Cold Case Squad (15 page)

"You mean the sex, the champagne, the all-nighter?" Burch asked.

"Yeah. You say the marriage had problems?"

"He was staying out. Evasive. She thought he was seeing somebody,
but didn't know who," Burch said. "But that night, she said he was
amazing." Nazario raised his eyebrows. "Like the first time."

Riley gave them a knowing smile.

"Goodbye sex." She leaned back in her chair. "Kiss, kiss, boom,
boom, bye-bye. When one sex partner knows it's not happening again but
the other doesn't. He's saying here's something to remember me by.
Thinks he's being romantic or kind. Ego enhances his performance. When
it dawns on her later, she's furious or crushed… unless her ego is
equally overinflated and the thought never even occurs to her. You guys
know what I'm talking about."

"Right." Burch finally spoke up when nobody else did. "Not that I
ever was the goodbye guy." He paused. "But it mighta happened to me."

"Sure," Riley said. "Goodbye sex isn't gender specific."

"I'll buy that," Stone said. "Say Charles Terrell knew this was the
last time they'd have sex. Was it because he was about to dump her for
somebody else? And then, before he could dump her, he accidentally
caught fire?"

They exchanged skeptical glances.

"Or did he know he was gonna catch fire?" Nazario said.

"Or that somebody was?" Riley said.

"He might have felt threatened, knew somebody wanted to kill him,"
Stone said. "You know, like soldiers going to war. The night before the
big battle, everybody feels the need to get it on. A biological urge,
survival of the species."

"The son of a bitch is alive," Burch said.

Riley sighed. "My other news is about a press conference this
afternoon. Stone's the star attraction. You," she told him, "are taking
the Meadows case public."

"We can't," he protested in disbelief. "There is nothing we can
release!"

"Right." Burch looked incredulous. "You gotta be shitting us. No
good reason for it. It ain't like the public is clamoring for
information. What's the point?"

"I think the killer's in Miami. I can feel it." Stone shook his
head. "He'd be tipped off. The FBI would be pissed off. They wanted it
all kept quiet."

"The press will convene at four, in the conference room adjacent to
PIO," Riley went on briskly, as though deaf to their objections. "Crime
Stoppers will offer a five-thousand-dollar reward for information.
You'll ask for help from the public. Say nothing that will hurt the
case. Try to make us look good. Don't embarrass us."

"No way!" Stone sprang to his feet. "I won't do it."

Riley got to her feet, eyes intense, the grenade gripped tightly in
her right hand. "You will do it. That's a direct order." She tossed her
head. "Look at the bright side, Stone. You wanted the opportunity to
work full- time on Meadows. You've got it now."

"But ask the public for tips and they inundate you with hundreds, a
majority of 'em wacko, most, if not all, worthless." Burch was red in
the face. "But some poor asshole in this room will have to check out
each and every one. You have to be careful what you ask for or it blows
up in your face."

"I'll try to get you help to sift through them. Hopefully the right
one will come in. You and Nazario, keep working Terrell."

"Get your thoughts together," she told Stone. "Go talk to Padron.
He's waiting for you in PIO. Everybody will be at the conference. The
chief, the deputy chief, the major, the captain, ASA Jo Salazar, your
sergeant, and me. So do it right. You'll be representing all of us—
including the victims."

"That's all." She avoided their angry stares, returned to her chair,
and gazed out her window, eyes following a sleek, silver jetliner as it
pierced the clouds high above the state building.

The detectives clustered at Stone's desk, where they couldn't be
heard from Riley's office. Corso joined them.

"The woman's crazy. She's always had it in for me." Stone paced
wildly. "I can't do it. What the hell can I say?"

"She's lost it," Corso said. "Never had it. No good reason for the
bitch to turn on you like this."

"I don't know what she's thinking, or if she's thinking at all,"
Burch said. "But, Sam, my man. If you want to work on this squad, you
gotta do it. She's the boss. Whatever the hell is going on, it, too,
will pass. Now, whacha got new in Meadows?"

