Love Kills

by Edna Buchanan

  “Sure,” I said, “with you it’s always an accident.” K. C. Riley snatched up both their guns.

  She intended to handcuff Holt to a bathroom pipe but I protested. We were marooned and I had to use the facilities too often to share the space. She cuffed him to a pipe under the kitchen sink instead.

  The rain began to let up.

  I elevated Lacey’s legs and cradled his head. He seemed as bewildered as I felt.

  “Why?” I asked again.

  “We had enough money. I begged him to stop. But he always said, One more, just one more. He promised we’d never have to work again, I could write my novel…”

  “How…When did you and Holt hook up?”

  His smile was a painful grimace. “You guessed it a long time ago, Britt. I had trouble keeping a straight face when you kept saying what a good actor he was. We met in an acting class the year I spent in New York. He knew at first sight. It was all new for me.”

  “And Suzanne?”

  His smile was sad. “We were misfits, best friends, always together. She was clingy, so needy. Once I had a taste of life in New York with Marsh, I could never go back to our old relationship in Baton Rouge. I tried. But she won that writing contest, got so much attention. I couldn’t help but be jealous. Marsh was looking for another wife. He suggested her, and I agreed.” He winced. “It hurts,” he gasped. “Help me, Britt. I don’t want to die here, not like this.”

  “We have to take him down the mountain to a hospital,” I told Riley.

  “Too dangerous,” she said. “In flash floods, the water always wins.”

  “It’s starting to recede, according to the radio,” I argued. “We can’t wait. His heart rate is way up. He’s so pale. His stomach looks distended; he must be bleeding internally. If we just get him down to the paved road, to a roadblock. Medics can stabilize him and get him out.”

  Marsh Holt joined the argument. “Please,” he said, a sob in his voice. “Get us the hell out of here. If you don’t, Johnny will die and I’ll be crippled for life.”

  He sat on the kitchen floor, cuffed to the pipe, pressing a blood-soaked towel to his slashed heel with his free hand.

  “Don’t let him die,” he pleaded, tragic and grief stricken, his usual act.

  Maybe this time it was real.

  By morning the rain had dwindled to a light drizzle. It took the combined strength of all three of us to move Lacey out to the car and make him as comfortable as possible in the back of the Range Rover. Nancy would drive, with K.C. riding shotgun, keeping an eye on the prisoners. I settled in the backseat with Lacey’s head on my knees.

  Holt sat in the space behind us, clutching the caked towels he used to apply pressure to the still-bleeding wound in his heel. My knife blade had apparently severed tendons and ligaments. He was unable to walk, and the open gash spurted blood at the slightest movement. “I have to keep pressure on it or I’ll bleed to death,” he protested, when Riley reached to cuff him behind his back.

  “Standard procedure,” she said flatly. “Prisoners are not transported without cuffs.”

  “He can’t run,” I argued impatiently. “He can’t even walk. What could he possibly do? He’ll bleed out all over the car if you cuff him. All he wants is medical help for Lacey and himself.”

  Riley grimly removed the cuffs. “You sure you want to do this, Britt? I’d be more comfortable waiting here for medics.”

  “Stop arguing! Start driving!” Holt cried urgently, pressing another bloody towel to his heel.

  “Shut up,” Riley told him, her voice cold. “You have no vote. Try anything and I promise to shoot you dead. You make one move, and I’ll dump you by the side of the road in handcuffs. The medics can look for you later. Got that?”

  Holt nodded.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “All right.” She chewed her lower lip. “Let’s roll.”

  So we rolled, despite her reluctance, all of us stressed, sleep deprived, and on edge.

  We’d gone just a few miles when we spotted a police helicopter, flying low. Nancy and Riley waved. The chopper hovered overhead, as the pilot signaled us to proceed down to the main road.

  “They gave us a go,” Riley said. “Either the road is open or they have a place to land.” The chopper headed south down the mountain and disappeared behind the trees.

  “Hear that?” I told Lacey, who’d been drifting in and out of consciousness. “You’ll be in a hospital soon. Hang in there.”

  I wasn’t sure if he heard me.

  But Holt did and was suddenly talkative. “Nancy? Sweet darlin’? They’re lying. You know it. Don’t let them poison your mind against me. How can you believe them? They’re jealous women. Think about it, Nancy Lee. Baby. Sweetheart. Only you know what we have. You’re my wife. Listen to me.”

  His words resonated with a desperate sincerity. The raw anguish in his voice was heart-wrenching. Marshall Weatherholt, trained actor.

  We had warned Nancy, told her not to listen, but she nearly skidded off the road when he spoke her name. When he began the endearments she began to watch him in the rearview mirror. They made eye contact, which made me nervous.

  “Okay,” I said abruptly. “Pull over, Nancy. It’s time I drove.”

  Riley nodded her approval.

