The Ice Maiden (22 page)

“Where's Sunny?” I gasped.

Jimmy, the sax player, lay sprawled on the stairs faceup. Blood leaked from a hole in his chest. It ran down his outflung arm, dripped off the edge of the open banister, and splashed in huge drops onto the faded lobby carpet.

Sunny sat hunched in a chair in her studio. A patrolman bent over her, barking questions into her bad ear. There was blood on her blouse.

“Is she all right?” I asked.

“Outside, you have to wait for PIO.” The cop gestured impatiently toward the street.

“No, I want her here,” Sunny said, raising her head.

The cop paused, then nodded.

I held her hand as she answered him, numb and dry-eyed, hesitating from time to time, eyes focused on
nothing. Was she reliving that long-ago night, the young cop who took notes? She'd been working, she said. Heard the saxophone earlier. Didn't notice exactly when it stopped, but at some point thought she heard someone at her door. She called out, asked who was there. No answer. Moments later, she thought she heard a door slam. From her studio windows she saw a car accelerate and drive off at a high rate of speed. She couldn't see the make, model, or color through the picture window in the dark but did note that it was missing a taillight. She called upstairs to ask Jimmy if he'd heard anything. He didn't answer then, or a short time later when she tried again. She decided to check, stepped out into the lobby, key in hand, and saw him. She ran up the stairs. A bloody, frothy foam bubbled from his mouth. She couldn't find a pulse.

I stayed while she answered the same questions and more from the homicide detective.

Jimmy had mentioned a sister in Chicago. She knew of no other relatives or any enemies. He wasn't into drugs, though he might have smoked marijuana. He was not a heavy drinker or gambler. Did not appear to have many girlfriends, in fact was awkward with women. No, she didn't think he was gay. He did not flash money or jewelry. He was basically a quiet and mellow man who loved to play music.

“I'm so glad you were here,” she told me later, head on my shoulder. “It's all…you remind me so much of Kathy. You're like her.”

“Kathy?”

“The policewoman who stayed with me after Ricky was killed.” She wiped her eyes. “Kathleen Riley.”

“Oh. Right.” I should have realized, I thought. “She's still trying to protect you, Sunny.”

Nazario filled the doorway moments later, out of breath, hair disheveled, face stricken.

“
¡Dios mio!
Why did you not call me?”

He conferred privately with the Beach detective and then told Sunny to pack a bag.

He insisted on taking her to her parents, to a hotel, to his place, to my place, anywhere she wanted to go.

She refused. “My things, my work. I can't pack it up and take it with me. I can't let fear run my life.”

Nazario worked the radio, issuing a BOLO—Be on the Lookout—for Mad Dog, his cousin Stony, Cubby Wells, and the Reverend Wright to be stopped and brought in for questioning only.

The streets would be unpleasant tonight for anybody with a busted taillight.

Sunny and I drank herbal tea as she cried for her good neighbor: his talent, his kindness, his friendship.

When I left, Nazario and the Miami Beach detective were taking an increasingly exasperated Sunny through a painstakingly precise minute-by-minute reconstruction of her movements during the past two weeks. I shared her exasperation. How, I wondered, would that help? Sunny wasn't a suspect. Why weren't they out on the street instead, beating the bushes, finding the bad guys?

The lobby crime scene was still roped off. Jimmy's body still sprawled on the stairs, now covered by a plastic sheet. One of his flip-flops had flown off when he fell back. I stood there for a moment, then made the sign of the cross for a man who awoke that day unaware he was about to become a case number.

It was already midnight. In the rush of my arrival, I'd left my cell phone in the car. I'd only driven a block before it rang.

“Britt!” She sounded nearly hysterical. “I've been trying to call you for hours!”

“Shelby! Is that you? Where are you?”

“A Denny's on Thirty-sixth Street.” She sounded near tears. “I can't go home. I need to talk to that policeman. Right now!”

“Okay! Okay! Stay there.”

“No. It's too bright. All lit up. Somebody will see me.”

“Where?”

“I'll walk over to Miami Avenue. By those old apartment houses. Remember the one that burnt, across from the liquor store? I'll watch for your car. Is Stone coming?”

