The Death File

by J. A. Kerley

  Novarro nodded. “Hit and run, the Trujillos said.”

  “I don’t think the driver even slowed down. Probably drunk or stoned.”

  “This was on a main road?”

  “Yep. But at half past midnight. Traffic is few and far between at that hour because there’s nowhere to go or be.”

  “And he had car trouble?”

  “Trujillo drove a twelve-year-old Escort and we found a loose cable. The engine was running off the battery and not the alternator. When the battery died, so did the whole car. I figure he was looking under the hood when he got slammed. Threw him almost forty feet. Died instantly, thank god.”

  It was all Hart could offer.

  We prepared to aim south to Phoenix, standing in the blinding sun outside the Sheriff’s office and sipping the coffee Hart offered for our return trip. Novarro leaned against the bumper of her cruiser and thought, a slight but welcome breeze rippling at her skirt, the first non-slack outfit I’d seen her wear, dark-blue linen with an orange blouse. For a split-second I had a vacation from the cases.

  “Four people in the photograph,” she recited, pulling me back to the moment. “Shackleton, Mashburn, Trujillo and the woman called ‘the Cat.’ Two are dead.” She looked at me. “Why not Mashburn? He’d be a simple hit. A kid in a house with his aunt.”

  I thought it over. “Darnell’s already dead, so to speak. He’s trapped in his mind, probably never leave the house again.”

  “He’s safe because he’s crazy?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How could the killer or killers know that?”

  I thought about it as fantastic mountain formations passed by, mesas and buttes and cliffs of red and pink rock. “Maybe Meridien’s files weren’t simply deleted, but downloaded and read. They would have described his failing mental state.”

  “And also give descriptions of the targeted kids’ habits.”

  I nodded. “You better get a guard on Darnell. Just in case.”

  She pulled her phone and made the request, talking to someone in the uniform division. There was some pushback but she invoked the name of Solero, and that seemed that.

  “It’s done,” she said, tucking the phone back in her purse. “Regular patrols during the day, closer surveillance at night. But there’s a loose end.”

  I was already there. “The guy behind the camera, robot man or mechanical boy or whoever. He’s in the same danger, I’d bet. He’s either dead or on the way. Cat Girl’s in big trouble, too. Problem is, we don’t know who they are.”

  “I’ll bet Escheverría does.”

  31

  We were halfway between Sedona and Phoenix and lost in thought, me watching the landscape pass by, noting that rolling hills previously devoid of saguaro cacti now held hundreds of them on a single slope, like an army of green robots marching at a pace too slow for the human eye to notice, driven by a secret need.

  My thoughts were interrupted by Novarro’s phone, ringing from the console. She snatched it up, nodded at the caller’s name, and put it to her cheek. “Yá’át’ééh,” she said. She listened a moment, said “That was fast, Walt, considering. Thanks. We’ll be there in an hour or less.”

  She rang off and shot me a glance. “Walter Totsonnie, a pathologist. He’s just finishing the autopsy on Brad Shackleton.”

  “Three days to get to him. Is that quick?”

  “The usual is a week or more. But Walt likes me. We’re kinfolk, kind of.”

  The Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s was in the Forensics building on West Jefferson, and we were there in forty minutes with the aid of siren and flashers.

  Walter Totsonnie was a large man in his mid-forties who recalled the Native American actor Will Sampson: prominent nose above full lips, large and piercing eyes, a brick-broad forehead.

  “Sister Tasha,” he said, a stone face breaking a smile at the sight of Novarro.

  “Something interesting, Walt?”

  “Like so much, it depends on translation.”

  Novarro did introductions. I expected a bone-crushing handshake, but Totsonnie’s fingers barely clasped mine and released. He excused himself to retrieve the prelims of the procedure. “He’s a Native American, right?”

  A soft chuckle. “E-yup.”

  “Are you two of the same tribe?” I asked. “Pima?”

  “Walt grew up in the Navaho Nation, a huge res that’s mostly in Arizona, but pushes into Utah and New Mexico.” She winked. “We’re everywhere in the Southwest. Aha-á tonoya etá eyutanah.” She paused, added, “Eyahaté yana-óhotalyana.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Got you surrounded, white man.” She paused, added: “Because we own all the casinos.”

