The Ice Maiden

by Edna Buchanan

  “What do you do now?”

  He sighed. “Inform next of kin, see if they can point us to the others.” His dark face glistened in the sweltering night, his voice dropped. “This is the part of the job I hate the most. Waking up strangers in the middle of the night, giving them the worst news they’ll ever hear. Thought I wouldn’t be doing it again, working cold cases.”

  He straightened up slowly, as though his body hurt, and studied the night sky for a long moment.

  “Growing up, I always said I would leave this city. But it won’t let you go. I think it’s the sky here. It’s so big and low and all around you, everywhere. It’s on your skin; you can feel it. You inhale it, it’s part of you and you are part of it and somehow you are one with this place.”

  He bent back down to my window, his eyes dark pools that reflected the night.

  “Did you know that the department has informed us that it’s against policy to use the word dead when informing next of kin? I always use dead or killed and I’m not going to stop. Sometimes, even then, they don’t understand. Can’t grasp it. You have to be straight with people at times like this. I’m sure as hell not going to say ‘She expired,’ which is what they told us to say. Some people right here, in the neighborhood where I grew up, don’t even know what expired means. She wasn’t a quart of milk, for Christ’s sake.”

  “No,” I said, voice hollow. “She wasn’t.”

  “Go the hell home,” he said wearily. “And lock your doors.”

  21

  “Relax,” Burch told me when I called his office at 4 A.M. “We’re assembling our cast of characters. Even have the good reverend here. He’s a real piece of work. Dragged him out of the sack with his choir director. How long we can hold any of them is another story. Nobody’s talking; they’re all getting lawyered up. Only one still missing. Stone got a tip on Mad Dog’s location, missed him by minutes—”

  “What about Cubby Wells?”

  “He’s here. His wife is calling every five minutes, driving us up the wall. Says he didn’t kill anybody, rape anybody, or see anybody else do the deeds. Nobody else is even saying that much. The whole team’s working, including the lieutenant.”

  “How come you never mentioned Riley worked the case too, protecting Sunny?”

  “Didn’t I? No big deal. K.C. was a kid, a rookie at the time. Didn’t do any real investigating. We needed a female officer to baby-sit Sunny. She was a baby-sitter.”

  “Not important, but it explains a lot. I think they bonded.”

  “Super Glue wouldn’t bond with that woman.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’s not so bad.”

  I tried to nap but couldn’t. My mind raced at ninety miles an hour. Something tugged at my subconscious, something elusive. Flipping listlessly through the glossy pages of Sunny’s show catalog, I stared again at the face I knew was the Reverend Wright’s, and at Andre Coney’s horrid scarring. The pictures had been reproduced from color slides.

  I called Sunny on a hunch. “You awake?”

  “You are kidding,” she said wearily. “Who could sleep?”

  “Is it all right if I come over?”

  “You never asked before.”

  “My manners are improving,” I said. “By the way, Sunny, do you have slides of all your work?”

  “Sure, slides, photos, sketches.”

  “Right, you said you sketch the pieces first.”

  “At every step of the way, as well. It’s an important part of the process.”

  Unable to face more herbal tea, I stopped at an all-night café on the way for some strong Cuban coffee and guava and cheese pastries to go.

  The yellow crime-scene tape was gone, along with a section of carpet the technicians had removed from the stairs.

  As I placed the small paper cups on her little table, I noticed a coffeemaker on the counter. “Something new?”

  “A gift. From Pete.”

  “How romantic.”

  “He craves coffee.”

  “I know. It’s a Cuban thing. I’ll teach you how to make it.”

  “Okay,” she said, “but I doubt I could ever actually drink it.”

  “I can teach you that too,” I said. “Here.” I handed her a tiny cup. “Drink this.”

  She downed it like a shot of whiskey, eyes shut tight, then grimaced. “Oh, my God.” She gasped. “Will I ever sleep again?”

