“Enough is enough!” he bawled as Lieutenant Riley and Assistant State Attorney Jo Salazar joined the detectives.
“What’s this?” He held the papers Salazar handed him out at arm’s length, then fumbled for his reading glasses.
“A search warrant.” Salazar introduced herself.
“Look, lady.” Edelman mopped his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief. “I don’t care who you are. These people have all got to go. I have heavy equipment coming in first thing in the morning.”
“Sorry,” she said sweetly. “That won’t be possible.”
In stifling heat, under portable floodlights fueled by a fire department generator, crime scene photographers documented the interior and exterior of the wooden chest without disturbing the bundles inside.
Hoping to find transfer evidence from whoever placed them there, technicians swabbed the parts of the box that might have been handled, seeking fingerprints and possible DNA evidence. They also processed the shelf that held it and the wall behind it. Due to the intense heat buildup, they were forced to take frequent breaks.
Finally, rubber-gloved techs carefully lifted the box, secured it inside a huge zippered pouch, and transported it to the medical examiner’s office. Photographers and technicians continued to process the space where the chest had been.
“Stay with it,” Burch told Nazario. “Let’s just hope they find a date on some a those newspapers they’re wrapped in and that it’s not recent.”
Like a mourner following a hearse, Nazario trailed the morgue wagon to One Bob Hope Road, the Miami–Dade County medical examiner’s complex. An attendant logged in the wooden box and assigned a case number to the tiny known occupant.
The detective watched them shoot more photographs, then followed the wooden box to the X-ray room.
The old X-ray machine had recently been replaced by a new top-of the-line, computerized, digital scanning X-ray machine with excellent resolution and a twenty-one-inch display screen.
The moment of truth, Nazario thought as the chief medical examiner hit the switch.
Nazario held his breath as the outline of the box appeared on the screen. The image revealed the metal hinges on the lid, the broken lock, and inside, rows of tiny skulls, rib cages, femurs, and arm bones.
“We have multiple bodies here,” the chief medical examiner told his assistant. “We need six more case numbers, consecutive to the first, for a total of seven.”
Nazario sighed.
The process was painstaking.
Each wrapped bundle yielded the image of a tiny human being.
Technicians reexamined the lid of the makeshift coffin again, for fingerprints and DNA. The box’s interior was photographed again before the first bundle was removed. Still wrapped, the infant was x-rayed individually, then repositioned several times for X-rays from multiple angles.
Lost children, Nazario thought, watching the procedure followed again and again, seven times over. Whose babies are you? How long did you stay alone down there in the dark? Who left you there?
Laid out on two autopsy tables, each infant appeared to have been wrapped first in cloth, then in several layers of now-yellowed newspaper.
“You see a date on any of that newsprint?” Nazario asked.
“I want to wait for a forensic anthropologist before unwrapping them all,” the chief said. “Dr. Helmut Newberger over at Florida International University said he’d be here first thing in the morning.”
With tweezers, tongs, and careful gloved fingers, the stained wrappings were gently peeled away from the first bundle, revealing the tiny, shriveled, blackened face of the shrunken cadaver.
“Infants dry out faster,” the chief explained. “That’s why an infant left in a hot parked car will die when an adult would not. The smaller the body, the more rapidly it dehydrates. Since these infants were wrapped in porous materials that allowed the escape of water vapor, they dehydrated and mummified.”
“Can you determine race and sex?” Nazario asked.
“That may take a little time,” the chief said, delicately stripping away a four-inch-by-four-inch section of yellowed newspaper.
“Let’s have a better look at this.” He placed the delicate scrap beneath a bright magnifying light.
“Well,” the chief said. “No mistaking this.”
The detective peered over his shoulder. A partial headline included the initials JFK in twenty-four-point type.
“That rules out the twenties,” the chief said grimly. “A paragraph on the reverse side mentions a n event that occurred in April 1961. Isn’t that the year Pierce Nolan was killed? The plot thickens.”
“Were these infants born alive?”