  Totsonnie reappeared with a slender sheaf of forms. “Cause of death is indeterminate,” he said, slipping on dark-framed reading glasses. “Either extensive internal bleeding or massive head trauma, a crapshoot as to which took him first. He was like porridge inside.”

  “So it really was a fall?” she said.

  “I found some disturbing anomalies. If the deceased fell almost seventy feet onto rock, there would have been total sudden deceleration. All internal tissue and organs would – laymen’s terms here – smoosh to the side of impact. Yet the liver seems to have received the largest impact from the right side, the left side ribs, and lower pulmonary lobe from the left. The pancreas seems to have suffered anterior impact, the right kidney, which is nearby, from the posterior. But like I said, it was a jumble in there.”

  “So he didn’t fall?” Novarro said. “That’s what you’re saying?”

  “No. A fall is possible. Especially if he dropped a couple stories, sustained an impact, fell again, spinning, sustained an impact … all the way to the bottom.”

  I saw Novarro mentally tracing the route from the trail to the ground. “That’s not how I was reading the path of the fall. It’s a straight drop.”

  “I know the mountains, Tasha. Looks can be deceiving. A body hits an outcropped rock, spins, catches another … all the way down.”

  “I’m pretty sure if I dropped a brick from the trail it would sail to the bottom as straight as da Vinci’s cannonball.”

  Totsonnie removed the readers and walked to a small utility office at the end of the room and sat motionless at a small desk, like in a trance.

  “Walt’s thinking,” Novarro said, taking my arm. “Let’s take a walk.”

  We went outside and wandered down the sidewalk. It was not an area where you’d find a diner or a Starbucks. After a ten-minute stroll we returned to the morgue, Totsonnie up and pacing. “Do you have a photograph of the area where he landed, Tasha?”

  “Sure, just let me … oh shit.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “They’re in Maricopa County’s database. I have to call Merle.”

  She reluctantly made the call, not using the speaker. I heard her make the request, then say “No, Merle, not tonight. Not this weekend, either. Yes, he’s still here. No, I don’t know when and here’s something else, it doesn’t matter. Yes, I need them now. I’ll wait.”

  She muttered Jeee-sus, dropped the phone in her pocket and looked back at Totsonnie and me. “Castle’s out romping with his DEA buddies, but says he’ll have someone send the shots ASAP.”

  “Which are actually here,” Totsonnie said. “In the files in the forensic lab, but can only go to you with official release.”

  Meaning the photos were inside a computer probably a hundred feet away, but inaccessible without permission from the proper authority. It was less inane than it seemed; no law enforcement agency wanted another entity – even another official agency – scrabbling willy-nilly through its reports and case files.

  But Castle was as good as his word and the scene photos arrived eleven minutes later, e-mailed to Novarro’s PPD account, which she accessed with a morgue computer.

  Totsonnie crouched at her side and studied the shots.

  “It does look like a straight shot, Tash,” h
e said, nodding. “But then there’s this …” He tapped the screen with his forefinger, indicating a rocky ledge about thirty feet from the canyon floor. “Look over here …” He took the mouse and changed angles on the bottom of the cliff. “There’s a stairstepping of rock, steep, but accessible. It goes to this small ledge about forty feet from the canyon floor.”

  “Meaning?” I said, seeing just stone and vegetation.

  “It wouldn’t be that hard to carry 140 lb human – the victim’s weight – up to this lower ledge.”

  “And pitch him off,” Novarro whispered.

  Totsonnie nodded. “It’s possible the victim was hauled up to the ledge and tossed to the ground. Do this two or three times and you’d replicate what I’m seeing.” He slipped off the glasses and thought a moment. “It’s actually pretty damn canny from a forensics point of view.”

  32

  It was almost six p.m. when we left the morgue. Novarro wanted to drive by Escheverría’s gym, thinking she might concoct a ruse to get Sparza loose from her companions. By tacitly admitting that Ramon Escheverría lied about his whereabouts when Carazo was killed, Gloria’d made a lean toward our side.

