Legally Dead Read online

  ALSO BY EDNA BUCHANAN

  Love Kills

  Shadows

  Cold Case Squad

  The Ice Maiden

  You Only Die Twice

  Garden of Evil

  Margin of Error

  Act of Betrayal

  Suitable for Framing

  Miami, It’s Murder

  Contents Under Pressure

  Pulse

  Never Let Them See You Cry

  Nobody Lives Forever

  The Corpse Had a Familiar Face

  Carr: Five Years of Rape and Murder

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Edna Buchanan

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department,

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Buchanan, Edna.

  Legally dead: a novel / Edna Buchanan.

  p. cm.

  1. Identification—Fiction. 2. Miami (Fla.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  813'.54—dc22

  PS3552.U324 L44 2008 2008022502

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-7941-0

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-7941-9

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  For the warriors,

  the heroes who protect our flag,

  our shores, and us, every day

  …You know that we live in an important time. It is now time for you to wake up from your sleep. Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is almost finished.

  —Romans 13:11–12

  The world is a world of lies. Raise a cup to the dead already—and hurrah for the next who dies!

  —Anonymous

  PROLOGUE

  She was all he desired but everything forbidden.

  Her appeal was lethal. Her spirited steps, her laughter, each reckless toss of her shiny blond hair struck him like bullets to the heart. She had a way about her. And the body type that never failed to excite him.

  By daylight she haunted him, materializing like an apparition in the supermarket, at the community center, or walking her dog. As he collected his mail or plucked his paper off the grass, he’d glimpse her face in a passing car. Wherever he went, she was there.

  He thought of her the most when he was alone in the dark.

  Fate was giving him the finger. That he knew. Led into temptation, he resisted. Why complicate his existence in this community of six thousand souls in neat frame houses with maple and pine trees standing like sentinels along streets that all led to nowhere? A bowling ball rolling down Main Street at 11 p.m. would not strike anyone. If he hungered for a late-night steak or burger he had a choice: stay hungry or learn to cook.

  The huge flocks of Canada geese migrating overhead were another frequent frustration. Honking and flying, flying and honking, until all he wanted was to shotgun them out of the goddamn sky. The profound silence when they neither honked nor flew was even worse. He’d wake up alone in the night convinced he’d gone deaf in the dark.

  His passion went unrequited, but he and the object of his attention did share rare moments: they nearly collided one Saturday morning as he browsed hangover remedies in an aisle at the Rite Aid Drugstore. Her megawatt smile deepened her killer dimples and crinkled her mischievous blue eyes. She obviously recognized him.

  He whistled softly through his teeth as he watched her go. “You know what you just did to me,” he whispered.

  They always knew.

  He fought his basic instincts, kept his profile low, and stuck to the rules—some of them. He had a secret plan about to spin into play. Who could blame him? Bored to distraction, he missed the money, the sex, the power. Nightlife here revolved around a pizza joint that closed early and monthly church suppers at which participants prayed, no doubt to survive the inedibly gummy spaghetti dinner.

  Sleepless, he paced his modest middle-class home like a caged and moody lion yearning for his natural habitat, a concrete jungle astir with the wild life and high-risk encounters among the creatures of the night.

  During a routine physical his new doctor suggested that he smoke less and exercise more. They won’t be satisfied, he thought bitterly, until I am stripped of every comfort and simple pleasure. Nonetheless, he began a regimen of brisk daily walks. Fresh air and exercise would keep him too busy for unhealthy obsessions. But soon her house became a major landmark on his route. She lived on the far side of a small park surrounding an imposing stone sculpture, a horseman wielding a raised sword.

  He paused to read the plaque at its base. The inscription identified the rider: he was General John Stark, who led the New Hampshire Minutemen to battle in the Revolutionary War and coined the state’s motto, Live Free or Die. He studied the horseman’s face and his sword, then checked his watch and quickly moved on. His walks were synchronized with her schedule so he could see what she wore—and didn’t. How much more smooth, milky skin would she bare as the long, dreary days of winter began to yield to blindingly bright yellow daffodils? Unlike the stone-faced general, she exuded life and energy. He obsessed over the impatient jut of her hip, her merry laughter, and the graceful curve of her neck, exposed when she pinned her glowing hair back. They all fueled his fantasies.

  Spontaneous and typically female, she was not always predictable, or inclement weather would intervene. Often he was disappointed, but when she was on her front porch, in the driveway, or her yard, it was worth the wait. Eventually, she began to acknowledge him with a look of recognition, then a smile, and most recently, a friendly wave.

  He responded with a neighborly nod, nothing more.

  He had been told to make friends. How do you do that in middle age, when all your previous friendships were forged and flourished in childhood? Friends grow up together, cover each other’s backs, and build alliances through a lifetime of history shared back in the day.

  An outsider here, he was as disoriented as an alien from a distant planet. He and his new neighbors shared nothing in common. Many seemed short on teeth but still spoke in uppity tones. The women appalled him. Where did they grow these heifers? Yet the gaggles of runny-nosed kids who trailed behind them were proof that men actually slept with them. Disgusting. So he kept to himself, kept control, held his demons at bay.

