The Death File

by J. A. Kerley

  I stepped close to her and we looked into one another’s eyes as her eyes eclipsed all other eyes I knew and her lips were on mine and my hands fell to her hips and rejoiced as we moaned through our moving tongues and I felt her hands pulling desperately at my belt, as my hands went to her blouse and my jeans snapped open as I gasped the word bedroom and as a single entity we began stumbling down the hall.

  By the time we tumbled into bed neither of us had many clothes left, me frantically trying to pull my feet through my pants with shoes on, an impossibility. “Hang on,” I hissed, pulling loose my runners and kicking them away in the raw wind of lust and long-bottled needs. I forced myself to slow down, to savor Novarro’s tastes and textures and scents, and she did the same until…

  BAM!

  Until something hit the front door.

  “What was that?” Novarro said, head up, eyes wide.

  BAM!

  34

  We fell apart, grabbing clothes.

  BAM!

  Novarro, half-covered by her blouse, had her weapon in her hand. Stumbling into pants, pushing hair from my eyes, I followed her to the living room as the door exploded open. A slender young man tumbled through and fell face-down on the floor. Novarro rolled her eyes and set the gun on an end table. It seemed her brother had arrived, in his cups. Novarro looked supremely pissed, crossing the floor as she rebuttoned the top of a blouse that thankfully covered her to mid-thigh.

  “Jesus, Ben. Not again.”

  The kid pushed up from the floor. His face was bleeding and his clothes were torn. His right arm was a bloody mess. “I’m not drunk, Tash. Someone tried to kill me.”

  “Don’t start with your lies. You got—”

  “I’M NOT LYING,” the kid screamed in pain and anger. “SOMEONE TRIED TO KILL ME!” His eyes found me. “Who are you?” He didn’t sound drunk to me, just scared.

  “This is Detective Carson Ryder,” Novarro said. “We’re working on a case together.”

  She was in a misbuttoned blouse; I was wearing only half-zipped jeans. With a belt flapping loose. Ben Novarro seemed too agitated to notice.

  “Someone just tried to kill me,” he repeated. “They shot guns at me.”

  “Who?” Novarro asked. She didn’t sound convinced.

  Benjamin Novarro shook his head and tried to push from the floor, but his right arm buckled and he moaned in pain. I crouched beside him, gently palpating the arm.

  “Ouch!” he wailed.

  “His arm’s broken,” I said to Novarro. The kid was shaking and white as a sheet. “He’s going into shock. We’ve got to get him to an emergency room.”

  We hastily pulled on the rest of our clothes and walked Ben to the car, setting him gingerly in the rear seat. I drove as Novarro questioned her brother.

  “Who tried to hurt you, Ben?”

  “I don’t know,” the kid said, shaky. “Someone tried to hit me with a black van. They were coming right at me, no lights. But I veered and it went by, hitting me with the side mirror. I went flying but the bike wasn’t damaged so I jumped back on and kept riding.”

  “Where was this?”

  “On Woodland where all the warehouses and stuff are. I was coming to your place, Tash. I got locked out of my apartment. I didn’t want to but I had nowhere else to—”

  “Forget that,” Novarro said. “Tell me about this attack.”

  “I pulled into a church lot. They were right behind me and I heard them crash into something. They started shooting at me, Tasha. A bullet smashed a window by my head.”

  “Why would someone try to kill you?” Novarro held a tone of disbelief.

  “I don’t know. It was insane.”

  “Did you get messed up in something bad?”

  “I got locked out of my apartment.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t been—”

  “I KEEP TELLING YOU, TASH … SOMEONE TRIED TO KILL ME!”

  Minutes later a shock-woozy Benjamin Novarro was in the ER getting his shirt cut off, the attending physician a young bespectacled guy named Flores. He ushered Novarro and me out while he worked. The main ER waiting room looked like a casting call for a play titled Down and Out and Broken, and we found a small alcove down the hall and sat on a blue sofa.

  “Jesus,” Novarro said. “What if it’s actually true?”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “Ben’s made up stuff before. Almost as bizarre.”

