The Death File: A gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist

The Death File

J. A. KERLEY

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright

KillerReads

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © J. A. Kerley 2017

Cover design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

J. A. Kerley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008263751

Version: 2017-09-27

Dedication

To Virginia, who loved her beer and baseball…

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by J. A. Kerley

About the Publisher

1

Dr Leslie Meridien watched a vulture appear from the failing glow of a twilight sky to land atop a towering saguaro cactus fifty feet from her second-story window. The predator stared into her brightly lit home office, detecting the motion of Meridien’s hands lifting a glass of Chardonnay and assessing their potential as prey.

After a minute the bird renewed its journey unsated, the black of the vulture consumed by the black of the sky. Meridien sat at her oaken desk dressed in a fifteen-year-old gray college sweatshirt – Harvard, her Alma Mater – and a pair of navy shorts, a workout on the exercise bike just over, her shoulder-length brown hair damp from the shower.

A psychological therapist and counselor, Meridien was transcribing notes from the day’s sessions into her cloud account, currently recalling her last session with Adam Kubiac, ten days back. He’d not shown for today’s scheduled session. Or last week’s.

Meridien wasn’t surprised. Adam had likely dealt with much in the past two weeks, given his father’s sudden death. How had Adam taken the news? With sadness or glee? By weeping or partying? It could have gone either way. The father, Eli Kubiac, was a human mess, misdirected, often clueless in his relationship with his son. A self-made multimillionaire, Eli Kubiac loved being the macho, driven businessman; a man for whom traits such as compassion and sensitivity were suspect, somehow unmanly. And as was often the story in such individuals, Eli Kubiac had a dark side: he’d died on the floor in a motel in Scottsdale, nothing more in the news reports. There was probably a sad story there.

Meridien hoped Adam Kubiac found understanding. And, perhaps against all odds, maturity.

She leaned back and stared into the blank whiteness of her ceiling, a sharp contrast to the dark moods Kubiac often sank into during his private sessions, even carrying his private personal anger into group work, the reason she had removed him from group after several sessions. Adam could be charming and personable – though still emotionally closer to twelve years of age than nearing eighteen – but when his dark moods hit, or his bouts of insecurity-driven megalomania, he was hard to handle, even for Meridien.

Meridien jumped at the sound of a car door slamming. She ran to the front bedroom and looked out the window: a battered blue vehicle at the far side of her drive, the door slamming. But how? Hadn’t she closed the gate at the end of the drive? She watched a rail-thin body leap from the passenger seat.

“I s-see you in the window, Dr Meridien,” yelled a voice from below. “I w-want to talk!”

She blew out a breath and shook her head. Adam Kubiac. He had reverted to the stutter that plagued him when under stress. It had been worse when they started; perhaps the only true headway made.

Meridien walked down the wide stairs and crossed the open-concept great room, its walls of bright wood hung with Native American rugs and paintings, and opened the front door to see the Phoenix-centered desert valley, a 30-mile long plain holding nearly four and a half million people, tens of thousands of lights and looking like a galaxy blazing in the center of the desert.

In the foreground, centering the small porch, was Adam Kubiac. Skinny to the point of gaunt, Kubiac was attractive in a puppyish fashion: large dark eyes, high cheekbones, full lips now framed in a pout. He looked different; the usual battered jeans and black tee now a short brown blazer over a blue work shirt and rolled-cuff black jeans over tan suede kicks. Was that skinny piece of fabric a tie? Meridien couldn’t resolve the fashion with Kubiac: He looked like a kid trick-or-treating as a hipster.

Beside Kubiac stood a petite and gorgeous young woman dressed in a purple jumpsuit, her curling walnut-brown hair in a fluffy ponytail and her searching eyes huge behind outsize round glasses with red frames. She looked in her late teens or early twenties.

“Hello, there,” Meridien said, holding out her hand.

The woman just stared, studying Meridien like cataloging a new species.

“Come inside, then,” Meridien said, putting on false bonhomie. “Why don’t you two have a seat? Would you like—?”

“You knew, d-didn’t you?” Kubiac blurted, his voice thick with sarcasm.

“Knew what, Adam?”

“That my scumbucket male parent fuh-fucked me in his will.”

“Pardon me, Adam? What are you talkin—?”