  He did wrestle the devil on occasion. He emerged from the exercise room at the community center one sunny afternoon, sweaty and exhausted, and she was there at the pool, hair wet, skin glistening, a thirsty towel draped around her neck. She giggled with a friend, hunched her slim shoulders, and hugged her arms against a chilly breeze. Teeth chattering, she turned away.

  He licked his lips and swallowed, close enough to see the gooseflesh rise on the inside of her pale thighs and how the clingy fabric of her wet bikini bottom rode up her crotch.

  He positioned his exercise bag in front of him to conceal his excitement, catching his breath at the sight of her daintily extended bare leg as she slid gracefully into the car for the ride home.

  The moment was defining. She saw him watching, he thought, and flaunted herself. Deliberately. Tried to turn him on and succeeded. Females are born knowing how to drive a man crazy.

  Still, he never would have touched her but destiny inte
rvened. Late one afternoon, as he nodded off in his underwear and socks watching a Yankees game taped over the weekend, the doorbell launched him to his feet, totally awake.

  Instinctively, he dove for the small silver-colored automatic pistol concealed beneath a sofa cushion. He pressed his thick back to the wall and released the safety.

  There was a growing chill outside the window and the feel of rain in the air. The streetlights were still dark. Cautiously, from behind the curtains, he squinted into the deepening dusk.

  When he saw the figure alone in the lengthening shadows, persistently pushing his doorbell, he gasped. Quickly, he scanned the street. Perfect. No traffic in sight. No one watching.

  “Hold on! I’ll be right there!” He snatched his trousers off the back of a chair.

  He zipped up, fingers fumbling as he fastened his belt, afraid she might leave.

  He checked the window again before unlocking the door. Nothing had changed. She still stood there alone. He could scarcely believe his good fortune. What she wore electrified him: a badge, and her crisp, neatly starched uniform. His wildest fantasy come true!

  He threw the door open and laughed aloud when he saw what had brought her, delivered her, to his door.

  She was selling Girl Scout cookies.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Michael Venturi hit the airport late. His own fault, exacerbated by traffic. The security line stretched across the building, a slow-moving, mind-numbing hell presided over by morons. At last, he sprinted down the concourse to the gate where his flight should have been boarding. It wasn’t.

  “De-layed,” chirped the pretty girl behind the counter. She smiled flirtatiously and batted her big blues. Her obvious interest failed to diminish the cloud that hovered over him. Flying was no longer fun. Neither is my job, Venturi thought, or my life.

  His head pounded; his fault as well. Not enough sleep and too much to drink. He needed to find hot coffee, which he hoped, with a few aspirins, might provide relief.

  At the end of the concourse, he found a Starbucks, picked up some newspapers, and returned to the gate. He sipped the coffee, which was good, as he skimmed the news, which was not: car bombs in Baghdad, celebs in rehab, the globe warming, a new cold war looming, corrupt politicians, crisis in Cuba, same old, same old.

  A headline below the fold on page five caught his eye as he searched for sports.

  Small Town Mystery

  Little Girls Lost

  The Flemington, New Hampshire, dateline jumped out at him. He read the first paragraph, blinked, then reread it.

  An eight-year-old schoolgirl had vanished from that rural township in broad daylight. Weeks earlier another girl, age nine, had disappeared from the same neighborhood. Last seen selling Girl Scout cookies she, too, remained missing.

  Both gone without a trace, despite Amber Alerts, tearful appeals from anguished parents, and intense searches by police and volunteers on foot, on horseback, and in the air. The coffee he’d swallowed rose in his throat.

  The PA system kicked in. Pretty girl behind the counter made eye contact, smiling again as she announced that his flight was now ready to board. But he was not. Michael Venturi would not fly today. He snatched up his duffel bag, left his half-empty coffee cup, and retreated.

  “Am I responsible?” Venturi wondered. “Is it my fault?” Full of dread, sick at heart, he knew the answer was yes, and that his life had changed forever.

  “What the hell you doing here?” Tom McMullen, the Chief U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of New York, looked startled and checked his watch with an exaggerated gesture. “Shouldn’t you be halfway to Chicago?”

  Venturi, who had interrupted a meeting, dropped the newspaper onto his boss’s desk. “Have you seen this?” He pointed out the New Hampshire story. “Check the dateline. What the hell did we do?”

  The chief gave the paper a cursory glance, scowled, and looked up too quickly. “So?” He shrugged. “Heard something about it. Whadaya, jumping to conclusions?”

  “We put him there.”

  “Sure, and it doesn’t mean a thing,” said Rich Archbold, an assistant U.S. Attorney, from his chair in front of the chief’s desk.

  April Howard, a deputy U.S. Marshal like Venturi, sat next to Archbold. She nodded repeatedly, like a bobble-headed doll.

  That they all knew about the story before he did agitated Venturi more.

  “We were aware of that sick son of a bitch’s sexual preference. We knew what his ex-wives confided off the record. I knew it was a mistake, I argued against it, but no,” he turned and paced the room, “we did it anyway.”

