“Good morning, Bernard,” she said, smiling.
“It isn’t good so far,” he told her glumly. “Maybe you can improve it.”
“A shortage of clues from Tuesday?” Walden’s voice was sympathetic.
“More like none. Which is why I’m here, mostly to ask why in hell a fingerprint report is taking so long.”
“Three days isn’t long,” she answered sharply. “Not when I had a fistful of prints to check out and identify—as you should know.”
“Sorry, Sylvia,” Quinn said penitently. “This sick case has turned me into an ass. Manners out the window.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re all pretty frazzled over this.”
“So what have you got?”
“Some prints came through this morning from New York. They belong to the guy who stayed in the hotel room just prior to the Frosts.”
“Were they on file there?”
“No, no. He agreed to be fingerprinted by the NYPD to help us out. I’m just comparing them with those we found.”
The computer that Walden faced was a state-of-the-art AFIS model—shorthand for Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The machine, after scanning a fingerprint from a crime scene, could accomplish in less than two hours what it would take a human being an estimated one hundred and sixty years to complete—a search through hundreds of thousands of fingerprints on record across the United States—and provide a matching print, with identification, if one existed. Fingerprints in the system were stored and retrieved by a digital code that worked at lightning speed. AFIS was often an instant crime-solver; also, since its arrival, many old investigations had been reopened, with bygone fingerprints identified and criminals charged and convicted. Today, though, Walden’s task was simpler—comparing the set of prints from New York, transferred by modem, with unidentified prints she had lifted from room 805 of the Royal Colonial.
The computer did not take long to provide an answer. The New York prints matched those from 805.
Sylvia Walden sighed. “Not good news, I’m afraid, Bernie.” She explained that the only fingerprints she had found at the murder scene proved to be from the dead victims, a hotel maid, and now the room’s previous occupant.
Quinn ran his fingers through his tousled hair and grunted unhappily. There were days when he felt his retirement could not come soon enough.
“I’m not too surprised about the prints,” Walden said. “I noticed some smudges in places where there might have been fingerprints—smudges that latex gloves leave. I’m pretty sure the killer wore them. I do have something, though.”
Quinn’s brows shot up. “What?”
“An unidentified palm print. It’s only a partial, but it doesn’t match palm prints from any of those people whose fingerprints we’ve identified—I asked for their palm prints specially. There’s also a Police Department register of palm prints, but no match there, either.” Walden, crossing to a desk, leafed through computer printouts and passed a single sheet to Quinn; it bore a black-and-white partial handprint. “There it is.”
“Interesting.” He turned the sheet around, viewing it sideways and upside down, then handed it back. “Nobody I recognize,” he said laconically. “So what can you do with it?”
“What I can do is this, Bernie: If you locate a suspect and get his palm prints, I’ll tell you—pretty close to a certainty—if he was at the murder scene.”
“If we ever get that far,” he told her, “I’ll be here like a rocket.”
Walking through the fifth-floor corridors on his way back to Homicide, Quinn felt slightly heartened. At least the palm print was a minor start.
From the outset there had been an unusual lack of evidence in the Frost case. The day after the murders were discovered, Quinn had returned to the Royal Colonial scene armed with a lengthy list of questions. First he took a fresh overview of the scene, then he and Julio Verona, the lead technician, discussed each item of discovery to assess its value. One of those items—among others already removed as evidence—was a torn envelope from the First Union Bank. Later that day, Quinn visited First Union branches in the area and learned that the morning before their deaths, the Frosts had cashed eight hundred dollars in traveler’s checks at a Southwest 27th Avenue branch near the hotel. The bank teller who had served them remembered the two older people well and was sure no one else was with them. Also, neither he nor the other tellers had noticed anyone following the Frosts when they left the bank.
Quinn ordered a further fingerprint search of room 805, in darkness, using fluorescent powder and laser lighting. The process sometimes revealed prints missed when a normal fingerprint powder was used. Again, nothing was found.
He obtained from the Royal Colonial manager a list of guests at the time of the murders, plus a second list of those who had stayed in the hotel during the preceding month. Each guest would be contacted by police, either by phone or in person. If anyone seemed suspicious or hostile, a closer follow-up would be made by an officer, or perhaps Quinn himself.
A sworn statement was taken from Cobo, the security guard. Quinn pressed hard with questions, hoping to jog Orlando Cobo’s memory in case something small but significant had been overlooked. Other hotel staff who had known the Frosts also made sworn statements, but nothing new emerged.
Phone calls to and from room 805 during the victims’ stay were checked by police. The hotel had a record of outgoing calls; the phone company was subpoenaed to provide a log of incoming calls. Again, no leads.
Quinn contacted several known informers, hoping for street gossip about the murders. He offered money for information, but there was none.
He flew to South Bend and inquired at the police department there if any police record existed involving the Frosts; the answer was no. To the victims’ family members Quinn expressed condolences, followed by questions about the backgrounds of Homer and Blanche Frost. In particular, was there anyone who did not like the Frosts and might want to harm them? All responses were negative.
