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

“Putting him in at the gas pump in just that time frame,” I said. It was all conjecture, but it was all we had and there had been times when we’d started with less.

“I can’t make out a plate,” I said, squinting at the monitor. “Mr Black pay in credit?”

“Nope. But there’s one last scene, Carson.”

Harry advanced to a shot from an interior camera; the door swinging open and our suspect entering while pulling his wallet, showing the tats on his hands. He seemed cautious, keeping his head down like knowing the camera was there.

“Awfully camera-shy, you think? All I see is the freaking hat.”

“Wait for it …” Harry said.

A horn blasted in the fueling lot, loud and strident, and for a split second Mister Black’s head lifted and spun to the commotion. Harry pushed pause, framing a full-face shot, moderately blurred, but with enough definition to know the man was hard-eyed and looked Hispanic. I could make out tats on his face and neck.

“Say cheese,” Harry grinned.

“Vince and his people have any idea who this guy is?”

“They’re showing a still around MDPD, especially the gang units. But they’re coming up blank.”

I sat on the couch and pulled on black running shoes, staring at the half-focused face frozen on the monitor. I saw another face in my head: a short cheerful guy in his late fifties who thought it was forever 1975.

“You think Dabney Brewster’s still running the facial-recognition project at Quantico?” I said.

9

Harry lifted my phone and called the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, putting the phone on speaker. When he asked to speak to Dabney Brewster, the voice on the other end sounded uncertain. “I’m not sure if we have a—”

“Try R&D,” Harry said. “Research and Development.”

“Got him,” the voice said, taking Harry’s name. “Here we go. Hang on while I connect you.”

Harry covered the phone and spoke to me. “The Dabster’s still there. Second piece of luck.”

He picked up seconds later, a rich southern voice vibrating the lines. “Harry-freaking-Nautilus … talk about a voice from the past. How’re things in good ol’ Mobile?”

Dabney Brewster was an old-school hipster computer geek from Mobile who sometimes consulted on our computer-crime cases back in the day. His spare-time hobby had been computer-generated art, portraiture, using pieces of photographed actual faces to construct odd and funny montages of invented faces. He’d created a library of facial features, building algorithms to define certain characteristics so he could catalog them. His work caught the attention of the FBI and he was suddenly in Quantico and at the forefront of facial-recognition software development.

“I retired from the MPD, Dab,” Harry said. “I’m in Florida with the FCLE.”

“No shit? I heard Carson’s there.”

“He’s sitting across from me and grinning.”

“Hey Dabs,” I yelled.

“Muthaaafuck …The Harry and Carson Show is back on stage.”

“Why we’re calling, Dabs … we got a potential bad guy on CCTV vid, and would really like to know if he’s in FBI files. Local mug shots are coming up blank. You make any headway since Tampa?”

I was referring to an early experiment in which facial-recognition equipment was installed in Tampa’s Ybor City district, a miserable failure scrapped two years later and still the butt of jokes. Another experiment at Boston’s Logan Airport had also ended poorly. But both were before Dabney got called to Quantico.

“Refining algorithms takes a long time. There are problems, but we’ve come a far piece lately.”

“How far?”

“Given a fairly clear face – individualized features and not many deep shadows – we can feed it into a photo database of known criminals and get solid hits. We’re above a 90 percent recognition factor.”

“Got any time to slip us into the mix?”

“Maybe …” he said, a grin in his voice. “If you send me some love.”

It was Dabney’s quirk that before taking any outside job, he wanted a “love token,” a meaningless gift that he found amusing. Our past tokens had included an Elvis Presley Pez dispenser, a harmonica that had once passed through a room where John Lee Hooker was dining, and a bag of novelty clam shells that, when dropped into water, opened to disburse little paper flowers.

“Get us in fast, Dabs,” I yelled. “And we’ll love you like Gertrude loved Alice B.”

“I dunno what that means, but I’m on it.”

We e-mailed Dabney the video and hit the street, hoping to find anyone who could tell us more about the killings of either Angela Bowers or John Warbley, now looking more and more like highly calculated – and connected – murders.

* * *

Adam Kubiac was an early riser. He liked the quiet of sitting alone on the balcony of Zoe Isbergen’s apartment as Zoe slept and the sun rose in the east. He often used the time to game against players on the other side of the planet. But this morning he wasn’t thinking about gaming, he was pacing the small balcony, four steps down, four steps back. Then repeat and repeat and repeat. Mumbling to himself.

He hadn’t been able to sleep, too angry at his father and his father’s stinking lawyer. Bastards! They had both conspired to keep his money from him. His money. His old man may have made it selling cars, but he owed Adam for putting up with years of bullshit. The drinking and drugging when he thought Adam wouldn’t notice. Or the times he just didn’t care. The women Adam would find in their home, his home. The times the local cops would bring his father home, half drunk, and he’d start pretending to himself and Adam that he was a real father.