“I'll call him,” I said. “Be careful. I'm on the way.”

When Stone answered the beep and said he'd be there in ten minutes, I was already speeding west on the causeway.

As I crossed the Boulevard headed for the avenue, a police cruiser passed me doing at least seventy, sirens and lights flashing. Did Stone overreact and dispatch a patrol car? No, I thought. He was too cool for that. Two more speeding patrol cars raced after the first. A fire rescue unit in full emergency mode barreled along Northeast Second Avenue, air horn and sirens sounding. It lumbered through the red light and turned west, hogging the road. We were all headed in the same direction.

What was the big emergency? All the noise will surely spook Shelby, I thought, annoyed. The woman
wanted to remain low-profile, have a secret meeting. The chorus of oncoming sirens around me could wake the dead. I prayed she wouldn't panic, run, and get lost again. I cursed impatiently under my breath, willing them to veer off, to go to their emergency.

They didn't.

My next reaction was a sick sinking feeling. My destination and theirs were the same.

The liquor store's shattered plate-glass window looked as though it had exploded. A middle-aged man moaned, rocking back and forth amid broken glass shards on the sidewalk, clutching his bloodied ankle with both hands.

A paramedic jumped off the rescue truck and ran to another form in the street nearby. He took her pulse, then got to his feet. His body language said there was none.

I ventured close enough to see the silver cross on a chain around her neck, then walked away, nauseated and trembling.

“Is that her?” Stone asked, from behind me.

He must have arrived before I did. He held his radio.

“Yes,” I whispered. “That's Shelby.” I clutched at his arm, my heart constricted. “Have them do something! They're not even working on her! They didn't even try! They can bring her back! They bring back people with no pulse all the time.”

“The back of her skull is missing, Britt.” His jaw tightened. “She's DRT: dead right there.” Turning away, he spoke into his radio. “We've got a guy who took one in the ankle, and a kid around the corner who got one in the gut.”

I stopped breathing. “A kid?”

“Teenager,” he said. “Looks like a local gangbanger.”

“Probably a drive-by,” a young officer in uniform said. “We got us a little turf war in progress on the east side.” He studied me, puzzled. “How'd the press get here so fast?”

 

Too late to file a story tonight. The paper had gone to bed. Not even TV had come out to this scene. Uniforms appeared convinced this was another drive-by shooting, the wounded teenager the intended target and the others innocent victims caught in the crossfire. The teen, en route to surgery, refused to talk to police.

The liquor store had just closed for the night, the manager said. As he locked up, his storefront exploded and he went down, hit in the ankle. He saw very little but thought all the gunfire came from one car. A second vehicle may have been involved, he wasn't sure. The man had worked a twelve-hour shift. He'd been tired and hungry. Now he was in pain. He didn't know Shelby, had never seen her before.

Stone followed me as I left.

“Bad night,” he said, leaning in my car window.

I nodded numbly.

“Looks like somebody made a try at Sunny tonight,” he said, “but her neighbor interfered and bought it instead. Now we've lost our witness. Both were threats to our suspects. You might be considered one as well. Be careful until we round up all the players.”

“What do you do now?”

He sighed. “Inform next of kin, see if they can point
us to the others.” His dark face glistened in the sweltering night, his voice dropped. “This is the part of the job I hate the most. Waking up strangers in the middle of the night, giving them the worst news they'll ever hear. Thought I wouldn't be doing it again, working cold cases.”

He straightened up slowly, as though his body hurt, and studied the night sky for a long moment.

“Growing up, I always said I would leave this city. But it won't let you go. I think it's the sky here. It's so big and low and all around you, everywhere. It's on your skin; you can feel it. You inhale it, it's part of you and you are part of it and somehow you are one with this place.”

He bent back down to my window, his eyes dark pools that reflected the night.

“Did you know that the department has informed us that it's against policy to use the word
dead
when informing next of kin? I
always
use dead or killed and I'm not going to stop. Sometimes, even then, they don't understand. Can't grasp it. You have to be straight with people at times like this. I'm sure as hell not going to say ‘She expired,' which is what they told us to say. Some people right here, in the neighborhood where I grew up, don't even know what
expired
means. She wasn't a quart of milk, for Christ's sake.”

