The Ice Maiden by Edna Buchanan Read Free Book Online Page A

on horseback, backed up by Stealth bombers and spy satellites. Unfriendly skies, airport lockdowns, and bad mail—really bad mail.
    Locally, lightning had sparked dozens of new blazes in Dade and Palm Beach overnight. Smoke from two thousand acres of burning saw grass was threatening posh Boca Raton neighborhoods. “And locally, fire destroyed…” The newscaster read the first few graphs from my Gomez story almost verbatim. A few callers reacted to it on the talk show that followed. Most sympathized with the jailed shop owner.
    Like a good omen, a treat waited on my doorstep when I returned, a plump grapefruit freshly pickedfrom one of Mrs. Goldstein’s three trees. So far, they had escaped the chain saws of the canker police, state agricultural inspectors on a search-and-destroy mission to protect Florida’s commercial citrus groves. They cut down both infected trees and every healthy tree within a third of a mile as well. Backyard citrus, another joy of life in South Florida, would soon be just a memory. I cut the grapefruit while my English muffin toasted. Yes! My favorite, ruby red, sweet and bursting with juice. I devoured half with my muffin and tea, planning to save the rest, but couldn’t resist and ate that too.
    I set out on my beat feeling better. Despite the roller-coaster ride that is my job, I love being a journalist. There is something noble and exciting about venturing out each day to seek the truth. And my beat has it all, comedy and tragedy, sex and violence. Shakespeare in the raw—Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet—I meet them all on Miami’s steamy streets.
    I kept an eye out for Sergeant Craig Burch during my usual rounds but had no sightings. He did not respond to a phone message or calls to his beeper. A good sign, I thought. I imagined him seated across from Sunny, dealing out mug shots like playing cards in front of her. Her features were a blur in my fantasy but I saw Burch clearly, poker-faced, alert, sharply observing her reactions.
    A two o’clock bond hearing had been scheduled for Hector Gomez, but I didn’t cover it. Andy Maguire, the courthouse reporter, was as territorial about his beat asI am about mine. Just as well, as it turned out, since breaking news intervened.
    Jerry, an intern who monitored police radios in a cubbyhole niche off the newsroom, called me to report that something unusual seemed to be happening deep in south Dade farm country.
    â€œI don’t know if it’s anything,” he said hesitantly. “I can’t get a handle on it, Britt.”
    â€œWhat does it sound like?” I said.
    â€œI dunno, but there’s a lot of radio transmissions.”
    â€œSuch as?” I gazed at the murky haze beyond the newsroom’s big picture windows. The horizon was white with a yellow cast.
    â€œSounds like a scene in a farm field.”
    An image flashed through my mind: Richard Chance’s sprawled body; Sunny, covered with blood, staggering to her feet.
    â€œI checked the map,” Jerry was saying. “Looks like the middle of nowhere. The call went to police, then fire rescue dispatched on a three, and now they’re asking for drilling equipment—”
    â€œOh, no!” I blurted.
    I told him what it was, exited what I had on the computer, and gathered my things.
    He called back less than a minute later. “You were right,” he said breathlessly. “There’s a baby down a well!”
    Four toddlers had tumbled into uncapped irrigation wells in U-pick-’em farm fields in the past two years. Each frantic rescue attempt had ended the same way, with the recovery of a small lifeless body.
    The field, southwest of the old Homestead Air Force Base, was forty-five minutes away if I was lucky. I told Tubbs on the city desk and rushed for the elevator.
    â€œBritt!” My instinct was to make a run for it, but the slow-moving elevator hadn’t arrived. Too