  “Gino Salvi’s a terrific witness,” Archbold said, “and we still need him for Schoenberg, the biggest union corruption case in the history of our office.”

  “He’s a murderer!”

  “Those were mob hits on other hoodlums, not children or innocent bystanders,” Archbold said, hitching his shoulders and gesturing, palms up, as if to grant Salvi absolution for bad-boy pranks.

  “Somebody has to go to New Hampshire,” Venturi said, “and get to the bottom of this.”

  “What are you? Nuts?” Archbold’s body language registered alarm. “You’d sabotage the case on a hunch? Schoenberg goes to trial next month.”

  “Forget the trial.” Venturi’s voice rose. “Children are missing. I’ll go.” He looked around. “Who’s going with me?”

  “Nobody.” Chief McMullen’s voice dropped ominously. “Nobody goes to New Hampshire, especially you. Sit down, Michael. You’re getting on my nerves.”

  Venturi reluctantly took a seat near the others.

  “There is no evidence against Salvi,” Archbold said. “Only your suspicion. We’ve worked years to make this case. The trial’s a go this time. We’re in it to win it!”

  “It’s no game,” Venturi argued. “We can’t play with children’s lives.”

  “They could be runaways,” April Howard offered, her high-pitched voice thin, her eyes averted. “You know how kids can be.”

  “They’re not teenagers, they’re eight and nine.”

  Even Archbold didn’t buy the runaway theory. “If they were stranger abductions,” he said quietly, “they’re probably dead. Not much we can do.”

  “We can stop him.”

  “What him?” McMullen demanded plaintively. He raked his thick fingers across his receding crew cut, signaling an impending rant. “Hundreds of perverts are trolling this country for victims as we speak.”

  “Sex offenders are everywhere.” April’s slim, well-manicured fingers twirled a lock of her shiny dark hair. “Dirty uncles, nasty stepfathers, lecherous grandpas. Happens all the time.” She sounded breezy.

  Archbold snatched up the newspaper, scowled briefly at the headline, then slapped it back onto the chief’s desk in disgust. “Our man isn’t dumb enough to pull that in his own backyard.”

  “We’ve had no negative feedback on Salvi,” Chief McMullen said, “not a word. The man’s innocent till proven guilty.”

  “So let’s go up there and prove it. We can polygraph him,” Venturi suggested, keeping his voice steady.

  They stared in unanimous dismay.

  “At least we should give the local cops a heads-up,” he continued. “They’re beating their brains out searching for the missing girls.”

  “Not our job!” The chief’s face reddened. “It’s a local issue. Let the locals solve their problems.”

  Archbold, the prosecutor, agreed. “We all know the pressure they’re under. It’s a high-profile case and they’ve got nothing. They’d pile on our guy like dogs fighting for a bone. If his name surfaces, if he’s even routinely interviewed, his credibility is shot, we’ve lost our star witness, and our case is down the crapper. We can’t afford it.”

  “We can’t afford not to,” Venturi insisted. “No small-town police department is equipped to solve a thing like this.”

  “Stay out of it,” the boss growled, focusing his venomous stare on Venturi. “Got that? Let th
em do their jobs. That is a goddamn order!”

  He lowered his voice. “You know how small-town police departments work, they leak like sieves. No hick cop can keep a secret. They’ve got no reason to. They don’t care about our case, our reputation. They’d like nothing better than to stick it up our federal asses.”

  “There is no cause,” Archbold said firmly, “to believe our star witness is involved. You sound paranoid, Venturi.”

  They ganged up on him.

  “He’s right, Michael,” April cooed reassuringly. “You’ve been under too much stress. You’re not yourself.” She crossed her legs, smoothed her pencil-slim suit skirt, leaned forward, and wagged her finger at him. “I always said, you should have taken more time off after the accident. You should see someone. Really.” Her tone was condescending.

  He studied each face—his boss, a federal prosecutor, and a fellow agent, and came to a conclusion that sickened him: not a conscience in the room. Aware the girls were missing, they never mentioned it. Why? Was it the reason for his sudden weeklong assignment in Chicago? Or was he paranoid?

  They continued to berate him.

  “She’s right.” The chief shook his head. “We all saw this coming. I urged you to take more time, offered all the compassionate leave you needed. But no, Mr. Macho here came right back to work, to tough it out. It took its toll. Look at you.” His face puckered in distaste. “Alcohol has affected your brain, clouded your judgment.”

  Enough was enough. “What the hell are you talking about?” Venturi said angrily. “My work hasn’t suffered. My evaluations are all excellent.”

  “You know more than anybody how much manpower and hard work we’ve invested in this case, this witness,” Archbold said reasonably. “The office has a lot at stake here.”

  “It’s only fair to give the local cops a clue,” Venturi said stubbornly.

  The sigh was collective.

  The chief’s stubby index finger stabbed the air between them. “Don’t go there, Venturi. I’m warning you. Stay out of it! Keep your mouth shut. Got that?”