Detective (12 page)

At their last meeting Major Yanes,
a heavily built man with bushy hair
and a drill sergeant's voice, wasted
no time after his secretary ushered
Newbold in.

"Lieutenant, what the hell are you
and your people doing? Or should I
say not doing?"

Normally the major would have used
Newbold's first name and invited him
to sit down. This time he did
neither, and simply looked up,
glaring, from his desk. Newbold,
suspecting that Yanes had received
his own castigation from higher up,
and knowing the
down-through-the-ranks drill, took
his time before answering.

The major's office was on the same
floor as Homicide, and a large
window overlooked downtown Miami,
bathed now in brilliant sunshine.
The desk was gray metal with a white
plastic top, on which piles of
folders and pencils were laid out in
neat military order. Facing him was
a conference table with eight
chairs. As in most police offices,
the effect was austere, relieved
slightly by a few photographs of
Yanes's grandchildren on a side
table.

"You know the situation, Major,''
Newbold responded. "We're swamped.
Every detective is working
sixteen-hour

DETECTIVE 97

days or more, following every lead
we've got. These guys are near
exhaustion."

Yanes waved an arm irritably. "Oh,
for Christ's sake! Sit down."

When Newbold was seated, Yanes
declared, "Long hours and exhaustion
are part of this job and you know
it. So however much work you're
getting from everyone, drive 'em
harder. And remember this when
people are exhausted they're apt to
miss things, and it's our job to
make damn sure they don't. So I'm
telling you, Newbold, take a good,
hard look at every case, right now!
Make sure there's nothing undone
that should have been done. Go over
every detail and look especially
hard for connections between cases.
If I learn later that something
important has been overlooked, I
promise you'll regret ever having
told me your men are tired. Tired!
For Christ's sake!"

Newbold sighed inwardly but said
nothing.

Yanes concluded, "That's all,
Lieutenant."

"Yes, sir." Newbold rose from his
chair, turned smartly and went out,
deciding that he would do exactly
what Manolo Yanes urged.

It was less than a month after this
confrontation that as Leo Newbold
would describe it later "the whole
goddam roof fell in."

The series of events began on August
14 at 11:12 A.M., when the temperature
in Miami was ninety-eight degrees
Fahrenheit and the humidity
eighty-five percent. Detective-
Sergeant Pablo Greene was heading
that day's Hot Team when a radio
call to Homicide headquarters, from
a uniform patrol officer named
Frankel, reported an apparent

98 Arthur Halley

murder at Pine Terrace Condominiums
on Biscayne Boulevard at 69th
Street.

The victims were a Hispanic couple
in their sixties named Urbina,
Lazaro and Luisa. A male neighbor,
after knocking on their door and
getting no response, peered in
through a window. Seeing two bound
figures, he forced the door open,
then moments later used the Urbinas'
phone to call 911.

The dead husband and wife were in
the living room of their four-room
condominium. Both victims had been
beaten, their bodies slashed by a
knife, and cruelly mutilated. Blood
had pooled on the floor around them.

Sergeant Greene, a twenty-year
Miami Police veteran, tall, lean,
and with a bristling mustache, told
Frankel to secure the scene, then
urgently looked around the office
for someone to send.

Standing up and surveying all of
Homicide, he could see that every
other detective's desk was empty.
The room was large, with a
half-dozen rows of small,
bureaucratic metal desks, set side
by side and separated by shoulder-
high dividers. Each desk contained
a multiple-line phone, several file
trays, overflowing, and in some
cases a computer terminal. Every
detective had his or her own desk,
and most had tried to personalize
their drab conformity with family
photos, drawings, or cartoons.

In the entire room the only other
people were two harried secretaries,
busily answering phones. Today, as
every day, the calls were from
citizens, news media, members of
victims' families asking for
information about relatives' deaths,
politicians looking for answers to
the sudden rise in shootings, and
countless other sources, rational
and otherwise.

