Cold Case Squad (8 page)

"The next Bill Gates," Joan said. "A millionaire by the time he was
eighteen. Software. He invented a whole new computer language. Got a
full scholarship to Princeton."

Ryan rolled his eyes.

"What's that?" Stone stopped the tape and rewound.

"HoHo's act," Stan said.

The clown waved a red silk scarf overhead like a banner.

"Something else going by. Looks like it stopped for a minute," Burch
said. "Hard to tell between the trees, with all that glare from the
sun."

They continued to watch.

"Hey, there it is again." Nazario leaned toward the screen.

HoHo reached deep into his throat and dramatically withdrew the long
red scarf.

"Now watch this," Ryan said. "Here it comes. The big baboomba!"

Cheers, applause. A loud
whoosh
.

"Fireworks!" A glowing eight-year-old Ryan, arms raised in
jubilation, birthday crown askew.

Jerky camera movements. Smoke and flame. An explosion, empty sky,
treetops, a pony bolting, a man chasing after him. Chunks of burning
wreckage falling like meteors. Sookie scrambling, tail between her legs.

Car and house alarms wailing. Flames, orange and red against
brilliant blue sky. Pudgy legs churning. Stan sprinting. Children
screaming. The screen went dark as the camera hit the ground.

"I dropped it," Joan said in a voice thin with remembrance. "Or
threw it down. I can't remember which."

The room stayed quiet for a moment.

"Should have kept shooting, Mom. You could have sold it to
America's
Funniest Home Videos
."

"You're a sick kid," his father said.

"Can we borrow the tape?" Burch asked.

"God bless Americans and their video cameras," Nazario said in the
car.

"Nice people," Burch said. "Real nice. Notice how they kept
finishing each other's sentences?"

"Yeah. Sometimes you forget there are still families like that. We
heading over to see the widow?"

"Yeah. I gotta stop on the way to pick up cat food."

"I've got some personal business, too. Something I need to take care
of," Stone said. "For about an hour. Okay, Sarge?"

"A little afternoon delight, huh? Oh, to be young and
single. Just make sure you stay single. And stay by your radio."

They dropped him off at the police parking garage.

"So the young stud has a sweet young thing waiting for him
somewhere."

Nazario nodded. "Guy has a way with the women."

Stone used his own key. He knew she'd be in the bedroom.

"Hey, where's my girl?"

She felt like a frail bird in his arms as they hugged.

"Did you eat without me?"

"No, I waited, jus' doin' a little mendin' until you got yourself
here." A cotton skirt, its hem ripped, lay across the arm of her
recliner.

She seemed slightly unsteady on her feet, and he took her arm as
they went into the kitchen of her tiny Overtown cottage.

"Why aren't you watching TV?"

She waved away the idea, lips pursed. "All that soap opera
foolishness? Everybody lyin' to everybody else, everybody sleepin' with
everybody else, swappin' husbands, tradin' wives. Who cares 'bout that
trash? And those crazy talk shows? Where do they find those poor white
trash?"

He grinned. "How about a movie? The History Channel or Animal
Planet? I know you like that."

She looked away, headed for the stove.

"Gran, you still have the cable, don't you?"

"Who needs four hundred channels? It costs too much. Somebody 'ud
have to watch night and day to make it worth the money. I don't watch
that much, jes' the news."

He looked exasperated. "But you don't have to worry about the bill,
Gran. I gave you the cable for your birthday, remember?"

"You do too much already, Sonny. Shouldn't spend money on me. You
work too hard for it, you could do lots of other things with it."

She frowned in front of the old-fashioned four-burner gas stove.
"You here for breakfast or supper, Sonny?"

He tried not to be alarmed. A minor short-term memory lapse. That's
all it was. She still had total recall of events that took place forty
years ago. If you misplace your keys, the doctor said, don't worry.
Worry when you find them but don't remember what they're for.

"It's lunch, Gran. I think you already fixed it. Something sure
smells good."

"Oh, that's right." Nodding, she opened the oven door. "I was jus'
keepin' it warm."