  Lacey, holding my hand, opened his eyes, in protest I thought. His lips moved and I leaned over to hear what he was trying to say.

  “Suzanne,” he murmured, then faded out, his pupils fixed and dilated, his open eyes empty. Gone, just like that.

  I sighed, and looked up at Riley, but she was focused on a hairpin turn in the road ahead, watching for a safe place for Nancy to pull over.

  From behind me, Holt saw everything. He knew.

  With a furious cry, he lunged forward across the seats, caught Nancy by the hair, and jerked her head back. She screamed. Holt cursed. I rolled Lacey’s body off the seat and kicked Holt in the side, in the groin, in the ribs, as hard as I could with both feet. He kept his stubborn grip on Nancy’s hair as the car fishtailed all over the road.

  “Let go.” Riley pointed the Glock at his head. “Let go, now!”

  Holt didn’t. The car careened sideways and began to tip over as though in slow motion.

  The explosion hurt my ears as the car rolled, then rolled over again. I felt the shock waves as blood spattered everywhere in a red sheen.

  I thought of Miami and home as the car rolled again and again.

  I opened my eyes, saw blood and brain tissue, wondered if it was mine, then blacked out.

  When I woke up, the car had finally stopped moving. I saw open sky beyond the shattered windshield, a strange sky with a pale orange sun skirting the horizon.

  Nancy’s screams assured me that I was still alive. So did the fierce pain that made me wince, double over, and cry out.

  No, no, I thought. Please. This is too early. Too early for this baby. I remembered Onnie’s words, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and I repeated them, over and over.

  I don’t know how long it was before I was lifted from the overturned car on a backboard and felt the whirlwind of chopper blades. I saw Sam Stone’s face and heard his words of encouragement and, disoriented, believed I was back in Miami.

  Strangers’ voices discussed my broken shoulder, possible head injuries, and a fetal monitor. The pains grew surprisingly intense.

  “Don’t worry, Britt, it’s all right,” K. C. Riley said. She held my hand.

  “I know,” I murmured. “Everything will be all right now.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful to the brilliant star hustler Jack Horkheimer and to the supremely gifted Paul Jacobs, star of the concert stage and the Juilliard School.

  New friend J. Jason Wentworth of Fairbanks, Alaska, generously shared his world for this book. So did my old buddies Robert Tralins and Miami Beach super-chef Steve Waldman.

  Special thanks go to the world’s best pathologists, Dr. Joseph H. Davis, Miami
-Dade County Chief Medical Examiner Emeritus, and Dr. Stephen J. Nelson, Chairman of the Florida Medical Examiners Commission and Chief Medical Examiner for the 10th District of Florida. I’m also indebted to the renowned forensic odontologist Dr. Richard Souviron for his help and friendship.

  Attorney Joel Hirshhorn, the Reverend Garth Thompson, and my good friend Renee Turolla continue to do their best to keep me out of trouble. It’s no easy job.

  The usual suspects, Frank and Angela Natoli, Ann Hughes, Mary Finn, Kay Spitzer, Lloyd Hough, Dale Kitchell, Cynnie Cagney, and Arnold Markowitz, came through, as always, when I needed them. So did Patricia Keen and Howard Kleinberg, along with all the other sharp-eyed, quick-witted, Cuban-coffee-drinking Sesquipedalians.

  Raul J. Diaz, former homicide major, private eye, and true soldier for justice, was patient and generous with his time and words. Again.

  Two razor-sharp young Miami journalists, Andrea Torres and Stephanie Garry, helped me during the writing of this book. As did Glenn Lane, William Dishong, Norry Lynch, Bart Wever, Marie Reilly, Jerelle Farnsworth, Colleen Rudnet, Cristina Concepcion, and Miami Police Public Information Officer Hermina Jacobson.

  My heartfelt thanks go to my longtime friend and agent, Michael Congdon, and to the rare and wonderful Mitchell Ivers, an editor who can be trusted.

  And a special thank-you to that glamorous redhead Marilyn Lane, my chief accomplice, co-conspirator, and getaway driver.

  What a sterling cast of characters.

  The old saying is true: Friends will bail you out of jail, but good friends are sitting in the cell next to you, saying, “Damn, that was fun!”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A Pulitzer Prize–winning Miami Herald police reporter and winner of the prestigious George Polk Career Award, Edna Buchanan brings a dynamic and steamy Miami to vivid life in all of her novels. She feels both the heartbeat and the hot breath of this restless, exotic, and mercurial city. Buchanan also won the Paul Hansell Award for Distinguished Journalism from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, the Florida Bar Association Media Award, the American Bar Association Gavel Award, the David Brinkley Award from Barry University in 1988, the Miami Police Trailblazer Award, and has been honored by the Association of Police Planning, the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, and the Miami Police Department. The author of sixteen books and numerous short stories, she lives in Miami with two dogs, a herd of cats, and Benjamin, a small brown rabbit.