“Y’know what, Adam, we doan see enough of each other, do we, son? What say we head up to Aspen this weekend? You ever skied? I’ll teach you to ski. You’ll love it. An’ wait till you get a load of the ski bunnies in the lodge, make your eyes pop out …”

Soon after, the liquor-reeking bastard would begin snoring, and then awaken the next morning with no memory of the conversation. He’d start right back in on digging at Adam for a host of supposed infractions: laziness, immaturity, disobedience, insolence, swearing, or any of a dozen other bullshit things. The old man had been a bitch.

But now he was gone, and Adam should have gotten over twenty million bucks on his upcoming birthday.

Instead, he would receive one dollar. One fucking dollar.

He screamed and kicked one of the cheap lawn chairs on the balcony, causing it to fold and fall to the floor. Seconds later the glass door slid open and Zoe’s head poked out. He knew she didn’t come all the way out because she slept naked.

“Jesus, Adam, what’s going on?”

“I’m thinking. That’s all.”

Her eyes found the tumbled chair. “You’re thinking about Cottrell, right? And your father?”

“Damn right, the scumbags, both of them. Hashtag: SCREWADAM!”

“Relax, Adam. Calm down.”

“I don’t want to calm down. I want my $20,000,000.”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll get dressed and we’ll go to that little coffee shop down the street. Get a couple of muffins. Watch the robots going to work. You like that, right?”

He thought a moment. “I guess. Hurry up.”

She pulled her head back inside and disappeared. Adam set the chair upright, hearing Zoe bustling around inside. He and Zoe had only been together about two weeks but it seemed a lot longer; they got along so good.

It had been that way from the beginning, when she’d noticed him at his favorite tacqueria on Indian School Road. He’d been sitting in a booth in the rear, playing Clash of Clans against some chick in Finland. She’d been pretty good but Adam had won easily. He’d returned to his beef torta and Cola when Zoe had just walked up and slid into the booth opposite him.

She’d said, “Whatcha doing?” like she’d known him for years.

“Do I know you?” he’d said.

“No,” she had said. “But that’s not set in stone, right?” Her shy smile seemed as wide as her face.

“S-set in stone?” Don’t fucking stutter! Whatever you do, don’t stutter. Relax, Adam, he’d heard Dr Meridien say in his head. Think first, then speak.

The woman clarified: “Not set in stone means, ‘Doesn’t have to stay that way’.” She was still smiling, but like she was happy, not making fun of him.

“Oh, sure. No, I guess not.”

“I was at that table over there.” Nodding her head toward the corner. “You looked like you were having fun, laughing while you played with your phone.”

“I was gaming against someone in Finland. She was good, but I won. I almost always win.”

“I don’t know anything about gaming. I’ve always wanted to learn, but there’s no one I know that can teach me.”

Adam’s heart had leapt to his throat, and he heard himself say: “I can teach you. I’d be happy to teach you.”

“Would you? You’re not just saying that? That would be too cool.”

He had affected nonchalance, almost yawning. “Yeah. It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it. It just takes some time to learn. We can start now, if you want.”

She had slid out of the booth and slid back in on his side. Close enough that they were touching!

“OK, then,” she had said tapping the phone in his hand. “Show me how this game stuff works.”

The sliding door reopened. Zoe stepped out wearing black tights, ankle-high black boots with two-inch heels, and a crimson top that left her right shoulder bare.

“Let’s go get coffee,” she said.

“Let’s take my car,” Adam said.

“But it’s just four blocks. We always walk.”

“Let’s go to that coffee shop over by Scottsdale, Higher Grounds?”

“Why there?”

“We’ll be in the area.”

Looking quizzical but saying nothing, Zoe followed Adam to his white 2011 Subaru Outback, a dent in the front right wheel panel, another in the hatchback. It needed a wash.

They got in and Adam started driving. He drove a few blocks to Van Buren and headed west to Highway 17, where he went north several miles, then turned east on the Pima Highway.

“Where are we going, Adam,” Zoe asked, after fifteen minutes of watching Phoenix go past.

“It doesn’t concern you, Zoe.”

She went back to looking out the window. Adam drove for another ten minutes, then took an off-ramp into a residential neighborhood of tidy middle-class homes. He zigged and zagged a few times, finally pulling under a stone arch. Beside the arch a sign proclaimed, “Eastwood Memorial Gardens.”

“Adam …?”

“Shhh.”

He drove what seemed a memorized route, left then right and another right, past a fountain spraying water twenty feet into the air. He pulled off to the side of the slender asphalt road, parked. He looked all directions. They seemed the only living people in the cemetery.

“We’re all alone,” Adam said. “Good.” He got out and Zoe started to follow.

