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. DetectiveSergeant 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.
The dead husband and wife were in the living room of their four-room condominium. Both victims had been beaten, their bodies slashed by a knife, and cruelly mutilated. Blood had pooled on the floor around them.
Sergeant Greene, a twenty-year Miami Police veteran, tall, lean, and with a bristling mustache, told Frankel to secure the scene, then urgently looked around the office for someone to send.
Standing up and surveying all of Homicide, he could see that every other detective's desk was empty. The room was large, with a half-dozen rows of small, bureaucratic metal desks, set side by side and separated by shoulderhigh dividers. Each desk contained a multiple-line phone, several file trays, overflowing, and in some cases a computer terminal. Every detective had his or her own desk, and most had tried to personalize their drab conformity with family photos, drawings, or cartoons.
In the entire room the only other people were two harried secretaries, busily answering phones. Today, as every day, the calls were from citizens, news media, members of victims' families asking for information about relatives' deaths, politicians looking for answers to the sudden rise in shootings, and countless other sources, rational and otherwise.
Greene knew that all available detectives were out working and, for most of the summer, Homicide headquarters had looked the way it did today. His own team of four was investigating eight murders, and other teams were under similar pressure.
He would have to go to Pine Terrace himself, Greene decided. Alone and quickly.
He looked down at the paperwork piled on his desk two weeks' arrears of crime records and other reports that Lieutenant Newbold was urging him to complete and knew he must put the work aside yet again. He slipped on his jacket, checked his shoulder holster, gun, and ammunition, and headed for the elevator. From his unmarked car he would radio one of his units and have someone join him, but, knowing everyone's workload, he doubted it would happen soon.
As to the burdensome, never-ceasing paperwork, Greene reasoned gloomily he would have to come back and move some more tonight.
* * *
Some fifteen minutes later Detective-Sergeant Greene arrived at Pine Terrace condominium number 18, where the condo and the surrounding area were cordoned off by official yellow display tape POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS. Greene approached a uniform officer standing between the condo entrance and a small, curious crowd.
"Officer Frankel? I'm Sergeant Greene. What do you have?"
"Me and my partner were here first, Sergeant," Frankel reported. "We haven't touched a thing." He motioned to a heavily built, bearded man standing off to one side. "This is Mr. Xavier. He's the neighbor who called nine-one-one."
The bearded man joined them. He told Greene, "When I saw those bodies through the window I just broke down the door. Maybe I shouldn't have."
"Forget that. There's always a chance someone might be alive."
"The Urbinas sure weren't. Didn't know them well, but I'll never forget "
Frankel interrupted. "Two things Mr. Xavier did he used the phone inside to call nine-one-one, and he turned off a radio."
"It was so loud," Xavier said, "I couldn't hear on the phone."
Greene asked, "Did you do anything else to the radio, like change the station it was set to? Or touch anything else at all?"
"No, sir." Xavier looked crestfallen. "Do you think I messed up any fingerprints?"
Everybody's a crime expert, Greene thought. "Too early to tell, but we'd appreciate your letting us take your prints so we can separate them from any others. The print record will be returned to you." Greene told Frankel, "Stay in touch with Mr. Xavier. We'll need him later today."
When Sergeant Greene entered the Urbinas' condo, he knew at once that what he was seeing was no routine homicide, but a dire and crucial development in what was surely a sequence of ghastly serial killings. Greene, like most Homicide supervisors, kept himself informed of other teams' cases and was familiar with the Coconut Grove murders in January of Homer and Blanche Frost. He knew, too, of the Hennenfeld case in Fort Lauderdale almost three months ago that was so similar to the Frosts'. Now here horribly and unmistakably was a third matching atrocity. Greene acted fast, reaching for his portable police radio secured to his belt, and made several calls.
First he called for an ID crew, the most pressing need in a case like this, where another serial killing could occur at any time. Every scrap of evidence had to be gathered fast, examined and assessed without delay. But a dispatcher informed Greene that all the ID crews were tied up on other cases, and one would not get to him for at least an hour. Pablo Greene seethed, knowing the delay might cause some evidence to deteriorate. But abusing the dispatcher would accomplish nothing, so he kept quiet.
He was far less patient when he made his second call, summoning a medical examiner to view the victims. No ME was available, he was told, though one would be sent "when possible."
"That's not good enough,'' he said, trying not to shout, but knowing there was nothing he could do. The next call yielded similar results: no state attorney was available; one presently in court would try to arrive within an hour.
So much was changing for investigators, he brooded. Not long ago, any summons to a murder scene produced immediate action, but obviously no more. He supposed it was all part of society's declining values, though certainly not declining murders.
Greene did manage to reach Lieutenant Newbold by radio and, while choosing his words carefully since others would be listening, conveyed the urgency for fast action at the Pine Terrace scene. Newbold quickly promised to do some phoning himself. '
Greene also suggested that Sergeant Ainslie and Detective Quinn be notified, which Newbold agreed to do, adding that he would come to the scene himself within the next half hour.
Greene returned his attention to the two murder victims and the sadistic violation of their bodies, continuing the notes he had been scribbling since entering the building. Just as in the other two cases he had heard described, the man and woman had been positioned facing each other, bound and gagged. It seemed likely that each had been forced to watch in silent terror while the other was tortured.
Sergeant Greene sketched their positions, without disturbing anything before the ID crew's arrival. On a side table he observed an incoming addressed envelope from which a letter had been removed and left open. Moving the letter carefully with a penknife to avoid touching it, he was able to learn the Urbinas' full names, which he added to his notes.
On a small bureau near the bodies Greene spotted a portable radio clearly the one that Xavier had switched off. Peering at the tuning dial, Greene noted the setting: 105.9 FM. He knew the station: HOT 105. Hard rock.
Then, still moving meticulously, stroking his mustache as he considered what he saw, he viewed the other rooms.
In both bedrooms the drawers had all been opened, presumably by an intruder, and left that way. The contents of a woman's purse and a man's wallet had been emptied onto a bed. There was no money, though some minor jewelry remained.
Each bedroom had a separate bathroom and toilet, and though the ID crew would go over both thoroughly, Greene saw nothing of significance. In what appeared to be the main bathroom, the toilet seat was raised, and there was urine in the bowl. Greene added both facts to his notes, even though he knew that neither urine nor stool could be linked to an individual for identification.