His grandmother had always been the smartest, hardest-working, most
resourceful woman he'd ever known. She didn't let Sam get away with a
thing while raising him. For a long time he'd really believed she had
eyes in the back of her head.

"Set down and read the newspaper, Sonny, and I'll fix you a plate."

He took the still-folded
Miami News
and sat in the small
living room. Years ago they'd shared the same old armchair as his
grandmother told him stories and showed him yellowed photos: Overtown
nightclub owners, businessmen with marceled burr cuts, and show
business stars. Overtown was a mecca for black entertainers, top stars
who sang, danced, and did comedy at fancy Miami Beach clubs and hotels
but were not permitted to eat or sleep there. They all stayed in
Overtown and starred in late-night performances at its lively clubs and
theaters, in the days before the white establishment gutted the
once-vibrant neighborhood to build the expressway. She'd shown him
photos of a woman called Diamond Tooth Mary and of his great-aunt
Marva, a well-known schoolteacher and church organist.

He felt relaxed and at home in that room where his parents smiled
from a picture frame on a shelf. Next to it was a photo of himself at
age five. Wearing a navy blue suit, saddle shoes, and a tie, he peered
uncertainly at the camera from in front of a vintage television set.
His eyes wandered back to his parents' faces, their smiles frozen in
time, much the way he remembered them.

His father had labored over the fire, barbecuing juicy ribs, pork
chops, shrimp, and chicken, while his mother waited on customers at
their tiny take-out restaurant.

They worked side by side, thirteen hours a day, seven days a week.

His parents would drop him off at school and go on to work. After
school, Sam walked home, let himself in, and did his homework until his
grandmother arrived from her housekeeping job in Miami Beach. She would
stay until his parents came home at night.

His mother said all the hard work was for the future. It would not
be forever, she had assured him.

She was right.

He was eight years old when their future ended.

They had been robbed twice before. His father bought a gun for
protection. He kept it on a shelf over his barbecue stove.

He never had a chance to reach for it the night it happened.

Sam was working on his math at' the kitchen table, hoping that the
hard rain falling meant his parents would be home soon. Rain always
made business slow. When the knock at the door came, he thought it
might be them at first, but it was a policeman. His grandmother sent
Sam to his room, but he ran back to her when he heard her scream.

The policeman picked him up, held him in his arms, and said
everything would be all right, as his grandmother wailed.

The next time Sam saw his parents, they lay in matching caskets,
side by side.

He never forgot the policeman whose name he never knew. After Sam
pinned on the badge, he watched for the man, certain he would still
recognize him. But he apparently quit or retired, never knowing he had
motivated Sam to follow him into the department. Sam worked hard, won
honors in patrol, and persistently applied to join the Cold Case Squad.
When the time was right, after he had proven himself, built some
seniority and respect, and had enough clout, he would persuade the team
to pursue the case that had changed his life forever.

"Hope you're hungry, Sonny. Come set down while it's hot."

She'd filled his plate with ham, sweet potatoes, collard greens, and
pole beans. His iced tea was the way he liked it.

"I'll be by Saturday morning," he told her, as he slathered sweet
butter on a slab of warm cornbread. "Time to mow the lawn, take the
coconuts off that palm tree. Shoulda done it sooner. It's hurricane
season. They'd be cannonballs in a storm."

She nodded. "I'll fix you a nice breakfast Saturday. How is your
case comin', honey? The big one, 'bout all those women?"

"Good, Gran. Coming along. Really good. But the lieutenant is
driving us crazy. Sending us off on a wild-goose chase just when I
start making some headway."

"What on earth is wrong with that woman?"

"Long story, Gran."

She leaned forward, eyes bright. "Well, whacha got that's new?"

He put his fork down and grinned across the table at her.

He and this tiny woman had been a team; when he was a child she took
him everywhere. They rode buses all over Miami. Even to places where
they weren't wanted. They went to the Historical Museum, to South
Beach's Art Deco District, to old Coconut Grove, Orchard Villa, Lemon
City, and other historic Miami neighborhoods. They went to the library
and to Saturday afternoon matinees. They watched TV detectives—Charlie
Chan, Sam Spade, and Sherlock Holmes—matching wits with the sleuths.
She even took him to Miami Beach and taught him how to swim in the
ocean. Back then he was the only child in his inner-city neighborhood
who knew how to swim. Some grew up never having seen the ocean, just a
short drive across the causeway.

