by J. A. Kerley
“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.
Her phone rang, Castle again. “Merle, give me a break, would—”
“Hi Tash. Better start thinking what you want for supper tonight.”
“Supper? You can’t keep beating this horse, Merle.”
“At Donovan’s. My treat. I made reservations for eight.”
“Eight people?”
“Eight o’clock. For two. For me and you. Hey … I’m a poet.”
Novarro frowned. Donovan’s was arguably the best steakhouse in a metro area with a dozen phenomenal steakhouses. Had Castle been drinking?
“We’re not going to dinner tonight, Merle. Or any night, for that matter.”
“Of course, we are, Tash. It’ll be like the good old days.”
“Good is a relative term. Besides, what makes you think—”
“I have something in my hands you’ve been looking for.”
Novarro frowned. She’d left a pair of panties at his place. But that had been months ago. Had he just now found them? Given the way Castle cleaned—
“I’d forgotten how much I hate your childish games, Merle.”
A pause. “It’s something relative to the Meridien case, Tash. Something big … Muy im-por-tan-te.”
Meridien? Novarro sat up straighter. “What did you find, Merle?”
“I’ll pass it over after dinner. Trust me, you’ll be amazed.”
Novarro felt her heart speed up. Castle has something … a lead? It would have to be good, more than a way to lure her to dinner. Even the sensitivity-challenged Merle Castle would know a cheap trick would be a major mistake. Donovan’s was a wonderful restaurant: red leather, dark wood, crackling hearth. Monumental cocktails. Brick-sized slabs of succulent aged beef …
“Where you at, Merle?”
“Home changing into my Donovan’s clothes. Got to wear the elastic belt to make room for all that meat.”
“OK, then,” she said. “We’ll meet at eight for dinner and your revelation.”
“Great, Tash. You won’t be disap—”
“But at La Azteca, instead.”
It took several seconds for her words to register. “That cheap-ass taco joint on Van Buren? Christ, Tasha, I’m offering you a free meal at—”
“One, La Azteca is halfway between my place and yours. Two, it’s cheap, like you said. Dinner for two at Donovan’s is gonna set you back about a hundred and a half. Dinner for two at La Azteca will be about twenty-five bucks. And since I’m paying for my half, you’ll do even better.”
“C’mon, Tash.” He sounded like a little kid pleading for a second cookie.
“It’s the only way it’s gonna happen, Merle. I’m starving, so let’s make it 6.30. See you there.”
Harry and I ended the day staring out my window as twilight settled over the strident skyline of Miami, the sky looking like the fading sun had been filtered through roses. Lights were appearing in the tall buildings and high-rises, random squares of illumination like spectral crossword puzzles blooming in the near-night.
“It has to be the convocation,” I said, staring between my desk-resting feet to see Harry on the couch. “Something happened to make Bowers remember me.”
“More than remember, Cars. Whatever you said, you must have made a big-ass impression, since Bowers started gathering information on you.”
“But why?”
“I’d bet a week’s pay she thought of you as a potential resource. Someone to turn to when a situation jumped from theoretical to real … got hairy and scary. Warbley could provide the academic reasoning. Maybe she wanted the cop reasoning.”
“But what could be the situation? What would it deal with?”
“What you handle, Cars: The broken people. I think the lady had a conflict that got her killed. What was it?”
Thus we ended the day at the crossroads of Death and Question, a place where Harry and I had spent enough time that we could probably get mail delivery there.
11
Merle Castle was in the lot and sitting on the hood of his huge black pickup when Novarro rolled in. He jumped down and followed her into the restaurant like it was a punishment. They passed the grill on the way to the order counter, a squat Hispanic cook flipping fajitas and chicken breasts beside a mountain of blackening jalapeños.
Castle sighed. “Melt-your-tongue peppers when we could be having melt-on-your-tongue filets.”
“Quit pissing and moaning, Merle. Order up.”
They placed orders with a smiling clerk named Juanita and took drinks to a table in the farthest of two brightly lit dining areas. The walls were yellow, with cartoon murals of diners at tables. Criss-crossing rows of plastic pennants were strung from the ceiling, touting Corona and Tecate beers. The tablecloths were woven Mexican rugs protected by clear plastic sheets.