Back in Miami, both Ainslie and Quinn were surprised by the absence of phoned-in tips following the extensive media coverage of the murders. The main facts were released through Public Information, though a few were held back, as was normal with homicides, to ensure that certain details were known only to the investigators and the murderer. Those details, if alluded to by a suspect, either inadvertently or in a confession, would strengthen the prosecution’s case at trial.
Among the information not released was the presence of dead cats, and that Homer Frost’s eyes had been set on fire.
Thus, as time began to slip by—one week, two weeks, three—any solution seemed increasingly remote. In a homicide investigation the first twelve hours are most critical. If by then a strong lead or suspect has not emerged, the likelihood of success diminishes with each passing day.
A trio of essentials with any homicide are witnesses, physical evidence, and a confession. Without the first and second, the third was unlikely. But in the Frost investigation there continued to be a glaring absence of all three.
Inevitably, as other new homicides occurred, the Frost case lost its priority.
Months went by as crime in Florida kept on escalating. Every police force in the state, including homicide departments, was overwhelmed, many of their personnel exhausted. Part of the pressure was an unceasing Niagara of paper—external mail, internal mail, Teletypes, fax messages, local police reports, protocol reports, crime reports, lab reports on blood and drugs, reports and requests from other jurisdictions, BOLOs … the list seemed endless.
Out of necessity, priorities emerged. Urgent local matters came first, and other paper was supposedly handled in order of importance; sometimes it wasn’t. Some reports or requests were glanced at, then put aside, becoming an ever-growing pile for later reading. At times it could be three, six, or even nine months before certain papers were dealt with, if at all.
Bernard Quinn had once dubbed those papers the Tomorrow Pile, and the n
ame stuck. Typically, he’d quoted Macbeth:
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day …”
All of which was why a Teletype from the police department of Clearwater, Florida, dated March 15 and addressed to all police agencies in the state, received only cursory attention at Miami Homicide, then remained in the Tomorrow Pile—until five months after its arrival.
The Teletype was from a Detective Nelson Abreu, who, stunned by the brutality of a recent Clearwater double murder, asked for information about any similar murders that might have occurred elsewhere. Included in the Teletype was a note that “unusual items” were left at the murder scene, the victims’ home. These were not described because Clearwater Homicide was limiting knowledge of that evidence for the same reason Miami Homicide had withheld information about the Frosts’ murder scene.
Clearwater had a large population of elderly people, and the murder victims were a husband and wife, Hal and Mabel Larsen, both in their seventies. They had been bound and gagged, then, while facing each other, had been tortured, finally dying from loss of blood. The torture included a savage beating and mutilation by severe knife wounds. Inquiries revealed that the Larsens had cashed a thousand-dollar check a few days earlier, but no money was found at the crime scene. There were no witnesses, no unaccounted-for fingerprints, no murder weapon, no suspects.
While Detective Abreu received several replies to his Teletype, none proved helpful, and the case remained unsolved.
Two and a half months later, another scene:
Fort Lauderdale, May 23.
Again, a married couple, the Hennenfelds, in their mid-sixties and living in an apartment on Ocean Boulevard near 21st Street. Again the victims were found bound and gagged, and in seated positions, facing each other. Both had been beaten and stabbed to death, though their bodies were not discovered for an estimated four days.
On the fourth day a neighbor, aware of a foul odor coming from the adjoining apartment, called police, who made a forced entry. Broward Sheriff-Detective Benito Montes was sickened at the sight and stench.
At this crime scene no “unusual items” were left. However, a two-burner electric space heater had been lashed by wire to the feet of Irving Hennenfeld, then plugged into an electric outlet. The space heater’s red-hot bars had burned out before the bodies were found, though not until the man’s feet and lower legs were reduced to cinders. In this crime, too, any money the victims may have had was apparently taken.
Once more, no fingerprints, no witnesses, no weapon.
But this time Sheriff-Detective Montes remembered reading about the Coconut Grove murders of an elderly couple some three months earlier, which seemed similar. Following a phone call to Miami Homicide, Montes drove to Miami the next day, where he met with Bernard Quinn.
In contrast to the veteran Quinn, Montes was young, in his mid-twenties, with neatly trimmed hair. Like most Homicide detectives he dressed well—that day in a navy blue suit with a striped silk tie. During a two-hour discussion the detectives compared notes of the Frosts’ and Hennenfelds’ murders and viewed photos of both crime scenes. They agreed that the manner of the victims’ deaths seemed identical. So did other factors, including placement of the bodies, and the killer’s barbaric cruelty.
One small detail: When the bodies were found, a radio was playing loudly, presumably having been left that way by the killer.
“Do you remember what kind of music?” Quinn asked.
“Sure do. Rock, so goddam loud you couldn’t hear yourself speak.”
“Was the same way at the Frost scene.” Quinn made a note.
“It’s the same guy,” Montes declared. “Has to be.”