  I sat on the floor beneath a halogen lamp in her studio examining slides, poring over pictures neatly encased in plastic, then looking through crammed sketchbooks. Her drawings depicted sculptures from all angles: works contemplated as well as those in progress or completed. Many included faces. It was similar to searching a book of police mug shots for a suspect. I flipped back several pages to reexamine one that jogged my memory. Where had I seen that face before?

  “Who’s this, Sunny?”

  She leaned over my shoulder. “Nobody. A face I came up with—you know, doodling and drawing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yep, like most of them.”

  “Here he is again,” I said, turning pages, “and again. Where’s the sculpture?”

  “Never did it.” She shrugged. “He was too creepy to spend the time with. When you work on a piece, you spend twenty-four hours a day with it. You have to like it. I learned my lesson about working on a project that makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Can I borrow this? I promise I’ll bring it right back.”

  “Sure, but why?”

  “It could be nothing. I’ll explain later.”

  The lobby was dark, the newsroom empty. I checked the library and then called the squad. All the detectives were out. Nobody answered when I paged them. Maybe Mad Dog had been run to ground, I thought hopefully. Maybe they had him surrounded. I called the man whose face I saw in Sunny’s drawings. No answer.

  Puzzled, I called Sunny. No answer. Probably in the freezer. I wished Nazario had bought her a damn answering machine instead of a coffeemaker.

  Moments after I hung up, the phone rang at my desk. Unusual at 5 A.M.

  “I want to leave a message for Britt Montero,” the voice quavered. “This is Abby Wells.”

  “Abby, it’s me, not a recording,” I said.

  “I’m at police headquarters, in the lobby. They have Charles. They won’t let me talk to him. Wait.” There was silence. She must have put her hand over the phone.

  She came back elated. “Oh, Britt, they told me he’s going to be released, they’re letting him come home! It’ll just be a few minutes. I’m so relieved.”

  “I need to see you. I’m on the way,” I said.

  The lobby at headquarters was cold and quiet. Abby Wells shivered in a thin blouse, waiting on a wooden bench near the elevator. “They said it would only be a few minutes,” she complained.

  The elevator dinged at the fifth floor, and the light blinked at each floor on the way down. The door yawned open and Cubby Wells stepped out alone. He wore a rumpled T-shirt and blue jeans. He looked as though he had lost weight since the funeral. His eyes were red and bloodshot.

  They embraced. She wept, he was teary-eyed.

  The officer at the front desk glanced up, then resumed reading his newspaper.

  Cubby didn’t look surprised to see me.

  “It’s not over,” I told him. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He took a long deep breath as we stepped out into the moist warm air.

  “I’m scared they’ll charge him with a crime he didn’t commit,” his wife said.

  “They probably will,” I said. “Shelby’s dead, so is an innocent man. Two people are wounded. This isn’t an old cold case anymore. You have to tell the truth. You were there that night, weren’t you?”

  Abby began to cry.

  “We can’t talk here,” he said.

  We went back to the News, to the deserted, dimly lit, third-floor cafeteria. They sat next to each other across from me, holding hands, at a table overlooking the darkness of the ba
y and Miami Beach, a blaze of lights across the water.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  He stared out the window. “We went after them,” he said dully, “the boy and the girl.”

  “You saw them outside the ice-cream shop?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “No. We waited for them to leave the marina. After they left the boat, we followed them down to that ice-cream place, trying to figure where to do it.”

  “You were just…waiting for anybody to leave the marina?”

  “No, it was them. They were the ones we were after.”

  “You knew them?”

  “No. See, it was a job. Andre’s deal. He’d been busted for grand theft auto. Spent some time in jail. They had a program for youthful offenders then, doctors and dentists who donated their services to rehabilitate young inmates who had medical or dental problems that affected their self-image, their self-esteem, and contributed to them getting in trouble. They’d fix—you know—cleft palates, birthmarks, bad teeth. Even removed tattoos, pinned back big ears, and did nose jobs. Said they’d fix Andre’s scars. This doctor, a plastic surgeon, he came to see Andre in jail, told him he could make him look normal, even make it easier for him to move his neck where it was too tight from the scar tissue. Andre was so excited. You’da thought it was Christmas morning. But the doctor wanted something first. See, he had this daughter.”

