Cold Case Squad (12 page)

"He wouldn't have been with her, at the wrong place at the wrong
time, if I had cried, argued, fallen on the floor, and dung to his
goddamn ankles, for God's sake, he'd be alive."

"Where the hell is the reporter?" Jo muttered. "Haven't seen her
byline in the paper lately."

Riley shrugged. "Out of town, I guess."

"Duh. Somebody had the sense to take time off. I know it had to be
tough to lose him to a reporter, the way you've always felt about them."

"Funny." Riley wiped her eyes. "I don't hate her. Wish I could.
She's stubborn, hardheaded, but not a bad person when you get to know
her. And she's miserable. She lost him, too, except I had a lot more
invested, since second grade. I wish I could hate the man responsible,
but he's dead. I wish to hell I had somebody to hate. But I don't. I
just hate myself—and the city for how they've treated him."

"This year's nominations for the silver medal of valor and the gold
medal of courage were posted yesterday. His name wasn't there, Jo. A
fucking major on the fast track for
chief, a dead hero, but they ignored him because it happened off duty
and he didn't go by the book. He didn't even have a full honor guard at
his funeral. That's not right. I can't stop thinking about it.
Sometimes, in meetings with the brass, I just want to start screaming."

"Not a good career move, kid."

"But a violent ex-convict, high on drugs, snatches his six-year-old
kid, beats up his ex-wife and his own mother, barricades himself in his
mother's house, and holds the kid hostage. The kid is screaming, the
father's splashing gasoline, threatening to ignite it. The place is
full of fumes. He's flicking a cigarette lighter. The house could go up
in a heartbeat. Kenny knew if he went by the book and waited for fire,
SWAT, a hostage negotiating team, and the domestic violence unit,
they'd be too late. No way the cavalry could arrive in time. So off
duty, unarmed, he gives it his best shot to get that little boy out
alive."

"And he did, sweetie. He did." Jo sighed. She'd heard it all before,
too many times. She listened again.

"The kid said Kenny Mac threw him out the front door and yelled for
him to run. He did, and a few seconds later, the whole place explodes.
It kills the worthless piece of shit who started it and the only man I
ever loved. Why?"

"Every life has its purpose, Kath. It's not something we can ever
understand. But maybe in his life, at that moment, he'd accomplished
what he was here to do."

 "It's a circle. Life is a continuum. The soul is all that's
permanent. Death is a rebirth. Leaves and birds come back, so does the
soul. We all have a life cycle. It's nature, part of the universe, part
of everything around us. The billions of stars out there, they're born
and they die. In fact"—she cocked her head—"I read that astronomers see
more stars dying now and fewer being born. Which means that the
universe is going dark."

Riley sighed. "Thank you very much. If this is your inspirational
spiel for grieving witnesses in your homicide cases, it needs work. I'd
leave out that last bit if I were you." She wiped her face on her towel.

"Sorry, I digressed," Jo said, "but what I meant to say is that
grieving is for us, not him. He's going forward. Staying positive will
help his soul to move on."

"Bullshit, Jo. Don't try to sell me that crap, I won't even rent it.
You know his name belongs on that plaque in the lobby with all the
others killed in the line of duty."

"It's not important." Jo shrugged. "He didn't do what he did for
recognition. He did it for all the right reasons. Maybe that was his
reason for being."

"You mean his sole purpose in life was to rescue a little kid who's
probably destined to wind up a bad, sad, dead druggie, like his dad?"

"We're not here to judge. That's for God on Judgment Day. Maybe that
little child was saved for a reason."

"I wish," Riley said bleakly.

Hooker scratched at the back door and Jo let her in. The old dog
shook herself, spraying her with water before docilely submitting to
her towel. "Whose good ol' dog are you?" she crooned, as she wiped her
paws and rough-dried her coat.

Riley watched, eyes pained.

"Maybe we can find her a good home," Jo offered. "I can ask around
the office."

"No way."

