The Death File

by J. A. Kerley

  Novarro scanned the tabletop of stolen items. “Three thousand bucks’ worth of goods, at least,” she said. “And it was buried in the freaking desert. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Castle cracked his knuckles and nodded. “It should have gone straight to a fence. You were right, Tash. The robbery was fake, a diversion. Killing the lady was meant to look like a break-in gone bad.”

  Novarro nodded slowly. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Then only barely.”

  “Not my problem.” Castle pulled some papers from the bottom of the box. “Here you go.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Chain-of-custody paperwork. MCSD is transferring the evidence to Phoenix PD. You’ve got the case to clear … we sure as hell don’t need the evidence. You can put them in PPD bags when you’re done looking.”

  Novarro signed her name in several places, assuring the transfer had gone by the book. She gave Castle her first real smile of the evening.

  “Thanks, Merle.”

  Castle stood, pressed his Stetson on, hitched up his pants. “You nailed it from the git-go. Score a big one for you, Three-Points.”

  Novarro’s eyes flashed. “Stop calling me that.”

  Castle ignored her words, tipped his hat and turned for the door. “Nice having supper with you again, Tash. But next time …” He paused, a sudden and pained look on his face.

  “Next time what, Merle?”

  “Let’s for Chrissakes please go to Donovan’s.” He winced, bent with his knees outward and released a lengthy and pitch-rising trill of flatulation. “One more time here would about near kill me.”

  An hour later, Novarro sat on her couch, legs tucked beneath her, the only light a low cone of amber from the lamp on the end table, its shade still askew from Ben’s kicking it to the floor. That he was out there in the night and likely doing things destructive to his future (did he still have one?) only occasionally intruded on her thoughts, pressed back by the task at hand: trying to discern if there was anything helpful on the paper desktop calendar buried with the remainder of Meridien’s property.

  Except for one thing, that was: Meridien’s desktop computer, still missing and not buried with the other items. Assumption: Whoever took it either wanted to analyze its innards, or make sure it was shattered into a thousand unusable pieces, its secrets dead forever.

  Novarro flipped through the calendar again, her hands sweating within the latex gloves. The calendar seemed a scheduling notepad for Meridien, a place to jot down appointments before transferring them to the cloud, and Novarro pictured the psychologist with phone tucked to her cheek – and owl brooch on her blouse – as she penciled the time across the calendar page. Unfortunately, Meridien’s protectiveness of her patients’ anonymity extended to her notations, all simply single or double initials followed by a time: C, 9.30 a.m.; DA, 11.45 p.m.; TM, 1.30 p.m.; BN, 3.15 p.m… She turned to a previous month, saw more of the same, and continued flipping to the first month, finding the pattern held: AS, 9.15 a.m.; WP, 11.30 p.m., DA, 1.30 p.m.; BN, 4.15 p.m. There were a few sessions marked only with ‘Group,’ followed by initials: In June she saw Group, 7.15, AS, BN, WP; the same in July, only Group AS, WP, CL, DD. And pretty much the same for all other months, meaning nothing to be gleaned from the calendar.

  Novarro sighed and started to return the dozen spiral-bound sheets to the evidence bag when she saw a scribble on the blank rear of the calendar: a name inked in ballpoint and followed by a question mark. Dr Meridien, for all her other attributes, had lousy penmanship. She squinted at what looked like

  Carson Rider?

  Novarro stared, feeling a scant awakening of her heart, like an injection of double mocha latte. Was it the name of a patient? Someone suggested as a date? Meridien’s car mechanic? Novarro reopened the calendar and felt her mocha flush fade as she paged through the months. Not a single CR noted in the cryptic sketchings. It was like she perhaps got the name while on the phone – supporting a recommendation – and hastily flipped the calendar over to write it down.

  She put the calendar back in the bag, zipped it shut, removed the damnable rubber gloves, walked to the kitchen sink to wash her damp hands beneath the tepid Phoenix tap water. She dried her hands and opened a cabinet to get a drinking glass. In the rear of the cabinet, behind mugs and glassware, was a 750 ml bottle of Cazadores Blanco tequila left over from her housewarming party. Ben must not have noticed it, she thought. Or it’d be long gone.