Greene knew that all available
detectives were out working and, for
most of the summer, Homicide
headquarters

DETECTIVE 99

had looked the way it did today. His
own team of four was investigating
eight murders, and other teams were
under similar pressure.

He would have to go to Pine Terrace
himself, Greene decided. Alone and
quickly.

He looked down at the paperwork
piled on his desk two weeks'
arrears of crime records and other
reports that Lieutenant Newbold was
urging him to complete and knew he
must put the work aside yet again.
He slipped on his jacket, checked
his shoulder holster, gun, and ammu-
nition, and headed for the elevator.
From his unmarked car he would radio
one of his units and have someone
join him, but, knowing everyone's
workload, he doubted it would happen
soon.

As to the burdensome, never-ceasing
paperwork, Greene reasoned gloomily
he would have to come back and move
some more tonight.

Some fifteen minutes later
Detective-Sergeant Greene arrived at
Pine Terrace condominium number 18,
where the condo and the surrounding
area were cordoned off by official
yellow display tape POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.
Greene approached a uniform officer
standing between the condo entrance
and a small, curious crowd.

"Officer Frankel? I'm Sergeant
Greene. What do you have?"

"Me and my partner were here first,
Sergeant," Frankel reported. "We
haven't touched a thing." He
motioned to a heavily built, bearded
man standing off to one side. "This
is Mr. Xavier. He's the neighbor who
called nineone-one."

The bearded man joined them. He told
Greene, "When

100 Arthur Halley

I saw those bodies through the
window I just broke down the door.
Maybe I shouldn't have."

"Forget that. There's always a
chance someone might be alive."

"The Urbinas sure weren't. Didn't
know them well, but I'll never
forget "

Frankel interrupted. "Two things
Mr. Xavier did he used the phone
inside to call nine-one-one, and he
turned off a radio."

"It was so loud," Xavier said, "I
couldn't hear on the phone."

Greene asked, "Did you do anything
else to the radio, like change the
station it was set to? Or touch
anything else at all?"

"No, sir." Xavier looked
crestfallen. "Do you think I messed
up any fingerprints?"

Everybody's a crime expert, Greene
thought. "Too early to tell, but
we'd appreciate your letting us take
your prints so we can separate them
from any others. The print record
will be returned to you." Greene
told Frankel, "Stay in touch with
Mr. Xavier. We'll need him later to-
day."

When Sergeant Greene entered the
Urbinas' condo, he knew at once that
what he was seeing was no routine
homicide, but a dire and crucial
development in what was surely a
sequence of ghastly serial killings.
Greene, like most Homicide
supervisors, kept himself informed
of other teams' cases and was
familiar with the Coconut Grove
murders in January of Homer and
Blanche Frost. He knew, too, of the
Hennenfeld case in Fort Lauderdale
almost three months ago that was so
similar to the Frosts'. Now
here horribly and unmistakably was
a third matching atrocity.

DETECTIVE 101

Greene acted fast, reaching for his
portable police radio secured to his
belt, and made several calls.

First he called for an ID crew, the
most pressing need in a case like
this, where another serial killing
could occur at any time. Every scrap
of evidence had to be gathered fast,
examined and assessed without delay.
But a dispatcher informed Greene
that all the ID crews were tied up
on other cases, and one would not
get to him for at least an hour.
Pablo Greene seethed, knowing the
delay might cause some evidence to
deteriorate. But abusing the
dispatcher would accomplish nothing,
so he kept quiet.

He was far less patient when he
made his second call, summoning a
medical examiner to view the
victims. No ME was available, he was
told, though one would be sent "when
possible."

"That's not good enough,'' he said,
trying not to shout, but knowing
there was nothing he could do. The
next call yielded similar results:
no state attorney was available; one
presently in court would try to
arrive within an hour.

So much was changing for
investigators, he brooded. Not long
ago, any summons to a murder scene
produced immediate action, but
obviously no more. He supposed it
was all part of society's declining
values, though certainly not
declining murders.

