Читать книгу The Death File: A gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist - J. Kerley A. - Страница 14

Harry lifted my phone and called the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, putting the phone on speaker. When he asked to speak to Dabney Brewster, the voice on the other end sounded uncertain. “I’m not sure if we have a—”

“Try R&D,” Harry said. “Research and Development.”

“Got him,” the voice said, taking Harry’s name. “Here we go. Hang on while I connect you.”

Harry covered the phone and spoke to me. “The Dabster’s still there. Second piece of luck.”

He picked up seconds later, a rich southern voice vibrating the lines. “Harry-freaking-Nautilus … talk about a voice from the past. How’re things in good ol’ Mobile?”

Dabney Brewster was an old-school hipster computer geek from Mobile who sometimes consulted on our computer-crime cases back in the day. His spare-time hobby had been computer-generated art, portraiture, using pieces of photographed actual faces to construct odd and funny montages of invented faces. He’d created a library of facial features, building algorithms to define certain characteristics so he could catalog them. His work caught the attention of the FBI and he was suddenly in Quantico and at the forefront of facial-recognition software development.

“I retired from the MPD, Dab,” Harry said. “I’m in Florida with the FCLE.”

“No shit? I heard Carson’s there.”

“He’s sitting across from me and grinning.”

“Hey Dabs,” I yelled.

“Muthaaafuck …The Harry and Carson Show is back on stage.”

“Why we’re calling, Dabs … we got a potential bad guy on CCTV vid, and would really like to know if he’s in FBI files. Local mug shots are coming up blank. You make any headway since Tampa?”

I was referring to an early experiment in which facial-recognition equipment was installed in Tampa’s Ybor City district, a miserable failure scrapped two years later and still the butt of jokes. Another experiment at Boston’s Logan Airport had also ended poorly. But both were before Dabney got called to Quantico.

“Refining algorithms takes a long time. There are problems, but we’ve come a far piece lately.”

“How far?”

“Given a fairly clear face – individualized features and not many deep shadows – we can feed it into a photo database of known criminals and get solid hits. We’re above a 90 percent recognition factor.”

“Got any time to slip us into the mix?”

“Maybe …” he said, a grin in his voice. “If you send me some love.”

It was Dabney’s quirk that before taking any outside job, he wanted a “love token,” a meaningless gift that he found amusing. Our past tokens had included an Elvis Presley Pez dispenser, a harmonica that had once passed through a room where John Lee Hooker was dining, and a bag of novelty clam shells that, when dropped into water, opened to disburse little paper flowers.

“Get us in fast, Dabs,” I yelled. “And we’ll love you like Gertrude loved Alice B.”

“I dunno what that means, but I’m on it.”

We e-mailed Dabney the video and hit the street, hoping to find anyone who could tell us more about the killings of either Angela Bowers or John Warbley, now looking more and more like highly calculated – and connected – murders.

* * *

Adam Kubiac was an early riser. He liked the quiet of sitting alone on the balcony of Zoe Isbergen’s apartment as Zoe slept and the sun rose in the east. He often used the time to game against players on the other side of the planet. But this morning he wasn’t thinking about gaming, he was pacing the small balcony, four steps down, four steps back. Then repeat and repeat and repeat. Mumbling to himself.

He hadn’t been able to sleep, too angry at his father and his father’s stinking lawyer. Bastards! They had both conspired to keep his money from him. His money. His old man may have made it selling cars, but he owed Adam for putting up with years of bullshit. The drinking and drugging when he thought Adam wouldn’t notice. Or the times he just didn’t care. The women Adam would find in their home, his home. The times the local cops would bring his father home, half drunk, and he’d start pretending to himself and Adam that he was a real father.

“Y’know what, Adam, we doan see enough of each other, do we, son? What say we head up to Aspen this weekend? You ever skied? I’ll teach you to ski. You’ll love it. An’ wait till you get a load of the ski bunnies in the lodge, make your eyes pop out …”

Soon after, the liquor-reeking bastard would begin snoring, and then awaken the next morning with no memory of the conversation. He’d start right back in on digging at Adam for a host of supposed infractions: laziness, immaturity, disobedience, insolence, swearing, or any of a dozen other bullshit things. The old man had been a bitch.

But now he was gone, and Adam should have gotten over twenty million bucks on his upcoming birthday.

Instead, he would receive one dollar. One fucking dollar.

He screamed and kicked one of the cheap lawn chairs on the balcony, causing it to fold and fall to the floor. Seconds later the glass door slid open and Zoe’s head poked out. He knew she didn’t come all the way out because she slept naked.

“Jesus, Adam, what’s going on?”

“I’m thinking. That’s all.”

Her eyes found the tumbled chair. “You’re thinking about Cottrell, right? And your father?”

“Damn right, the scumbags, both of them. Hashtag: SCREWADAM!”

“Relax, Adam. Calm down.”

“I don’t want to calm down. I want my $20,000,000.”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll get dressed and we’ll go to that little coffee shop down the street. Get a couple of muffins. Watch the robots going to work. You like that, right?”

He thought a moment. “I guess. Hurry up.”

She pulled her head back inside and disappeared. Adam set the chair upright, hearing Zoe bustling around inside. He and Zoe had only been together about two weeks but it seemed a lot longer; they got along so good.

