Miami, It's Murder

by Edna Buchanan

  When I returned from the cafeteria later, with a cup of coffee, one of the messages on my desk instantly caught my eye.

  Call Lt. McDonald at his office, ASAP. That was it. Not exactly ardent and romantic enough to sizzle my socks and curl my toes. Perversely, I shuffled it to the bottom of the stack.

  Phone tucked under my chin, I began returning calls and opening mail simultaneously. One message was from Dan, and I returned it immediately.

  “Where have you been?” I scolded. “You’re never home. I was ready to file a missing-persons report. I tried twice to call you.”

  “Didn’t know I was supposed to wait for your call. Been busy.” His words were brusque. “Got a TV there?”

  “Sure.” Three small sets sit in front of the city-desk clerk who monitors the TV news, listing the stories and their play, to ensure that we haven’t missed anything.

  “Something you should see on the noon news, Channel Seven. I’ll hold.”

  Gloria, the city-desk clerk, was on the phone. I stood at her side watching the screen. The face was familiar. Marianne Rhodes. “Oh, no,” I whispered.

  When the blond anchorwoman with the big hair and silly smirk asked, “How does it feel to be the seventh victim of the man known as the Downtown Rapist?” I swore softly and went back to my phone.

  “Thought you’d be interested,” he said. “I’m surprised they didn’t protect her identity and show her only in silhouette. They used her name and everything. The promo said they’ll have more at six.”

  “I know, I know,” I mourned. “They’re vultures. They took advantage of her. I’m sure she’ll be sorry she did this.”

  “You gonna use her name?”

  “Not if I can help it, but she sure blew it by being on TV.”

  “What were you trying to call me about?”

  I filled him in on Fielding.

  “Wish I coulda seen his face,” he gloated. “That son of a bitch.”

  “He definitely didn’t go away happy,” I said.

  “What’s new on the rapist?”

  “Nothing, really, except that he’s mad as hell and has changed his MO,” I said. “Hey, Dan, did you hear about the guy they arrested for impersonating a cop?”

  “No.” He was dead serious.

  “He was asleep at three A.M. in a donut shop.”

  “Not funny. Did you ask the Rhodes woman if she knows any of the other victims?” he demanded, his tone businesslike. No one would ever believe this man had retired, I thought.

  “No. I guess I just assumed that if she did, she would have brought it up.”

  “Never assume anything. What you really ought to do,” he suggested, “is find out what, if anything, they have in common. Maybe they’ve attended the same parties, the same aerobics class; maybe they buy their gas at the same service station.”

  “But I thought these victims were random,” I said, frowning, “in the wrong place at the wrong time. He lurks in a ladies’ room and attacks the next woman who walks in.”

  “But what if they aren’t? A lot of older women work in these buildings, but did you notice that all his victims have been attractive and between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five? Maybe it’s not so random. Somehow he’s able to come and go without being noticed. What if he’s selecting and stalking these women? There might be a thread linking them together, like shopping in the same supermarket, eating lunch in the same restaurant, or going to the same beach.”

  “What makes you so smart about rape investigations? You always worked homicide.”

  Gloria had caught my eye, gesturing and mouthing a message. “Lieutenant McDonald on the other line. Says he has to talk to you.”

  There was a time when I would have hung up on God to talk to that man. I put my palm over the mouthpiece. “Tell him I’ll call him back,” I said breezily.

  “Same stuff applies to serial killers as it does to serial rapists,” Dan was saying. “And you forget that up until ten years ago, homicide detectives also investigated sex crimes. I put my share of rapists away.”

  He sounded like the old Dan. “Let me take some of these questions down,” I said. “I’ll have to ask Harry, because I don’t have all the victims’ names.”

  “Good, maybe it’ll light a fire under ’im. Also check and see if the victims had any contact with the police or fire departments in the month before they were attacked.”

  “You think the rapist could be a cop or a fireman?”

  “Some cops are capable of anything,” he said quietly.