She always told him, "You can't be what you can't see."

He didn't know then what she meant by that. He knew now.

"The killer stays with the bodies, I think, probably overnight. He
puts them to bed and folds the bedclothes really tight at the bottom,
military or hospital style. I think he cleans their kitchens and
bedrooms. So far he's killed on every day of the week but Saturday."

Arms folded, she listened intently as he rattled off the details.

She seemed to be a tower of strength when he was little. The more he
grew, the bigger and stronger he got, the smaller and weaker she'd
become. He'd always wanted to protect her from the crime, drugs, and
weird-ness that lurked in the dark. She was all he had.

She tapped her chin with an arthritic finger and pursed her lips
thoughtfully. "Jewish," she said, and nodded. "Sounds like Jewish,
Orthodox."

"Who?"

"The killer."

Sam laughed. "What makes you say that, Gran?"

"Don't you laugh at me, Sonny. I been around longer than you and I
still know a few things. Sounds Orthodox."

He still grinned. "How so?"

"The things he does. I worked for the Waldmans long enough to soak
it all up. Why, I always prepared their seder, helped those children
study for the bat and bar mitzvahs. Chopped the chicken liver, fixed
the gefilte fish. Braided the challah—that's bread, Sonny. Wasn't
nothin' to learn, jus' like plaitin' hair. Grandma Waldman taught me
all of it in her kosher kitchen. Had two sets of pots and pans, two
sets of dishes, two sets of everythin', even glasses and crystal and
dishtowels—even two dishwashers—and they can never be mixed up
together. I know all about it." She sternly wagged a gnarled index
finger. "So don't you talk no smack to me."

He remembered the Waldmans. For more than thirty years she'd worked
for generations of that large and warm family. She'd taken him to their
big house in Miami Beach. He had played with the children, the first
boys he'd ever seen wearing yarmulkes. When he mocked their skullcaps
later, she'd lashed out, indignant. "Jus' remember, Sonny, you never
hear of anybody gets mugged by a boy in a yarmulke."

When the family patriarch, Rabbi Saul Waldman, died, she had taken
him with her to the funeral.

"I'm not doubting you, Gran." He fished his notebook from his
pocket. "Okay, which things are you talking about? Let me write this
down. Maybe you can help me solve the case." He spoke half in jest, but
his curiosity was piqued. "Maybe you'll make officer of the month,
Gran."

"Don't you play with me, boy. I know what I'm talkin' 'bout here.
The man you want doesn't work on
shabbat
, the sabbath. They
don't work on Saturday." She shook her head, then sipped her tea.

"They have rituals for the dead." She put down her glass. "The
women, their eyes and mouths closed?"

He nodded, seeing again the blown-up photos forever etched in his
mind's eye.

"They never leave the dead alone. Somebody sets by them all the
time, readin' the Psalms."

"I remember that," Sam said. Two years earlier, after a Jewish
police officer was killed in the line of duty, a fellow officer, a
fellow Jew, had remained with the corpse in the medical examiner's
morgue overnight.

"But people who observe Orthodox customs are religious," he said,
thinking aloud as they always did when trying to solve a mystery before
Sherlock Holmes.

"Everybody's capable of murder, Sonny. You say that yourself.
Religious people kill each other every day. How 'bout that rabbi in New
Jersey who murdered his wife?"

"New Jersey?"

"I watched some of that Court TY" she said grudgingly. "Wasn't bad."

"But burial has to be within twenty-four hours, right?"

"There's exceptions, like the sabbath or relatives comin' from a
distance. Other things."

"Well, thanks, Gran. I'll look into it."

"And for the first meal afterward, the mourners eat bread and
hard-boiled eggs."

Eggshells in the garbage. Crazier things had happened.

He stood up, stretched, and, ignoring her protests, carried the
plates into the kitchen.

"Hey!" He noticed something. "Gran, your back door's not locked!"

"Oh." She shrugged "It keeps stickin' and gits hard to open."