  Flores appeared. “A fracture of the ulna is the worst problem. Scrapes, contusions. He’ll not be moving fast for several days.”

  “Can I see him?” Novarro said.

  “I gave him a potent painkiller. He’ll not make a lot of sense for hours.”

  Novarro nodded and turned to me. “There’s nothing to be done here, Carson. Up for a ride?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “We gonna check a story?”

  “Damn right. And if he’s lying …”

  Novarro knew the area her brother was talking about, a four-lane street in a neighborhood of light industry, warehouses, truck rental outlets and so forth. The street was two a.m. empty and the orange-yellow glow of the streetlights and the star-like brightness of nearby security lamps threw shadows in all directions.

  “He said he hauled ass to a church, right?” I said.

  “Keep going. There!”

  We saw a Catholic Church on the left, a tall metal gate around a front yard centered by a human-size statue of Mary. It was an incongruous location and I figured the church had been there long before the area became industrialized.

  “The gate,” Novarro said, nodding toward an opening in the fence. “Ben went through the gate. The van had to go to the drive to get in.”

  The vehicle entrance was a hundred feet away. We parked and strode toward the church, now in the glow of its security lights.

  “There’s a walkway,” Novarro said, pointing to a wide sidewalk that bordered the cream adobe structure on one side, leading to the church entrance fifty feet down.

  “Ben said he was racing down the walkway when he heard guns popping, then a crash or something.”

  Four-yard-high concrete stanchions stood at the top of the parking lot, heavy chains sagging between them, delineating a line between the lot and the grassy yard. We jogged toward them when Novarro pulled up short.

  “I’ve got a shell casing, a 9 mm.”

  I saw bright brass shells at my feet and checked the foremost stanchion, its surface scraped and chipped, broken glass at the base. “The vehicle hit this,” I said. “Probably not hard. I figure they jumped out and started shooting.”

  Novarro had her phone out, calling PPD and a forensics team to the scene. When she went to slip the phone back into her pocket she missed, the phone falling to the ground. I saw her hands were shaking. She leaned against the stanchion for support, her eyes anxious and confused.

  “Ben was telling the truth, Carson. Someone really tried to kill him.”

  35

  Novarro and I stayed on the scene for an hour, answering questions from her colleagues, filing a report, then watching the techs go about their business. The final score was fourteen 9 mm shells. The church lost two plate glass windows.

  “All those gunshots and no one called the cops?” I said.

  “There isn’t a residence within a quarter mile. And they’re low-income neighborhoods, mostly Hispanic.”

  “Hear no evil.”

  She nodded.

  “What next?”

  A sad but speculative smile. “We could go back to my place and …” she caught herself. “No, that’s gone.”

  I pulled her to me and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Not gone, postponed. Let’s go back to the hospital. It’s important for you to be near Ben.”

  “You should head back to your house and get some rest.”

  “It’s important for me to be near you.”

  The call came at seven in the morning, waking Novarro and I from fitful slumber in hospital chairs. Benjamin N
ovarro didn’t stir, still under the sway of the potent painkillers. Novarro fumbled the phone to her face, the speaker still turned on.

  “You had a call from Merle, Tasha,” said an operator from the PPD.

  Novarro sighed, and dialed the phone. “What is it, Detective Castle?” she said.

  “I saw the report on the incident with your brother,” Castle said so loudly I could have heard him with the speaker off. “What kinda trouble Ben get his ass into now, Tash … dealing drugs?”

  “Keep it on the business side, Merle. What are you calling about?”

  “A dark van … A night patrol found one in a wash west of the Sonoran reserve an hour ago.”

  “I’ll send one of our tech teams,” she said. “Maybe we can get something from it.”

  “You’ll have another problem there, Tash. The van got torched. Ain’t nothing but a pile of fried metal and drippy plastic. Hey, that Florida guy still hanging around?”

  A glance my way. “Yep.”

  “Are you screwing him yet, Tash? When we worked together it took you less than five weeks to—”

  She speared her finger wildly at the phone. It went dead. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess he figured you weren’t listening.”

  “Yes,” I said. “He knew.”

