"Like all things good and bad in the world, it began with a woman..."
And so begins the first chapter of Edna Buchanan's Cold Case Squad, a new suspense novel that features a special homicide unit that breathes new life into old cases.
A man and a woman are shot dead at a strip club in Miami Beach. A few hours later, an explosion in a garage rocks a child's birthday party and burns a father of three to death. The murders go unsolved and the fire is chalked up to an accident.
But was it an accident? Twelve years later, a blonde walks in to the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad -- which Buchanan fans will remember from The Ice Maiden -- and complains that she's been seeing her husband everywhere she goes. Trouble is, he's been dead for twelve years. In Buchanan's characteristic voice, "Some guys just don't know when to let go."
As the Cold Case Squad unearths the details of the strip club deaths and the dead or missing father -- as well as the unsolved killings of a series of little old ladies -- readers get to know the three cops and their boss: veteran homicide detective Sergeant Craig Burch, whose marriage has turned into a case he can't solve; Detective Sam Stone, for whom the past will always be a mystery; Detective Pete Nazario, airlifted out of Cuba during "Operation Pedro Pan" in the 1960s; and Lieutenant K. C. Riley, for whom one case will never grow cold.
Edna Buchanan has been thrilling readers since her Pulitzer Prize-winning stint as a crime reporter for The Miami Herald. The Chicago Tribune once raved that "few writers can touch Buchanan," to which The Washington Post Book World seemed to respond, "I doubt if anyone else is doing it better." In Cold Case Squad, Edna Buchanan, the woman the Los Angeles Daily News calls "the Queen of crime," delivers unlikely killers, near-perfect murders, and her most suspenseful novel yet.
Chapter One: Four A.M., May 23, 1992
Long legged and nearly naked, the reclining woman stared into the night, her huge eyes blank and soulless, her long hair barely covering her voluptuous breasts.
She saw everything, and nothing.
The deserted street was dark.
Her expression never changed as the sleek car on the street below turned left into a Dumpster-lined alley and crept to a halt. The driver killed the lights. He and another man in dark clothes emerged and quietly approached a steel-plated door. The passenger carried a small suitcase.
In this silent hour before dawn, they could hear the sea pounding the sandy shore four hundred yards away and smell the salt in the air. The driver punched the buzzer beside the door as his passenger nervously scanned the street outside. He looked up at the reclining woman, who smiled seductively.
"Yeah?" The static-distorted voice was almost a bark.
"It's me," the driver said.
"About time."
"Sorry about that. You know how it is."
"Who the hell's that with you?"
"My cousin, from out of town. I want you to meet him."
The buzzer sounded, locks disengaged. The driver swung the door open and gestured for his companion to follow.
On the stairs, the driver appeared preternaturally calm, his steps light as his companion stumbled hesitantly along behind him.
The nervous man reacted at the sound of a second buzzer that unlocked a heavy door at the top of the stairs.
A handsome, muscular man in his late thirties sprang up to greet them with such enthusiasm that his thick, padded leather chair continued to rock behind his massive mahogany desk.
His face was pink-cheeked, his eyes and hair dark and shiny. His watch was Rolex, his suit expensive, his winking pinky ring a diamond. He clenched a fine, unlit cigar between his teeth.
"Hey, hey, Buddy." He playfully punched his visitor's shoulder, caught him in a hearty bear hug, then stepped back to scrutinize the stranger.
"Who's this, your cousin? He could be your fucking brother. I see the family resemblance."
"Meet my cousin Michael."
"So," Chris said, "didn't know you had a cousin." He turned to the stranger, "Me and your cousin Buddy, we go way back, all the way to high school."
Chris shook Michael's hand. "So which side a the family you from?"
The stranger hesitated.
"My father's," Buddy said quickly. "His father was my father's brother."
"So where you from?"
Michael licked his lips and glanced at Buddy before replying. "Milwaukee," he said.
