Cold Case Squad (21 page)

She exhaled. Smoke from her cigarette spiraled into the soggy night.

"I thought you looked me up because you missed me." Her voice
sounded small.

"I do. I think about you all the time." He was telling the truth.
"But you know how it is with us."

"How is it with us?" she asked mournfully. "Tell me again."

"You know. I don't want to go out on a call someday and find out
that the body in the street is you."

"That's not fair."

She flipped her cigarette into the drenched parking lot, where it
sputtered and died in an inky puddle.

"I'd live with the same fear because you're a cop. Look at McDonald.
You worked with him. One of the girls here lost it when he was killed.
Couldn't work for weeks. She's still not over it. She knew him a long
time."

"Tell me about it," he said. "He had a way with the ladies."

"So do you." She turned easily into his arms, raised her face to
his, and kissed him.

He turned her back to the wall, pressed against her, and kissed her
again.

"Where's your car?"

He couldn't catch his breath. Hand in hand, they ran to his car.

He couldn't wait to touch her everywhere. She was unbuckling his
belt. The car windows steamed up and fresh torrents of rain pounded on
the car roof.

"This isn't why I came here, Fiona," he told her later.

"That's the hell of it," she murmured, curled up beside him, her
bare right knee nestled in his crotch.

"Is that time right?" She sounded drowsy, squinting at the dashboard
clock. "I've got to go back soon."

He told her what he was looking for.

"I remember the redhead with the snake. They called her Desiree.
Hadn't seen or heard a word about her in years. Thought she left town
to get married. She knew how to dance, but that snake. It gave me the
creeps. She talked to it like it was a baby. Fed it mice and rats, live
ones." Fiona shuddered and lit a cigarette.

"Ran with a rough crowd." She inhaled, licked her lips, and cracked
open the passenger-side window. "Danced at the Place Montmartre, on the
Beach. Some mobbed-up guy owned it until he got wasted. Then the place
shut down."

"You see her after that?"

Fiona shrugged. "She must have left around that time."

"I need her real name, age, where she's at now, if she had family
here, or friends she mighta stayed in touch with."

"I know somebody who knew her. Come by tomorrow night?" She smiled.
"I can have something for you by then."

"How about if you call me?" he said.

She stared at the floor for a long moment.

"Okay," she said wistfully.

They went back inside. A dark-haired girl in long braids and an
abbreviated Indian costume was onstage.

"God, I'm on next. I've gotta go." Fiona kissed his cheek. "Don't
stay away so long next time, Pete."

He went to the men's room and surprised the man in the dark shirt
masturbating.

His spine stiffened as he flashed back to the first time the tall
priest took him to his office. He was eight years old, and it was the
first time he had ever seen an adult with an erection. He caught his
reflection in the bathroom mirror. For a moment he didn't recognize
himself as he tried to
remember. Was that the orphanage in New Jersey or the one in New
Orleans? As if it mattered.

Stomach churning, he returned to the bar and waited until Floria
reappeared onstage. He watched her, then left near the end of her act.
He paused at the door for one more look. The lights backlit her hair,
her soft skin glistened as she moved, and her golden eyes met his. The
club was noisier now and more crowded. It was a relief to plunge out
into the sweltering night and leave it behind.

"I think I've got something for you," said Dan Powers from the
Forensic Video Unit.

"I love it when you talk to me like that," Burch said. "We're on the
way."

"Powers wants to show off the enhanced video," he told the
detectives.

Lieutenant Riley joined them.

"Here we have the original." Powers rolled a computer-enhanced
image: a chubby boy tying a balloon to the collar of a golden
retriever. Children milling about as a white blur passes in the
background.

"The videotape actually picks up more than you can see," he said.
"All machines crop the tape on playback. But the bigger picture is
really available, with more pixels."

"Here we go. See, with frame averaging you can pull out more
detail." He locked in on the blur.

"A van." Stone peered at the image. "Looks like a white Chevy van."

"Right," Powers said. "A 'ninety, or 'ninety-one model."