“No, Zo. You have to stay here. This is for me and me alone.”

She nodded, somehow knowing, and pulled the door shut.

The gravestones were all set at ground level, simple. Elijah Kubiac, perhaps planning on living to be one hundred, had died without making funeral and burial plans. Adam had left that up to some whispery asshole at a funeral home, after picking out the cheapest coffin possible. He’d first thought about cremation, but the idea of the old bastard slowly rotting away underground sounded better. He’d picked Eastwood as the cemetery simply because he’d driven by several times and remembered the name.

He continued past two large palo verde trees and turned down a row of black granite headstones, some with small bouquets of flowers stuck into the ground beside them. He stopped. Looked down at a headstone. Stared for a long minute.

Then pulled out his penis and began urinating.

The dark headstone below, its engraving quickly filling with urine, proclaimed simply, Elijah T Kubiac, 1959–2017.

Adam zipped up and walked away, whistling.

* * *

Tasha Novarro had awakened at eight in the morning; Mountain Time, creeping softly into the living room to find her brother snoring gently, the covers kicked off. As predicted, he’d missed the bucket.

After cleaning the floor and spraying the room with half a can of air freshener, Novarro went to work, returning to Dr Meridien’s house and office and spending fifteen minutes searching closets and drawers until finding what she’d hoped for: Two albums of printed photos. Meridien was a chronicler: the back of each picture noted with date and place and others in the setting.

“Sedona, August 24 2007, me and Taylor Combs and Lanie Buchwald. Hot day, 89. Just finished Pink Jeep tour. Now lunch at Taco Rancho!”

They were standard travel shots. But eight of forty-seven photos of Meridien showed her wearing the same brooch, a stylized owl’s head of silver half-orbs of turquoise forming the eyes and obviously a favored piece. Novarro also noted other pieces of jewelry and accessories in the photos. She marked them with corners of sticky notes and took the shots to tech services.

Twenty minutes later a tech handed Novarro close-ups of three different earring styles, two necklaces, a silver-and-turquoise bracelet, and two angles of the owl adornment.

“Nice brooch,” the tech said. “Looks expensive.”

Novarro started driving from pawnshop to pawnshop across the Phoenix basin, hoping killer or killers – perhaps aching for dope – had tried to sell the jewelry for fast cash: a long shot. Novarro wished she had a partner to handle half the work, but dual detective teams had been cut back with the economic downturn, now only assembled when entering a dangerous situation. Even that was discouraged, the suggestion being to take along a uniform when danger loomed.

When she was on the seventh pawnshop, her phone rang. The screen said CASTLE. She sighed and answered while bending low to inspect a jewelry case. In every shop it was the same, row after row of pawned wedding rings, probably not a good social indicator. “I’m kinda busy at the moment, Merle,” she said, knowing to hold the phone two inches from her ear, Castle incapable of talking softly.

“Doing what?” Castle bayed.

“The pawnshop rounds. Meridien had a favorite piece of jewelry, a silver owl. Plus I’ve got shots of other pieces.”

“Any luck?”

“Think, Merle. If I had luck I’d no longer be going from pawnshop to pawnshop.”

“The shops all smell the exact same, right, Tash? Like your grammaw’s attic. And in the Hispanic shops no one speaks English the moment you step inside.”

Castle was right. A clerk who minutes before would have been arguing the price in perfect, unaccented English was suddenly all wide-eyed puzzlement and “No inglés.”

“What do you want, Merle?”

“Let’s go eat somewhere tonight. It’s been months.”

Novarro sighed. “We’re done, Merle. If we’d been jigsaw puzzles no edges would match.”

“I thought we fit together real good,” Castle chuckled. “Especially at night.”

“Come on, Merle. Grow up.”

Silence. Castle veered a different direction. “You’re right, Tash, it was my fault. I was, uh …” he searched for a word.

“You were yourself, Merle. It’s OK. You seem happy with it.”

“C’mon, Tash. I think we can —”

Novarro clicked the phone off and pondered faxing Castle a single sheet of paper with the word NO! running from edge to edge.

10

After sending the material to Dabney, Harry and I headed to the U. Nothing of interest had been found at Warbley’s home, but we hadn’t been to his office since his death.

Warbley’s office knew he had died and expressed it by emitting an aura of stillness and a scent as dank as if it had been weeks without habitation. Whatever life-force vibes Warbley’s presence added had gone elsewhere, and the space was now just space. I took the filing cabinets, not knowing what I was looking for, if anything. Harry sat and found Warbley’s desk locked but seven seconds with two bent paper clips popped the simple mechanism. He scraped around for a few minutes, putting the standard trappings atop the desk and looking morosely through nothing of merit.

“I don’t think we’re going to find anything in the papers and trinkets,” he said, finally swiping it all back into the drawer with his forearm. “I think we’re going to find it in you.”