“I just c-came from the luh-lawyer’s office. You were r-ratting me out all along. Telling the asswipe what I really thought about him. That’s why he did it.”

“Did what, Adam?”

“LEFT ME SHIT!”

Meridien felt her mouth drop open. “What?… How …?”

“HOW? Here’s how … fucking papa dear had $20,000,000. I get $1 when I t-t-turn eighteen. ONE DOLLAR, Meridien … That’s FUCKING IT! The rest goes to a bunch of foundations and charities and WORTHLESS SHIT. I put up with the bastard and his insults and his whores … IT’S M-MY MONEY!”

“Here’s the truth, Adam,” Meridien said, keeping her voice calm. “I never spoke to your father about our sessions. Not a word. I told you about Doctor–Pati…”

“Doctor–patient p-privilege?” Kubiac sneered, his eyes pinpoints of fury. “DON’T LIE TO ME. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID!”

Meridien pointed to the door. “You have to leave, Adam. I’ll be happy to talk to you, but not when you’re angry.”

“WE’RE DONE! I want EVERYTHING BACK!” Kubiac shrieked. “Everything I T-TOLD YOU!” He was flying out of control and making little sense; Meridien had seen it a dozen times before.

“Your records are confidential, Adam. Safe.”

“I WANT MY RECORDS, B-BITCH! GO G-G-GET THEM!”

“I don’t keep records here, Adam. Part of my precautions.”

“I know where you store them,” Kubiac grinned. “I can get them if I want.” He jiggled his fingers in the air as if on a keyboard.

Meridien shook her head. “No way, Adam. The only person who can access your records is me.”

Without a sound the woman crossed the room and tapped the back of Meridien’s head. “They’re still in here, Adam,” she said. “Your records.”

Meridien spun and slapped the hand away.

“Get the hell out of my house.”

The woman pirouetted like a ballerina, striding to the door without a backward glance. When Kubiac followed, Meridien let out a breath. Whatever the reason for the bizarre visit, her visitors were leaving.

The pair stepped into the night. When the car screeched away, Meridien checked the gate system and saw that everything seemed normal. She must have forgotten to set the …

Wait. The gate, like the alarm system, was computer operated. Adam Kubiac was a computer genius. Meridien hurriedly chain-locked the door, set the deadbolt and paced for twenty minutes thinking about the discordant information swirling in her head. Something was terribly wrong … or not. True, she had actually seen the will leaving Adam one dollar – the father showing it to her, telling her it was a way to force his son into line. “To make Adam behave like an adult,” Elijah Kubiac had said. But he’d also intimated that the will was false, a dummy, a ploy for him to use only as a last resort.

My god … had that been the actual will? Had Eli Kubiac left his only child one solitary dollar? Or …

Jesus, what a quandary. Where to start?

She poured another glass of wine and returned to her office, pen in one hand, phone in the other, dialing a friend she hadn’t seen in far too long.

“Leslie!” Dr Angela Bowers said. “So good to hear from you.”

“I’m not calling you too late, am I, Ange? I just remembered that it’s three hours later in Miami.”

“You’re fine. My first class tomorrow isn’t until eleven so I’m binge-watching old Seinfelds. What’s up?”

“I just had a disturbing contact with a patient. Or former patient, I guess.”

“One of your brilliant young minds?”

“At the age of sixteen he devised a computer algorithm that sped up server traffic by a few nanoseconds. It seems that’s a lot in the computer world. It made him a $100,000. He was about to start his first year at Caltech.”

“Whoa. Not bad.”

“His college career lasted two months. He quit, citing boredom. It’s how we met: a week later his father all but dragged the kid to my office, the father referring to his son as failure and screw-up during the registration process. At one point he slapped the back of his kid’s head.”

“Jesus! The father’s story?” Bowers asked.

“Wealthy, the self-made kind. Made twenty-something million selling cars.”

“No way.”

“He owned five dealerships in LA, one in San Diego, two in Scottsdale. He retired to Scottsdale when the son was twelve. The father was a mess, a heavy drinker who went through a series of women, kept some in a condo in Sedona, bringing others home for drugs and sex while his son was in the house, that type of thing.”

“Not a candidate for father of the year.”

“I actually think the man loved his son – he was, after all, of his flesh – but was horribly misguided and heavy-handed in his efforts to gain control … that’s where things get murky.”