"Nothing releasable." Stone collapsed into his desk chair as though
crushed by a heavy weight. He stared at the floor. "There is a chance,"
he muttered, "that the killer is Jewish, could be Orthodox."

"I'm not even gonna ask at this point how you came to that
conclusion," Burch said. "Let's see, we got about five million Jews in
the U.S. Half a them are doctors and lawyers. That narrows it down. How
many suspects does that leave us?"

"Gimme a break," Stone muttered. "I'm dying over here."

"Do it," Burch said. "Get through it the best you can. What else you
gonna do? Try not to hurt the case, what there is of it. We'll go do
some follow-up on Terrell." He promised to be back before the
conference.

April Terrell and her children lived in Morningside, an old
neighborhood of burgeoning redevelopment and spiraling real estate
values just north of downtown Miami. The address was just east of
Biscayne Boulevard, about four blocks from the bay, a charming, older
building with bicycle racks out front and a pool out back.

A girlish voice answered the buzzer. "Sergeant Burch! I wanted to
meet you. Come up. My mother will be home any minute."

A girl about seventeen opened the door to the third-floor apartment.
Wholesome and fresh scrubbed, with blue eyes and blond hair like her
mother, she reminded Burch of his own daughter, not in looks or
coloring but in her manner, the way she had about her. He could see the
same hopeful exuberance, the innocent energy of girls exploded into
puberty, about to blast off into the world like unguided missiles.
Jennifer's hunger for experience, her eagerness for adulthood, scared
him. Was she all right? He missed her.

"My mom told us about you both," Joy Terrell said, inviting them in.

Girls were not that poised and self-assured when he was young, Burch
thought.

The mother's influence, he decided.

"Charlie? Come say hello."

The boy, who appeared to be a few years younger, glanced up from his
video game, barely acknowledging his sister or the visitors.

"They're real police detectives!" she said enthusiastically.

"We like to think so," Burch said.

The boy, about fifteen, became more interested, wandering over to
join them as they settled on a comfortable couch and armchair in the
warm, inviting living room. "You ever shoot anybody?" he asked Nazario.

"Nope."

"Anybody ever shoot you?"

"Charles!" the girl admonished. She and Burch exchanged knowing
glances, a meeting of the minds on the crass nature of younger brothers.

"It's not like you see on
TV
," Burch explained. "Most cops
work an entire career, then retire without ever shooting at anybody."
He didn't say that those cops probably didn't work in Miami. "I've only
got nine years to go myself."

"The job is actually ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent
sheer panic," Nazario explained.

Disappointed, the boy returned to his video game.

When they declined the girl's offer to fix them coffee, she pulled a
chair up to within a few feet of where they sat, then gazed at both
men, expression expectant. She wore pink barrettes in her hair, blue
jeans, and a frilly little cotton blouse with bows on the shoulder.

"We were so excited when my mom went to see you," she said happily.
"She thought about it for a long time."

Burch wondered how much the mother had told them.

"Charlie doesn't remember much about my dad. But I do. I really miss
him. Want to see his picture?" She sprang to her feet without waiting
for an answer.

She moved with the same coltish grace as Jennifer, Burch thought, as
the girl returned from another room with a framed photo.

And like Jennifer, she, too, was chatty and outgoing. "This is my
favorite." She handed Burch the picture. "It was his birthday. Wasn't
he handsome?" She peered over their shoulders to study it with them.

Tall, blond, and rugged, with pale eyes and strong features, Charles
Terrell wore a huge grin. He stood at a dining room table, a cake in
front of him.

"Nice," Burch said.

"Once when I was little, he took me shopping to buy a Christmas
present for my mom. He held my hand. He took me to the circus, too. I
remember him holding me way up high so I could feed peanuts to the
elephant. He was really neat."

Charles made sneery sounds from his video game.

"Don't pay attention to him." She rolled her eyes at her brother.
"He hardly remembers anything. Once when we went to see my dad, my mom
dropped us off at the house. But Dad wasn't there, and Natasha made us
wait outside until he came home. It got dark. We were hungry. Charlie
was crying and had to go to the bathroom."

"Shut up," Charlie muttered.

