Suitable for Framing (19 page)

“Miss Tierney? She's not coming?”

“She's out of town at the moment.”

He nodded. “Ernesto is dead,” he whispered.

“Yes, you did a good job on him,” I said.

“He would have killed me.”

“Are you saying it was self-defense?”

“You know he planned to kill me.”

“How would I know that?”

“Miss Tierney. Trish. She knew. She warned me, told me he bought the gun, that he planned to kill me. Because of his mother. She said he blamed me. But I loved her.”

“She told you he bought a gun?”

He swallowed, then coughed weakly. I brought the glass up and positioned the straw between his lips. After several swallows I took it away and picked up my pen again.

“That,” he said, voice raspy, “was why I bought a gun too. To protect myself. She said he was looking for me.”

“Why did you go to the cemetery, knowing he'd be there?”

He looked bewildered, squinting up at me as though the overhead light was too bright for his eyes. “He wasn't supposed to be there. She called me at work to warn me. She was in danger and so was I. He was crazy, threatening both of us, she said. A powder keg ready to explode. Those were her words. She said she told the police, but they wouldn't help us. She asked me to meet her at the cemetery. She was scared and wanted me to bring a gun. We were both in danger.”

I held my breath, heart pounding in my ears. “What happened when you got there?”

“He was there, kneeling, with some flowers. I didn't see him until I got out of my car. She looked frightened. She yelled, ‘Oh, no! He's got a gun!' and then hit the ground behind the big tree. I didn't see her again. I pulled out my gun. So did he. We were yelling at each other. He started shooting.” He closed his eyes and gasped for breath. “So did I.”

“Who do you think she called out to warn?”

“I thought it was me, at first.”

“What do you think now?”

“It all happened so fast, too fast to stop. But now, I keep seeing his eyes, the way they looked. He was scared. He was scared of me. I think she had called him and told him the same things she told me.”

“You mean that she warned him about you? That you were both set up?”

He nodded. The question burned in his eyes. “Why?” he asked me. “Why?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Hey! Britt Montero! Who gave you permission? What the hell you doing in here?” The cop had returned. His face was red.

“I was just leaving.”

“Damn right, you're leaving.” He turned on the security guard. “You dumb son of a bitch! How the hell did she get in here?”

“She walked right in to talk to your prisoner.” The guard shrugged. “I figured she was authorized. You're supposed to be watching him.”

I sat in Fred Douglas's office and told him about my visit with Miguel.

“What are you saying, Britt?”

“That there's a possibility that Trish manipulated those then into violence. Victims, anguished survivors, the grieving, the bereaved, they're vulnerable and easy to set off. I suspect it was no accident that they both showed up at the cemetery with guns, ready to use them.”

“That would be an incredibly dangerous and foolhardy stunt to pull.” He shook his head, incredulous, disbelieving. “She could have been killed herself—almost was.”

“Miguel says she dove for cover the moment he arrived.”

He turned his back to me and faced the window, gazing off into the distance. After a long moment, he returned and sat at his desk, face stern.

“Have you mentioned this to anyone else?”

“No. I thought I should talk to you first.”

“Good, because I don't want this bandied about. I've seen cases of newsroom rivalry and petty jealousy before, Britt, but this”—he shook his head again—“this is totally out of hand.” He shook a warning finger at me. “I don't want you starting rumors or suggesting something this preposterous to anyone.”

“I didn't. Miguel himself is saying this.”

“Of course, what else is he going to say?” His voice was hard. “He's certainly not going to stand up in court and say that he stalked his stepson to the cemetery and pulled a gun, intending to murder him in cold blood along with anybody else who stood in his way. Nonsense. He and his attorney are going to concoct a defense, an excuse for his crime, and the way to do that is to blame someone else. It's always somebody else's fault.”

I opened my mouth, and he held up his hand to stay my protest.

“That family was on record, in police reports, long before either Trish Tierney or you knew they existed. Those two then bought guns intending to use them, and they did. I will not have the integrity of one of my reporters and this newspaper impugned, especially from within.”

