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

lawyer handed Hinton the writ.

      “Mostly I need Dr Meridien’s appointment lists,” Novarro said. “Calendars, dates, times, addresses, that kind of thing.”

      “I can read,” Hinton said.

      He spun in his chair and began ticking on the keyboard. Novarro, Klebbin, and the attorney stepped back. The lawyer turned to Novarro for a bite of schmooze pie. “So you’re a friend of Kenneth’s?” The attorney flashed teeth so pearly white they had to be caps.

      “Come on, dammit,” Hinton said, keyboarding away in the background.

      Novarro smiled slyly at the attorney. “Ken and I go back a ways.” About ten minutes.

      “Come on,” Hinton repeated, more stridently. As if pressure helped, he pounded harder on the keyboard. Novarro wondered if the guy was always this stressy.

      “Come on,” Hinton almost screamed. “WORK!”

      “Chaz?” the lawyer said, walking to Hinton’s side. “Is something wrong?”

      Hinton balled his fists and stared at the screen. ‘IT CAN’T BE,” he said, a fist slamming the desk. “IT CAN’T FUCKING BE!”

      The door opened and the CEO strode inside. “What the hell’s going on, Chaz … I’m trying to have a meeting down the—”

      “Someone got inside,” Hinton whispered.

      Novarro had never seen a human being turn that white that fast.

      “No way,” Larkin said, looking like he might tip over.

      “Dr Leslie Meridien, client A-4329-09. We’ve stored her data for forty-seven months.” He pulled close a printed page. “The client printout from last week documents 2.5 megs of data in storage. But there’s nothing there.”

      “The backups, Chaz,” Candace Klebbin suggested. “It’ll be safe there, right?”

      “I JUST CHECKED THE FUCKING BACKUPS, YOU IDIOT!” Hinton railed at Klebbin. “DO YOU THINK I’M STUPID?”

      “Chaz …” Larkin rasped. “Talk to me.”

      Hinton swallowed like it hurt and turned to his boss. “A-4329-09 is gone, Kenneth … every last byte.”

      Larkin put his hands on the edge of the desk and leaned close to the screen, incredulous. “You’ve done the restore protocols?” His voice was trembling.

      “There’s nothing to restore. It’s like the data never existed. Even the shell that held them is gone.”

      The CEO, lawyer, and tech director stared at the dark screen with open mouths and mute terror.

      Novarro shot a glance at Klebbin.

      “A good day to update my résumé,” the office administrator said.

       5

      “Angela didn’t practice any more, Detectives,” Professor John Warbley said to Harry and me, his eyes sad. “She taught.”

      We were at the U of Miami. Warbley’s office was three doors down from Angela Bowers’s university digs. Harry had come to root through both Bowers’s office and life, at least as her colleagues knew it. There was, unfortunately, nothing in her office bearing my name or suggesting how it had come to be in her possession. We had already talked to seven colleagues over the course of the day, ending with John Warbley. A fit and trim man in his mid-fifties with graying hair, Warbley had been out of the department all day, but entered as we were leaving.

      “Medical ethics?” Harry asked.

      “It’s a growing field, given the choices both patients and healthcare professionals face on an increasing basis; end-of-life decisions, the pros and cons of assisted suicide, informed consent and so forth. As a psychologist, Angela was particularly interested in doctor–patient confidentiality and its ramifications.” He swallowed hard and turned away. “Jesus, I can’t believe she’s …”

      “We’ll be gone soon enough, Professor Warbley,” Harry said, his big hand on the distraught man’s shoulder. “We need to know a bit more about Dr Bowers.”

      “Who would do such a thing?” Warbley said plaintively. “Why?”

      “That’s what we’re here to figure out. When did you last speak with Dr Bowers?”

      “Yesterday afternoon. She took me to lunch to discuss a topic that, I take it, was a concern to a friend of Angela’s.”

      “The topic?” Harry asked.

      “My field. A question about medical ethics.”

      “It didn’t pertain to Dr Bowers? Not personal?”

      “It only affected an old friend and former college roommate, a psychologist in Arizona.”

      Two thousand miles away, I thought, not pertinent.

      “Did Dr Bowers seem worried about anything, Doctor?” Harry asked. “No boyfriend or significant-other problems?”

      A sad head-shake. “Nada. And I’d have been among the first to know. Angela and I were close friends.”

      We started to leave, but I had one more question, more for my own edification, since I’d been in tangles where ethics and justice were in conflict and had even lectured on the subject at a couple of symposia.

      “What was the ethical question Dr Bowers was asked about?” I said. “In a broad sense.”

      “It regarded concerns about doctor–patient confidentiality, among other legalistic permutations. The whole confidentiality topic is fraught with implications; a thorny road.”

      “Because psychologists and psychiatrists hear the most intimate aspects of patients’ lives, right?” I said. “Dreams, wishes, fantasies, desires. Even the desire to harm or kill someone.”

      He nodded. “For instance, what if, in the course of privileged and confidential conversations, a psychologist comes to suspect someone may – only may – have committed a serious crime? And that this crime may be being perpetrated on one of the psychologist’s patients. There is no proof, only suspicion. To reveal suspicions of this crime to the authorities likely violates doctor–patient privilege. To make matters even more difficult, it’s quite possible there may have been no criminal act whatsoever. Events are proceeding exactly as they are supposed to proceed. What is the psychologist’s legal obligation? Moral obligation? What if they diverge? And who decides what is right?”

      “Thorny questions, indeed,” I said, wondering if Warbley was using his conversation with Bowers as the example.

      “Consider that there’s also money involved,” Warbley said.

      “And suddenly thornier,” I added.

      We packaged a few pieces of Bowers’s life for further investigation: a calendar, appointment book and such, then interviewed several of the doctor’s colleagues. We drove to Bowers’s home while mulling the bottom line thus far: Dr Bowers was uniformly respected as a psychologist, an instructor, and a person, selfless in the giving of her time and intellectual prowess to various causes. “Who would harm such a person?” was the one question on every lip.

      Bowers had lived in an apartment complex in Wingate, expensive and catering to professionals. The super had a bypass to the electronic locking system. We passed through the living room to her office, stepping delicately around the dried blood on the floor. Her workspace was in muted gray and green tones, indirect lighting, two plush chairs and a long wide couch which made me wonder if she didn’t see the occasional patient.

      While I leafed through the deceased’s desk – the one my name had been in –