Cold Case Squad

Scanned by Highroller.

Proofed by Aunti

Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet.

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.

High-pitched screams and ear-splitting shrieks shattered the air.
What must the neighbors think? Joan wondered.

Grinning, she closed one eye and peered through the video camera's
viewfinder, slowly panning the front yard.

A bouquet of bright balloons bobbed above the mailbox, marking the
party's location. Two picnic tables adorned with festive paper
tablecloths stood in the shade of a huge black olive tree. The paper
plates, napkins, and party favors were all in red, white, and blue
rocket-ship patterns. A sweating galvanized copper tub held soda cans
and juice cartons nestled in an icy slush. Puffy white clouds sailed
across a serene blue sky above while happy chaos reigned below.

HoHo the Clown twisted squeaky balloons into animal shapes as a
rent-a-pony, led by a handler wearing a Stetson and cowboy boots,
plodded docilely around the circular old Chicago brick driveway.
"Giddeup! Giddeup!" bawled the rider, an impatient third grader.

The loudest shrieks came from children rebounding wildly off the
bright, inflatable walls of the rented Bounce House. They sprang and
ricocheted off the floors and even the ceiling in daredevil imitations
of super-heroes, Olympic gymnasts, and human flies.

Joan focused on her husband. Red-faced and perspiring, he manned the
grill, an unruly shock of curly dark hair plastered across his
forehead. Stan wore sunglasses, oven mitts, a bib apron over his grill
sergeant T-shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts as he flipped burgers and
plump hot dogs that sputtered juice into the fire.

Stan winked at her and the camera, then addressed the crush of
partyers around him. "How many want burgers? Two, three, that's four.
How many want cheese on their burgers? Okay. How many hot dogs?"

"Both. I want both," Lionel demanded. The husky eight-year-old was
built like a gap-toothed pit bull with freckles.

"Coming right up!" Stan adjusted his chef's hat to a jaunty angle.

Lionel screwed up his face in disdain. "My dad doesn't do it that
way."

"Who invited Lionel?" Stan muttered to his wife. "You know he's a
troublemaker. His own mother calls him Lying Hell."

"Sssshhh. Honey." Joan rolled her eyes and lowered her voice. "He
might hear you. Sally's my best friend."

"But she doesn't call her son Lying Hell for nothing. Look." He cut
his eyes at Lionel, who was up to his dimpled elbows in a huge bowl of
Cheez Doodles.

"Just keep an eye on him," Joan urged. "I already briefed Consuela,
if she ever gets here." She checked her watch. "Where'd you put the
cake?"

"On the pantry counter, still in the box from the Cuban bakery. You
sure it's safe to feed them more sugar?"

As though on cue, Ryan, the birthday boy, scrambled around the side
of the house. In hot pursuit were Sookie, the golden retriever, and
half a dozen guests. Half of Ryan's face was painted blue, his legs
churned, his cardboard crown was askew.

Joan focused on her firstborn on the occasion of his eighth
birthday. It seemed only yesterday that she was being rushed into
surgery for an emergency C-section. Could it really be eight years?
Given his exuberance, no one would ever guess that last night Ryan had
fretted, pouted, even threatened to boycott his own party. He wanted
fireworks. For days he had nagged, pleaded, and cajoled. His
third-grade buddies expected fireworks, he'd argued. He intended to be
an astronaut, speeding in swaths of fire across the galaxy. His party
theme was rockets. He
wanted
fireworks.

His five-year-old sister's birthday theme had been
The Little
Mermaid
. Her party favors, he pointed out, included real live
goldfish in clear water-filled plastic bags. "She
always
gets
everything she wants," he'd howled.

Joan and Stan had nearly caved. A boy is only eight once. But with
memories of the barbecue debacle involving Lionel last Fourth of July,
it was not going to happen.

Ryan would be king for a day, with a crown, a clown, a rocket-shaped
cake—but fireworks? No. Not even a sparkler.

Consuela materialized and helped Joan refill bowls of chips and
Cheez Doodles. Half-empty sodas and half-eaten food were everywhere.

Stan served up Lionel's hot dog and burger with a flourish.

"Eewwuuh. What's that?" The child poked a grubby finger at the
cheese.

"Cheese. You wanted cheese," Stan said pleasantly.

"You don't have bleu cheese?"

"Nope, only American."

His freckled nose wrinkled.

"Right." Stan tossed another burger on the grill. "I'll fix you one
without cheese."

Before he could reach for the boy's plate, Lionel was feeding his
cheeseburger and hot dog to the golden retriever.

"Sookie likes it." Lionel beamed a cherubic smile, then frowned at
the fresh burger Stan offered.

"My father doesn't do it
that
way." Sookie's plumed tail
began to wag expectantly.

"Oh?" Stan's eyebrows arched.

"No. He puts the catsup on
both
sides of the bun first,
then
the hamburger." Lionel folded his arms and scowled.

"Here, Lionel, you can do the honors."

Lionel reached for the catsup bottle and scrutinized the label, his
expression sour. "You don't have Heinz?"

Stan bared his teeth and made an evil monster face.

Lionel fled.

*  
*   *

Blue-green horseflies dive-bombed the baked beans. Joan waved them
away, eager to finish feeding the kids before the semitropical sun
fried their little brains. Some of the smaller ones already glowed pink
despite slathers of sunscreen. She hurried inside for the pièce de
résistance.