The van slowed to a crawl in front of the Terrell home, stopped for
a moment or two, then moved out of the frame.

"As you see, the tag was never visible."

"That's it?" Burch said. "We wanted you to zoom in on the driver's
back pocket, pull out his license, and blow it up on-screen."

"I may have something almost as good," Powers said. "The van moves
out of frame for ninety-two seconds. Probably the time it took to drive
around the block. When it comes back, you can see it's clearly the same
vehicle; note the little sticker in the back of the side window.
Probably a parking permit or club validation."

"The next shot is from a more favorable vantage point, better
lighting and fewer obstructions."

Joan Walker, still operating the camera, had moved in order to focus
more closely on HoHo and his magic.

Powers worked his own. The van slowed again, then stopped briefly at
the far corner of the Terrell house. "You stabilize the video and the
image becomes rock solid. Look. There." A figure, a fleeting image,
blocked by the van itself, scrambled into the passenger side.

"No way to see the passenger any better. But you can see the
driver's profile."

"Looks like a woman," Stone said.

The van drove out of the frame. "Gone, a full three minutes before
fire begins to erupt from the garage."

He brought up the driver's image again.

"Not good enough for a positive ID, but that hair's got to help.
Unless, of course, it's a red wig."

"Big Red," Burch said. "She was there."

"Charles Terrell is back from the dead," Nazario said.

"What do you mean back? The son of a bitch never went. That's the
hell of it," Burch said.

"The camera never blinks," Powers said happily. "The camera never
blinks."

"My entire career as a cop," Burch said in the elevator, "the part I
hated most was breaking hearts. Telling strangers that their sons or
daughters, husbands, wives, or fathers wouldn't be home again.
Ever." 

"You'd knock on a door and they'd answer, without a clue that their
life was about to change forever. Some would scream or start to cry
before you could spit it out. They'd look at your face and know. And
I'd know I was gonna be part of their worst bad memory forever."

"We've all felt that, Sarge," Stone said. "Only a sicko wouldn't."

"Yeah, but now I'm looking at something even worse. Breaking the bad
news to April Terrell and her kids. 'Sorry, but your dad isn't dead.
Nope, he's one son of a bitch, kids, a cold stone killer. But if we can
just hunt him down, we'll try to have the state do the job. And this
time we can make sure he's dead.' How the hell you think that's gonna
go over?"

"Maybe it's still premature, Sarge," Nazario said.

"No," Riley said. "If you're sure they have no guilty knowledge,
it's only fair to give them a heads-up. I'd hate like hell to have them
find out some other way and think we kept it from them. Just swear them
to secrecy until it's resolved."

"Uh-oh," Stone said, as the elevator doors opened. Padron was
waiting, with a stranger.

"There you are!" Padron greeted them. "I was wondering where
everybody went. What's happening? Anything I should know?"

"Not a thing," Riley said. "Just a routine meeting."

The balding stranger wore glasses and a bulky vest with multiple
pockets. Several cameras swung from leather straps around his neck.

"I'm here to shoot Stone," he cheerfully announced. He was the
photographer assigned to Nell's story.

"Do what you'd normally be doing. Pretend I'm not here," he told the
embarrassed detective.

"Say cheese." Burch grinned and waggled his fingers at Stone.

"A star in the making." Nazario rolled his eyes. "A matinee idol."

"Don't forget, we want autographed copies," Corso said.

Stone noticed that even Riley, whose crazy idea was responsible for
all this, retreated to her office.

"Don't disturb me," she said, closing her door, "unless he really
shoots Stone."

"Listen," Stone told the photographer. "We're all a team here. We
work together. You can shoot pictures of all of us, the whole crew."

The photographer checked his assignment card. "That's not what it
says here. You're the subject."

"Did you talk to Nell Hunter?" Stone asked irritably, aware he'd be
razzed unmercifully by the others. "She said she was
sending me a fax."

"Oh yeah." The photographer patted his pockets. "She said to give
you this."