  “But we think he’s Cuban, probably Marielito.”

  “Could be anybody. We have our share on the city payroll.”

  “What’s your gut feeling, Dan? Do you have a hunch?”

  I picked a letter from the stack of mail. The handwriting looked familiar. I tore it open, then looked up at Gloria. She stood at my desk, her face solemn.

  “Lieutenant Riley is on one line for you and Detective Harry Arroyo on another. They both want to talk to you right away.”

  My heart lurched. Maybe they had caught the rapist.

  “Okay,” I said, excited. “Give me the lieutenant and ask Harry to hold.” I bid Dan a hasty goodbye and picked up the line on the first ring.

  K. C. Riley was in her usual form.

  “Goddammit, Britt. What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Good afternoon to you too, lieutenant.”

  “Don’t get smart-ass with me. Communication is a two-way street. Why the hell didn’t you pass your information along to us?”

  “On the Downtown Rapist?”

  “Don’t play dumb.”

  “I don’t have any information,” I said, tiring of the conversation fast. I should have taken Harry’s call first to find out what was going on.

  “We want those damn letters and we want them now!”

  “What letters?”

  “The ones with the fucking powder on them!”

  “How’d you know about that?”

  “We have information that you got them days ago.” Her voice was poisonous.

  “I threw them out,” I said, my stomach suddenly cramping.

  I held the phone and the stream of invective it spewed six inches away from my ear.

  “But don’t worry.” My voice was tense, and my right eyelid had begun to twitch uncontrollably. “I just got another one.”

  “What? Today?”

  “Just now. I just opened it.”

  “I’m sending somebody over to pick it up; you better come along. Don’t let anybody touch it!”

  I jerked my hand off the envelope as though it were red hot, rubbing my fingertips together.

  I hung up and took the call on hold. “Harry?”

  “Jesus, Britt, where you been, how come you—oh, Christ.”

  I heard the lieutenant’s voice in the background as she bore down on him.

  “See ya,” he said, and hung up.

  The phone rang again immediately. On my feet, about to tell the city desk what had just happened, I snatched it up impatiently. “Britt Montero.”

  “Britt?” The voice that used to make my knees weak. At the moment I was too preoccupied.

  “McDonald.”

  “Yeah. Have you talked to the rape squad yet?”

  “Not exactly, but I’ve been cussed out by Lieutenant Riley and hung up on by Arroyo.”

  “You should have returned my call.” He sounded like he was itching for an argument himself.

  What the hell was going on here? What did he have to be annoyed about? My eyes were glued in fascination to the letter. I had torn the envelope open but the folded paper inside was only half out. Should I or shouldn’t I?

  I studied the grimy legal-size white envelope addressed in red pen to:

  MISS BRITT MONTERO

  MIAMI DAILY NEWS

  MIAMI, FLA.

  The writer was heavy-handed on his downstrokes, like
somebody in a hurry or mad as hell. The y had a chopped-off tail, and the i’s were dotted with hard little circles that had the centers filled in solid. No street address. Not even a zip code. And no return address.

  Had the envelope contained a sweepstakes check or a marriage proposal from a long-lost love who would save me from all this, it would have been diverted directly to the dead letter office. But let a rapist drop a line, and the postal workers perform like champions. What makes the cops even think this guy is the rapist? I wondered.

  “This is a serious matter,” barked the long-lost love on the other end of my telephone line.

  Suddenly I caught on. “Dr. Simmons. The shrink notified the rape squad about the letters, didn’t he?”

  He paused a beat, as though weighing the pros and cons of lying, then owned up. “Right.”

  “McDonald, this is a gross overreaction. I casually mentioned a crank letter in a conversation. I get tons of them. We all do. This is embarrassing. These letters are powdery and I know the rapist uses surgical gloves, the ones with talc. But the powder on these letters is much heavier and sweeter-smelling than that.”

  “Right. But you don’t know everything, Britt. This is serious.”