“You said was. Is the father deceased?”

“Two weeks ago,” Meridien sighed. “Something strange happened tonight, Ange. I’d like to run my thoughts by you. And do you still work with that medical ethicist?”

“John Warbley? Sure, his office is one floor down.”

“Could you get his input on this ASAP? I could really use some guidance here …”

The conversation ended minutes later. Meridien typed up the notes from Kubiac’s visit, summarized her conversation with Bowers and dialed her cloud account, inputting her password, surprised by the response on her screen.

Account in use. Please try later.

What did that mean? Rolling her eyes – she’d been sending her files to the account for four years without a hitch – Meridien quit the program, waited six minutes and tried again. The files went through like always. Worn from her day – the last two hours of it at least – Meridien finished her wine, undressed, and went to bed.

* * *

Teet … teet … teet …

It was 3.43 in the morning. Meridien knew because her clock was on the table beside the bed. Something had awakened her, but what?

Teet … teet …

There, a small sound from downstairs. It sounded like the timer on the stove.

Teet …

Somehow she’d set the timer … but how? The last time she’d been near the stove was yesterday morning.

Teet … teet …

Meridien pulled on her robe and followed the sound to the kitchen. She punched the timer off, confused. How had she set it?

A sound at her back. Meridien spun to see a shaven-headed man standing in the doorway, Hispanic, his neck and face coated with tattoos, his eyes as lifeless as chunks of coal. For some reason he wore clear plastic overalls and blue paper booties.

“What are you doing here?” Meridien whispered, her heart trapped in her throat.

The man produced a gleaming knife held in latex-gloved fingers.

“Earning a living, chica. Nothing personal.”

2

The white and blue City of Phoenix PD cruiser blew south on Highway 10 at 80 mph, the flashing lights and piercing siren pushing traffic aside like a dog scattering chickens from a path, until a semi-truck moved aside to reveal an ancient gray van wobbling down the center lane at 30 mph, its roof piled high with a couch, three chairs, a kitchen table and, improbably – or perhaps exactly right – a kitchen sink, all lashed together by clothesline with various lamps and doodads crammed into the mix. The back doors of the van held a large hand-painted picture of Christ.

“JESUS!” deputy investigator Tasha Novarro screamed, cranking the wheel and sending the cruiser into a tire-screeching sideways skid, the rear of the vehicle aiming dead-center at Jesus’s bearded chin until Novarro goosed the gas and yanked the wheel hard right, the cruiser’s tires catching concrete as it straightened out and passed the van on the driver’s side, Novarro’s adrenalin-charged mind photographing the driver: Hispanic, wizened though likely in his forties, a woman beside him in the van, two infants on her lap.

The pair had looked at Novarro with surprise: Qué estás haciendo aquí? – What are you doing here?

Novarro exhaled a breath and stared into the rear-view. A tough life, she thought. Traveling with the crops. Moving north with the harvest, stoop labor, picking beans or grapes or tomatoes or perching on a flimsy ladder to pluck oranges or grapefruit from the tops of trees. Not much had changed since Steinbeck. She shook her head in sadness, sighed and blasted down the exit to Baseline Road, tacking her way south, Phoenix’s South Mountain Park off her left shoulder, the craggy peaks rippling in the morning heat.

Novarro continued through several blocks of small houses with battered vehicles in the drives and angled uphill, passing a small ranch long past its prime, the split-rail fence tumbled, stalls once holding horses now storing a rusted tractor and a faded motorboat.

The road climbed a hundred feet in elevation. The address was in a dozen-home enclave sharing ten acres of north-facing mountainside abutting the park. Novarro pulled through an open wrought-iron gate set in high rock walls to see the kind of home she figured she’d buy someday, that day being the one right after she won the lottery: double-story hacienda-style with adobe walls, a tile roof, and acres of glass, a valley view from the front, the park in the rear. The front yard was landscaped with agaves and barrel cacti, bee brush and bursage, a line of white thorn acacias flanking the south side of the structure. Three City of Phoenix cruisers plus vans from forensics and county medical examiner jammed the circular drive.

A fourth vehicle caught her eye: an SUV from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Novarro heard herself groan.

She passed the ornate wooden door, open, nodding at the pair of forensics techs checking the knob for latents. The room was large and sun-bright and through a side window she saw cops checking for footprints in the sand and pebbles.