  She fished the bottle through clinking glassware to find two-thirds of the premium brand sloshing in the glass. She looked at the clock: 9.42. There’d been a pair of sangrias at supper with Castle – delicious, just enough kick to relax her a bit – but she hadn’t had a pop while inspecting Meridien’s unearthed booty. Novarro turned and shot a glance at the box of evidence on the low table in the living room couch … it could wait until the morning.

  Novarro slipped on flip-flops and went to her backyard. To the south a jetliner descended toward Sky Harbor, its engine wailing as it fell from the stars. Dogs barked in the distance. Novarro crossed to her precious lime tree and in the dim city light gathered eight plump specimens and returned to squeeze a half-cup of pungent juice. She poured it into a pitcher, added a hearty dollop of tequila, splashed in a few ounces of orange juice from the fridge and finished by stirring in a couple tablespoons of demerara sugar. She took a sip, added a shade more sugar, and poured a glass over ice.

  Novarro returned to the living room, put on Music from a Painted Cave by Robert Mirabel and Rare Tribal Mob and relaxed on the couch, toe tapping to the music as she sipped at her tequila concoction. But after a few minutes her eyes fell on the box of evidence like it was a ringing phone and she sat forward, pulling on latex gloves.

  12

  Though it was late, I drove home to Matecumbe, needing the hour-plus ride to clear my head. And I wanted to see Mr Mix-up, the huge canine constructed of mismatched parts that I’d saved from the needle years ago. My secluded tract of land bordered a wildlife sanctuary which Mix-up wandered cheerfully when I wasn’t at home, coming inside through a doggie door, his meals dispatched twice a day via a contraption that cost almost three hundred dollars.

  He was also a welcome visitor at the home of my nearest neighbor, Dubois Burnside, a former funeral home operator in Atlanta; so welcome, in fact, that Dubois had commissioned a special bed for Mix-up’s resting pleasure, about eight hundred dollars’ worth of plush comfort. I should be so lucky.

  As if knowing I was coming, Mix-up was just inside the gate by the road, waiting for me to enter. I opened the door and he bounded inside, dark-mudded feet telling me he’d been playing in the mangroves. Mix-up licking my hand on the shift knob, we drove several hundred feet to park beneath my stilt-standing house.

  Inside I mixed a bourbon and soda and retreated to the deck to sit in an Adirondack chair and stare over the small moonlight-laden cove that opened into the wide and shallow waters surrounding the Keys. Somewhere a big fish jumped, splashed. A couple miles out I saw the lights of a ship moving east toward the Atlantic. Mix-up lay beside me and my fingers scratched his ears in time to the dappling of waves upon the strand.

  I used the quiet time to consider the Bowers case. It was becoming clear that a colleague had called her with a question or conflict regarding ethics. If Warbley had been using Bowers’s friend’s query as his example – which I was beginning to suspect more and more – it seemed her friend had been suspicious of something or someone, perhaps suspecting some form of deception. She had taken the problem to John Warbley. Both were possessors of a shared piece of information, and both were now dead.

  My major conjecture was that a patient had revealed homicidal tendencies or even a tacit admission to murder. Was the deception a masking of the fact while a patient? The premises, especially the first, would be a tightrope walk for a shrink, the doctor–patient privileged-information contract suspended with suspicion a major crime had been committed.

  Had Bowers been con
templating a trip or call to authorities? It explained my name being uppermost in the doc’s desk. Her collection of material preparation for the day she needed the opinion of someone in law enforcement. Perhaps someone experienced with broken minds.

  I momentarily cursed the fact that the phone company legal office was only reachable during business hours and we had to wait until tomorrow to get Bowers’s phone records, but it was short-lived as the blast of bourbon damped my adrenalin and weighted my eyelids and my dog and I tottered off to bed.

  I climbed from the sheets about the time the sun was climbing from the water, though far less colorfully, a process comprising groaning, stretching, and lamenting the lack of Vivian Morningstar’s lovely visage on the pillow beside mine. It seemed like a month since I’d seen her. Ten minutes later I was freestyling slowly across the cove, pulling laps to loosen up. Five minutes after that I angled out into open water for twenty minutes of foaming-wake workout.