  I detected a genuine note of concern, prompting me to ask, “What’s wrong? Why were you so uptight when they hauled that car out of the drink the other day? When I was talking to Captain Norske?”

  “Captain?” I heard the sneer. “You mean that cracker in the ice-cream suit? I thought he was selling you a Popsicle.”

  Damn, I thought, smiling. He is jealous. “What do you mean I don’t know everything?”

  He resumed his officious tone. “The Downtown Rapist case isn’t mine to talk about. It came up at a staff meeting, but it’s Lieutenant Riley’s investigation. I’m sure the rape squad will fill you in, but watch your step, Britt. The guy is still at large. He’s dangerous. I know you never listen, but don’t go pulling any stunts to get a story.”

  I thanked him for the advice, hung up, and beelined for Fred Douglas’s office.

  The news that the cops were on the way seemed to elate him. “Let’s get Mark Seybold in on this,” he said, punching numbers into his phone. “Think it’s the real thing, Britt?” he said, before Mark, the News’ lawyer, picked up.

  “I didn’t think so, but they are withholding information about the suspect, details I don’t know, and something about this letter has them really excited—without seeing it, of course.”

  He conferred briefly with Mark, who said he’d come right up from his second-floor office.

  “Where is it?” Fred said, bounding out his door into the newsroom.

  “On my desk,” I said reluctantly, feeling a slight sense of anxiety, “but we shouldn’t touch it.”

  “Did you open it?”

  “Just the envelope, I didn’t even read it before I got the call from the rape squad lieutenant.”

  “Call photo,” he said on the way to my desk. “We need somebody to shoot pictures of it now.” He turned to me. “Sometimes getting things back from the police proves to be a problem. Technically, that letter is the property of this newspaper and you as its representative. We have to strike a deal with them.” He rubbed his hands together like King Midas might have done right after something he touched turned to gold.

  “Fred, I think we should just give it to them without a hassle. I mean, if it really is from the guy, we don’t want the cops to waste any time if this could help identify him.”

  “This it?” He bent over my desk, his nose practically touching the envelope.

  “Don’t touch it,” I warned, beginning to feel jittery.

  “Did you call a photographer?”

  I dialed photo and asked Antonio, who works in the darkroom, to come out and shoot pictures of the letter.

  “What’s going on, Britt?” Now Ryan stood next to Fred. The elevator pinged as Mark Seybold stepped off and joined us.

  “This it?” he asked, squinting through his glasses as a crowd began to gather.

  “Don’t touch it,” I said.

  Fred and Mark conferred.

  “We have to strike a deal with the cops that puts us on the inside of the investigation,” Fred declared.

  Mark nodded. “An information trade. We should lock them into giving us the inside info. Part of the agreement should be that they can’t discuss any of this with the competition. They get the letter only with the proviso that we”—he nodded at me—“Britt, gets to see the crime lab results.”

  Oh, man, I thought, shaking my head, the cops are not gonna like this. “It would probably be better for our relationship with the police to just cooperate and give it to them,” I said. “In the interests of justice.”

  “I’ll call security,” Mark said, ignoring me, “and have the cops detained in the lobby until we get the go-ahead from their supervisor. What’s his number, Britt?”

  “It’s Lieutenant K. C. Riley,” I said, reluctantly removing the card with the rape squad numbers from my Rolodex.

  “I’ll call him right now,” Mark said, heading for the privacy of Fred’s glass-enclosed office.

  “Her, not him,” I called after him.

  “Take your nameplate off your desk, Britt, so if they get into the newsroom before we’re ready they won’t know which desk is yours.” Fred’s eyes glittered, and he rubbed his hands together again. “It’ll make it tougher for them if they go for a search warrant.” He glanced at me. “What’s wrong with your eye?”

  “Nothing,” I mumbled, trying to hold the lid still. “Lack of potassium.” They were acting like we expected a SWAT team invasion. I reluctantly tossed my nameplate into my desk drawer and stuffed the rumpled printouts of old stories in on top of it. I felt furtive. News security told to detain Miami cops in the lobby? This was out of hand.