“Hard to say. We should be able to determine their maturation by the contents, if any, of their stomachs and the condition of their umbilical cords. We’ll take tissue from around the navels, place it in a softening compound, then process it to make microscopic slides of the umbilical cord attachments.”
“Will it work with remains this old?”
“They do it with two-thousand-year-old mummies. No sign of trauma so far. The X-rays revealed no fractures.”
The cloth used to wrap the remains would be sent to the crime lab for possible identification.
“Don’t close that door!” Kiki yelped from inside a small interview room.
Corso swung it shut behind him.
“How’s she doing?” Burch asked.
“Pretty pissed,” Corso said. “Freaks out when you close the door. Wants to go home.”
“Don’t we all?” Burch said grimly.
“Bingo!” Stone sat at his computer terminal. “Kiki’s got a rap sheet.”
“I knew she was guilty of something the minute I laid eyes on her,” Burch said, irritated. “I knew it!”
“Had me fooled,” Corso said. “She seemed normal.”
“Everybody seems normal, till you get to know them,” Burch said.
“No major felonies,” Stone said. “Trespassing, failure to follow a police order, disorderly conduct, demonstrating without a permit, and resisting arrest without violence. Kiki also has an alias, Lisa Court.”
“How ’bout that.” Burch stepped into the small interrogation room.
“Okay, Kiki. You’ve got some ’splaining to do.”
She hugged herself as though cold, as he sat down opposite her.
“Would you leave that door open please, Sergeant?”
Her eyes and body language looked odd.
“What’s your problem?”
“Open the door.”
She wore the expression of a trapped animal. Burch leaned back in his chair, unlatched the door, and left it ajar.
“Happy? Now talk to me.”
“Why am I here? I have to leave. Where’s Lieutenant Riley? Who had that officer stop my taxicab? What right—”
“I ask the questions.” He sighed. “But for your information, when the officer radioed me that you were uncooperative, unwilling to return to the Shadows, I instructed him to bring you here.”
“But why? Did Edelman—”
“Edelman had nothing to do with it, Kiki. Tell me everything you know about what we found in the basement.”
Her stare was wide-eyed and innocent. “What did you find?”
“Kiki. It’s been a long day. Level with me. You knew what we were going to find down there, didn’t you?”
She blinked as though puzzled. “No.”
“Gimme a break. You insisted we go out there. Why?”
“You know why. To save the Shadows.”
“Oh. And you just happened to have information about a secret cellar, and knew where the door to it was located, and then you just happened to decide not to go down there with us because you knew we were about to find a goddamn dead body!”
“A body!” Her mouth dropped, her eyes widened. “Was it a homeless person?”
“No, Kiki. A body that appears to have been there for a hell of a lotta years.”
&
nbsp; “Captain Cliff Nolan?” Her posture changed and her eyes lit up. “You solved his disappearance? After nearly eighty years! Was he there all along?”
“Kiki, I’m not gonna play games with you,” he warned.
“I’m not playing games.” She checked her Swatch watch. “For Pete’s sake, I have to go home!”
Burch’s walkie crackled to life.
“Three thirty-two to four forty-one.”
“Four forty-one, stand by.” Burch turned to her as he got to his feet. “And you just happened to call a cab after you knew we’d found it? What was your big hurry?”
“Fergie and Di are home alone, since early this morning.”
“Sure. I’m Prince Charles and you’re the Queen Mother. I’ve had it with you, Kiki.”
He stepped out and slammed the door.
“Leave it open!” she wailed.
“Four forty-one,” he said into the radio. “Whatcha got, Naz?”
“Seven,” Nazario said. “Cause unknown so far. Could have been live births. Circa 1961.”
“Crap. Where you at?”
“Pulling into the station garage now.”
“Good, I want you to take a crack at Kiki. She seemed to like you.”
Nazario reported to the others in the lieutenant’s office.
Salazar whistled and ran her manicured fingers through her curly brown hair. “Edelman won’t be a happy camper.”
