“I wasn't around then.”

“Oh, yeah. Funny, it seems like you've been here forever. But you know what happened, right?”

I was a deputy chief medical examiner for Dade County when Robyn Naismith was murdered, and I remembered reading about the case, following it in the news, and later seeing a slide presentation about it at a national meeting. The former Miss Virginia was a stunning beauty with a gorgeous alto voice. She was articulate and charismatic before the camera. She was only twenty-seven years old.

The defense claimed that Ronnie Waddell's intent was burglary, and Robyn's misfortune was to walk in on it after returning home from the drugstore. Allegedly, Waddell did not watch television and was unfamiliar with her name or brilliant future when he was ransacking her residence and brutalizing her. He was so hopped up on drugs, the defense argued, that he didn't know what he was doing. The jurors rejected Waddell's temporary insanity plea and recommended the death penalty.

'I know the pressure to catch her killer was incredible, “ I said to Marino.

“Friggin' unbelievable. We had this great latent print We had bite marks. We had three guys doing a cold search through the files morning, noon, and night. I got no idea how many hours I put in on that damn case Then we catch the bastard because he's driving around North Carolina with an expired inspection sticker.”

He paused, his eyes hard when he added, “Course, Jones wasn't around by then. Too damn bad he missed out of seeing Waddell get his reward.”

“Do you blame Waddell for what happened to Sonny Jones?” I asked.

“Hey, what do you think?”

“He was a close friend.”

“We worked Homicide together, fished together, we were on the same bowling team.”

“I know his death was hard for you.”

“Yeah, well, the case wore him down. Working all hours, no sleep, never home, and that sure as hell didn't help matters with his wife. He kept telling me he couldn't take it no more and then he stopped telling me anything. One night he decides to eat his gun.”