray, stepped off the elevator. “He does have a unibrow—you know, like Frida Kahlo.”

  “Frida who?” Corso said. “You talking about that new female recruit in—”

  “Shhh,” she said.

  Dyson looked subdued in an expensive suit and tie.

  “I read the newspaper this morning about the York case, the homicide you’re investigating,” said Gray, well known as a high-priced and aggressive criminal defense attorney. “I advised my client, who is guilty of absolutely nothing, that under the circumstances it would be in his best interests to cooperate.”

  They gathered in the conference room with a tape recorder on the table.

  “I was stupid,” Dyson sheepishly admitted.

  “We’re interested in the night York spoke at the Fathers First meeting,” Nazario said.

  “Look.” Dyson turned both palms up, the open gesture of a man with nothing to hide. “To our group of screwed-over fathers, York was like a visiting celebrity. He’d gone to jail for the cause. He might be going back. They gave the guy a standing ovation. There was a lot of anger and passion in the room that night.”

  “So they treated York like their patron saint,” Corso said, glancing at Burch.

  “Right. But if any crime was committed”—Dyson’s forefinger jabbed the air—“I was the victim. That son of a bitch ran off with my money. He ripped me off to finance his getaway.”

  “How so?” Nazario asked

  “I hired him to snatch my kid, Colin Junior. He never grabbed the kid. He never did a goddamn thing.”

  The detectives exchanged glances.

  “My ex-wife moved to Georgia—Savannah—with my only kid. He was eleven. I had visitation, but I had a life, a fiancée, a business to run. How am I gonna fly to Savannah every other weekend? Or fly him down? Impossible.”

  Fathers First met in their usual place that night, a hotel banquet room near the airport. The menu never varied: steak, baked potatoes, and chocolate cake for dessert. They paid York a modest $200 speaker’s fee. He delivered a rousing fire-and-brimstone, half-hour, give-’em-hell talk and then participated in another thirty minutes of Q and A with his audience. Afterward, they passed the hat for donations to help defray his expenses.

  “Everybody kicked in, tens, twenties, hundred-dollar bills,” Dyson said. “We had a packed house. York wound up with a paper bag full of cash.”

  Several members then gathered at the bar and bought York drinks.

  “A few of us were interested in his services,” Dyson said. “I offered to drive him back to his room.”

  “And where was that?” Burch said.

  “Some motel over on Southwest Seventh Avenue.”

  “Remember the name?”

  He squinted, brow furrowed. “Sea Spray, Sea Bird, Sea something…Had a little lounge off the main lobby. We had a few drinks and talked. He said he had to stay a little more low key, operate under the radar, because of his pending case, but he was up for it, more than willing. I agreed to pay him five thousand dollars, two thousand down and the rest, plus expenses, when I got my kid. I gave him pictures of my ex-wife and my son, and their Savannah address and handed him two thousand bucks that night. Cash. Never saw him again.”

  “You always carry that much money?” Riley asked.

  “No, but after I read the news story that morning, I took it with me just in case. It was stupid to give it to him. I guess I got carried away by the excitement of the meeting, and the Jack Daniel’s I was drinking probably didn’t help my judgment. I couldn’t wait to see the look on my ex-wife’s face when she got knocked on her ass and we took the kid.”

  “When did you realize York was gone?” Burch said.

  “He told me to petition for custody here in Miami-Dade first. I went to see my lawyer the next day, to start the ball rolling. York was supposed to call. He didn’t. I had some questions, but he didn’t answer the phone in his room for a couple of days. I finally drove over there. The clerk said he didn’t check out; he skipped out, still owing them money. I kept expecting him to surface. But a couple weeks later they said he’d jumped bond. That’s when I knew I’d been ripped.”

  “Sure you didn’t hunt him down for payback?” Burch said.

  “Hell, no. I never would’ve been able to get custody of my kid if I got arrested.”

  “Did you get custody of your boy?” Nazario asked.

  Dyson’s face screwed up in an expression of disgust. “Yeah. Biggest mistake of my life. That little bastard cost me a goddamn fortune. Lawyers up the wazoo. And what did it get me? A kid who didn’t appreciate a goddamn thing I did for ’im. Started running away at twelve, smashed up my car when he was fourteen, stole money from me, always in and out of trouble, and when he was nineteen he slept with his stepmother, the bitch. I threw ’em both outa the house.”

  “How old was the stepmom?” Burch asked.

  “Twenty-four. What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he demanded angrily.

  “Just curious.” Burch sighed. This was not what he had hoped to hear.

  “You ever own a gun?” Nazario asked.

  Dyson hesitated.

  “Don’t answer that,” his lawyer said. “My client has been completely forthcoming. When he saw the newspaper and realized what you’re investigating, he wanted to put everything on the table. Mr. Dyson should not be treated like a suspect.”

  “Did you physically harm Spencer York in any way?” Nazario asked thoughtfully.

  “Nah. I would have loved to rip him limb from limb”—Dyson shrugged—“but I couldn’t find him.”

  “Where’s your son now?” Burch asked.

  “Beats me. I see him in my neighborhood, I call the cops.”

  “How lovely,” Riley said later. “What a delightful cast of characters. Is there anybody who wouldn’t have loved to kill Spencer York?”

  “Dyson said he’ll supply us with the names of the others in the group,” Nazario said. “He tossed the records but said he has an old mailing list. He also agreed to take a ride with us to see if he can point out the Sea-something motel if we have no luck finding it.”

  “The bad news,” Riley said, “is that York went from flat broke that morning to having about three thousand cash in his pocket, according to Dyson. Which means we can add every low-life robber, sneak thief, con ma
n, and mugger in Miami to our list of suspects. If York was flashing that roll around, it could have been anybody.”

  “How ironic would that be,” Burch said, “if the shooter was some stranger who didn’t even know who York was? That would really leave our case FUBAR.”

  “Fucked up beyond all recognition,” Corso said, nodding.

  “Unlikely,” Riley said thoughtfully. “Most robbers who shoot strangers just leave the bodies where they fall, they don’t bother to hide them. But just in case,” she told Stone, “access records and print out a list of all the armed robberies, known suspects, and missing persons reported in that sector, along Southwest Seventh, during the three months before York disappeared and the three after. Especially in the area of his motel, if and when we find it.” She turned to Nazario. “How truthful was Dyson?”

  He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “He wasn’t lying when he said he wanted to rip York limb from limb or to see his ex-wife’s face when they snatched his son. And he was truthful about giving York the money. He’s so hostile, the rest is hard to read. Last night I really thought he might be the one,” Nazario said, his spaniel eyes sad.

  Riley frowned. “Let’s not rule him out yet. His son was old enough then to remember if he met York. Why don’t you find Colin Junior and see what he knows.”

  BRITT

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I slid my morning paper out of its condomlike sheath: two bylines. Not bad for my first day back. I couldn’t be accused of not doing my job—yet. The missing newlyweds had hit the front page, probably because of our exclusive photos. The wedding shot had caught the couple surrounded by well-wishers in a joyously exuberant moment as they left the church in their first public appearance as husband and wife.

  The fate of the Custody Crusader was keyed to out front and led the local page.