“Me?”

“Why was your name in Bowers’s desk? Why did she follow it with question marks?”

“I don’t know. We’d never met. Maybe she had a stalker, saw my name in the news. Wondered if she should call.”

“I’d think if Doc Bowers had a stalker she’d call, not dither about it or keep files on individual cops.”

“Yeah.” Harry was right as always.

“You’re sure you two never crossed paths? Met at a psychology function or whatever.”

I shook my head. “I really haven’t done a lot of that since coming to Florida. Just a few. And they weren’t about psych stuff, per se, mainly groups of law-enforcement types there to hear about how the dark people think … or as much as I can tell them.”

“Nothing at the U?” Harry said. “Where she might have wandered in and sat in back?”

I searched my memory. “Come to think of it, one of the venues was … let’s get back to the office, pronto.”

Harry looking quizzical but not saying a word, we sped back to the FCLE’s offices. We elevatored up and I almost ran to my office. I sat in my chair, spun it to my file cabinet and started riffling through folders.

“What?” Harry said.

“I’m looking for my LAME file. It’s in here somewhere.”

The file had been named years ago, in Mobile, when Harry discovered I was keeping a folder noting my various appearances. He’d laughingly dubbed it my LAME file, for Look At Me Everyone. I pulled material from the folder and spread it out on my desk, mostly programs for various law enforcement seminars and symposia.

Harry leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What are you looking for?”

I pressed my fingers against my eyelids. “I see it in my head … a darkened hall, me at the podium. A hundred or so people in the audience. I’m showing a video of Randall Jay Caudill howling about his rights from inside his cell. The vid ends and a hand goes up in the audience and a woman asks a question.”

I squeezed my eyes tighter and replayed the memory. A woman’s voice, pleasant, engaged, says something like, “Did I not hear that the case against Caudill was made with information garnered inadvertently while he was under anesthesia?”

I nod. “Caudill was at his dentist’s office undergoing root canal. While sedated, he said things that led the dentist to connect Caudill’s ramblings to a case widely publicized in the Tampa-St Petersburg area. The dentist called the authorities.”

The woman: “I assume Mr Caudill’s lawyer invoked doctor–patient privilege, did he not?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “About every thirty-three seconds.”

Laughter from the mostly cop audience.

“It didn’t hold sway?” she asks.

I say something like, “A dentist has a duty to respect a patient’s right to confidentiality and self-determination, especially in regards to medical records. But in this case the court ruled that the dentist was not bound to remain silent about what seemed solid indicators of a patient’s involvement in four murders.”

“Thank you, Detective Ryder.”

“My pleasure, ma’am. Do you happen to be a dentist with someone to turn in?”

Laughter.

“I’m a psychologist,” she says. “If you ever find my hand in your mouth, Detective, I’m probably searching for your ID.”

Howls. Applause. I’m laughing louder than anyone.

The memory left and Harry watched me scrabble through programs and brochures with titles like Southwestern Law Enforcement Convention; the Police Chiefs Association of Florida; the National Sheriff’s Convention; the Criminal Justice Review Board … I’d even given a couple of speeches at ACLU gatherings, and since the audience expected a goose-stepping J. Edgar Hoover imitation, I was better regarded after I finished than before I started.

I came to a program guide for the Southwestern Convocation of Judicial Issues, billed as “Top Minds in Criminal Justice Discussing Pressing Issues in Law Enforcement.” I unfolded the page and saw my photo, small enough to fit on my thumbnail. My topic had been, “Determining Insanity: Who Holds the Gavel?”

I was reading from the brochure and punching numbers into my phone.

“Who you calling, Cars?” Harry asked.

“The University of Florida, Criminal Justice Department.”

I punched the phone on speaker so Harry could hear, and it was answered in two rings.

“Alexandro Salazar.”

“Mr Salazar, I’m Detective Carson Ryder with the—”

“FCLE … of course. You spoke at the event the department sponsored last spring. Great talk, scary in places. I’d love to have you back for next year’s meeting. All of us would.”

“I’ll weld the date to my calendar today if you can do me a favor, Mr Salazar. Do you still have the list of attendees?”

“Of course. We use it for our mailings.”

“Could you see if there’s a Dr Angela Bowers on the list, a psychologist.”

“Lemme pull the file. I remember there were several psychologists in attendance.” I heard the ticking of a keyboard. “OK, here’s the file … scrolling. Yep, there it is, Dr Angela Bowers. Do you need her address?”

“Not necessary,” I said, shooting Harry a glance. “I believe I have it.”

It was past three and Novarro was on her twenty-third pawnshop, a grubby joint on the edge of Mesa that – true to Castle’s description – smelled like an elderly person’s attic. She’d shown the proprietor the jewelry photos and received a sad head-shake in return.

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