  A shower followed, with a breakfast of 30-weight coffee and a grittito, my own concoction of leftover cheese grits rolled in a flour tortilla and – when Vivian wasn’t around – drenched in sausage gravy.

  I was at HQ a bit past nine, having to pass Roy’s office. “You got that vacation lined up yet, Carson?” he bayed, a phone in each hand and his hair looking like it was re-enacting the Haymarket Riots.

  “I’m close, Roy,” I said, picking up speed. “I’ve got three getaway venues in mind.”

  Hither, Yon, and somewhere in-between.

  Harry had texted that he was out talking to the clerk at the c-store where our man in the red muscle car had filled his tank, just to see if the guy could add to our info store. Harry showed up at 9.45, sighed and set his briefcase on the floor, shaking his head: nothing new.

  “The subpoena for Bowers’s phone records should be ready soon,” I said. “We can head over there now and wait for—”

  My phone rang. Bobby Erikson, the ex-cop who ran the phones, spoke over my intercom. “There’s a Dabney Brewster on line three, Carson.”

  “Got it, Bobby. Thanks.”

  I shot Harry a glance, feeling my heart ramp up. Thus far there’d been nothing from the mug books at MDPD, which seemed odd … the guy in the c-store had gangsta written all over him, almost literally.

  I spoke toward the phone’s receiver. “We’re both right here, brother Brewster.”

  “Got me some love?” he trilled, a good sign. I’d passed one of those weird vintage-junkiness shops in Tampa and saw exactly what we needed in the window.

  “A stuffed alligator circa 1970,” I said. “Eighteen inches long and ridden by a troll doll dressed in a hula skirt. Unfortunately, there’s a bit of mold on the belly …”

  “Mold adds to the charm, Carson,” Dabney trilled. “Glorious kitsch! Beautiful.”

  “I’ll mail it today, Dabs. Got us some love in return?”

  “Maybe, baby. I ran your video through the most advanced program we have, still experimental, but right 93 percent of the time. Given the blurring of the video, I’d guess this is maybe 80 percent. I’ve got a name and some info, but I don’t have your new e-mail addy.”

  I gave it to him and heard the clicking of keys. “On its way. Should be there in a just a—”

  Bing. I heard my e-mail alert. Harry moved to my back as I opened the file to see a mug shot of a guy who looked Hispanic, tatted on a neck that looked thick as a phone pole. His glittering eyes nonetheless looked as dead as the eyes of a cobra. I noted the 6’3” marking a bit shy of the crown of his head.

  “The program IDs him as Ramon Escheverría,” Dabney said. “But his friends call him El Gila.”

  “The healer?” Harry asked.

  “Hee-la, like in Gila monster. Seems he got into a fight in prison – first time in, just nineteen years old – Escheverría was getting the worst of it until he clamped his teeth down on his assailant’s neck and hit the carotid. Blood’s squirting everywhere, in his eyes, down his throat, but …”

  “Escheverría hung on,” I said, recalling the myth about the Gila monster: When it bit, it didn’t release its jaws until the sun went down.

  “If you guys are going after this bastard, go together. And take a flame-thrower.”

  “What’s his story,” Harry said.

  “The info is sparse. Problem is that no snitch will inform on him because he scares them shitless. Mention his name and CIs go mute. What there is suggests Escheverría’s primary occupation seems to be a kind of high-level enforcer. No gang affiliation; he’ll work for whoever’s got money. It’s assumed he also does contract murder, but never proven. Probably because he keeps a low profile. It’s get in, do the job, get out, and leave no evidence behind. He’s supposed to be wicked smart. And totally cold.”

  “Wicked smart? He’s been busted.”

  “Squeezes out on plea bargain or a witness shows up with an impaired memory. Probably owns a sleazy lawyer or two.”

  “How you know all this stuff, Dabs?”

  “He’s in the database here. The Bureau was looking into a killing of one of their informants a couple years back. It was in LA. They were looking at several potential hit men, Ramon among them. This is what they amassed, mainly from sources familiar with ol’ El Gila. But then …”

  I was familiar with the story. “Right. Half the Bureau’s been switched to Homeland Security.”

  Harry had been checking the computer. “Miami-Dade PD has no files on Escheverría, Dabney.”

  A pause. “Probably because Escheverría’s never been seen east of the Mississippi, Harry.”