It had been that way from the beginning, when she’d noticed him at his favorite tacqueria on Indian School Road. He’d been sitting in a booth in the rear, playing Clash of Clans against some chick in Finland. She’d been pretty good but Adam had won easily. He’d returned to his beef torta and Cola when Zoe had just walked up and slid into the booth opposite him.

She’d said, “Whatcha doing?” like she’d known him for years.

“Do I know you?” he’d said.

“No,” she had said. “But that’s not set in stone, right?” Her shy smile seemed as wide as her face.

“S-set in stone?” Don’t fucking stutter! Whatever you do, don’t stutter. Relax, Adam, he’d heard Dr Meridien say in his head. Think first, then speak.

The woman clarified: “Not set in stone means, ‘Doesn’t have to stay that way’.” She was still smiling, but like she was happy, not making fun of him.

“Oh, sure. No, I guess not.”

“I was at that table over there.” Nodding her head toward the corner. “You looked like you were having fun, laughing while you played with your phone.”

“I was gaming against someone in Finland. She was good, but I won. I almost always win.”

“I don’t know anything about gaming. I’ve always wanted to learn, but there’s no one I know that can teach me.”

Adam’s heart had leapt to his throat, and he heard himself say: “I can teach you. I’d be happy to teach you.”

“Would you? You’re not just saying that? That would be too cool.”

He had affected nonchalance, almost yawning. “Yeah. It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it. It just takes some time to learn. We can start now, if you want.”

She had slid out of the booth and slid back in on his side. Close enough that they were touching!

“OK, then,” she had said tapping the phone in his hand. “Show me how this game stuff works.”

The sliding door reopened. Zoe stepped out wearing black tights, ankle-high black boots with two-inch heels, and a crimson top that left her right shoulder bare.

“Let’s go get coffee,” she said.

“Let’s take my car,” Adam said.

“But it’s just four blocks. We always walk.”

“Let’s go to that coffee shop over by Scottsdale, Higher Grounds?”

“Why there?”

“We’ll be in the area.”

Looking quizzical but saying nothing, Zoe followed Adam to his white 2011 Subaru Outback, a dent in the front right wheel panel, another in the hatchback. It needed a wash.

They got in and Adam started driving. He drove a few blocks to Van Buren and headed west to Highway 17, where he went north several miles, then turned east on the Pima Highway.

“Where are we going, Adam,” Zoe asked, after fifteen minutes of watching Phoenix go past.

“It doesn’t concern you, Zoe.”

She went back to looking out the window. Adam drove for another ten minutes, then took an off-ramp into a residential neighborhood of tidy middle-class homes. He zigged and zagged a few times, finally pulling under a stone arch. Beside the arch a sign proclaimed, “Eastwood Memorial Gardens.”

“Adam …?”

“Shhh.”

He drove what seemed a memorized route, left then right and another right, past a fountain spraying water twenty feet into the air. He pulled off to the side of the slender asphalt road, parked. He looked all directions. They seemed the only living people in the cemetery.

“We’re all alone,” Adam said. “Good.” He got out and Zoe started to follow.

“No, Zo. You have to stay here. This is for me and me alone.”

She nodded, somehow knowing, and pulled the door shut.

The gravestones were all set at ground level, simple. Elijah Kubiac, perhaps planning on living to be one hundred, had died without making funeral and burial plans. Adam had left that up to some whispery asshole at a funeral home, after picking out the cheapest coffin possible. He’d first thought about cremation, but the idea of the old bastard slowly rotting away underground sounded better. He’d picked Eastwood as the cemetery simply because he’d driven by several times and remembered the name.

He continued past two large palo verde trees and turned down a row of black granite headstones, some with small bouquets of flowers stuck into the ground beside them. He stopped. Looked down at a headstone. Stared for a long minute.

Then pulled out his penis and began urinating.

The dark headstone below, its engraving quickly filling with urine, proclaimed simply, Elijah T Kubiac, 1959–2017.

Adam zipped up and walked away, whistling.

* * *

Tasha Novarro had awakened at eight in the morning; Mountain Time, creeping softly into the living room to find her brother snoring gently, the covers kicked off. As predicted, he’d missed the bucket.

After cleaning the floor and spraying the room with half a can of air freshener, Novarro went to work, returning to Dr Meridien’s house and office and spending fifteen minutes searching closets and drawers until finding what she’d hoped for: Two albums of printed photos. Meridien was a chronicler: the back of each picture noted with date and place and others in the setting.

“Sedona, August 24 2007, me and Taylor Combs and Lanie Buchwald. Hot day, 89. Just finished Pink Jeep tour. Now lunch at Taco Rancho!”

They were standard travel shots. But eight of forty-seven photos of Meridien showed her wearing the same brooch, a stylized owl’s head of silver half-orbs of turquoise forming the eyes and obviously a favored piece. Novarro also noted other pieces of jewelry and accessories in the photos. She marked them with corners of sticky notes and took the shots to tech services.

Twenty minutes later a tech handed Novarro close-ups of three different earring styles, two necklaces, a silver-and-turquoise bracelet, and two angles of the owl adornment.

“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.