  We passed the tacqueria where we’d seen Sparza yesterday, the spicy scent priming my stomach – we hadn’t eaten since breakfast – but the hard frown in Novarro’s eyes said food was not an issue. We were headed the two blocks to the gym when I turned to study a pitiful old woman half-hobbling down the pavement, hunched over, a hand to her face. I saw a flash of white, like a bandage.

  My heart froze. I said: “It’s Gloria.”

  We swung to the curb with tires squealing. Sparza’s face turned our way in terror. A hand reached up as if to ward us off as she stumbled ahead. I saw her face: purple with bruises, a crust of dried blood in the corner of her mouth. She tried to hobble away but moved like a three-legged spider.

  “My god,” Novarro said. “What happened, Gloria?”

  “G’way,” Sparza said, waving us away like we carried plague. A fat compress was over one eye, from it, pink fluid dripped down her cheek. It had formed a crust on one bare shoulder.

  “What happened?” Novarro demanded. “Who did this?”

  Sparza hobbled into a storefront, banged her forehead. She probably didn’t notice, loaded on drugs.

  “Go way from me,” she wailed. “Lemme be.”

  “Ramon did this, right?”

  “No. NO!”

  “Then how did it happen?”

  Sparza hadn’t figured that one out yet.

  Novarro was shaking with fury. “We can get him, Gloria,” she implored. “Help us take the bastard down.”

  But Gloria Sparza pushed between us and stumbled in the opposite direction, her hands waving like we were angry hornets buzzing her head. Novarro grabbed Sparza’s arm and studied her wrist. Sparza shrieked and yanked the arm back, staggering away beneath wracking sobs that shook her hunched-over body.

  Novarro quivered with fury. She spun and strode to the car, jumping into the driver’s seat, the car jetting from the curb before I had my door closed.

  “Where we going?” I asked.

  “Gloria had a hospital wristband.”

  The hospital was St Luke’s Medical Center, a complex on the east side of the city. We entered the emergency area, Novarro flashing the gold. I was reminded of Viv Morningstar’s daily environment. I’d again neglected to call, thinking of it only after it was too late in the east. But she hadn’t called either.

  Three minutes later we were talking to a Dr Elian Chavez, young, slim, big eyes behind bigger glasses. He recalled Sparza perfectly. “She first went to a clinic downtown. But they weren’t equipped to handle the injury.”

  “A beating?”

  “Her right eye was punctured. She said it was an accident. That she’d been carrying a knife and had fallen.”

  “A knife in her eye?”

  “Out the back of the eyeball and into the muscle cone. She was not fully coherent, drugs of some sort. I called in our ophthalmic surgeon. He was fearful of administering an anesthetic, not knowing what was already in her system. We used local, but not to great effect, I fear. She was very difficult to handle when he made repairs. He wanted her admitted, of course, but she ran off. I doubt she’ll regain full sight in the eye.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Novarro said, her voice wire-tight.

  “If you see Ms Sparza,” Chavez called as we walked away, “tell her to come back and quickly. The eye needs much more work, plus there’s a terrible risk of infection.”

  “Ramon fucking found out,” Novarro said as we climbed back into the vehicle, her voice clenched in fury. “HE FOUND OUT, CARSON. Like goddamn Carazo. The bastard has eyes in the department. It’s why he’s always ahead.”

  She pulled away with a screech, veered into a turn, throwing me into the door, then blew past a beer truck close enough that I could have reached over and offloaded a six pack.

  “Let me drive,” I said.

  “I’m GODDAMN FINE!”

  “You’re not fine at all, Tasha,” I said gently. “You’re gonna plow us into a phone pole.”

  The car shrieked to the curb, the driver behind us yelling asshole! as he passed. Novarro was staring into nowhere, but I knew what she was seeing: Sparza’s ruined eye.

  “I’m hungry,” I said, seizing on anything. “Is there anywhere we can go that’s not here … a place we can chill? You need it, Tasha.”