Quinn quizzed him. “You’re sure it’s a man—one man?”
“Yep. And the bastard’s big, strong as an ox, and smart.”
“Educated smart?”
“My instinct says no.”
Quinn nodded. “Mine, too.”
Montes added, “He enjoys it, wallows in it, slavers over it. We’re looking for a sadist.”
“Any thoughts about the dead cats at our scene?”
Montes shook his head. “Only that this prick loves killing. Maybe he did the cats to pass the time, and brought them along for kicks.”
Quinn said, “I still think it’s a message—in some code we haven’t deciphered.”
Before Sheriff-Detective Montes left, Bernard Quinn apologized for the absence of his sergeant. Quinn explained that Malcolm Ainslie would have liked to be present at their meeting since he, too, was involved. However, Ainslie was committed to attend a one-day police management seminar in another part of town.
Benito Montes said, “That’s okay—there’s time. I think what we’ve seen is only the beginning.”
3
During the spring and summer of that year, the residents of South Florida wilted in exceptionally high temperatures and steamy humidity, sustained by daily thunderstorms and drenching rain. In Miami itself a series of electrical outages, caused by heavy power demand, brought those who had air conditioning into the sticky world of those who did not. Another problem, exacerbated by heat-induced irritability and carelessness, was crime. Gang fights, crimes of passion, and domestic violence all flourished. Even among normally peaceful people, patience ebbed and tempers flared; in streets or parking lots, trivial disagreements resulted in total strangers coming to blows. With more serious disputes, anger turned to rage and even murder.
At Homicide headquarters, an entire wall was occupied by a white glazed board known to detectives as the “People-Dying-to-Meet-Us Board.” Divided by neat lines and columns, it recorded the names of all murder victims during the current year and the year preceding, along with key details of investigations. All possible suspects were named on the board. Arrests were recorded in red.
At mid-July of the preceding year, the board showed seventy murders, of which twenty-five still remained unsolved. By mid-July of the current year, there had been ninety-six murders, with the unsolved figure a highly unsatisfactory seventy-five cases.
Both upward trends pointed to an increase in homicides accompanying otherwise routine robberies, carjackings, and everyday street holdups. Everywhere, it seemed, criminals were shooting and killing their victims for no apparent reason.
Because of wide public concern about the numbers, Homicide’s commander, Lieutenant Leo Newbold, had been summoned several times to the office of Major Manolo Yanes, commander of the Crimes Against Persons Unit, which combined Robbery and Homicide.
At their last meeting Major Yanes, a heavily built man with bushy hair and a drill sergeant’s voice, wasted no time after his secretary ushered Newbold in.
“Lieutenant, what the hell are you and your people doing? Or should I say not doing?”
Normally the major would have used Newbold’s first name and invited him to sit down. This time he did neither, and simply looked up, glaring, from his desk. Newbold, suspecting that Yanes had received his own castigation from higher up, and knowing the down-through-the-ranks drill, took his time before answering.
The major’s office was on the same floor as Homicide, and a large window overlooked downtown Miami, bathed now in brilliant sunshine. The desk was gray metal with a white plastic top, on which piles of folders and pencils were laid out in neat military order. Facing him was a conference table with eight chairs. As in most police offices, the effect was austere, relieved slightly by a few photographs of Yanes’s grandchildren on a side table.
“You know the situation, Major,” Newbold responded. “We’re swamped. Every detective is working sixteen-hour days or more, following every lead we’ve got. These guys are near exhaustion.”
Yanes waved an arm irritably. “Oh, for Christ’s sake! Sit down.”
When Newbold was seated, Yanes declared, “Long hours and exhaustion are part of this job and you know it. So however much work you’re getting from everyone, drive ’em harder. And remember this—
when people are exhausted they’re apt to miss things, and it’s our job to make damn sure they don’t. So I’m telling you, Newbold, take a good, hard look at every case, right now! Make sure there’s nothing undone that should have been done. Go over every detail—and look especially hard for connections between cases. If I learn later that something important has been overlooked, I promise you’ll regret ever having told me your men are tired. Tired! For Christ’s sake!”
Newbold sighed inwardly but said nothing.
Yanes concluded, “That’s all, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” Newbold rose from his chair, turned smartly and went out, deciding that he would do exactly what Manolo Yanes urged.
It was less than a month after this confrontation that—as Leo Newbold would describe it later—“the whole goddam roof fell in.”
The series of events began on August 14 at 11:12 A.M., when the temperature in Miami was ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity eighty-five percent. Detective-Sergeant Pablo Greene was heading that day’s Hot Team when a radio call to Homicide headquarters, from a uniform patrol officer named Frankel, reported an apparent murder at Pine Terrace Condominiums on Biscayne Boulevard at 69th Street.
The victims were a Hispanic couple in their sixties named Urbina, Lazaro and Luisa. A male neighbor, after knocking on their door and getting no response, peered in through a window. Seeing two bound figures, he forced the door open, then moments later used the Urbinas’ phone to call 911.