“No,” I said, voice hollow. “She wasn't.”

“Go the hell home,” he said wearily. “And lock your doors.”

“Relax,” Burch told me when I called his office at 4
A.M.
“We're assembling our cast of characters. Even have the good reverend here. He's a real piece of work. Dragged him out of the sack with his choir director. How long we can hold any of them is another story. Nobody's talking; they're all getting lawyered up. Only one still missing. Stone got a tip on Mad Dog's location, missed him by minutes—”

“What about Cubby Wells?”

“He's here. His wife is calling every five minutes, driving us up the wall. Says he didn't kill anybody, rape anybody, or see anybody else do the deeds. Nobody else is even saying that much. The whole team's working, including the lieutenant.”

“How come you never mentioned Riley worked the case too, protecting Sunny?”

“Didn't I? No big deal. K.C. was a kid, a rookie at the time. Didn't do any real investigating. We needed a female officer to baby-sit Sunny. She was a baby-sitter.”

“Not important, but it explains a lot. I think they bonded.”

“Super Glue wouldn't bond with that woman.”

“I don't know. Maybe she's not so bad.”

I tried to nap but couldn't. My mind raced at ninety miles an hour. Something tugged at my subconscious, something elusive. Flipping listlessly through the glossy pages of Sunny's show catalog, I stared again at the face I knew was the Reverend Wright's, and at Andre Coney's horrid scarring. The pictures had been reproduced from color slides.

I called Sunny on a hunch. “You awake?”

“You are kidding,” she said wearily. “Who could sleep?”

“Is it all right if I come over?”

“You never asked before.”

“My manners are improving,” I said. “By the way, Sunny, do you have slides of all your work?”

“Sure, slides, photos, sketches.”

“Right, you said you sketch the pieces first.”

“At every step of the way, as well. It's an important part of the process.”

 

Unable to face more herbal tea, I stopped at an all-night café on the way for some strong Cuban coffee and guava and cheese pastries to go.

The yellow crime-scene tape was gone, along with a section of carpet the technicians had removed from the stairs.

As I placed the small paper cups on her little table, I noticed a coffeemaker on the counter. “Something new?”

“A gift. From Pete.”

“How romantic.”

“He craves coffee.”

“I know. It's a Cuban thing. I'll teach you how to make it.”

“Okay,” she said, “but I doubt I could ever actually drink it.”

“I can teach you that too,” I said. “Here.” I handed her a tiny cup. “Drink this.”

She downed it like a shot of whiskey, eyes shut tight, then grimaced. “Oh, my God.” She gasped. “Will I ever sleep again?”

I sat on the floor beneath a halogen lamp in her studio examining slides, poring over pictures neatly encased in plastic, then looking through crammed sketchbooks. Her drawings depicted sculptures from all angles: works contemplated as well as those in progress or completed. Many included faces. It was similar to searching a book of police mug shots for a suspect. I flipped back several pages to reexamine one that jogged my memory. Where had I seen that face before?

“Who's this, Sunny?”

She leaned over my shoulder. “Nobody. A face I came up with—you know, doodling and drawing.”

“You're sure?”

“Yep, like most of them.”

“Here he is again,” I said, turning pages, “and again. Where's the sculpture?”

“Never did it.” She shrugged. “He was too creepy to
spend the time with. When you work on a piece, you spend twenty-four hours a day with it. You have to like it. I learned my lesson about working on a project that makes me uncomfortable.”

“Can I borrow this? I promise I'll bring it right back.”

“Sure, but why?”

“It could be nothing. I'll explain later.”

 

The lobby was dark, the newsroom empty. I checked the library and then called the squad. All the detectives were out. Nobody answered when I paged them. Maybe Mad Dog had been run to ground, I thought hopefully. Maybe they had him surrounded. I called the man whose face I saw in Sunny's drawings. No answer.