Chris's hooded eyes became thoughtful and he returned to sit behind his desk. A top drawer was slightly open, just a few inches. "Did you bring what I asked for?"
"Don't I always?" Buddy jerked his head toward the suitcase on the floor beside Michael. "How's about I fix you two a drink first?"
Chris nodded. "Sure."
"I'll get it, don't get up." With the familiarity of a man who had been there many times, Buddy moved smoothly behind the desk to the custom, built-in bar. "The usual, Chris?"
"Right."
"What about you, Michael?"
"Scotch, if you have it."
"Siddown," Chris told him.
Michael sat tentatively on the edge of a red plush sofa.
Ice rattled into a heavy crystal glass.
Buddy left the glass on the marble-topped bar, stepped two feet to Chris's desk, and slid a 9mm silencer-equipped Luger out of a shoulder holster. As Chris turned to take the glass, Buddy shot him in the face at close range.
Chris jerked back in his chair, his head at an awkward angle, mouth open in surprise at the geyser of blood spurting onto the front of his white shirt.
It showered onto the desk blotter as he slumped sideways in his chair. Stepping back so he would not be spattered, Buddy stretched his arm full length and pumped another slug into the back of the convulsing man's head.
The spasms stopped.
"Hated to do that, but it's the way it's gotta be," Buddy said regretfully. He turned to Michael, who sat frozen on the red plush couch, eyes wide.
"Come on, come on! It's right over here." Buddy opened the concealed bookcase safe, which was not locked.
His shaken companion, still staring at the corpse, looked up and swallowed. Hands shaking, he opened the suitcase and removed a folded supersize duffel bag.
"Fill 'em up! Fill 'em up!" Buddy demanded.
Galvanized into action by the still-smoking gun in Buddy's hand, Michael began to stuff cash into the suitcase.
"How much you think is in here?" He looked in awe at the big bills stacked tightly on floor-to-ceiling shelves.
"Maybe two million," Buddy said calmly. "Make sure you pack it -- " Both men's eyes widened at a small explosion of sound, a toilet flushing in the next room.
"You said nobody else would be here!" Michael's whisper was ragged.
The door to the private bathroom opened.
"Honey? Chris, honey?"
Smile tentative, she stepped into the room. A stripper from the club downstairs, the new girl.
She looked young, still wearing her scanty work clothes, glittery pasties and a G-string. Sparkly angel dust accented her eyelids and décolletage.
She approached them, shaky on strappy stiletto heels. One more step and she would see Chris, his blood spilling down the side of the chair, soaking into the thick carpet.
Buddy cursed. Who knew Chris would be indulging in his own private after-hours lap dance?
"Bring her over here," he told Michael.
"Ma'am," Michael said apologetically, and reached for her elbow. She took the fatal step, her painted face puzzled. She screamed, a high, shrill shriek.
"Over here!" Buddy demanded, face flushed.
Once she was dead, they filled the bags. When they were unable to cram another greenback into the duffel bag or the suitcase, Buddy yanked out a deep desk drawer, dumped the contents, and filled it with bills. He also removed the dead man's gun from the slightly open top drawer.
"What about the camera hooked up to that intercom?" Michael said.
"Doesn't record," Buddy said confidently. "Nothing to worry about."
They took the night's receipts, still stacked on the desk, put them in the safe, locked it, wiped down all they had touched, and left the way they came.
Michael was hyperventilating, breathing hard and trembling. "You didn't tell me -- "
"Be cool," Buddy warned him, as they carried the bags down the stairs.
The street was still deserted.
Buddy dumped the cash out of the desk drawer into the trunk of their car. A block away he had Michael toss the wiped-down drawer and Chris's gun into the backseat of an unlocked, beat-up Chevy convertible. As Michael darted back to the car, heart pounding, he looked up for a moment at the distant figure of the reclining woman, long yellow hair aglow in the warmth of neon. She stared back, her wet, red smile seductive.
Copyright © 2004 by Edna Buchanan