“You’re right,” Riley said. “We have to go over that place inch by inch, maybe even dig around the back of the house. God knows what else we’ll find out there.”
“I’ll get a temporary restraining order against any action by the builder,” Salazar said. “How’s thirty days?”
“We can extend it if necessary, right?” Riley said.
“Right. Edelman’s gonna hate it.”
“I know I do,” Burch said. “Jesus. Babies. Little babies. You know what the time frame means.”
“Nolan had three teenage daughters, didn’t he?” Riley asked, face taut.
“Summer, the oldest, was sixteen when her father was murdered.” Burch consulted his notebook. “Spring was fourteen, and Brooke, thirteen.
“Nolan was the only man in the house, right?”
Burch nodded. “The son, Sky, was nine at the time.”
“Looks like our victim might have been a bad dad, a very bad dad,” Riley said.
“Nobody ever looked seriously at the wife or the kids as suspects,” Stone said. “Never found a motive, either.”
Riley, pale under her tan, toyed with the hand grenade on her desk. “Incest is a motive.”
“Think those babies are his?” Salazar said.
“Sick, but not unheard of,” Riley said. “Similar cases have surfaced around the country, mostly in rural areas.”
“The products of incest buried in backyards or locked in a trunk in the attic.” Salazar shuddered.
“Or the cellar,” Burch said. “Why hide them if they were legitimate? That son of a bitch.”
“According to the background investigations and news clips in the file, Nolan and his wife were always out and about, attending charitable functions, their pictures on the society pages. In the years before his murder, she sure wasn’t home pregnant all the time,” Stone said.
“Somebody was,” Riley said. “Incest sounds like a good motive to me.”
“Might explain why the widow and kids split right after the murder,” Corso said.
“And hung on to the property,” Salazar said.
“Kept it in the family like everything else,” Corso said.
“The wife knew,” Riley said, thinking out loud. “No way she didn’t. Three girls, seven babies?”
“Guy was having himself a field day,” Corso said.
“Is the widow still alive?” Salazar asked.
Burch nodded.
“Wonder why she’d sell the place now?” Riley frowned.
“Forty million good reasons,” Burch said. “That’s what Edelman paid her.”
“She’s gotta be, what, in her seventies by now. Maybe she’s senile and forgot what they left behind in the cellar,” Corso said.
“I don’t care how old you are, you don’t forget something like that,” Riley said. “She knew Edelman’s intentions, that he’d demolish the Shadows. Figured nobody would remember the cellar all these years later. The high-rise would go up and the babies would be buried forever under thousands of tons of concrete. Nobody in the outside world would know they were ever born.
“We need to move fast,” she told Burch. “Reporters from Channel Four and the Miami News are pushing PIO. Word leaked out that we found human remains at the Shadows. They want the story. I’m trying to stall a press release. When it gets out, the story will probably get a lot of coverage.”
“In this case it might do some good,” Burch said. “Might bring in some leads. Somebody had to know something about those girls being pregnant.”
“Or it could put us in the middle of a media frenzy. You need to talk to the widow and the daughters before that happens.”
“One of them probably killed him,” Burch said. “Or maybe it was a family project. Hell of a thing. Imagine what those females went through for years. Looks like Pierce Nolan was a goddamn monster.”
CHAPTER 5
Nazario closed the door to the small interview room. Within seconds, it inched back open. No one came out.
“See, the broad don’t like being alone with any guy,” Corso said. “Has to tell you something.”
Nazario emerged forty-five minutes later.
“Talk to me.” Burch looked up from the Nolan file spread out across the conference room table.
“She’s telling the truth,” Nazario said. “She had no idea what we’d find down there.”
“I knew his shit detector didn’t work on good-looking women,” Corso crowed. “I knew it.”
Nazario ignored him. “Kiki’s claustrophobic, Sarge. Barely tolerates elevators, doesn’t like planes, hates small rooms with no windows.” He rolled his sad spaniel eyes toward the interview room. “That’s why she didn’t go down the cellar stairs with us.”