Puzzled, I called Sunny. No answer. Probably in the freezer. I wished Nazario had bought her a damn answering machine instead of a coffeemaker.

Moments after I hung up, the phone rang at my desk. Unusual at 5
A.M.

“I want to leave a message for Britt Montero,” the voice quavered. “This is Abby Wells.”

“Abby, it's me, not a recording,” I said.

“I'm at police headquarters, in the lobby. They have Charles. They won't let me talk to him. Wait.” There was silence. She must have put her hand over the phone.

She came back elated. “Oh, Britt, they told me he's going to be released, they're letting him come home! It'll just be a few minutes. I'm so relieved.”

“I need to see you. I'm on the way,” I said.

The lobby at headquarters was cold and quiet. Abby Wells shivered in a thin blouse, waiting on a wooden
bench near the elevator. “They said it would only be a few minutes,” she complained.

The elevator dinged at the fifth floor, and the light blinked at each floor on the way down. The door yawned open and Cubby Wells stepped out alone. He wore a rumpled T-shirt and blue jeans. He looked as though he had lost weight since the funeral. His eyes were red and bloodshot.

They embraced. She wept, he was teary-eyed.

The officer at the front desk glanced up, then resumed reading his newspaper.

Cubby didn't look surprised to see me.

“It's not over,” I told him. “Let's get out of here.”

He took a long deep breath as we stepped out into the moist warm air.

“I'm scared they'll charge him with a crime he didn't commit,” his wife said.

“They probably will,” I said. “Shelby's dead, so is an innocent man. Two people are wounded. This isn't an old cold case anymore. You have to tell the truth. You were there that night, weren't you?”

Abby began to cry.

“We can't talk here,” he said.

We went back to the
News,
to the deserted, dimly lit, third-floor cafeteria. They sat next to each other across from me, holding hands, at a table overlooking the darkness of the bay and Miami Beach, a blaze of lights across the water.

“Tell me,” I said.

He stared out the window. “We went after them,” he said dully, “the boy and the girl.”

“You saw them outside the ice-cream shop?”

He frowned and shook his head. “No. We waited for them to leave the marina. After they left the boat, we followed them down to that ice-cream place, trying to figure where to do it.”

“You were just…waiting for anybody to leave the marina?”

“No, it was them. They were the ones we were after.”

“You knew them?”

“No. See, it was a job. Andre's deal. He'd been busted for grand theft auto. Spent some time in jail. They had a program for youthful offenders then, doctors and dentists who donated their services to rehabilitate young inmates who had medical or dental problems that affected their self-image, their self-esteem, and contributed to them getting in trouble. They'd fix—you know—cleft palates, birthmarks, bad teeth. Even removed tattoos, pinned back big ears, and did nose jobs. Said they'd fix Andre's scars. This doctor, a plastic surgeon, he came to see Andre in jail, told him he could make him look normal, even make it easier for him to move his neck where it was too tight from the scar tissue. Andre was so excited. You'da thought it was Christmas morning. But the doctor wanted something first. See, he had this daughter.”

I gasped, ice crystals forming in my blood.

“She wanted to date some kid, a teenage jock who lived in the neighborhood. He didn't like it. He wanted Andre to round up some guys to humiliate the kid in front of the girl. You know, so she wouldn't think the kid was such a big deal. Wouldn't want to date him.

“He didn't want his daughter hurt, only scared. Said it was okay if Ricky got smacked around a little. Andre
was excited as hell, anxious to do a good job and get his scars fixed.”

“So the trouble with the boat was faked?”

He shrugged. “Doctor told Andre they'd come out and get in the car. And they did. We followed them to the ice-cream store; we could've done it there but Mad Dog was afraid somebody might see us. We took them when they came out, went looking for a nice quiet place to work the kid over. He kept asking us to let the girl go. She was crying, asking where we were taking them. Every time we saw a spot and slowed down, somebody was there or it had too many lights or a police car would cruise by. Kept going south, turned on a dirt road, and wound up at that farm.”

Tears welled in his eyes. Abby was already crying.

“We had 'em tied up so they couldn't get away. But when we took them out and were beating up on the kid—” He gulped, gasping for air to stifle a sob.

