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

8

Rather than drive from Miami to Upper Matecumbe Key, I went to the Coral Gables home of Dr Vivian Morningstar. Viv was my longest-ever significant other (the term always seemed ridiculous … other what?), our relationship entering its second year. I’d met her in the last months of her previous employment as a pathologist with the state forensics lab, but shortly thereafter Vivian had an epiphany: She needed to work with the living. Specializing in trauma medicine, she was completing her internship at Miami-Dade General, which involved long hours at the hospital and often sleeping there.

Harry was staying at the Palace, a former hotel owned by a scumball the FCLE had busted for human trafficking. All his other confiscated properties had been sold, but Roy convinced the accountants to retain the Palace as lodging for visiting agents and consultants to stay and as a safe house for the occasional snitch wanting to stay alive.

It was just past one a.m. when my phone rang: Vince Delmara.

“What are you doing to me?” he said.

“I’m not tracking,” I said, wondering if I was dreaming. “But then it’s two minutes after—”

“I’m in a front yard in Coral Terrace, Carson. I’m looking at a body that has your and Nautilus’s cards in his shirt pocket. They’re next to a U of Miami ID. You know a Professor John Warbley?”

My phone went off less than a minute after I hung up: Harry. Called by Vince, he was on his way to Viv’s to grab me up.

We arrived at a single-story ranch-style house, two jacarandas up front, a bank of azaleas to the side, plus some big overhanging tree I couldn’t identify. The ME and forensics vans were in place, plus three cruisers and Vince Delmara’s black unmarked. The uniforms were working crowd control, horrified neighbors looking on as emergency lights bathed the night in pulses of white and blue and red.

We pulled in behind a massive step van, one of the forensic department’s mobile labs and headed into the crowd, looking for Vince.

“There he is,” Harry said, pointing to the right. We jogged over and brushed aside overhanging limbs to see the face of a man we had spoken with scant hours ago. Warbley stared into the sky with lifeless eyes, one reddened with blood seeping from burst veins, the grass beneath his head glistening with scarlet.

“Any idea what happened?” Harry asked.

“The rear of his skull is bashed in,” Vince said. “Something big and heavy, ball bat, hammer, rock.”

I saw Harry wince; he’d been struck from behind some years ago, sparking a long hospital stay and convalescence.

“Warbley worked with Angela Bowers at the U,” I said. “His specialty is medical ethics. We talked to him today.”

“Jesus,” Vince said. “Think there’s a tie with Bowers?”

“If not, it’s a strange coincidence.” But we’d seen strange coincidences before. Fate sometimes likes to play with you.

“Wallet around?” Harry asked.

“Nope. I got a tan line indicating he wears a watch most of the time. It’s not there. No phone, either, if he was carrying one.”

Classic robbery signs. And like a lot of cops I knew there was a statistical probability that hours after interviewing Warbley, he would fall victim to an unrelated attack. But the hollow in my gut told me my belly wasn’t believing those odds, not just yet.

“Who found him?” Harry asked.

“Penn and Ortega,” Vince said, nodding toward one of the MDPD cruisers. “Standard patrol, Penn driving, Ortega flashing the spotlight over the houses, yards. Then they see the bottom of shoes.” Vince checked his watch. “That was at11.56.”

“And this is his home?”

“No,” Vince said, nodding down the street. “He’s four doors down.”

We looked across the yards and saw a similar house, but lacking the heavy growth.

“Opportunistic,” I said. “It’s a perfect ambush point.”

“No call, no reports of anyone in the area?” Harry asked Vince. “Creepers, peepers, people out of place?”

“Not that I’ve heard so far.”

Harry got to his hands and knees and leaned his nose over Warbley’s open mouth, sniffing delicately, his bulldozer-blade mustache almost brushing the victim’s lips. “Scotch,” Harry said, standing and dusting his hands. “And he’s wearing a pair of Rockport walkers.”

I caught the glint of an object on Warbley’s belt and leaned down to inspect it. “A pedometer,” I said. “Combine that with the walking kicks and whisky breath …”

“There’s a neighborhood-type bar about four blocks over,” Vince said. “The Lucent. It’s the kind of place you find academic sorts: craft beers and single malts, a couple bookshelves with everything from Aristotle to Zen koans. A jukebox that plays the latest from Mozart.”

“You keep a catalog of all the bars, Vince?” Harry asked.

“I live about a mile north of here,” Vince said. “It’s on my radar.”