  I gasped, ice crystals forming in my blood.

  “She wanted to date some kid, a teenage jock who lived in the neighborhood. He didn’t like it. He wanted Andre to round up some guys to humiliate the kid in front of the girl. You know, so she wouldn’t think the kid was such a big deal. Wouldn’t want to date him.

  “He didn’t want his daughter hurt, only scared. Said it was okay if Ricky got smacked around a little. Andre was excited as hell, anxious to do a good job and get his scars fixed.”

  “So the trouble with the boat was faked?”

  He shrugged. “Doctor told Andre they’d come out and get in the car. And they did. We followed them to the ice-cream store; we could’ve done it there but Mad Dog was afraid somebody might see us. We took them when they came out, went looking for a nice quiet place to work the kid over. He kept asking us to let the girl go. She was crying, asking where we were taking them. Every time we saw a spot and slowed down, somebody was there or it had too many lights or a police car would cruise by. Kept going south, turned on a dirt road, and wound up at that farm.”

  Tears welled in his eyes. Abby was already crying.

  “We had ’em tied up so they couldn’t get away. But when we took them out and were beating up on the kid—” He gulped, gasping for air to stifle a sob.

  “Things got out of hand?” I said.

  “A little. The kid pissed ’em off when he tried to fight back. Had a bloody nose, cut lip. Me and Earl were saying it was enough. But Mad Dog, his cousin, and Andre were whaling on the kid. Then we heard something. A big engine coming, high beams in the dark. We thought it was the cops, panicked, and took off.”

  “What happened to—”

  “We hauled ass, left ’em there.”

  “Who shot them?”

  Tears ran down his face. “I’m telling you, I don’t know! They were alive and well when we left. She was intact, had all her clothes on. Didn’t have a mark on her. Andre had a gun he stole somewhere, but he only used it to scare the kid. Nobody ever fired a shot.”

  “You sure he or Mad Dog didn’t go back later to rape her?”

  “Hell, no. I don’t think any of us coulda found that place again if we wanted to. You know how dark it is down there, no signs, no lights, all those fields the same. We got lost getting the hell out. We panicked, thought the police were coming after us. Plus, she was never supposed to get hurt. If she did, Andre wouldn’t get his scars fixed. He was scared the doctor would be pissed off because we left her way down there. But Earl said it would be okay. The job went right. When we heard later about the couple who was shot, we thought it couldn’t be them. No way. But then they showed the kid’s picture on television. It was him. When they said the girl with him got raped, shot, and she was gonna die, Andre went crazy. Out of his mind. Cried like a baby. Knew he’d lost the only chance he ever had to look normal. He called the doctor once. Man said to never call again and hung up.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the truth?”

  “Sure, we snatched ’em, took ’em to the murder scene, tied ’em up—but didn’t shoot ’em? Who’d believe that? They were already looking for us. We had records. Even the doctor thought we did it. We’d go to the electric chair or prison for life.

  “Andre never got his surgery. Now he’s dead. And I might as well be.” He covered his eyes, as his weeping wife comforted him.

  A noise at the door startled me. A member of the night maintenance crew, an older man pushing a cart loaded with cleaning equipment, stared at us, turned, and left.

  “So you’re saying they were shot and she was raped by somebody else who left them for dead? Who?”

  “The hell knows? Could be anybody. Coulda been cops for all I know.”

  I stared at him skeptically. “But how did Shelby get killed?”