"But every time you see her…"

"Kenny found her injured, lying in the fast lane up in hooker
heaven, on the boulevard around Seventy-ninth Street, when he was
working vice. She looked dead. Dirty and skinny, bleeding from the
mouth, couldn't walk, had no tag. They wanted to call animal control.
He scooped her up in his raincoat, put her in the back of his patrol
car, and took her to a vet. He could have been in trouble for leaving
his zone, but he did it anyway. Hooker is all I have left."

"Okay, okay. But if it's too hard, if you change your mind, let me
know. I'm just trying to help."

"I know you are."

She walked Jo to her car, parked out on the street. The rain had
stopped.

"I promised Ricky I'd be back by midnight. But I wish I could stay
over. You worry me, Kath. I hate seeing you so depressed."

 
"I worry
myself. Because you're wrong. I'm not depressed.
I'm angry. I'm so angry, so filled with rage, that sometimes I'm afraid
I'll kill somebody."

"Time to see the department shrink?"

"Sure. How swell would that look on my resume?"

"I'll call you tomorrow. Take care, Kath."

Riley hugged her friend and watched her drive away. She lingered,
staring at the sky.

"They're right," she murmured to the old dog beside her. "The
universe is going dark."

The chief stepped gingerly into his office, wincing as he eased into
the chair behind his desk. Only 8:30 a.m. and his head throbbed. After
words with Mildred, he'd stormed out of the house forgetting his
sunglasses. The white heat of Miami's morning sun on the drive to
headquarters had triggered a jackhammer behind his eyes. He cautiously
touched an eyelid, certain that his retinas were blistered.

He was acutely aware that he was the fourth chief in three years.
One went to prison, another was fired in disgrace, a third forced to
resign. Neither his present nor his future appeared bright. So far his
entire administration appeared to be a slow-motion train wreck. His
solicitous aide brought coffee as the chief vaguely wondered why his
command staff and aides were all men. Probably something to do with the
ill-fated romance of one of his predecessors. The woman had worked at
police headquarters but was married unfortunately—to a convicted drug
dealer. The press had a party with that one.

He forced open a watery eye. José, his young aide, stood poised,
eagerly awaiting orders, like a faithful K-9. If the boy had a tail, it
would be wagging. The chief had him close the blinds, quickly, to block
out the blinding sunlight and the towering steel and mirrored skyline
of the city that mocked him. Then he sent Jose for an Alka-Seltzer.
Aspirin would upset his stomach. The chief wished fervently for
something stronger, some happy pill, some psychotropic drug.

He'd heard about Miami's corruption, violence, and banana republic
when offered the job.

But he felt strong, vital, and still young. Three years of sterling
service would enhance his resume, paving the way for his entry into the
private sector as a highly paid consultant and expert witness. He had
retired from the top job in Milwaukee in his early fifties, his
reputation relatively intact. At least nobody had anything he could be
indicted for. Ready to conquer new worlds, he felt invincible,
convinced he had what it took for the job.

Most important, he had what it took to be accepted in this Hispanic
city—
sangre hispana
, a trace of Hispanic blood in his
heritage. His grandmother, bless her heart, after dumping her second
husband, had fallen for a skinny, fiery-eyed, square-jawed flamenco
dancer passing through on tour. The doomed union endured long enough to
produce his father, who had changed his name from Diego Granados to
Donald Green.

His son, foreseeing America's future, took back the Granados name
upon entering law enforcement.

He owed his career advancement, the opportunities he'd enjoyed, and
the position in which he now found himself all to the grandfather he
never met, that son of a bitch, the flamenco dancer.

Bubbles from the Alka-Seltzer tickled his nose as he downed the
drink.

Something afloat in the oppressively hot and humid Miami air had
activated his allergies. He awoke that morning wheezing. Then he'd
complained that all his boxer shorts were now pink. His wife showed no
sympathy.

"I never promised to live in a foreign country," she said bitterly,
apparently still upset after a bad experience the day before.

Mildred grew up in Muncie, Indiana, and was having adjustment
problems. She had called him hysterically from her cell phone,
hopelessly lost while driving. No one on the street, not even a letter
carrier, spoke enough English to help.

The woman had no sense of direction. He had explained Miami's grid
system to her a dozen times. "Think of St. Louis," he'd said. "STL:
streets, terraces, and lanes all run east and west. Then remember CPA:
courts, places, and avenues. They go north and south. Simple."