  We both stared at Ben Novarro, mouth open wide, drool dripping onto the sheets. Zonked. “He’s got more color than last night,” she said, hopefully. “I’ll let him sleep and come back later. I need to ask some questions, and I’m not sure he’ll like what I’m gonna ask about.”

  “You suspect involvement in something bad, right?”

  “I don’t know what to suspect. But this kind of thing …” She couldn’t say the word.

  “Drugs.” I could.

  “If he’s gotten himself in debt to a dope dealer, I swear I’ll kill him myself.”

  * * *

  Adam Kubiac awakened at seven a.m. finding Isbergen already up, in a robe and staring at the television from the sofa. It was blaring, the only sound level Isbergen knew.

  “Why so early, Zoe?” he said, passing through the living room to the kitchen, grabbing his morning Red Bull from the fridge.

  “Just up,” she said. She unfolded her legs from beneath her and padded to Kubiac, wrapping him in her arms. “How’d my baby sleep last night?”

  “Hashtag: shitty. I kept dreaming about pirates. Or maybe it was lawyers.”

  Kubiac made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sat on the couch eating, and gaming on his laptop while Isbergen stared at a show about women and guys who made their own clothes. Adam thought it was the stupidest thing he’d ever seen, but it kept Zoe from talking. Zoe was cool, but sometimes she talked until his ears hurt.

  At eight fifteen, Isbergen’s phone rang. She checked the screen, said, “I’m gonna take it outside where it’s quieter.”

  “Just turn the fucking TV down,” Kubiac said.

  But she was out the door.

  Kubiac was waiting when she stepped back inside two minutes later. “Who the hell was that?” he asked.

  “Cottrell. He, uh … you’re not going to like it.”

  “What won’t I like, Zoe?”

  She slumped to the couch. “He says he has properties you need to buy before he changes the will.”

  Kubiac stared. “What properties?”

  “Some real estate out west. In the desert.”

  Kubiac glared. “How much?”

  “Uh, $5,000,000.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Plus the, uh, other money.”

  Kubiac paced the room, hands clenching and releasing. “I know what the scumwad is doing. He’s buying useless dirt for nothing, then selling it to me for FIVE FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS!”

  A shrug. “Maybe. I don’t know. You’ll still get—”

  “He wants $5,000,000 more of MY MONEY?”

  A nod. “He said he’s thought about how risky it is to rewrite the will. He’s afraid, Adam. I can understand.”

  “YOU UNDERSTAND?”

  Isbergen went to Kubiac and put her hand on his arm. “I mean … He’s being a shit, but it’s the only way.”

  Kubiac slammed the can of Red Bull into the wall. “FUCK!”

  “Easy, baby,” Isbergen said, wrapping him in her arms again.

  He twisted free. “Maybe I should do like Cottrell told me at first, Zoe. Forget my father’s money and use my brains to make my own.”

  “Adam, you have to take his offer.”

  Kubiac stared at the floor. “Maybe I don’t want dear old Daddy’s money. Maybe it’ll make me dirty like him.”

  “No, Adam. You’ll be the loser.”

  “I’ll call fucking Cottrell and tell him to wrap dear old Daddy’s will in barbed wire and to CRAM IT UP HIS SHYSTER ASS!”

  And then Isbergen was toe to toe with Kubiac, her eyes like twin flares. “It DOESN’T MATTER, ADAM … you’re still making millions. USE YOUR GODDAMN BRAIN FOR ONCE!”

  Kubiac stared like he’d been slapped. “What?”

  Zoe’s voice switched to contrite. “I’m-I’m sorry, Adam. It’s just … time’s running out. If you don’t do like Cottrell says, he won’t change a thing on the will. I’m so scared that you’ll get nothing.”

  Kubiac stood absolutely still for several seconds, absorbing the information. He screamed like a banshee and kicked over the coffee table. He grabbed up a tumbler from the table and threw it into the wall, shards of glass exploding everywhere. Isbergen’s new brown boots were on the floor and he punted them across the room, shrieking with each kick.

  And then the fit passed, Kubiac alone in the center of the room, shoulders slumped and on the verge of crying. “Here’s the hashtag, Zoe,” he whispered. “Doublefucked. Call the filthy shitwad and tell him to go ahead.”

