by J. A. Kerley
We followed Vince to a tall and slim woman at the edge of the crime scene tape. She was elderly, gray-haired, but unbent by her years, alert and studying every aspect of the controlled tumult around her. Ortega, a big burly guy with a mustache to rival Harry’s, was beside her.
“These men are with the FCLE, Ms Sabitch,” Ortega said. “Could you repeat your observations, please.”
She looked at us and nodded. “No big deal. I like to look outside at my birds, got a dozen houses in the trees. I sit in my living room and drink coffee and read magazines and watch the birds. I’m eighty-seven, it’s what I do best. Some people may think I’m a nosy old biddy but they can take a—”
“What’d you see or hear, ma’am?” Harry said, stepping in.
“Just a car going down the street. Twice. It slowed down as it went by Mr Warbley’s house, like checking for an address.”
“What time was this, Ms Sabitch?”
“Earlier, around seven thirty. The guy inside was Mexican or Cuban or something like that. Not real old, like in his thirties. He had on one of those tight hats they all love so much. I saw his hands on the steering wheel, tattoos all over them.”
Harry’s eyes scanned the distance from the house to the street, fifty or sixty feet. “You have very good eyesight, ma’am.”
“No. I have very good binoculars. I watch birds, remember?”
“Do you know the make or model of the car?”
“Some big shiny thing, red. Not like those boxes, SUVs? This looked low to the ground, like a prowling cat. It even made a purring sound.”
We turned. Vince was standing at the edge of the conversation, listening. We now had two sightings of a tattooed and probably Latin male, one possibly scouting the neighborhood, the other in a bar at the same time as John Warbley. Vince turned and yelled some names, adding to the crew checking for potential surveillance in the area.
It was closing in on 3.30 a.m. and there was no more sleep tonight. Harry and I went to HQ and bagged out on our couches for a bit, anything resembling rest would keep us moving through what promised to be a long day.
I arose at 8.00, ran through the shower downstairs, put on one of the three changes of clothes I keep in my office, the suit option, since I had a 9.15 deposition at the DA’s office, about fifteen minutes of looking serious and professional.
I returned 45 minutes later to find Harry in my office, rolled back in my seat and staring at my video monitor.
“I hid all my porn vids,” I said, stripping off the formal look to change into jeans, blue tee, and a tan linen sport coat. “For ten bucks I’ll tell you where they are.”
“Your man Vince does good work,” he said.
“He’s in the vids?” I said, buckling my belt.
Harry walked to the player and loaded a disk. “If you’re heading to Warbley’s place from the nearest major highway, there’s one good route, the way a GPS would go. Detective Delmara had his men check for CCTVs along that three-mile route, found three. One’s at one of those personal storage locations, but it doesn’t reach the street, another’s at a restaurant, nothing there. Then there was this from a restaurant three blocks down; had a couple robberies so they put in surveillance that overlooks the parking lot and some of the street. This was the nearest thing they found.”
Harry pressed Play and we watched a grainy shot of a Camaro slowing for the corner stoplight and stopping for a three-count until the light changed. The windows were smoked and the driver was hunched down: Nada to work with.
“Sure looks like a cat,” Harry said. “A big red prowling cat.”
“It affirms Sabitch’s story,” I said. “But that’s about all.
“One more snippet,” Harry said. “This is from a c-store about four miles from Warbley’s home.”
“Four miles?”
“Like I said, your man Vince does good work. Casts a wide net. Check it out.”
We watched a scene from an exterior cam at the c-store, probably there to record drive-offs. I saw a man filling the tank of a Camaro Z/28. He was dressed in black with flash at the beltline, definitely a shiny buckle. Topping his round dome was a black skullcap. He was shoulder heavy, a chunk of muscle, and he was moving fast, like he had an appointment somewhere.
“What time?” I asked.
Harry froze the playback. “Fifteen minutes before midnight. So here’s the time frame: Warbley’s in the bar from nine until eleven. If this is the perp, it wasn’t opportunistic, because he’d scoped out Warbley’s presence in the bar. He follows the prof, or is already waiting in the dark near Warbley’s house, made easier because he’s dressed in full black. He kills him with a single blow, yanks wallet and cell, and walks calmly to his vehicle, stashed around the corner.”
“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.
