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

he extended a lamp-tanned hand to him. “I haven’t had a chance to call you again, Adam, but I want you to know you have my deepest condolences. Anything I can do to—”

      Kubiac swept by with his hands jammed deep in his pockets. “Well, uh … sure,” Cottrell said. “Step back into my office and let’s get comfortable.”

      In addition to Cottrell’s desk and chair, the room held a puffy brown leather sofa against a wall and two high-backed chairs facing the desk, also brown leather. “Have a seat, folks,” Cottrell said, gesturing to the chairs. The woman took a chair, sitting and crossing long and slender legs. Kubiac fell into the sofa, arms crossed over his chest. Cottrell leaned back in his swiveling chair and regarded Kubiac with warm sincerity.

      “Who’s your friend, Adam?” Cottrell said, smiling politely at the gorgeous young woman while trying to avoid winking.

      Kubiac ignored the question, arms tightly crossed as he glared fire at Cottrell.

      “I think I know what you’ve come to discuss, Adam. But I have to be perfectly clear that nothing’s going to change.”

      “You wrote the fucking thing, bitch,” Kubiac spat. “Hashtag: fuckAdamKubiac.”

      Cottrell sighed. “I basically took dictation, Adam. The will reflects your father’s wishes. I probably shouldn’t have showed it to you, but … Hey, I wish I could change things.”

      Kubiac’s eyes tightened to slits. “One freakin’ dollar to me. Twenty million to charities and shit? WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON?”

      Cottrell tried to shape his face somewhere between empathy and inspirational. “Maybe the will was your old man’s way of saying you’ve already got all you need, Adam: It’s that amazing mind of yours. You can use it to make your own—”

      “YOU’RE THE KUBIAC FAMILY LAWYER, RIGHT?” Kubiac screeched. “WHAT ABOUT ME!”

      “Adam …” the woman said quietly. “We talked about this.”

      “He’s one of them,” Kubiac snarled as if Cottrell wasn’t there. “A Neanderthal.”

      “I fought for you, Adam,” Cottrell said. “I told your father: ‘Think what you’re doing, Eli. Don’t punish Adam like this.’ But your father … you know how Eli could get, Adam – like you kid – he was adamant. I figured I could change his mind with just a little time, but, uh, the sad circumstances and …”

      “I’M NOT PAYING YOU A CENT, ASSHOLE!”

      “Uh, actually, that’s all been taken care of, Adam.”

      “What … did you steal a million bucks off the top?”

      “Come on, Adam,” Cottrell said, adding irritation to his voice. “Don’t treat me like this. I’ve been on your side from the start. I think you got screwed royally, unfairly … there, I said it.”

       Come on, you screwy little bastard. You’re supposed to be so goddamn smart … put it together …

      “IT DIDN’T DO A LOT OF GOOD, DID IT?”

      The girl left the chair to sit beside Kubiac, her arm around his shoulders as she spoke into his ear so softly that Cottrell could catch nothing. Kubiac stood and pushed the dark mop of hair from his blazing eyes.

      “I’ll be outside,” he snapped at the lawyer. “Talk to her from now on.”

      “But Adam, you were the one who called me to—”

      “Talk to HER!”

      Kubiac glared at the lawyer and zipped his forefinger over his lips, Done talking. He strode through the door and slammed it shut. Cottrell winced. Seconds later heard a tapping at his floor-to-ceiling glass window and opened the blinds. Kubiac stood outside, his middle finger aloft in Cottrell’s face.

      Cottrell sighed and turned away, conscious of Kubiac’s eyes burning into his back. He could have closed the blinds, but the goofy kid would probably have driven his fucking car through the window. He re-sat in his desk chair and looked at the woman. “How much has Adam told you?”

      The lovely woman offered a hint of smile. “Everything. He trusts me.”

      Cottrell nodded. “Then you know that when Adam turns eighteen he comes into his father’s legacy.” His eyes lifted to the woman’s eyes and held. “I hope he starts to think about it.”

      The woman shot a glance at Kubiac, then returned her eyes to the lawyer. “He thinks about it a lot. I’m sorry if we took up your time, Mr Cottrell. Adam really wanted to come here.”

      “He needed to vent. He’s angry.”

      “Very.”

      “I’m sorry,” Cottrell said, standing and holding out a hand. “But I didn’t get your name, Miss …”

      The girl offered her hand over the desk. “Zoe Isbergen,” she said. They glanced toward the window as Kubiac spit against it, thick and viscous.

      “And your relationship with Adam, Miss Isbergen?” Cottrell said with a lift of his eyebrow.

      A wisp of smile. “Complex.”

       7

      It was eight minutes past midnight when Tasha Novarro pulled into the Dobbins Point Overlook in South Mountain Park, its sixteen thousand-plus desert acres and jagged peaks making it the largest municipal park in the continental US. The Overlook, far above the desert floor and up a winding grade, was always crowded during park hours, but the park had been closed since seven p.m. No problem for Novarro: South Mountain was under the jurisdiction of the Phoenix Police Department, the cop at the entrance long used to Novarro’s nighttime visits and waving her through the gate.

      The Dobbins Point Overlook was Novarro’s own little parcel of Paradise, her sole company the spectral saguaros silhouetted in the light of a gibbous moon. Behind and above her, on the peak, stood a vast array of communications antennae with red lights blinking against the liquid sky.

      When Novarro was young, she’d thought the lights themselves formed the communications, a version of the heliographs she’d read about in a book borrowed from the library, the lights flashing semaphoric messages to towers miles away. Only later did she learn that the structures communicated via invisible transmission of short-wave energy called microwaves and the lights were only there to ward off aircraft.

      Novarro preferred her earlier interpretation.

      She shut off her engine and stepped from the cruiser, looking north across a crucible of light: Phoenix the blazing nexus, Glendale to the west, Mesa to the east, Scottsdale northeast. Headlights shimmered down the geometric maze of streets as a jet dropped from below the moon to land at Sky Harbor International Airport, five miles distant and one of the few airports located in the heart of a major metropolis.

      A woman killed, Novarro thought, staring into the vortex of light. She’d spent the last three days interviewing friends, neighbors, and business associates of Leslie Meridien, PhD. A pleasant and outgoing woman, by all reports, no apparent enemies.

      No one had an answer, no one understood.

      “Leslie was more than a psychologist,” a friend had wept. “She was a force for good.”

      The killing had been brutal but efficient. Efficient murders were not the norm, Novarro knew from seven years in uniform and eight months in Homicide. The vast majority of killings were messy affairs, anger- or turf-driven, with slashing blades or emptied bullet clips, ball bats or shotgun blasts, people killed for being in the wrong bed or on the wrong corner.

      Meridien’s murder was different. It was dispassionate, ice cold. And all of the victim’s patient files were gone, taken in a manner that baffled