The Death File

by J. A. Kerley

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means a court declared me an adult capable of taking care of myself.”

  Adam thought for a moment. “That’s way cool, Cat. I wish I’d known you could do that. Why did you become a, a …?”

  “Emancipated minor. Because it was necessary.” She looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it now, Adam.”

  “That’s cool. I understand. I think.”

  Adam reclined on the sofa. The dressing of the room was spare but artsy, he noted, posters on the wall and a series of photographs of old buildings. Everything looked new. He saw a bookcase with tomes on history, physics, mathematics, philosophy. There were candles everywhere: Fat things with all sorts of colors, some with holes in them like Swiss cheese, some tall, some short. He liked candles and had once told the bitch doctor he wished all the light bulbs in the world could be turned into candles.

  “Why?” she had prodded. Meridien was always prodding.

  “Because then the only real light would come from screens,” he had said. “Like open windows.”

  “I h-have some b-beer,” Maruyama said, looking more stable in the safety of her home. “I’m having some w-wine.”

  “A brew’d be cool.”

  Maruyama opened a bottle of Oak Creek Ale and handed it to Kubiac, then poured a tumbler of red wine, talking several sips before wandering the room with a lighter, igniting candles and a stick of incense.

  “Are you better, Cat?”

  She took another sip of the wine and sat on the couch. Kubiac was in a low chair, a round glass table between them, two candles blazing away on its surface. “I g-got too excited. Sometimes if I th-think a-a-about …”

  “Stay calm. Relax.”

  She rolled her head on her neck, took a deep breath and blew it out. “I feel better now.”

  Kubiac pulled his chair closer to Maruyama. “How did you know I was talking about my father? It wasn’t a guess. You knew.”

  Maruyama started pacing nervously, dabbing a tear from her face with her sleeve.

  “Cat? Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

  “I h-hated my fa-fa-father. H-he controlled everything I d-did, all the t-t-time. D-do this, d-do that. Read t-this book, go to th-that class. D-dress th-this way, comb your hair t-that. He t-took me to the beauty salon and explained how to c-cut my h-hair.”

  Kubiac scowled. “My father took me to the barber when I was fourteen and did the same fucking thing. Fourteen.”

  “He u-used to m-m-make f-fun of my stu-stu … linguistic impairment. S-said I could stop it if I wuh-wanted.”

  Kubiac’s eye narrowed. “If you had the personal willpower, right?”

  “Al-almost those exact words. That stu-stuttering was a sign of wu-wuh-wuuuh—” the word seemed stuck.

  “Weakness,” Kubiac finished, suddenly understanding why he felt comfortable with Cat Maruyama. She’d been through the exact same shit he had. It was like they’d had the same father.

  Maruyama nodded her thanks. “T-talk about wu-weakness; he divorced my mother so he could marry a woman h-half his age. It was wh-when Mom had cuh-cuh-cancer. He had a girlfriend, too. He kept her in a c-condo in Chandler and didn’t care who knew.”

  “The fucker! Were you smarter than him?”

  “H-he hated it. He once called me a fuh-fuh-fuh-fuuu…”

  “Freak,” Kubiac said from personal experience.

  “I can’t help who I a-am,” Maruyama continued. She put out her hand and grasped Kubiac’s. “B-but I’m not a freak, Adam … I’m an improvement. I’m not sure how to say it, but I think about history, about evolution … I’m making no sense again.”

  Kubiac went to the window, watching through the blinds as a dozen students passed by, the men showing off for the women, the women giggling, blushing, or rolling eyes. Some babbled into cell phones. One of the Neanderthal men saw Adam behind the blinds and shot the finger. Adam shook his head and turned back to Catherine Maruyama.

  “The world used to belong to Neanderthals, Catherine. Stinking, grunting, primitive machines. Then Evolution said: ‘Screw this shit’ and upgraded. Think how one of those first upgrades felt in a crowd of Neanderthals. When the upgrade tried to communicate, all he got was grunts and stares, the Neanderthal brains too small to understand the improvement among them.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Yes, Cat,” Kubiac said, “you can.”