  Relief flooded Isbergen’s face. She pulled out her phone.

  “I should waste the rotten fuck,” Kubiac muttered. “Hashtag: kill; Hashtag: murder; Hashtag: dead as a fucking doornail.”

  “Don’t think that, baby,” Isbergen eyed Kubiac warily. “You’d never get away with it. Don’t you ever think like that.”

  * * *

  We pulled off I-10 South and followed the GPS to a road paralleling a stack of rocks resembling an exploded mountain and continued past small peaks of rock and creosote bush and the occasional saguaro. The tech team had the van taped off, two men crawling through the charred wreckage, two more walking the sand, heads down.

  “Anything?”

  “We pulled the Vehicle Identification Number. It’s registered to Eugenio Vela.” He recited a west Phoenix address.

  Vela lived on a working-class street with small houses and older cars and trucks. In the drive was a blue Plymouth Voyager, some nicks in the paint, one wheel different from the others, but looking in decent shape. Vela was in his open garage and working on an ancient Harley. He walked up wiping his hand on a shop rag. Vela was maybe forty, big and big bellied and wearing a formerly white tee shirt that showed arms wrapped in tats, some pro, some prison models. “Yeah?” he said, pushing back sweaty, shoulder-length black hair and showing yellow teeth.

  “Where were you last night, Mr Vela?”

  “Working. I drive a forklift for Johnson Fabricators in Glendale. Night shift.”

  “You can document that?”

  A smug smile. “Time card. Other workers. My boss. I went in at eleven, clocked out at half past seven in the morning.”

  Novarro began looking up and down the street, frowning, leaning out past the garage and affecting stymied, finally back up with her hand porched over her brow against the sun and looking at the roof of Vela’s house.

  “Are you looking for something?” Vela asked.

  “The van, Mr Vela,” Novarro said. “The black one registered to you. Where is it?”

  A dramatic sigh. “Gone. Stolen. It was here one day, gone the next morning. I never heard it go. And it was white.”

  “You didn’t report it?”

  A
big hand flicked the thought away. “It was a twelve-year-old piece of mierde. What would I gain but a loss of time?”

  Novarro turned her eyes to the Voyager. “And there sits a nice and reasonably new van, three years old? Four?”

  “Si, tres.”

  “You’re a liar, Mr Vela.”

  Vela’s eyes flashed anger, but he chilled his face into innocence. Novarro planted herself in front of him, staring up a half a foot.

  “I know how it works, Eugenio. You handed your old van over to Ramon Escheverría or one of his crew.”

  “Exchevario? I do not believe I know the na—”

  “He gave you a better van, Eugenio. They used your beater for a crime. It wasn’t stolen, it was traded for.”

  Vela continued the innocence project. “It disappeared one night. I know la policía are busy on important things and I did not want to bother you on such a meaningless matter.”

  Novarro returned to the car with me in her wake. “You drive. I want to check on something I already know the answer to.”

  I took the wheel and she spun the computer screen her way, tapping the keypad and watching the screen. It took less than five minutes to get what she wanted.

  “Vela was in prison when Ramon was there. Like prisons everywhere, they hang with their tribe, blacks with blacks, whites with whites, Hispanic with Hispanic, Presbyterians with Presbyterians.”

  “What was Vela in for?”

  “Robbed a liquor store. Did three of five and clean since. But even though Vela’s walking the line, he owes allegiance to his old prison tribe. So when Ramon comes calling for a favor – one that benefits Vela, of course – old Eugenio goes along.”

  I nodded. “Tribal. Blood takes care of blood. Even after prison.”

  Novarro stared at the distant mountains and shook her head. “Everyone has a tribe but me, and I’m a fucking Indian.”

  36

  How did she do it? Adam Kubiac wondered, sprawling across the bed and staring at the ceiling. How did Cat get her father’s money?

  He had to find out. It was time.

  Isbergen was at the door, tapping. “Adam?”

  He traded wrinkled shorts for wrinkled jeans and wriggled into a green tee that said “Byte Me”.