  “I don’t know about that. She was a good girl. I know she was scared of Mad Dog, didn’t like him around. When he came home from prison he insisted on staying with her and her husband. He was pissed off as hell about the case coming back to life, said nobody was gonna send him back to prison for something he didn’t do. We were all talking about the girl, wondering how much she remembered, if maybe she could clear us. Everybody was pissed at those cops and you for stirring the pot with those stories. Earl Wright kept saying all along that we should stick together and just refuse to talk.”

  “Somebody else was murdered last night,” I said. “In Miami Beach, a friend of the girl. What do you know about that?”

  “Nothing, I swear. I was with my wife all evening, went to a show at her school. The kids put it on, a fund raiser for New York and Washington. Everybody there can confirm that. We were asleep when they came looking for me.”

  That, I thought, was probably why the cops had kicked him loose.

  “Be straight with the detectives,” I said. “If what you’re saying is true, the statute of limitations ran out a long time ago on anything you did. Talk to Pete Nazario. Don’t lie to him. He’ll know if you do.”

  Cubby agreed. He would go home, shower and change, and then talk to the police. He promised. They left hand in hand.

  Back in the newsroom, I tapped into the state database, ran a background check, and printed the results. Excited, I called the squad. Nobody there.

  I drove back to North Beach in that cloudless darkness before dawn.

  I saw a light behind the picture window of Sunny’s studio, but she didn’t answer her door. The dusty lobby was dark and shadowy. I tried not to look at the stairs. “Sunny?” Her name echoed through the creaky old building. The wind off the sea had picked up outside, and the hotel moaned and groaned in the dark, sounds you never hear in the light of day, as though the ghosts of all who had ever lived, loved, and laughed there were stirring.

  I steeled myself and glanced up apprehensively at the staircase, half expecting to see Jimmy standing there, a bloody starburst staining his shirt. He wasn’t. But somebody else was.

  22

  “Sunny? You scared me. What are you doing up there?”

  Her hair was long and loose, her face white. She held a flashlight in her hand.

  “The battery died,” she said, and descended, joining me. “The power went out; it must be the wind. Then I thought I heard a noise upstairs. I was afraid somebody might be stealing from Jimmy’s apartment. People do that sometimes, when they hear someone has died.” She dug a key ring from her pocket. “Let me lock the front door. We usually don’t bother. But with none of the other tenants in town…”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  The front door bolted, we retreated to her apartment. Her studio, with
its sheet-covered statuary, was illuminated by a battery-powered Coleman lantern.

  “Part of my survival kit,” she said. “It wasn’t hard to put together after nine-eleven. I already had hurricane supplies—you know, water and canned food, candles and waterproof matches. I didn’t spring for the gas mask, though.” She looked scattered, face taut.

  “There have been some developments,” I said. “Things you need to know about.”

  A sudden knock at the door startled us both. Three sharp raps.

  Sunny looked puzzled. “How did somebody get in? We just locked the front door.”

  “Who else has a key?”

  “Only other tenants.” She peered through the peephole, then began unlocking the door, throwing bolts open, unhooking the chain.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, alarmed. “Who is it?”

  “A woman,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  “Sunny, don’t!” Too late. She opened the door.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” the visitor said fervently. “I really need to call triple A, my car’s stuck.”

  She brushed by Sunny and stepped inside.

  “Well!” the tall raw-boned woman said, then looked Sunny up and down. “Look at you, now.”

  Sunny stared, expression odd. “Do we know each other?”

  “You betcha, missy. You wouldn’t be standing here now, without me.” She glanced at me, still frozen in place.

  “You would have to be here,” she said pettishly. “I thought that was you when you came in.”

  “Sunny,” I said, my voice a warning.

  The woman reopened the door behind her. “Clyde. Get in here!”

  The man wasn’t wearing his baseball cap, but I recognized the same sharp features I’d seen in the old news photos and in Sunny’s sketches. He was as tall as the woman but his shoulders were slightly hunched, as though he was reluctant to be there.

  Sunny stepped back. I fought the instinct to do the same.

  “Mrs. Pinder,” I said. “And this must be Clyde, your husband. Do you recognize him, Sunny?”