The pair took a front table by a window looking onto Van Buren Avenue. Traffic was steady but light, the evening rush well past. Novarro took a sip from a blood-purple sangria loaded with berries and slices of orange and lime and shot a glance at the taped-shut box beside Castle’s garish, hand-tooled Tony Lamas.
“Hunh-uh,” he grinned, sucking from a Budweiser. “That’s for dessert.”
When their number was called they picked up their food: a beef torta for Castle; Camarones a la Diablo for Novarro. Castle went directly back to the table; Novarro to the condiments bar to load up on roasted jalapeños, spicy salsa roja, and pico de gallo. When she set her tray on the table, Castle grinned at the mound of zingy peppers.
“That’s my girl … same cast-iron stomach.”
Novarro tapped the purse at her waist. “Don’t forget that I’m carrying a gun, Merle.”
Puzzlement. “What?”
“If you ever call me ‘my girl’ again, I’ll shoot you in the nuts.”
He grinned and held up his hands. “Sorry, Tash, figure of speech.”
Talk was sparse. Novarro squeezing the spicy shrimp from their shells with her fingertips as her lips sucked out the meat, loading a fork with rice as a chaser, taking a bite of flour tortilla, then repeating; Castle bit doleful hunks from his torta and chased them with beer.
They finished, Novarro dabbing away sweat beneath her eyes: the effect of a dozen jalapeños and the salsa roja. She nudged the box beneath Castle with her toe. “I’m ready for dessert, Merle.”
“Bus the table and we’ll begin.”
Novarro frowned, but put the plates and sauce tubs and mounds of used napkins on the trays and took everything to the trash. When she returned the box was atop the table. Castle produced a black commando knife from his boot and sliced effortlessly through tape holding the top shut.
“Have a seat, Tash. And get ready.”
She was pulling her chair to the table when Castle began emptying the box of items in MCSD evidence bags and setting them before her. One by one Novarro studied a shattered Toshiba laptop. A small and simple desk calendar. A pair of silver candlesticks. A silver gravy tureen. Next came jewelry: Over three dozen bags holding rings and earrings and bracelets and a pair of watches.
The clincher was in the last bag: Meridien’s turquoise-and-silver owl brooch. “This is incredible, Merle,” Novarro whispered, turning the brooch over in her hands. “Did you bust a fence?”
Castle sucked from his second Bud. “That would have been
great, right? Squeeze the guy until he ratted out where he got it. There’s luck here, Tash, but not quite that much. The stash was found in Queen Creek, not far from the West Sundance and Wild Horse Roads intersection. There’s a fissured outcropping about a quarter mile away. This stuff was in a twenty-quart garbage bag and buried under about six inches of sand and rock.”
“How’d it get unburied?”
Castle reached to the sack for a final evidence-bagged withdrawal: a few ragged strips of blue cloth crusted with rusty brown. He set it on the table, a grisly addition. “A shredded bandana,” he said. “And, yep, that’s blood. Let’s see how long it takes you to figure it out, Tash.” He looked at his watch.
A movie began playing in Novarro’s head: a knife slashes through three-quarters of Dr Leslie Meridien’s throat, blood spraying out, down, everywhere. She falls. Her killer studies the bloody knife – the path saying a five-inch blade at least, perhaps two inches at widest point – then pulls a blue bandana from pocket or head and wipes it clean. The blood-soaked bandana goes into the bag with the booty …
Later: the stolen goods in a vehicle passing through Queen Creek when someone or someones jogs several hundred feet to an outcropping, digs a fast hole in the middle of nowhere and buries the bag.
Then … the sun rises and the wet blood heats up and begins to smell. The odor sifts upward through the sandy soil until it hits the air.
“An animal dug it up,” Novarro said.
Castle lifted the watch to his eyes. “Two minutes and seven seconds. Yep. Coyote tracks all around the opening pit; the bandana dug out and gnawed on the spot.”
“Who found the trove?”
“Two kids: brothers, eleven and thirteen who live a half mile away. A big cleft in the outcropping was their clubhouse, and there’s your luck. If the banditos had scoped out the site in daylight they would have seen empty Coke cans and sandwich bags and, though the kids hid them behind a big rock, a couple of nudie magazines. The bad guys would have scurried elsewhere and you’d be searching pawn shops until doomsday.”