I nodded, swallowed the lump in my throat, and walked back out into the newsroom.

I called Marty in Chicago and left a message on his machine. “I need your help,” I said. “Call me.”

I was fighting for both job and reputation now. The only way to win is to know the enemy.

Scattered applause rippled across the newsroom. It had actually come from jaded newshounds, acknowledging Trish's buoyant entrance. She blushed modestly and settled in at her desk. The woman had become a media heroine. There was talk of a book contract and according to the newsroom grapevine she had met with a New York literary agent. Gretchen trotted back to Trish's desk, and I saw them laughing and chatting.

Marty returned my call and I filled him in, speaking softly so no one would hear. Mercifully, Ryan had wandered back to where half a dozen people ringed Trish's desk, probably gossiping about the celebrities she had met in the greenroom.

“Sounds like you're hip deep in shit,” Marty said.

“I've stepped in it this time,” I acknowledged. “I need all the help I can get. What else do you remember about her? How the hell did she get this way? Did she pull the wings off flies as a child? What did she do then, step on 'em? What can you tell me?”

“Actually, no more than what I mentioned at dinner. Let me think about it, make a couple of calls, and see what I can find out.”

“Bless you, Marty.”

I escaped the office then and headed over to Miami Beach police headquarters to check out some missing persons cases for a project I had in mind.

Fluffy mountains of clouds drifted lazily across a bright and beautiful sky. There is a fall and a winter in South Florida. The light becomes less harsh, more subtle, the greens less vivid. The sky is softer, the sunsets earlier, the dawns more misty. The temperature was a comfortable 72 as I drove across the causeway, windows down, enjoying the strong, frolicking breeze that stirred up whitecaps on the bright blue bay.

The high-pitched emergency tone on my police scanner jolted me back to reality. That shrill sound signals pain, open wounds, and broken hearts, alerting the street fighters assigned to hold back the tide of crime, death, and disorder. So often it comes too late.

This was the one everybody dreads. “Three-fifteen. Shots fired. Officer down, at Northwest Second Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street.”

My fingers spasmed around the steering wheel. Shit, a cop shot. I wheeled into a U-turn, hit the gas, and pushed a button to lock in the frequency on my dashboard scanner. Reports came fast and furious, a cool voice, controlled hysteria.

“A second victim.”

“Rescue dispatched on a three.”

“At least four subjects fleeing west in two vehicles.”

“The officer involved is city, off duty.”

My mind's eye saw the complaint-room personnel clustering around the dispatcher listening. A van loaded with sightseeing tourists ambled along in front of me at a maddening twenty-five miles an hour. I swerved around it, passing on the wrong side. No policeman would stop me on traffic charges. Every cop in town was either on the way or glued to a radio, waiting to hear every bit and piece of information: the condition of the officer, the description of the suspects, and which way they had headed.

“Two subject vehicles fleeing west in a blue van and a white Ford Taurus taken from the civilian victim.

“Subjects armed with an automatic weapon. Appeared to be a nine-millimeter Beretta, fifteen-shot. Use caution. A second subject is armed with a short-barreled shotgun. The officer's service revolver is also believed taken.”

“Where's rescue?” shouted the young voice of an officer, possibly first at the scene. His anguish and panic chilled my bones. This was no false alarm. Communications from officers arriving were fragmented and stress-filled. They never sound rattled or emotional on the air—unless a cop is shot. I wondered if it was someone I knew. I thought of Kendall McDonald.

“The officer involved was off duty in his personal vehicle.”

Somebody breathing hard, trying to piece chaos together, reported: “Apparently he had left the station and came upon a carjacking in progress.

“Subject number one is described as a white Latin male, approximately seventeen to eighteen years of age, black hair shaved straight across around the ears with a ducktail at the bottom, approximately five feet four inches, one hundred twenty-five pounds, wearing baggy black jeans low on his hips, boxer shorts showing underneath, an oversize plaid shirt, high-top sneakers, and a Raiders cap. He is armed with an automatic handgun.”

