J. Kerley - The Death File - A gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist

“Sure looks like a cat,” Harry said. “A big red prowling cat.”

“It affirms Sabitch’s story,” I said. “But that’s about all.

“One more snippet,” Harry said. “This is from a c-store about four miles from Warbley’s home.”

“Four miles?”

“Like I said, your man Vince does good work. Casts a wide net. Check it out.”

We watched a scene from an exterior cam at the c-store, probably there to record drive-offs. I saw a man filling the tank of a Camaro Z/28. He was dressed in black with flash at the beltline, definitely a shiny buckle. Topping his round dome was a black skullcap. He was shoulder heavy, a chunk of muscle, and he was moving fast, like he had an appointment somewhere.

“What time?” I asked.

Harry froze the playback. “Fifteen minutes before midnight. So here’s the time frame: Warbley’s in the bar from nine until eleven. If this is the perp, it wasn’t opportunistic, because he’d scoped out Warbley’s presence in the bar. He follows the prof, or is already waiting in the dark near Warbley’s house, made easier because he’s dressed in full black. He kills him with a single blow, yanks wallet and cell, and walks calmly to his vehicle, stashed around the corner.”

“Putting him in at the gas pump in just that time frame,” I said. It was all conjecture, but it was all we had and there had been times when we’d started with less.

“I can’t make out a plate,” I said, squinting at the monitor. “Mr Black pay in credit?”

“Nope. But there’s one last scene, Carson.”

Harry advanced to a shot from an interior camera; the door swinging open and our suspect entering while pulling his wallet, showing the tats on his hands. He seemed cautious, keeping his head down like knowing the camera was there.

“Awfully camera-shy, you think? All I see is the freaking hat.”

“Wait for it …” Harry said.

A horn blasted in the fueling lot, loud and strident, and for a split second Mister Black’s head lifted and spun to the commotion. Harry pushed pause, framing a full-face shot, moderately blurred, but with enough definition to know the man was hard-eyed and looked Hispanic. I could make out tats on his face and neck.

“Say cheese,” Harry grinned.

“Vince and his people have any idea who this guy is?”

“They’re showing a still around MDPD, especially the gang units. But they’re coming up blank.”

I sat on the couch and pulled on black running shoes, staring at the half-focused face frozen on the monitor. I saw another face in my head: a short cheerful guy in his late fifties who thought it was forever 1975.

“You think Dabney Brewster’s still running the facial-recognition project at Quantico?” I said.

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.