  27

  “Back to the ethics angle again,” Novarro said, staring at her desktop and shaking her head.

  “It’s all covered in clouds,” I said. “Meridien was having a problem with an ethical aspect of a patient relationship. She called Bowers who consulted with Warbley.”

  “But your partner, Harry … he had no idea what it was about?”

  I laughed without humor. I was getting good at it. “Only that Meridien may have been uncertain of what was happening and that it may have involved something illegal. Or, on the other hand, maybe not. Whatever it was, she thought it had ethical implications. She seemed split about reporting whatever it was to the authorities.”

  “You said may have twice.”

  I had a coffee cup in front of me and spun it in my fingers. “Would you be upset if I threw this against the wall?”

  “It pisses off the cleaning staff.”

  “Sounds like you’ve done it be—”

  “We’ll not go there.”

  Her phone rang, the intercom. “There’s an Alyce Mashburn on line one, Tasha. She says she’s—”

  “I know who she is. Put her on.” Novarro turned on the speaker so I could eavesdrop.

  “I found something in Darnell’s phone, Detective,” Alyce Mashburn said. “I’m not sure if it means anything but …”

  “I’m with Detective Ryder,” Novarro said. “Are you home?”

  We heard a distant howl and I figured it was Darnell.

  “Where else?” his aunt sighed.

  “On our way.”

  We were silent on the drive, both hoping whatever was on the phone, it would push the case into another realm: like having an idea of what was happening.

  When we arrived the aunt showed us into the living room and we gathered around an iPhone in her hand as she flicked through photos. “I was cleaning his room and found it hidden between the mattress and box springs. Mostly selfies and people from his high school or friends or family. They go back before he … changed. But the last one wasn’t anyone I knew. And I know you wanted to know about people he knew after he started up with Dr Meridien.”

  Novarro took the phone and went to the last shot. The photo was poorly focused, or the lens needed cleaning. The setting was somewhere in the desert, a pair of saguaros in the background. Ragged boulders. A steep peak. Novarro leaned close.

  “That’s a blue palo verde staring to bloom. This year it was mid-April.”

  “So roughly two months ago.”

  She nodded and reverse-tweezed to a close-up. In the middle foreground stood four young people. One was Darnell, the second was a slender male in jeans and a black ball cap, the third a plumpish dark-haired, Hispanic-looking kid in shorts and a Phoenix Suns shirt, and finally a dark-haired young woman in a yellow sundress and bearing a wide smile below her shades. Even with soft edges, there was a prettiness to her face.

  “I’m sure that was taken in Meridien’s backyard,” Novarro whispered. “South Mountain Park.”

  We leaned in and studied the second male in jeans and cap. Even with the lack of definition, we knew the face: The late Brad Shackleton.

  “Can we talk to Darnell?” I asked his aunt. “About the photos?”

  Another howl from above. “You can try,” she said.

  We went upstairs and knocked. “Darnell? It’s Detectives Novarro and Ryder,” she said. “May we come in?”

  “NO!”

  “We have some pictures of you,” I said. “Cool photos.”

  It hooked him. He said: “OK.”

  We entered,
Novarro and me up front, Alyce Mashburn in the rear. It was as if Darnell Mashburn hadn’t moved or changed clothes since our last meeting. He reached to the floor beside the bed and grabbed the racket he’d kept within easy reach.

  “I don’t think you’ll need a distance machine, Darnell,” I said quietly. “Once you’ve used the power, it stays used. Try it.”

  He looked at me through the webbing, then cautiously peered outside the frame. Whatever he saw agreed with his tormented mind. “All right,” he said.

  “May we show you a picture?” I said.

  A frown. “That’s my phone. Where did you GET MY PHONE?” I fought the wince. His agitation was starting.

  “You gave it to us the other day, Darnell,” Novarro said quickly. “Don’t you remember? You said you wanted us to make sure it was safe for you to use. That the dark things had been removed.”

  The frown softened as Mashburn pondered the information. Nice, I thought.

  “I remember,” he said.

  “It’s clean,” Novarro said, handing Darnell the phone and taking a chance he wouldn’t throw it through the window. “It likes you a lot. It said your name.”