“Back here, Tasha.”

Novarro turned to see Agustín Sanches, a tech from the coroner’s department, enter from a room to the rear. Sanches was a friend, late thirties, moderate height, his cooking hobby displayed in a touch of pudge at his belt. His naturally black hair was tinted with just enough red that it could be noted under sunlight. He was one of the very few openly gay people in the department.

“Bad, Augie?” Novarro asked, meaning level of violence.

“Not butchery, but certainly not pleasant.”

Sanches handed her paper booties and she followed him to a marble-tiled solarium off the living area where a woman’s body sprawled on the floor, looking like she was running, upper leg extended, lower one bent back. She wore a threadbare sweatshirt and blue runner’s shorts. The body lay in a dark pool of dried blood, and Novarro gingerly circled it until she discovered the neck cut from ear to ear. Novarro winced: she could see into the windpipe. Drawers had been pulled from cabinets and emptied on the floor, a jewelry box there as well. Flies buzzed throughout the room.

“Dr Leslie Meridien,” Sanches said quietly. “Forty-four, psychologist. Unmarried. This is her home and office.”

Novarro batted away a fly and continued to circle the body, leaning close while jotting in a notepad. She pulled the victim’s sleeve up two inches, frowned, and made another notation.

“Blood’s dry, Augie. No rigor. Got a TOD estimate?”

“I’m a tech, Tash, not my place to—”

“C’mon … give.”

“She’s been dead two days, give or take.”

That made the death on Friday night or Saturday. “How’d she get discovered?”

“It’s cleaning day and the Mexican housekeeper let herself in like always,” a different voice answered. “Felicia Juarez ain’t having a good Monday.”

Novarro looked up to see Sergeant Merle Castle in the doorway, thirty-five, close-cropped brown hair and dark eyes with lashes so thick they could have been ads for Maybelline. Six feet and then some, with iron-pumper biceps crowding the short sleeves of the beige uniform shirt of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and ankle-high boots polished to a mirror gloss. Beside him was Burton Claypool, an officer with the Phoenix PD, and buddy of Castle.

“Little out of your new jurisdiction, Sergeant Castle?” Novarro said. “If I remember correctly, you left the Phoenix PD two months back.”

A smile. “I was on Baseline Road when the call came through, got here five minutes before PPD. It’s all Maricopa County, right?”

“That means you’ll take the case and the paperwork?”

“Funny as always, Tasha.” Castle clapped Claypool on his back. “Plus I wanted to say howdy to my old buddies.”

“Gracias for the assist, Merle, but the City of Phoenix PD is here now.” Novarro shifted her eyes to Claypool. “Where’s Ms Juarez now, Officer?”

Burton Claypool was twenty-seven, medium height, but with a chest and shoulders that seemed to expand an inch a month. He’d started out with a normal physique eighteen months ago, but like several younger male recruits in the South Mountain Precinct, Claypool consciously or subconsciously emulated Castle: his cockiness, his Western swagger, and his physique, not cartoonish, but impressive.

“Juarez got freaked out by the body, Detective,” Claypool said, standing straighter. “I got the name of one of her niños and he came by and got her.”

Niño meant child, a youngster, generally. “How old was the kid? Novarro asked.

Claypool frowned. “I dunno. Thirty or so.”

Another something Claypool had subconsciously or otherwise taken from Castle: an Anglocentric worldview. Novarro saw Sanches study the Claypool-Castle duo, roll his eyes, and return to cataloguing his findings.

“You couldn’t have someone drive the poor woman home, Officer Claypool?”

“She lives in Gilbert, a half hour there and back. We’re short on manpower, Detective.”

She pulled out her notebook and began writing her initial thoughts.

“Want my take?” said a voice at her shoulder: Castle.

“Thanks for stopping by, Merle, but I’ve got it from here.”

A grin. “So when everyone’s gone, we’re back to first names, Tash?”

A waggle-finger wave. “So long, Sergeant Castle. Have a nice day.”

“Some assholes broke in and got surprised by the owner,” Castle said anyway. “It’s a shithole neighborhood. Put a big expensive house on the hillside and every low-life that drives by starts salivating at what’s inside: TVs, computers, jewelry, cash.”

“It’s a mixed neighborhood, Sergeant. Rich, poor, everything in between.”