Miami, It's Murder

by Edna Buchanan

  I washed my hands, brushed my teeth, undressed, and turned out the lights. Usually my sleep is untroubled, but as I slipped into that void just before slumber, I wondered if at this moment out there in the darkness, somewhere in a gleaming downtown tower, a woman lay undiscovered, tied and terrified. Her sobs haunted my dreams.

  Chapter 4

  In the morning I drove to the rape squad office hoping to corner the lieutenant and push for release of the rapist’s composite and psychological profile.

  The office was nearly empty, desks and phones unmanned. The lieutenant was out. Not a detective in sight. “Everybody went to a scene,” said the secretary. A small prim woman with a tiny scarlet mouth, she was dressed in a straight skirt, a tailored white shirt with a little tie, and comfortable shoes. Wary eyes peered out of a worn face, as though she had heard it all on this job but would never repeat a word.

  “The Downtown Rapist again?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “You know I can’t give out information.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m not asking anything about the case,” I said sweetly, pissed as hell that I didn’t know what was going on. “All I need is the location. That’s surely no secret.”

  She shook her head again, peered through her half glasses at the sheet of paper in her IBM Selectric, and dropped a tantalizing tidbit. “Homicide is out there too.”

  What had I missed? Damn, I thought, I hadn’t heard a clue on the scanner.

  “What’s the address?”

  She was unmoved. “You know the lieutenant”—her eyes darted around the room as if to be sure the lieutenant wasn’t lurking and listening—“and what would happen to me if I start talking to the press.”

  Rather than waste time trying to finesse her, I stormed out in a huff and punched the medical examiner’s number into the lobby pay phone. The clerk at the front desk answered.

  “Hi,” I said, identifying myself and trying to sound casual. “Which doctor is going out to that scene in the city, the one that homicide and sexual battery are at?”

  “They already left,” she said cheerily. “Dr. Duffy and the chief are both out there.”

  “The chief? Both of them? That’s unusual.”

  “Yep, they left a while ago.”

  “Sure we’re talking about the same scene?”

  “The one at 176 Southwest Fourteenth Street?”

  “That’s it.”

  I would have to scramble now. Homicide detectives often didn’t call the medical examiner for hours, waiting for the lab to finish before even touching the body. Whatever happened was hours old. How did I screw up? How did our police desk miss it? The address was a rundown residential neighborhood on the fringe of Little Havana. Sounded as if it was inside a house. Probably an older woman, I thought, mind racing as I piled into the car. Young rape-murder victims are usually abducted to remote woods. Older women are more likely to be attacked by intruders in their own homes.

  It was unusual for sexual battery to respond to a homicide scene.

  Maybe there was more than one victim, I thought, one murdered, one raped. I was probably the only reporter in Miami to miss it. The city desk obviously had not heard about it or I would have been paged. Damn. I floored the T-Bird through an intersection on the amber light, praying not to be stopped. Traffic was heavy, and I usually got lost in that aging neighborhood, full of narrow one-ways and dead-end streets. None of the transmissions on my dashboard scanner indicated crowd control or a manhunt in progress.

  I hate waiting with a media mob for a two-paragraph press release written in police jargon saying next to nada. The T-Bird’s air conditioner industriously pumped out hot air, adding to my discomfort and irritation. Outside temperatures had climbed into the mid-90s, and it felt hotter in the car. If the problem was a Freon leak I had yet another reason to feel guilty. In addition to blowing a story on my beat, I was polluting the atmosphere and enlarging the ozone hole. As I neared the neighborhood I watched traffic but saw no other news media or TV eyes-in-the-sky. The pack had to be there already, maybe even there and gone. I hate to arrive after TV crews have already stampeded through neighborhoods, alienating witnesses and infuriating residents. The whole damn block would probably be roped off. No chance for me to get anywhere near this scene.

  I was wrong.

  The house was CBS construction with peeling paint, a closed garage, and gritty pavement right up to the front porch. Official cars lined the street: several cruisers, a number of unmarked, a county car from the ME office, but no flashing lights, no PIO officer, no other reporters. No yellow rope.

  At all.

  It was eerie.

  Instead of being last, was I first? Not sure what to make of it, I found a space for the T-Bird halfway down the block and walked up to number 176. The drapes were drawn and the jalousies opaque. A leaky air conditioner wheezed in a front window.

  After two minutes or so, a woman answered the doorbell. A civilian. I had expected a cop.

  From behind her came murmured voices, movement, and activity. She looked in her late forties, with lank hair dyed mousy brown but growing in gray at the roots. Her face was ruddy, her eyes red-rimmed, and her bony chin stubborn. She wore a rumpled T-shirt and black stretch pants with rubber thongs.

  “What is it?” she said in a whiskey voice.

  I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on and didn’t know what to ask, so I introduced myself.

  “A reporter?” She turned to someone behind her and raised her voice. “This isn’t gonna be in the paper, is it?”

  “I tend to doubt it,” the chief medical examiner replied. He had discarded his jacket and his tie was loose.

  A paunchy homicide detective wearing a semiautomatic pistol in a Velcro holster on his hip came up behind the woman and peered over her shoulder. “Britt, how’d you hear about this?” His tone was blustery but his expression bright, with an amused edge.