  Personalizing the device; making it his again. Novarro was beginning to amaze me.

  Mashburn brightened. “I taught it to do that.”

  “The last picture you took, Darnell,” Novarro prompted. “The beautiful one. Where was that? Everyone looks so happy.”

  Mashburn turned the screen to his eyes. His mouth fell open and he stared as if entranced. “My chick-chick-chickies.”

  Novarro nodded. “Oh, your peeps. Your people.”

  Darnell grinned. “We were like a secret club. Dr Meridien’s secret club. Our group session. WE WERE SPECIAL.”

  “Who’s this good-looking guy here?” Novarro said, an elegant forefinger tapping Shackleton’s chest.

  “That’s my gangsta Brad-Brad-Bradleeee …”

  She moved her finger to the other male. “And him?”

  “That’s my boy, Leo. He’s the lion lion.”

  “Leo the lion?”

  Mashburn did a lion’s roar and laughed. “Leo made things appear. He had magic.” His face screwed up in anger. “I USED TO HAVE FRIENDS.”

  “Easy, Baby,” his aunt said quietly.

  “Tell me about Leo, Darnell,” Novarro asked. “Did he have a last name?”

  “He was living inside the red rocks. That was his name.” Mashburn’s hands balled into fists. “Don’t make me hit you.”

  “Shhhh,” his aunt said. “We’ll have none of that today. Tell these good people about Leo, Darnell.”

  “He drew me into his world.”

  It was the clearest statement he’d made. “‘His world’?” Novarro asked.

  “He lived in the stars. He drew me into the stars.”

  “Do you mean he—”

  “I live in the stars whenever I want.” He snuck a sly glance at his aunt and whispered: “I live in the stars whenever she goes away. Leo draws me there.”

  “You mean like up in the sky?”

  “STOP TALKING. YOU HAVE TO GO!”

  “Very soon, Darnell. And we thank you for being so nice to us today.”

  A sideways grin. “You’re a wet comb.”

  Novarro looked perplexed. I stepped close. “He’s saying you’re welcome.”

  She nodded and tapped the third figure in the photo. “Who’s the lovely woman, Darnell? Does she have a name?”

  He turned away.

  “Darnell?” his aunt said. “Remember your manners and please answer the nice lady’s question.”

  “She’s the Cat. She broke my eyes.”

  “You said the Cat flew away.”

  He pointed out the window. “She flew into the red sun.”

  “That was your group … with Dr Meridien?”

  He studied the photo and his hands moved faster. The memories were agitating him. “Almost. All. Almost. All.”

  “Who’s taking the picture, Darnell?”

  He started pinching his thigh. His aunt gently moved his hand to hers and held it tight. “Darnell?” she prodded. “Who’s not there?”

  “I can’t tell. The boy was hiding.”

  “Hiding from who?”

  He yanked his hand from his aunt and pointed at us both like a pair of pistols. “A BIG BLUE SISSY!”

  “You said he, right, Darnell? The one hiding from, uh, a big blue sissy? Do you remember his name?”

  “I WON’T TELL WON’T TELL WON’T TELL …”

  He glared between Novarro and I as she recalled parts of the previous meeting with him. “Wait, Darnell,” she said, “the hiding boy, the one not there. Was he the what … the robot boy, the mechanical boy?”

  Darnell Mashburn’s eyes widened. His fingers went into his ears and he fell back on his bed with eyes closed tight, done listening for the day.

  There was nothing to be done but thank Alyce Mashburn for her call and climb back into the vehicle. It was getting late in a day where the man who’d lent his car to Escheverría had been found dead, we’d gotten more enigmatic information from the Bowers-Warbley cases, and a kid who might have some answers was ranting about red suns, mechanical boys, and a blue sissy.

  “What next?” I sighed as Novarro pulled away and I sunk into my own depression.

  “I’ve been wanting to go to DataSĀF again. Let’s run in and see if there are any revelations about the missing files.”

  We drove for fifteen minutes, parking in a small employee lot holding a collection of expensive sporting wheels: Beamers, Mercs, Porsches.