“Makes sense,” Riley acknowledged.
“She explain her little rap sheet?” Burch asked.
“She was arrested twice. Edelman was clearing property for a shopping center in the Grove when protesters formed a human chain around a huge, hundred-year-old banyan tree his crew was about to cut down. They were all arrested. She was one of them.”
“A tree hugger, too!” Corso said.
“Hardly a public menace,” Stone said.
“They call that ecoterrorism,” Corso protested.
“Her other arrest was during a protest over on the Beach,” Nazario explained. “An art deco hotel was being knocked down so the late Gianni Versace, who owned the building next door, could dig himself a private pool. Both peaceful protests.”
“Sometimes that’s the only way to change the law or send a message,” Stone said, drawing a sharp look from Riley.
“When you said we’d found a body, she thought you meant the old rumrunner. Remember, he disappeared, lost at sea or something, in the mid-thirties, after Prohibition.”
“Okay, okay,” Burch said. He realized he’d never had lunch. It was nine P.M. No wonder he felt irritable. “One more thing. Did she mention a Fergie and Di?”
“Dogs. Fergie is her Yorkie,” Nazario said, his expression serious. “Di is a papillon.”
“A what?”
“Some kind a fancy little dog.”
“You mean like that one that wears bathing suits with rhinestones—you know, Tinkerbell, Paris Hilton’s little dog?” Corso said.
“Nah.” Stone frowned. “Tinkerbell’s a Chihuahua.”
“Somebody from PETA ought to launch a mission to rescue that poor creature,” Riley said.
“Right,” Salazar said. “The woman wears that dog as an accessory. Saw it on her lap during a TV interview once. The poor thing co
uldn’t stop trembling.”
“Tinkerbell makes a run for it every chance she gets,” Riley said, “trying to escape. Saw on the news last week that she got away again on South Beach. But the reward is always so big that people keep bringing the poor thing back.”
“Whadaya mean ‘poor thing’?” Corso demanded. “I’d trade places with that lucky little pooch anytime.”
“Puleeze.” Salazar grimaced. “Can you imagine where that dog’s been? What it’s seen?”
“Exactly. Anytime.”
“Guys? Lieutenant?” Kiki Courtelis peered timidly around the door to the interview room.
“You won’t forget about me, go home, and leave me in here, will you?”
“No way to forget you,” Burch said. “Much as we’d like to. Somebody will be right with you.”
“Getting back to Fergie and Di.” Nazario lowered his voice. “Apparently, the smaller the dog, the smaller the bladder. And Kiki just got a new carpet. So she was in a hurry.”
“Cut her loose. Take her home,” Riley said, disgusted. “Pick her brain. Find out what else she knows about the house, its history, and the people who lived there.”
Nazario’s red Mustang convertible burned rubber, screeching out of the police parking garage.
His passenger clung to the door handle. “Is this how you always drive?”
“Sorry.” His foot eased off the gas for a moment. “Want me to put the top down? So the space is not so small?”
“Yes.” She sighed and leaned back as the convertible top slowly receded, exposing Miami’s big, wide sky awash in Technicolor shades of star-studded midnight blue, streaked by purple, pink, and gold.
“I’ve traveled a lot,” Kiki said softly. “This is the only place you see clouds these colors at night. And see how the crescent moon is upended? Like a bowl upside down. This is the only place in the country where you can see it like that.”
She took a deep breath, turned to him, and grinned. “It feels soooo good to get out of your office. How do you work there every day?” She’d returned to her usual feisty, self-confident demeanor. “You need to go green in your cubicles, Pete. Live plants will minimize the effects of electromagnetic frequencies from phones, fluorescent lights, and computers. They’ll reduce that geopathic stress. In other words, you don’t feel as tired, fuzzy, and depressed with green plants around you. And everyone knows that fluorescent lights cause eye strain, headaches, and an overwhelming sense of stress and disorder.”
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