“Things got out of hand?” I said.

“A little. The kid pissed 'em off when he tried to fight back. Had a bloody nose, cut lip. Me and Earl were saying it was enough. But Mad Dog, his cousin, and Andre were whaling on the kid. Then we heard something. A big engine coming, high beams in the dark. We thought it was the cops, panicked, and took off.”

“What happened to—”

“We hauled ass, left 'em there.”

“Who shot them?”

Tears ran down his face. “I'm telling you, I don't know! They were alive and well when we left. She was intact, had all her clothes on. Didn't have a mark on
her. Andre had a gun he stole somewhere, but he only used it to scare the kid. Nobody ever fired a shot.”

“You sure he or Mad Dog didn't go back later to rape her?”

“Hell, no. I don't think any of us coulda found that place again if we wanted to. You know how dark it is down there, no signs, no lights, all those fields the same. We got lost getting the hell out. We panicked, thought the police were coming after us. Plus, she was never supposed to get hurt. If she did, Andre wouldn't get his scars fixed. He was scared the doctor would be pissed off because we left her way down there. But Earl said it would be okay. The job went right. When we heard later about the couple who was shot, we thought it couldn't be them. No way. But then they showed the kid's picture on television. It was him. When they said the girl with him got raped, shot, and she was gonna die, Andre went crazy. Out of his mind. Cried like a baby. Knew he'd lost the only chance he ever had to look normal. He called the doctor once. Man said to never call again and hung up.”

“Why didn't you tell the truth?”

“Sure, we snatched 'em, took 'em to the murder scene, tied 'em up—but didn't shoot 'em? Who'd believe that? They were already looking for us. We had records. Even the doctor thought we did it. We'd go to the electric chair or prison for life.

“Andre never got his surgery. Now he's dead. And I might as well be.” He covered his eyes, as his weeping wife comforted him.

A noise at the door startled me. A member of the night maintenance crew, an older man pushing a cart
loaded with cleaning equipment, stared at us, turned, and left.

“So you're saying they were shot and she was raped by somebody else who left them for dead? Who?”

“The hell knows? Could be anybody. Coulda been cops for all I know.”

I stared at him skeptically. “But how did Shelby get killed?”

“I don't know about that. She was a good girl. I know she was scared of Mad Dog, didn't like him around. When he came home from prison he insisted on staying with her and her husband. He was pissed off as hell about the case coming back to life, said nobody was gonna send him back to prison for something he didn't do. We were all talking about the girl, wondering how much she remembered, if maybe she could clear us. Everybody was pissed at those cops and you for stirring the pot with those stories. Earl Wright kept saying all along that we should stick together and just refuse to talk.”

“Somebody else was murdered last night,” I said. “In Miami Beach, a friend of the girl. What do you know about that?”

“Nothing, I swear. I was with my wife all evening, went to a show at her school. The kids put it on, a fund raiser for New York and Washington. Everybody there can confirm that. We were asleep when they came looking for me.”

That, I thought, was probably why the cops had kicked him loose.

“Be straight with the detectives,” I said. “If what you're saying is true, the statute of limitations ran out a
long time ago on anything you did. Talk to Pete Nazario. Don't lie to him. He'll know if you do.”

Cubby agreed. He would go home, shower and change, and then talk to the police. He promised. They left hand in hand.

 

Back in the newsroom, I tapped into the state database, ran a background check, and printed the results. Excited, I called the squad. Nobody there.

I drove back to North Beach in that cloudless darkness before dawn.

I saw a light behind the picture window of Sunny's studio, but she didn't answer her door. The dusty lobby was dark and shadowy. I tried not to look at the stairs. “Sunny?” Her name echoed through the creaky old building. The wind off the sea had picked up outside, and the hotel moaned and groaned in the dark, sounds you never hear in the light of day, as though the ghosts of all who had ever lived, loved, and laughed there were stirring.

I steeled myself and glanced up apprehensively at the staircase, half expecting to see Jimmy standing there, a bloody starburst staining his shirt. He wasn't. But somebody else was.