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

“Bowers, Angela. Psychologist. All we know.”

“Cause?” I asked.

“A slashed throat. She bled out in seconds.” He paused. “It looks like a single cut, Carson. Through the carotid and jugular on both sides. No hesitation.”

A tingle of ice ran down my spine. We saw a lot of knife wounds, most ragged horrors that indicated frenzied slashing. This seemed a professional-style hit: the victim held tight while a razor-sharp blade did its ghastly work. No hesitation, no qualms, nothing but a single and probably practiced move.

We entered the room and I saw a woman in her early fifties, her face a rictus of fear, a dark echo of her final moments. A lake of blood pooled beneath her lifeless body. Harry knelt beside the sprawled form.

“Like Vince said, one deep cut from ear to ear.”

“Take a look at her face, Carson,” Vince asked. “Look familiar?”

“Vince, she’s not my shrink. Or anything else.”

“You’re sure you never saw her before?”

“I wish I wasn’t seeing her now.”

“Bring it, Brady,” Vince said, waggling his fingers in the gimme motion. The tech jogged over with the evidence bag and I saw a 5 x 7 index card inside.

“We found this in the vic’s top-right desk drawer,” Vince said. “On top of everything else there. Position tell you anything?”

“She kept the card within reach. Says it’s probably important.”

“Show the card, Brady.”

The tech held it out to me at eye level. Printed on the card in heavy black marker was my name. After it were three question marks. I held it up to Harry.

CARSON RYDER???

“Why am I not surprised?” he said.

We returned to the department to stare at a copy of the card found in Dr Bowers’s desk drawer. I’d tacked it to a bulletin board in a conference room.

“To me,” I said, “a single question mark suggests a question about an unknown, like ‘Who is this guy?’ Multiple question marks seem to suggest a weighing process, like, ‘Is he the one?’ or ‘Should I contact him?’”

Harry pondered the ceiling. “I’d like to hear you try that one on a witness stand, but I like it. Of course, the woman might have simply had a jones for question marks.”

“We’ll find out soon enough, I expect. Vince will put nails in the killer’s coffin. He’s an ace.”

Harry frowned. “You’re not going to take a case that, uh, has your name written all over it?”

“Doesn’t matter what I want,” I sighed. “I’m excluded.”

“Peripheral involvement,” Harry said, seeing the problem: I was a facet of the case.

I nodded. “No way I could be the lead investigator on the Bowers case.”

Harry stood and went to the window, studying the Miami skyline. “OK, say Vince Delmara led the investigation. If you had thoughts on the case, could you present them to Vince?”

I nodded. “It’d be nuts not to be able to drizzle ideas to Vince. I’m simply restricted from any major role.”

“And you want to follow this thing. From up close?”

“A dead woman I never met had my name in her desk. I’d like to know why.”

He turned from the window. “So what happens if I take the Bowers case as lead? My very first FCLE case. You could follow me around like a little doggie and drizzle all over the place.”

I gave it a half-minute of consideration. “That actually makes sense. And doesn’t break a single rule.”

“Maybe not, Carson. But let’s try it anyway.”

Detective Tasha Novarro pulled into the lot of a three-story redbrick building in an industrial park where Phoenix abutted Tempe. Emblazoned across the top story was a chrome-bright sign proclaiming DataSĀF. Beside it was an amoeba shape with squiggly lines running horizontally through it, probably representing a cloud. Novarro had combed through Meridien’s financial records, finding receipts from DataSĀF and figured Meridien, like many concerned with security or just fast and easy data storage, sent her files to a data-storage firm.

There was private security in the lobby and Novarro flashed the brass pass. “Where you headed?” the rent-a-cop asked, an older guy in a uniform the color of a toad.

“I thought I was there,” Novarro said. “DataSĀF. That’s how you say it, right?”

“There’s three divisions: MediFile, BusiniFile and JurisFile.”

“The head office.”

The security guy grinned and lowered his voice. “Actually, it’s all DataSĀF upstairs. It started as three divisions but they’re under the same umbrella these days. I think they think it looks impressive.”

Novarro scanned the open atrium, glass everywhere, five-foot-diameter concrete planters holding small trees. At the far end an immense globe made of hundreds of squiggling rays of multicolored glass hung from the ceiling. Novarro recognized the artist’s work – she had seen it at the Desert Botanical Gardens a few years back – and remembered his name as Dale Chihuly. She figured it was an expensive piece of glassware.

“Helluva big building,” she said. “How many people work here?”

“About thirty.”

Novarro raised an eyebrow. “Must have a lot of empty offices.”

The security guy grinned. “What they got are computer servers, three full floors of the things lined up like black refrigerators with blinking lights. They call it the cloud but it’s made out of machines. It’s spooky.”

Novarro thanked the guy, picked up a visitor pass, and walked to the elevator. Phoenix PD had switched its files to the cloud – calling it “offsite storage” in official parlance – a year back. Whenever Novarro wanted a report or information she sat at her computer and bang! there it was. Sure beat riffling through clunky filing cabinets. Good for you, Cloud, she thought, momentarily wondering if it was cumulus or cirrus.

The elevator arrived and Novarro stood in the lobby of DataSĀF; hues of pinks and grays with a receptionist arena at the far end. A young woman with a severe look and hair sat within the granite-topped semicircle holding a clipboard. She wore a phone headset and was feverishly inputting data into a computer. “There’s a sign-in sheet,” the woman said, not looking up.

“I’m the heat,” Novarro said, holding up the badge. “I need to talk to someone about accessing a client account.”

The woman didn’t blink. “Take a seat and I’ll tell someone you’re out here.”

The chairs were designed to afford hipness before comfort and Novarro found sitting in one of the wobbly rail-and-canvas monstrosities was like trying to stand in a hammock. She leaned against the wall and read DataSĀF’s annual report, the only reading material in the room. It seemed DataSĀF was the largest cloud-based business data storage firm in the Southwest. They were growing at an average of 16 percent a year. They stored about a zillion wiga-diga-gigabytes or something like that. Their motto was “Putting Security Above All.”

Novarro fought the yawn and tossed the report back on a low table.

After ten minutes she returned to the receptionist, who seemed to have moved nothing but her fingers during that time.

“Excuse me,” Novarro said. “I need to—”

“Someone will be out momentarily,” the young woman said, not looking up from her keyboarding. “We’re quite busy here.”

Five more minutes passed. Novarro re-approached the recepti-robot. “Excuse me … could you direct me to the ladies’ room?”

“Down the hall to the left,” the woman said. “But it’s not a ladies’ room. It’s unisex.”

“Wonderful,” Novarro smiled as she turned for the door, “that means I can use my penis if I want.”