  “Whatever they do here,” I said, scanning the high-ticket metal, “it seems to make money.”

  “They do filing. They just do it on big computers and for a bunch of places at the same time. It’s a cloud or in the cloud or whatever.”

  We walked to the security checkpoint. The guard smiled recognition at Novarro. “You’re back.”

  “Couple more questions for the Ken doll.”

  The guy smiled. “Ah, yes … Mr Larkin.”

  “He in, you know?” Novarro eyed the sign-in sheet.

  “Mr Larkin doesn’t sign in since he’s, uh …”

  “Too important.” Novarro finished.

  “He should be up there.” A wink. “Don’t tell him I said so.”

  Temporary visitor badges slung from our necks, we took the elevator to the second-floor lobby of DataSĀF. I saw a pretty but vacant-eyed woman at a round reception structure at the far end of the room and followed Novarro.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the receptionist, “could I talk to Mr Larkin, please.”

  The women looked through us. “He’s not in right now.”

  Novarro met the frown with a dazzling smile. “I’ll just sit over here and clean my gun until he arrives.”

  Novarro sat cross-legged on the floor and pulled out her pistol, ejecting the clip and pretending to buff everything with a tissue. The woman’s eyes widened and she was suddenly on the phone. Novarro looked down the hall, smiled, jumped to her feet, and put away the weapon. “Here comes the big boss, Carson. No wait, the C-E-O. I think it stands for Compulsive Egotistical, uh … Osshole.”

  The glass door flew open, Larkin striding to us. “What are you doing?”

  Novarro slipped her weapon away. “I wanted to see if anything had been discovered about how Dr Meriden’s account was hacked.”

  Pursed lips, nose in the air. “We don’t know that it was hacked. That’s an assumption you shouldn’t make.”

  “Four years of data disappeared,” Novarro recounted. “Patient files, appointments …”

  Larkin crossed his arms, toe tapping like a nervous metronome. “We’re looking at it as an anomaly. Maybe an internal problem.”

  An arched eyebrow from my partner. “Someone pressed the wrong button?”

  “It would be more extensive than that. But yes, in a way.”

  “That happen a lot, you think?” Novarro was needling the guy, figur
ing he’d spill more if irritated. I stayed two steps back; this was her show.

  “It’s virtually impossible to get in from the outside, Detective. And yes, the Meridien account may have been deleted internally and accidentally.”

  “So the night the woman is murdered her accounts disappear and—”

  “That is none of my business. It’s yours.” The pink fingers clenched into fists. “For crying out loud, Officer, I didn’t kill the woman. Why are you here?”

  Novarro stared into the eyes. “So you still don’t know what happened? But saying a janitor spilled coffee on a keyboard sounds better than getting hacked.”

  “I’m busy. Please show yourselves out.”

  Larkin returned to his meeting, shooting dark glances our way. I figured the guy had an IQ off the charts and made a million-plus a year, proving brains and money didn’t buy manners.

  I said: “He was trying to sell the internal screw-up line to himself as much as to you.”

  She nodded. “Damage control. How would it look to have security breached?”

  We waited for the elevator. It opened and launched a solid and handsome woman at us, stopping just short of running into my chest.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Distracted.” She saw Novarro. “Oh, Detective Novarro. You’re back.”

  “This is my, uh, current partner, Detective Carson Ryder. Carson, this is Candace Klebbin, who I suspect runs the joint.”

  A laugh. “More like run over by the joint. Can I help you folks?”

  “We were wondering if anything new had been discovered about the Meridien breach. Kenneth was a bit elusive. Would you know?”

  A grin. “I’m the office administrator, Detective. It basically means I buy pencils and check time sheets.”

  “Not an insider,” I said.

  The eyes nodded toward the meeting room, seven young guys at a table being served coffee by a pretty young woman. One of the men glanced at the girl’s posterior, winking at his buddies as he made gnawing teeth behind her back.

  “It’s an old boy’s club,” Klebbin said. “Except the oldest boy is thirty-seven.”

  “I’m kinda surprised you’re still around,” Novarro said. “Last time I was here you alluded to a departure.”