Greene did manage to reach
Lieutenant Newbold by radio and,
while choosing his words carefully
since others would be listening,
conveyed the urgency for fast action
at the Pine Terrace scene. Newbold
quickly promised to do some phoning
himself. '

Greene also suggested that Sergeant
Ainslie and Detective Quinn be
notified, which Newbold agreed to
do, adding that he would come to the
scene himself within the next half
hour.

Greene returned his attention to the
two murder victims

102 Arthur Halley

and the sadistic violation of their
bodies, continuing the notes he had
been scribbling since entering the
building. Just as in the other two
cases he had heard described, the
man and woman had been positioned
facing each other, bound and gagged.
It seemed likely that each had been
forced to watch in silent terror
while the other was tortured.

Sergeant Greene sketched their
positions, without disturbing
anything before the ID crew's
arrival. On a side table he observed
an incoming addressed envelope from
which a letter had been removed and
left open. Moving the letter
carefully with a penknife to avoid
touching it, he was able to learn
the Urbinas' full names, which he
added to his notes.

On a small bureau near the bodies
Greene spotted a portable
radio clearly the one that Xavier
had switched off. Peering at the
tuning dial, Greene noted the
setting: 105.9 FM. He knew the
station: HOT 105. Hard rock.

Then, still moving meticulously,
stroking his mustache as he
considered what he saw, he viewed
the other rooms.

In both bedrooms the drawers had
all been opened, presumably by an
intruder, and left that way. The
contents of a woman's purse and a
man's wallet had been emptied onto
a bed. There was no money, though
some minor jewelry remained.

Each bedroom had a separate
bathroom and toilet, and though the
ID crew would go over both
thoroughly, Greene saw nothing of
significance. In what appeared to be
the main bathroom, the toilet seat
was raised, and there was urine in
the bowl. Greene added both facts to
his notes, even though he knew that
neither urine nor stool could be
linked to an individual for
identification.

He returned to the living room and
smelled something new an addition to
the putrid odor resulting from open

DETECTIVE 103

wounds on dead bodies. As he moved
closer to the victims, the smell grew
stronger. Then he saw it. Alongside
one hand of the dead woman was a
bronze bowl containing what appeared
to be human excrement, partly
immersed in what was obviously urine.

There were occasional moments in
his work when Pablo Greene wished he
had chosen some other profession.

As he drew back, he reminded
himself it was not unknown for
criminals to defecate at crime
scenes usually during break-ins at
well-to-do homes, presumably as a
gesture of contempt for the absent
owners. But he could not recall ever
having seen this before at a homicide
scene, especially given the nature of
the awful killing of two old people.
Greene, a good, decent family man,
thought fiercely of the perpetrator:
What kind of vile piece of hurnan
garbage are you?

"What was that, Pablo?" a voice
from the outer doorway inquired. It
was Newbold, who had just arrived,
and Greene realized he had spoken
aloud.

Still caught up by emotion that he
rarely felt or showed, Greene
gestured toward the two bodies, then
pointed to the bowl he had just
surveyed.

Leo Newbold stepped forward and
inspected it all.

Then he said quietly, "Don't worry.
We'll get the bastard. And when we
do, we'll put this case together so
goddam tight, we'll make sure the son
of a bitch burns."

Newbold was also remembering Major
Yanes's words, spoken not long ago:
Make sure there's nothing undone that
should have been done. Go over every
detail and look especially hard for
connections between cases.

Well, Homicide knew of a probable
connection between the Frosts'
killings and the Hennenfelds' in Fort
Lauderdale, and now, with this new
double slaying so clearly aligned
with those other two, inevitably the
question would

104 Arthur Halley

be asked: Could more have been
achieved by combining the two
earlier inquiries, accepting them as
serial killings? Might they even
have found a suspect?

Newbold didn't think so. Just the
same, he was sure there would be
some second-guessing, to which the
media would contribute, almost
certainly resulting in further pres-
sure on Homicide and the Police
Department generally.