He pulled an eight-by-ten manila envelope from an inside pocket of
his vest.

It contained a copy of a news story, along with the picture
published with it. An earnest-looking college girl with hopeful brown
eyes holding a family photo of her runaway father, the long-lost
Michael Hastings. He sat laughing on a wooden front porch, elbows
resting on his knees. He wore jeans and a work shirt and was holding a
stick out to a spotted puppy.

On the back was a penciled phone number in Wyandotte, Missouri, and
a Post-it note from Nell.

"Dear Sam Spade, Photos don't fax so well, so I'll send this with
Hal. Hope you get lucky and he's your Mr. Bones. You owe me. Nell."

Stone called Missouri himself. The number was still valid. The
mother answered and gave him another number for her daughter.

He caught Donna Hastings at work.

"I don't believe this!" she said, when he told her he was calling
about her father. She sounded almost giddy with excitement. "I'm
getting married next month. Finding him would be such a great wedding
present! I've always dreamed of my dad walking me down the aisle. Do
you know where he is?"

"Sorry," Stone apologized. "I didn't mean to give you false hopes.
This is just routine. A follow-up. I saw the old news story about your
search for your dad. Have you heard from him since that May 1992
letter?"

"No." She sounded crestfallen. "Nothing. But I'm glad the police
haven't forgotten him. I came to your headquarters when I was in Miami
looking for him."

Stone's discomfort was exacerbated by a blinding flash. He'd
forgotten the photographer, now crouched several feet away, shooting
candid shots of him on the phone.

Donna Hastings said that the big "break" her dad had written about
and the money he'd promised to bring home had probably fallen through.

"He was probably too embarrassed to come back and face us. But we—"

"The reason I called," Stone said, still blinking at the spots
before his eyes, "is to locate his dental records. Do you know where
they're located?"

She gasped.

"It's strictly routine," he lied, "to complete the file."

"I don't know," she said uncertainly. "I'll ask my mother."

"And that photo you were holding in the newspaper picture, could you
send me a copy? And any other good pictures you might have of your dad."

She hesitated. "I'll FedEx them this afternoon."

"Great." He gave her the street address.

"To the Missing Persons Bureau?"

"No." He couldn't bring himself to say Homicide. "Just make it to
the Cold Case Squad, fifth floor."

"That's impossible," April Terrell said. "It can't be. It just
can't." Tears rilled her eyes.

"Nothing is certain," Burch said. "But that's the direction this
thing is moving in, and I thought—the lieutenant thought—you should
know."

They sat at a table in the coffee shop of the high-rise building
housing the law firm where April Terrell worked as office manager.

Her tears spilled over.

Nazario handed her his handkerchief.

"How can I tell the children?" She dabbed at her eyes.

"Don't," Burch said. "Not yet. We'll let you know when the time is
right."

"Does Natasha know?"

"We're not sure what, or how much, she knows. It's important to keep
this just between us right now."

She nodded, sniffled into the handkerchief, then blew her nose. "I'm
sorry. But the kids, they idolize his memory."

"Kids are resilient. They're strong. You did a good job with yours,"
Burch said.

"You probably regret now that you ever came to us," Nazario said.

She looked up at them quizzically, eyes swimming. "No. Not at all.
If it is true, it means someone else is dead. Someone else's husband,
or father. You have to find out the truth. Please, promise me you won't
stop until you know what it is."

The message was waiting when Nazario got back to the office.

He called Fiona back.

She'd outdone herself. She always did, he thought, in every way. His
pulse quickened as he took notes. Was it the information she gave him,
or her voice?

"When am I going to see you?" she said at the end. She sounded like
a little girl.

"We're up to our asses in alligators right now. Maybe after we wrap
up this case."

"Okay," she whispered.

He sat staring at the phone for a moment after they said goodbye.

Stupidity, he told himself yet again, is repeating the same behavior
and expecting a different outcome.

"S'matter, Naz?" Burch said. "Bad news?"

"No. It's good." He stood up, clutching his notes. "Wait till you
hear this. My CI came through."