But it was not simple. Demented city planners, brains fried by the
sun or too many Cuba Libres, allowed for too many exceptions. There
were all the dead ends at waterways, canals, railroad tracks, and the
bay. There were too few through streets, the confusing distinctions
between SE, SW, NE, and NW, and the fact that most Miami roadways have
at least three names. Street signs use only one. The name on the sign
almost never matched the one on the road maps.

Her call had caught him in a crucial meeting with the mayor and city
manager, huddled at a table in a dark corner of a Cuban restaurant in
Little Havana. Both his bosses puffed thick black cigars. Bloated by
the heavily spiced food, sinuses clogged by his allergies and the acrid
cigar smoke, the chief had made the fatal mistake of answering his cell
phone.

He tried to smile casually at his macho bosses while listening to
his wife sob.

"Now try to remember," he said patiently. "What did I tell you about
St. Louis and CPA?"

He was certain they heard her scream. "Don't you patronize me, you
son of a bitch!"

He kept calm.

"Okay, sweetheart, let's figure this out. Tell me the name of the
street you're on right now."

"General Maximo Perez Way."

"Staff meeting in twenty minutes." José's pitted face peered around
the doorjamb. For God's sake, the chief thought, the boy suffers from
terminal acne. "Alexander Rodriguez, the state attorney, will be there."

Son of a bitch, the chief thought, and licked the Alka-Seltzer's
salty residue from his lips.

"Call Joe Padron," he told José. "Make sure he's coming."

Padron, their best public information officer, could put a positive
spin on anything. Cops could rape and pillage, and Padron could somehow
portray them as heroes. He could compose press releases that kept facts
murky, revealing nothing, yet the newshounds blindly accepted them. The
man had a talent.

José returned moments later. "Padron is out at a scene.
Sixty-five-year-old lady and her four-year-old grand-daughter shot in
the cross-fire outside Miami Senior High. Our
second school shooting this week."

"School hasn't opened yet."

"Right," José said. "They're in summer session."

The chief frowned and dreaded September.

"Fuck the old lady and the kid," he shouted, head throbbing. "Get
Padron's ass in here now!"

The budget was giving him fits. Every time unsubstantiated
intelligence warned that terrorists had targeted Miami, he was forced
to boost the department's alert from yellow to orange. Each day on
orange alert cost $5,000 in overtime for officers assigned to protect
high-profile facilities, including the homes of the mayor and the city
manager.

The publicity always generated new threats, a vicious circle.

The rank and file were close to mutiny because of the
Miami News
and their goddamn investigative piece exposing the practice of allowing
police officers to drive their patrol cars home. The story had revealed
the huge cost. Taxpayer groups were raising hell. The police union had
won the take-home car perk, including free gas and maintenance, years
ago. Patrol cars parked in officers' driveways in residential areas
would be deterrents and keep the neighborhoods safer. That was the
premise. Unfortunately, as the goddamn
News
revealed, most
cops refuse to live in crime-ridden Miami, America's poorest city. So
they commute in city cars to their homes in more affluent neighboring
counties. The chief himself did not know until he read it in the
newspaper that some of his officers lived as far as a hundred miles
outside city limits, or that the soaring number of city cars involved
in out-of-county traffic accidents was costing big bucks in injuries,
damages, and lawsuits.

Disgruntled cops and their unions would go to war if he tried to
eliminate take-home cars. Once given, no perk can be taken away.

Why did the blunders of prior administrations come back to bite him?
And if the crime rate was down among civilians, why the hell was it
accelerating among cops?

Alex Rodriguez would be at today's staff meeting to discuss
cooperation in the prosecution of the latest gaggle of street cops
charged with planting throw-down guns beside people they'd shot. Others
had recently been arrested for stealing drugs and money from evidence,
beating hapless civilians, and extorting sex from women motorists.

Other behavior, not criminal but just plain stupid, continued to
generate negative headlines. Wrong house raids, the pepper spraying of
tourists, and the one-legged suspect who outhopped half a dozen
officers and got away.