  She took a deep breath and pulled into a bank lot and put shaking hands over her eyes as if that would blot out the horror, then exited the car, walking to the end of the block and sitting at a bus stop, a small and symbolic break from the case. I stayed in the car, knowing what she was going through.

  Ten minutes later she was back, most of the pain and tension gone from her voice. “O.H.S.O. is about ten blocks, a microbrewery with good bar food. You’re not allergic to dogs or hipsters, are you?”

  A short time later we pulled into the lot of a sprawling single-story building, a mountain looming in the distance. We passed through an interior centered around brewing – huge shiny tanks, bags of malt – and to the open-air rear of the place, a central bar surrounded by dozens of booths and tables, many holding skinny men with trim beards and clothing, a mix of L.L. Bean and Salvation Army; the women svelte and pretty, and seemingly less concerned with the precision of their fashion than the males.

  It was a biker joint, though not in the classic sense of ponderous genetic failures who rode Harleys, transacted in heroin and meth, and kicked the teeth out of anyone with a measurable IQ. Spandex trumped leather here, and the bikes ran the gamut from beater Schwinns to sleek Pinarellos and Cervelos. It seemed every third person had a canine companion.

  We followed a giggly maître d’ to a booth in back, outside, a large area centered by another bar. The ground swelled behind the restaurant, like a levee.

  “What’s up there?” I asked.

  “The Arizona Canal, which flows from Granite Reef Dam to the New River, about fifty miles. There’s a trail beside it where I hike or bike occasionally. For some reason it helps me think better.”

  “Maybe it’s the forward motion.”

  She considered it for a full minute. “It’s the water. Because it’s so precious.”

  A waitress came and we ordered burgers and soft drinks.

  “OK,” I said. “Now we have to figure where Ramon’s getting his information. How he stays ahead.”

  The lovely eyes darkened.

  “Easy,” I said. “Make it intellectual, analytical. We have to stay uninvolved.”

  She blew out a breath and closed her eyes, like counting in her head. After about a half a minute said, “I’m chilled. Lay it out.”

  I thought it through. “We have to figure out who’s watching. What’s your paperwork trail? It’s in the paperwork. Or …” I let it hang.

  “No,” she said. “No way. Not Fish.”

  “Everyone’s under suspicion at this point, Tasha. Fi
sh included. What’s the trail?”

  She leaned back and thought, her large eyes moving to follow thoughts. “I talk to Fish about the case. He’s interested, obviously, hating Escheverría and not being able to take him down.”

  “What do you tell Fish?”

  “Just the usual stuff. It’s Fish, Carson … you’ve told me about Harry. They’re cut from the same cloth, old-school pros.”

  “Even if you didn’t talk to Fish, he’d still have access to the case notes and whatnot, right?”

  “Sure. The case reports, like everything else, go where all paperwork goes these days. All that’s needed is a Phoenix PD password.”

  “No copies of your reports floating around?”

  “All digital these days. I e-mail a copy to Castle. But I’ll bet he doesn’t read it. He’s just pulling my chain. Plus Merle has a kind of, uh, simple clarity that would never allow him to spy for Escheverría.”

  “Money is a good muddler of clarity.”

  A long moment of reflection followed by a sigh. “Merle does like shiny things like guns and motorcycles and silver-blingy saddles on his horsey. Maybe …”

  The food arrived, massive burgers with fries and salad. I watched Tasha Novarro eat with gusto, trying not to consider my long-held observance that women who reveled in dining were better lovers than those who picked and nibbled.

  “Thank you,” she said, pushing her emptied plate away. “I was falling down a hole after seeing Gloria. You reached down and saved me.”

  I nodded. “I’ve been down that hole before.”

  She glanced around at the smiling faces, the dogs, the blue sky arching above. “This is what I needed, Carson. It’s been a crappy week. I’m really glad you’re here.”

  I held up my brew in toast. “To my vacation, then.”

  “Someday you’re gonna have to come out here and actually have a vacation.”

  “I’d like that. But, unfortunately, time to get back to the real world: Where do we go from here?”

  “Not yet. I’m sick of wondering who in the department is a spy for a sociopath. Right now I need to pack my head in beauty and quiet.”