  Antonio showed up with a 35-millimeter Canon with a 50-macro lens. “¿Qué pasa? Where ees it?” Cuban born but raised in Miami, he spoke perfect English when he joined the News two decades ago, I was told. But with the Cubanization of Miami and of the newspaper, Antonio had steadily regressed until now he scarcely spoke English.

  “Don’t touch it!” I said.

  He climbed up on my chair, balancing one foot on the desk and shooting straight down at the envelope. Then he jumped down and, ignoring my admonitions, pushed at the envelope and its torn flap with a pencil.

  “They’re taking it to the crime lab,” I protested. “Don’t touch it, Antonio.”

  “I’m only rearranging, para la compositión,” he said, standing back and scrutinizing my desktop with the narrowed eye of an artist. He frowned and shoved the envelope again, this time with his thumb.

  “¡No lo toques!” I said, pushing at his hand.

  “What is going on, Britt?” Ryan persisted.

  “The cops think that letter is from the Downtown Rapist.” Ryan reached for the envelope. “Don’t touch it!”

  Mark, on the phone in the glassed-in office, had obviously reached Lieutenant Riley. His face looked lobster red and contorted, as though he were strangling or suffering a stroke.

  “There’s a detective and a crime-lab man in the lobby. They want to come up and see Britt,” Gloria called breathlessly from her desk in the center of the newsroom.

  “Tell security to hold them there until Mark clarifies the situation with the police department,” Fred ordered, a general issuing battle plans.

  “Fred,” I protested, “how can I go over there every day to press them for information when we refuse to cooperate when they want something?”

  “It’s not the same thing, Britt. They’re public officials, we’re not.”

  Gloria, still on the phone, waved her hand excitedly and reported a shoving match in progress down at security. Gretchen joined the cluster around my desk, frowning as though the skirmish was all my fault. I was betting on the cops. The detective downstairs was most likely in radio contact with his boss. Chances
were she had just instructed him to get the letter, and he was going over the top like a Marine. Probably Harry, I thought.

  “If we refuse to relinquish it,” Fred pondered aloud, “someone may have to go to jail for obstructing justice—”

  All heads swiveled toward me. Oh, no, I thought.

  “Just until Mark can take it in front of a judge,” Fred said, patting my shoulder in what he considered comforting fashion. I disliked the whole turn of events and the look in his eyes. “Brief the editorial board,” he muttered, in an aside to Gretchen. She hurried to a telephone, grinning.

  Sure. They’d write rousing editorials while the martyr languished in jail. I would be a good soldier and go to jail if necessary to protect a source, but I wasn’t even on our side in this skirmish.

  “They’re on the way up,” Gloria sang out from her desk.

  “What’d they do, shoot security?” I asked.

  “Everybody away from Britt’s desk,” Fred shouted. “Now!”

  They all scattered as I threw myself into Ryan’s empty chair and tried to look innocent. “Britt!” he objected. “I don’t want them searching my desk.”

  Reluctantly, I gave up the chair, glaring at him. I considered ducking into the ladies’ room, but with my luck the rapist would be lurking.

  The elevator pinged. Harry and a crime-scene technician named Warren Forester stepped out, adjusting their jackets, as Mark Seybold burst out of the glass cage. They all looked red-faced and angry.

  “Okay,” the lawyer said. “I just spoke to the chief, who agreed that Britt can stay on top of the investigation of this document as long as we promise not to prematurely publish anything that might compromise the investigation.

  “That Riley woman is impossible,” he said to me in a lower voice. “What a mouth! Do you deal with her often?”

  I nodded, pleased that somebody in management finally understood the tightrope that is my beat. Yet for some reason I felt compelled to defend K. C. Riley. “All she cares about,” I explained, “is catching the rapist.” This entire escapade would not endear me to her small hard heart, I knew.