  The woman stepped back passively as both the doctor and the detective came to the doorway. “What happened?” I asked them.

  “Nothing you can put in the newspaper.” The detective smirked.

  “It’s a homicide, isn’t it?”

  “Nope. Just an accidental death.” The chief looked serious.

  “Then why do you have so many people out here?”

  “Because we don’t get to see cases like this one too often,” Dr. Duffy said, emerging from another room.

  “Shut the door.” The woman sat down at a kitchen table, her voice cross. “You’re air-conditioning the whole goddamn neighborhood.”

  I stepped inside, across the scarred wooden door-sill.

  The detective turned to the woman. “You mind?”

  She shrugged, planted a sharp elbow on the table, and rested her forehead in her palm.

  “It’s an unusual scene, an educational experience,” Duffy said quietly.

  “Damn straight,” said the detective. “I heard of ’em, but this is the first one I seen.” His expression was close to a leer.

  “What happened?” I asked, baffled.

  “The husband of the lady in there died accidentally,” the chief said. “You’ve heard of sexual asphyxia?”

  “Sex—I don’t think so.”

  I glanced back at the woman, her face buried in both stringy hands. The doctors and I moved in the other direction, into the living room, trailed by the detective. Other cops were departing, shaking their heads. The rape squad lieutenant had already gone.

  “Solitary sexual activity, essentially narcissistic, practiced by men who simultaneously induce mechanical or chemical asphyxia,” the chief said. The halo of fine white hair around his smooth pink face made him look almost cherubic.

  “Masturbating?”

  “With a twist,” Duffy said. “They cut off the blood supply to the brain in order to enhance orgasm.”

  Good grief, I thought. He saw my bewildered expression.

  “The
y accomplish that by tightening a ligature, or by hanging, or by inhaling hydrocarbons. Their carbon dioxide level rises, which supposedly heightens orgasm. But sometimes they go too far.”

  “Terminal sex.” The detective grinned.

  “What did this one do?” My voice was barely audible.

  “Hanging. His wife goes out this morning, comes home a couple hours later, and there he is,” the detective said.

  “Where?”

  “The bedroom. The scene is pretty bizarre,” the chief warned. “They always are. There isn’t all that much literature on this type of case. Many are mistaken for homicide or suicide.”

  He stepped toward what appeared to be the bedroom. “The wife thought he had committed suicide, but clearly that’s not the case.” I followed him.

  The house was warm, but gooseflesh crawled up my back and down my arms. The rescue squad, summoned by the widow, had cut him down. The dead man wore a sheer red teddy. Dark body hair bristled through the garment’s lacy openwork. Almost fifty, he was grizzled and out of shape and looked hideously obscene, but his appearance had apparently fascinated him. A large mirror had been moved from the dresser to the floor so he could watch himself.

  Except for a sheer black stocking on his right leg, he was naked from the waist down. His penis had been adorned with a purple ribbon, which was tied around it. His hands were bound with a stained silk scarf.

  We stood in utter silence for moment. Most of the cops had satisfied their curiosity and left. “How can you be sure this isn’t a murder or a suicide?” I whispered.

  “That, for one thing.” Dr. Duffy pointed to something that lay on the floor in front of the dead man.

  A Playboy magazine, opened to the centerfold.

  “He didn’t intend to die. He miscalculated.” The chief spoke in his usual scholarly manner. “Note that the scarf binding his hands is loosely knotted and that he padded his neck with a towel, to cushion the noose.”

  “They don’t want rope marks,” Duffy pointed out.

  “Exactly,” said the chief.

  I suddenly felt a headache coming on.

  “They skate on thin ice,” the chief said, “but elude death. They always have an escape mechanism. But sometimes they err.”

  “Or just get carried away,” the detective said, his eyes knowing. “These guys are into fantasy, big time.”

  “True. He is relatively old for this,” the chief said thoughtfully, zipping his Minolta into a leather case. “We see some victims as young as twelve. Guess he was lucky, had been doing it longer.”

  I swallowed and remembered to take notes. “You said some use an inhalant? Like what?” I tried to avoid the dead man’s eyes. It was difficult. There is something terribly sad about dying during solo sex, leaving your deepest secrets exposed to complete strangers who invade your bedroom.

  “Instead of compressing their necks,” the chief said, “some achieve the desired effect by inhaling adhesive solvent, Freon, nitrous oxide, deodorant, various gases and solvents, even typewriter correction fluid.”

  “Right,” Duffy added. “Remember the dentist who used nitrous oxide and an anesthetic mask? Usually they just wear plastic bags over their heads.”

  The chief nodded.

  Plastic bags over their heads? “Typewriter correction fluid?” I mumbled.

  “Contains one-one-one trichloroethane,” Duffy said, nodding grimly.

  No wonder the managing editor’s executive assistant, in her small windowless office, looks goofy by five o’clock, I thought.

  “The line that separates a little bit from too much is a fine one,” the chief pointed out, peeling off his surgical gloves. “Some people don’t know the difference. Unlike many other deviations, these people don’t have their own publication—like those who are into bondage, SM, and fist fucking and compare notes on their types of aberration.”