Away from the mike, you could hear his rapid questions to witnesses providing the descriptions he fed into the radio.

“Reference the officer shot: subject number one is the shooter. He is driving a vehicle described as a late-model white Ford Taurus, partial Florida tag E echo, D delta, last seen proceeding west on Northwest Two-six Street from Second Avenue. This vehicle was taken from the civilian victim who—uh—looks to be a Forty-five at this point.”

Forty-five means dead. I tried to scribble notes with my right hand, the left on the wheel as nth, 12th, 13th streets flashed by.

“Subject number two is described as a white male, late teens, possibly Latin, five feet nine inches, a hundred and fifty pounds, black baseball cap, oversize dark pants, black T-shirt with large white letters,
DON'T ASK ME FOR SHIT
, black high-top sneakers. This subject is armed with what appeared to be a sawed-off pump shotgun with a homemade pistol grip. Driving a blue Dodge van, last seen westbound on Northwest Two-seven Street from Second Avenue.

“Subject number three: black male, five feet ten inches, skinny, approximately one forty pounds, jeans, wearing a dark T-shirt with some sort of design or logo on the front. He is the right front passenger in the blue van driven by the subject armed with the shotgun.

“Subject number four, a black Latin male, five seven, one-eighty pounds. Dark pants and black Malcolm X shirt…”

Suddenly gripped by a growing dread, I knew who they probably were. “Howie, don't be with them,” I breathed, my eyes searching side streets as much for them as for oncoming traffic.

“I think I have an ID on the subjects.”

It was Rakestraw's voice on the radio.

“The shooter is believed to be the same subject involved in numerous carjackings, ram-and-robs, and smash-and-grabs. He is armed and considered extremely dangerous. The subject is Gilberto Sanchez, d.o.b. October fourteen, 1976. Last known address, Twenty-four seventy-five Northwest Twenty-seventh Avenue. Current wants on felony murder, numerous charges of aggravated assault, armed robbery, burglary, and sexual assault.”

I didn't even know about that last one.

The scene was alive with sirens, medics, cops, and a growing number of bystanders.

As I pulled up a policeman ran toward my car, screaming at me to move it I did. At times like this, you don't argue with the cops. I parked a short block away and trotted back on foot.

The officer lay sprawled on his back next to a red Mustang standing with the driver's door open in a traffic lane. Arms flung out at his sides, he wasn't moving, but he was the center of furious activity by medics.

His skin looked dusky. A paramedic frantically squeezed a vinyl bag, forcing fluid to flow faster through an IV into his body. An endotracheal tube had been inserted down his throat to push oxygen into his lungs.

Across the intersection a man lay in a gigantic sea of blood that had gushed into the gutter and down the street for half a block.

The scene looked like a battlefield, on a beautiful sunlit Miami morning.

Lieutenant Kendall McDonald was already there, conferring with other arriving brass. I saw Rakestraw too. I knew what he was thinking.

“Can you tell me anything, McDonald?”

He stepped briefly away from the others. “We don't know much yet.”

“What happened?”

“The officer is a rookie, worked the midnight shift, got off this morning, and was running a few errands on his way home. Drove up on one in progress. The victim was struggling with the carjacker. Apparently he tried to intervene and they shot him.”

“Where is he hit?”

“In the chest.”

“Was he wearing his vest?”

McDonald shook his head.

“It was lying on the front seat, next to him. He was still wearing his uniform pants and a T-shirt.”

I read the irony in his eyes. After a midnight tour of duty in this violent city, a cop takes off his bulletproof vest to drive home on a beautiful day and meets a kid with a gun.

“Who is he?”

“The officer's identity can't be released until his family is notified.” He dropped his voice. “It's McCoy, first name Dana. A rookie. Don't print it until we give you the go-ahead.”

“Right. Wasn't he the hero in that fire a couple of months ago?”

“That's him.”

I nodded. “We have his picture.” I remembered the youthful grin. On routine patrol, McCoy had spotted a predawn fire, rescued the occupants of a second-floor apartment, then saved the owner of a ground-floor store who had dashed inside for his business records.