Vince put his uniforms and pair of detectives on interviewing the onlookers while Harry and I booked to the bar. Vince and his folks would take Warbley’s house.

We rounded the corner to The Lucent two minutes later, a corner bar with a side courtyard. The hardwood sign over the door was handcrafted artistic, the smooth name in scarlet in reverse-relief.

“Damn,” Harry muttered, trying the door and finding it locked. “Closed.”

Closing time was likely two a.m., ten minutes ago, but a light was on and tapping the window with badges brought a face to the embossed and decorative door, one Larry Milsapp. Milsapp was pudgy, in his sixties and sported a waxed and pointed mustache that would have sparked envy in Salvador Dali. Milsapp wore khakis and threadbare blue dress shirt under a white and damp-spotted apron. In the corner of the bar I saw a mop bucket; cleaning up.

“John Warbley?” Milsapp said in response to my question, his eyes sighting between the twin antennae. “John was in here earlier. I guess from maybe nine until eleven or thereabouts.” He frowned. “What’s this about, if I may ask?”

It was technically Harry’s case, which meant he pulled the ugly duty. He leveled his eyes into Milsapp’s eyes. “Mr Milsapp, I’m sorry to say Professor Warbley was killed earlier this evening, likely on his return home.”

If the bar hadn’t been in front of him, Milsapp would have gone down. He grabbed it for support, wavered, but Harry had an arm under Milsapp’s shoulder and guided the man to a chair, where he buried his face in his hands.

“Oh …” he said, trying to find a place to put his hands so they’d stop shaking. “Oh, oh, oh …”

Harry pulled two tumblers from the glassware rack, poured a treble shot of Pappy Van Winkle in one, spritzed soda water in the other and handed them to Milsapp.

“I, I, I …” Milsapp said. His wiring was shorting from sudden overload.

“First a deep breath,” Harry said.

Milsapp sucked in air.

“Now the booze.”

Milsapp downed half the bourbon, then half the soda. He closed his eyes and waited until the blast hit, then nodded thanks.

“Take your time, sir,” Harry said. “Then we need to ask about Professor Warbley.”

Milsapp polished off the bourbon. “John was part of the soul of this place,” Milsapp said, shaking his head. “The conscience, maybe. John never knew an enemy, only friends. This place will never be the same.”

“Was he married?”

“Married to his classes, his studies, his books. Married to the concept that reason, correctly constructed and passionately argued, would always win out.”

“Anyone in here earlier seem especially interested in Professor Warbley?” I asked.

A sad head-shake. “It was a small crowd, the usual regulars, most have been coming here for years. People came and went, maybe forty over the course of the eveni …” He paused and narrowed an eye.

“What is it, Mr Milsapp?” Harry asked.

“There was someone else. A man came in, looked the place over for a few seconds, then turned and left. I got the impression he was looking for someone who wasn’t here. Or maybe he saw that it wasn’t his kind of place.”

“How’s that, sir?”

Milsapp studied a memory and frowned as it gained focus. “He was hardlooking, dangerous looking. Latin, I’m sure. Big shoulders, small waisted. Wore one of those knit caps. Though he had a jacket with the collar popped up, I saw tattoos on his neck. He looked like one of those guys in prison documentaries who lift weights all day. You don’t think—?”

“We don’t think anything yet, sir. We’re just gathering data.” Harry scanned the ceiling, the rafters. “Speaking of that, do you have any security cameras?”

“Never had any need.”

We asked a few more questions and went to Warbley’s house to find Vince sitting on the couch and making notes as techs worked beneath porta-lamps out front. He gave us what’d you find? eyes.

“He’d been at The Lucent,” Harry said. “Left around eleven. Fits the timeline for an ambush.”

“He have much to drink?” Vince asked.

Harry nodded. “The owner said Warbley liked single malt. Had four in two hours. Not smashed but happy.”

“Not much to go on here,” Vince said, grunting up from the couch. His eyes looked tired, but then it was past two in the morning. “It’s like the standard-issue intellectual’s digs: Lots of books, an office where he graded papers, a stack of student essays on John Stuart Mill, a briefcase with more papers. Nothing out of place, tossed … I doubt the perp was ever inside.”

“Find a wallet?” Harry asked. “Phone?”

“Nada. There’s a bowl in a drawer by the door, got loose bills, coins, keys, an old uncharged flip phone, but a new charger hooked in a plug. I’ll bet it’s where Warbley tossed the wallet when he came in and charged his phone.”

“You’re thinking robbery?” I asked.