  Publications. Fist fucking. I was beginning to feel a bit goofy myself.

  “Takes all kinds,” the detective drawled. “You know,” he said casually, “like the people who enjoy loaded guns pointed at them during sex.”

  Shit, I didn’t even know about them. We all turned to look at him.

  “You know,” he said, conscious of our reaction. He gestured weakly, grin shrinking as color climbed his cheeks. “The element of danger.” From the way the two doctors eyeballed the detective, they were not totally familiar with that one either, but he obviously was. Thirty-two, I thought, and still surprised by what my mama never told me.

  “You think many people are into this kind of stuff?” I asked quietly.

  “No way to tell.” The chief tugged at his earlobe. “We only see the ones who slip up. This may be more common than we think.”

  “Mr. Creech obviously crossed the line.” Duffy was still scrutinizing the detective, who had suddenly become very busy with his paperwork.

  “Creech?” I said, startled. “His first name isn’t Emerson, is it?”

  “Sure is,” said the cop, consulting his clipboard.

  “I know him!” I said, glancing back at the bedroom. “Uncle Dirty. I didn’t recognize him.”

  “Not surprising,” the chief said wryly.

  The widow still oblivious, her back to us, mechanically made coffee in the kitchen. Her name was Ruby, I remembered now.

  I lowered my voice. “This will really interest some people at city homicide.”

  The detective perked up at the new direction of our conversation.

  “How long have you been in the unit?” I asked him.

  “ ’Bout a year and a half.”

  “You won’t remember the case. He was a prime homicide suspect years ago, my first year at the paper. The murder victim was Darlene Fiskus, his niece. She was fourteen, in junior high school.”

  “I think I remember that one,” the chief said, nodding. “The cheerleader.”

  “Right. He went to pick her up after a football game one night. People saw her get into a car the same color as his, but nobody could ever positively identify it or the driver. He claimed it wasn’t him, said he’d had car trouble and when he arrived late she was gone. She was found the next morning, raped and face down in a garbage dump.”

  “They could never make a case,” the chief said.

  “Uh-huh. They found her prints and a few hairs that matched hers in his car—but he was her uncle and often drove her to school. I tried talking to him once, outside the station after he was brought in for questioning. He wouldn’t talk to me, or the police. Had served time for the attempted rape of a thirteen-year-old neighbor a decade earlier. And Darlene had confided to her best friend that her uncle had tried to ‘bother’ her just a week before she was killed.” I shook my head in disbelief. “The investigators always referred to him as Uncle Dirty.”

  The detective made a face toward the bedroom.

  “Interesting,” the chief said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “I don’t know any other case of a subject involved in this sort of aberrant behavior also being involved in sex crimes against other individuals. But in this business there is always a first.”

  “Maybe he swore off little girls and turned to this,” the detective said. “May have thought it safer.”

  “Definitely wasn’t—for him.” Duffy took his radio from his pocket and notified dispatch to send the body snatchers to remove the deceased.

  I ventured into the kitchen to express my sympathies. The scratched countertops and aging appliances were a shade of avocado popular twenty years ago. The widow was staring into the depths of a coffee mug clutched in both hands. “Did you know he did this sort of thing?” I asked.

  “I knew he liked the young ones,” she mumbled, “but I never knew about none of this.” Her weathered face looked hard.

  “Were those your things he was … wearing?”

  “Never saw those frillies before.” Her eyes darted around the room, then locked on mine. “I look like the type to wear that
stuff?” She glanced down at her faded T-shirt and threadbare stretch pants.

  “I wrote about his niece, Darlene … when she was killed.”

  Her head jerked up, an indefinable flicker in her flat and hostile gray eyes. “That all happened a long time ago.”

  “It’s never been solved.”

  She managed a half-hearted shrug.

  “The police suspected your husband…”

  “They weren’t the only ones,” she said bleakly. “They weren’t the only ones. I loved that little girl like she was my own, never had any children myself. My husband’s family…” Her voice trailed off as she rubbed her upper arms with both hands as though a chill had come over her. “If you don’t mind, I don’t want to talk anymore.” Summoning up her tattered dignity, she pushed back her chair and carried her cup to the sink, chin up, shoulders square.

  Under some circumstances, I would have tried to push further, but I was uninvited in her home and her husband lay dead in the next room. I walked toward the front door. The medical examiners’ wagon had just arrived and the doctors were outside. The detective was in the bedroom finishing his paperwork, probably gloating that some men were weirder than he was.

  As I left the house, I wondered if she might have killed him to avenge her niece. Given the family history, this was no marriage made in heaven. But how could she hang a man his size? No, I am too suspicious, I told myself, rolling down all the car windows in a futile attempt to cool the interior before driving off. That happens in this business, I thought. When your mother declares that the sun will rise tomorrow, you call the weather bureau first. Then you check out your mother.

  “Terminal sex,” I told Lottie later in the photo lab, describing the hangman’s noose, the mirror, the lace teddy, the silk scarf, and the open Playboy.

  “Were the pages stuck together?” she asked eagerly.

  “I didn’t check,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “That never even occurred to me.”