  “What are you saying, Dabs?” I said.

  “Escheverría’s from the Southwest. All his busts or sightings were in Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Nevada. By the looks of things, those at the Bureau think El Gila’s based somewhere around Phoenix.”

  Aided by flashing lights and the occasional blast of siren, we were at the phone company in twenty minutes. Bowers being deceased, all we needed to obtain her records was a subpoena, easier to obtain than a court order or warrant. We chilled our heels in the waiting room of the phone company’s legal division for under fifteen minutes until the motorcycle dispatcher brought it by.

  “I figured you’d get one,” said Sonya Burroughs, a Rubenesque forty-something African-American lawyer with plump red lips and big brown eyes that kept drifting to Harry. “So I had the printout ready.” She handed my partner a sheaf of computer printouts encompassing the last two years of Doctor Bowers’s life, though we were mainly interested in the last couple of weeks.

  “Would you happen to have an office we could use for a few minutes, Ms Burroughs?” Harry said.

  “Of course, Detective Nautilus. And it’s Sonya.”

  She led us down the hall with a motion-augmented high-heel perambulation that likely set off seismographs throughout South Florida. She flicked on the lights in a small meeting room and I was amazed the pictures were still hanging straight.

  “I can get you some coffee,” she purred, not at me.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” Harry said.

  Double eye-blink. “Never.”

  The coffee arrived in a carafe that found its place in front of my partner. We poured mugs of decent brew and began poring over the pages.

  “Local, local, local …” I said, looking for anything from the Southwest.

  Minutes past until Harry smacked the table. “Bingo! An incoming call from Phoenix, Arizona. Made at 23.28 hours. That would be uh, 11.28 here in Miami. Phoenix is on Mountain Time, I think. But it’s daylight savings, so—” he checked the clocks on his phone, “it was 9.28 there.” He scanned the pages. “I’ve got a couple calls to LA, one to Dalton, Georgia, three to NYC, but this is the only Arizona connection.”

  “Read me the number.”

  Harry read, I dialed, the phone on speaker. Three rings and the answering machine clicked on. “You’ve reached the office of Dr Leslie Meridien,” said a professional but smiling voice. “I can’t get to t
he phone right now, but please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Hello, Doctor,” I said, simultaneous with scribbling down her name. “This is Detective Carson Ryder with the Florida Center for Law Enforcement. Could you give me a call as soon as you get this? It’s important.”

  I added my cell number and looked at Harry. “Now we wait. And hope Dr Meridien can answer some questions.”

  Harry sighed crossed the big arms. “I hate waiting.”

  Burroughs drifted past the door, smiling inside, and continued the bouncy-bounce down the carpet.

  “At least for some things,” Harry amended.

  13

  Novarro awakened to a motorcycle blasting down the street. Her eyes felt glued shut and her mouth tasted like boiled paper bags. She rubbed the mucilage from her eyes and turned to the clock, 8.56 a.m. She’d forgotten to set the alarm.

  She was padding to the shower when something made her detour into the living room. Her heart jumped: Someone had gotten into the house and messed with the evidence, some bags open and empty, pieces of jewelry strewn across the tabletop, the owl brooch glistening from the floor.

  Ben? Had Ben come in, seen the box, scrabbled through it? Novarro blinked her eyes and her heart raced … and then …

  And then the disparate pictures loomed into view: the second drink, diluted by melted ice and needing another splash of tequila, then sitting and comparing the items with the descriptions supplied by the Maricopa County people, squinting at the descriptions, blurred …

  Written by a chimpanzee, she recalled thinking.

  A third refill.

  Swallowing hard, Novarro went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. No pitcher. She opened the cabinet. The bottle was there, tipped on its side, empty. Two limes were on the floor. Feeling a wave of nausea, she went into the living room and looked on the far end of the couch. There was the pitcher, as empty as the bottle, and also on its side.

  It hadn’t happened in years. But here it was again.

  Beside the pitcher was one of the evidence bags. She’d opened them up, pulled out the pieces, did whatever, and left everything open and in disarray. The entire chain-of-custody could be ripped apart by a first-year law student: “The evidence was improperly handled, Judge. Perhaps even tampered with on purpose. It’s tainted and unusable, and I move to have it stricken from the case.”