Vince nodded toward the outside. “You’ve seen the street. Dark. Some broke junkie’s driving around and coming down hard, maybe looking for houses to creep until he sees an older guy trotting in the shadows. Or maybe he saw Warbley exit the bar a little wobbly and thinks he’ll be an easy target. The junkie pulls over, grabs the steel pipe or cut-down ball bat beneath the seat and tiptoes down the lawns while Warbley trots the sidewalk. As he walks by the darkest yard bang … he gets pulled into the shadows and stripped of anything worth a nickel.” He looked at us expectantly. “You guys get anything besides Warbley sipping at The Lucent tonight? Something we can follow?”

“Maybe,” Harry said. “If I understand how things work, Vince, you can do a few things for us, the FCLE, while we lead?”

Vince nodded. “I’ve got more manpower, you’ve got more specialists.”

“I’d be wondering if there are any security cameras in the area that might have caught shots of a tattooed mutha in a dark skullcap, bodybuilder type, Latin maybe …”

Harry finished the brief description and Vince went to put people on it ASAP. Harry and I waited until the big white box took Professor John Warbley on the grim ride to the morgue. When there was nothing to do but watch techs pick through the grass, we headed toward the car.

“Carson, Harry!” Vince yelled. We turned to see Vince waving us back. “Ortega just interviewed a woman lives four doors down. You should hear what she’s got to say.”

We followed Vince to a tall and slim woman at the edge of the crime scene tape. She was elderly, gray-haired, but unbent by her years, alert and studying every aspect of the controlled tumult around her. Ortega, a big burly guy with a mustache to rival Harry’s, was beside her.

“These men are with the FCLE, Ms Sabitch,” Ortega said. “Could you repeat your observations, please.”

She looked at us and nodded. “No big deal. I like to look outside at my birds, got a dozen houses in the trees. I sit in my living room and drink coffee and read magazines and watch the birds. I’m eighty-seven, it’s what I do best. Some people may think I’m a nosy old biddy but they can take a—”

“What’d you see or hear, ma’am?” Harry said, stepping in.

“Just a car going down the street. Twice. It slowed down as it went by Mr Warbley’s house, like checking for an address.”

“What time was this, Ms Sabitch?”

“Earlier, around seven thirty. The guy inside was Mexican or Cuban or something like that. Not real old, like in his thirties. He had on one of those tight hats they all love so much. I saw his hands on the steering wheel, tattoos all over them.”

Harry’s eyes scanned the distance from the house to the street, fifty or sixty feet. “You have very good eyesight, ma’am.”

“No. I have very good binoculars. I watch birds, remember?”

“Do you know the make or model of the car?”

“Some big shiny thing, red. Not like those boxes, SUVs? This looked low to the ground, like a prowling cat. It even made a purring sound.”

We turned. Vince was standing at the edge of the conversation, listening. We now had two sightings of a tattooed and probably Latin male, one possibly scouting the neighborhood, the other in a bar at the same time as John Warbley. Vince turned and yelled some names, adding to the crew checking for potential surveillance in the area.

It was closing in on 3.30 a.m. and there was no more sleep tonight. Harry and I went to HQ and bagged out on our couches for a bit, anything resembling rest would keep us moving through what promised to be a long day.

I arose at 8.00, ran through the shower downstairs, put on one of the three changes of clothes I keep in my office, the suit option, since I had a 9.15 deposition at the DA’s office, about fifteen minutes of looking serious and professional.

I returned 45 minutes later to find Harry in my office, rolled back in my seat and staring at my video monitor.

“I hid all my porn vids,” I said, stripping off the formal look to change into jeans, blue tee, and a tan linen sport coat. “For ten bucks I’ll tell you where they are.”

“Your man Vince does good work,” he said.

“He’s in the vids?” I said, buckling my belt.

Harry walked to the player and loaded a disk. “If you’re heading to Warbley’s place from the nearest major highway, there’s one good route, the way a GPS would go. Detective Delmara had his men check for CCTVs along that three-mile route, found three. One’s at one of those personal storage locations, but it doesn’t reach the street, another’s at a restaurant, nothing there. Then there was this from a restaurant three blocks down; had a couple robberies so they put in surveillance that overlooks the parking lot and some of the street. This was the nearest thing they found.”

Harry pressed Play and we watched a grainy shot of a Camaro slowing for the corner stoplight and stopping for a three-count until the light changed. The windows were smoked and the driver was hunched down: Nada to work with.

“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.