"It's tough growing up without him." She fixed serious blue eyes on
Burch.

"My mom hasn't even dated all these years. She wants to wait till
we're both in college. I'm afraid nobody will even ask her then."

"I've seen your mom." Nazario winked. "You have nothing to worry
about."

She smiled. "You can talk to her about most things, but sometimes,
you know, it would be more comfortable to talk to your dad. Especially
Charlie." She lowered her voice. "It's hard to be the only boy in the
family. But I think dads are really important for girls, too. I started
dating last year." She smiled shyly. "Some of my friends with fathers
or stepfathers say they hate it when their dads insist on meeting their
dates and telling them what time to bring the girls home. But I think
it's kind of nice. Don't you? Do you have any children?"

Nazario shook his head.

"Three," Burch said.

"Do you live with them?"

"Yeah," he said reluctantly. "Sorta." Was the guilt he felt because
he lied to this sweet, sad kid? Or because he wasn't living with his
own children?

"They're lucky," she said. "A lot of kids in my class come from
one-parent homes, like ours."

"My oldest is a girl about your age."

"What's her name? Where does she go to school? Maybe—"

A sound interrupted. A key turned in the lock and the door opened.

"Somebody, help." April Terrell juggled bags of groceries.

"Did you get the ice cream?" Charlie said.

She was surprised to see the detectives, hoped that Joy hadn't
talked their ears off, and wondered aloud why the visitors had no
coffee. With the kids in the kitchen, unpacking the grocery bags, she
confirmed that Charles drank little, if at all. And that he had lost
his right ring finger in a teenage accident.

"Gruesome," she said. "Water-skiing. His finger got tangled in the
tow line."

"Any medical problems, liver, anything like that?" Nazario asked.

"No, not at all. Charles was obscenely healthy, he worked out six
days a week, rain or shine."

"The condition of his teeth?"

"Excellent." She smiled. "He must have used every product that came
into the store. He flossed, had a Water Pik, an electric toothbrush, a
toothbrush sanitizer. He watched his diet, took vitamin supplements,
and—"

"Dental work?"

She frowned and looked from one to the other, puzzled. "Right after
it happened, an investigator from the medical examiner's office called
to ask the same thing. Charles saw a dentist a few times in college,
mostly for cleanings. He never had any major work done."

"Where was Charles buried?" Nazario said.

"He wasn't." April Terrell sighed. "Natasha had him cremated. I knew
that wasn't what he wanted, but she was in charge. I guess under the
circumstances it didn't make much difference, but it would have been
nice to have a place…" Her voice trailed off.

"I had such mixed emotions about bothering you," she said after a
pause. "I know you're busy with more important things, but this haunts
me so."

"We're looking into it," Burch said. "Right now we're interested in
learning more about Natasha, her background."

"You have to ask her, I guess. She's supposedly from the Midwest
somewhere. I was always good at that, but never could place her accent.
Have you met her?"

They nodded.

"Is she still as beautiful?" She sounded wistful.

Burch paused, as though he hadn't really noticed. "An attractive
woman." He shrugged.

"What was the problem involving the weight-loss clinics?"

April's hand flew to her mouth. "You don't think that could have had
anything to do with it?" she asked. "It was terrible. He and a business
partner, Martin Asher, opened the clinics. Asher used the title doctor,
but wasn't really a physician. They originated a regimen that combined
diet, exercise, and over-the-counter diet pills, which were basically
herbal supplements."

"They seemed to be successful until a housewife with small children
collapsed and died suddenly after a month or two on the program. Her
husband blamed the combination of pills and sued. Charles's lawyers
argued that she must have had some undetected heart abnormality. She
was also on birth-control pills and medication for a chronic condition.
Asthma, I think. Maybe what she was taking wasn't compatible with the
diet pills." She shrugged. "I don't know. The husband was obsessed.
He'd lost his wife, the mother of his children. The clinics went
bankrupt to avoid a judgment. Much later, after Charles died, a rash of
cases came to light. A class-action suit was filed against the
manufacturers, but I think it was too late for that family. I don't
believe they ever collected anything."