ON Fire (An Ozzie Novak Thriller, Book 5) (Redemption Thriller Series 17)

by John W. Mefford

“You want to know what kind of business I’m getting into?” Ty said, his eyes focused on a monitor built into the control panel. His multitasking was impressive. I just hoped it wasn’t slowing him down. We couldn’t afford to have Rocko show up and starting busting anyone’s balls.

  “Not everyone wants to hear your life story, Ty,” Pierre said. “They just want to see that video.”

  “Actually, I am interested,” Nicole said, resting her hands on the back of Ty’s chair. “What are your big plans?”

  “I’m going to open a nursery.” He flipped his head around. I could see grape jelly on his face. Pierre pulled a tissue from his pocket and wiped it clean. Ty didn’t seem to notice or care.

  “A nursery. So, you like kids?” Nicole asked, snagging a glance at me. I was just as puzzled, but to each his own, I figured.

  “Ha! Are you kidding? Kids, especially teenagers, are the bane of my existence. They come in and vandalize this beautiful structure. It’s the worst around prom time every year.”

  First, the hotel is a shit hole, now it’s a beautiful structure. It was all about perspective, apparently. “Ty…” Pierre leaned forward and tapped his watch. “We don’t need balls being busted.”

  “All right, all right. Almost there.”

  A moment later, Ty pointed at the monitor directly in front of us. “Check out number ten.”

  I assumed he’d numbered the monitors.

  “The APD detective seemed to focus on a short three-second clip,” Ty said. “And that’s all you really need to see.”

  “I only see what looks like a hallway.”

  “Right,” Ty said. “That’s the fourteenth floor, same one as the Congressional Suite. You can see the time in the upper left-hand corner. It shows 3:43 a.m.”

  “It’s barren.” I was, of course, stating the obvious.

  Ty grabbed his sandwich and stuffed the remaining third of it in his mouth. In my peripheral vision, I saw Pierre put a hand to his forehead. He muttered something in French. My guess was it involved something about Ty being a man-child.

  “Ten more seconds,” Ty said.

  I felt like I was waiting for a rocket to take off.

  A moment later, a man entered the right side of the screen. Same height and size as Franklin. Wearing a suit similar to what I’d seen earlier this morning. The man paused, turned back around, and faced the camera.

  My breath hitched.

  Nicole grabbed my arm. “Is that him, Ozzie?”

  I could feel the eyes of Pierre and Ty on me as well.

  “That was him. The DA wasn’t bluffing.” I could feel my breathing restricting a bit. I took in a couple of deep breaths and asked Ty to replay the video. He reversed and then restarted the scene.

  Just as Franklin turned to the camera, I yelled, “Stop.”

  “What? Did I do something wrong?” Ty asked.

  I took two steps forward and studied Franklin’s face. The video quality wasn’t great. It was slightly grainy, and I could see only half of his head. He had a stern look. His jaw appeared to be clenched.

  Had he and Pamela gotten into a fight? Maybe he’d left the room, gone back and—again, going with the confident-woman angle—it was possible he wasn’t happy with her response. And then, because Franklin wasn’t used to being flat-out rejected by anyone, he lost it on her and killed her.

  “What is it, Oz?” Nicole asked.

  I shook my head slightly, signaling that we would discuss it later. I thanked Ty for his assistance. Nicole hugged Pierre, and he proceeded to kiss her on both cheeks. She giggled, and we headed for the door.

  “By the way,” Ty said, grinning, “I’m becoming a certified horticulturalist. My nursery is going to be filled with plants and flowers and shrubs. I might expand it to trees someday.”

  “That’s cool, Ty,” I said. “Hope it all works out for you.”

  “Yep, I’m this close to making the big leap. Pierre here has been my biggest supporter.” He wiped his face with his shirtsleeve.

  I immediately looked at Pierre for his reaction to the shirtsleeve bit. He rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. “Like I said, sometimes opposites attract.”

  The word “opposite” hung with me as we left the hotel. The opposite of the truth is a lie. And based upon what Franklin had shared in our meeting, he’d told me the opposite of the truth. The question I had was: why?

  7

  Nicole and I traded theories on why Franklin would lie to me and, for that matter, his own attorney. All of the theories were ridiculous…well, except for one that Nicole offered up, but it was almost too simplistic.

  “Maybe he’s just a pathological liar. He’s a lobbyist, so that’s either a notch just above or just below a politician,” she said on our drive back to my apartment.

  “I know he lies for a living, but I would venture that he would describe it more as embellishing or stretching the truth. But what does that buy him? The cops, the DA—they can put him on the floor near the time of death. I know it’s not an actual visual of him killing Pamela, but it’s a strong piece of evidence, especially since he denied it.”

  Nicole bit her bottom lip again. Then she snapped her fingers so loudly that I jumped. She giggled and said, “Time.”

  “Time? He lied to buy himself more time?”

  “Think about it,” she said, lifting a knee onto the seat so that she faced me. “If he really killed Pamela, and they brought him to the station and charged him, he’s panicking, right? So, in his mind, he might be thinking, How can I get the hell out of this place? Say anything possible to get bail and get his freedom back. Now that he’s free—at least temporarily—he might be trying to figure out how to disappear, or even leave the country. He’s loaded.”

  I felt my stomach twist into a knot. “Disturbing thought, but it has one hole.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They probably confiscated his passport when he posted bail.”

  She nodded. “Back to the part about him being loaded. Money can buy you a lot of things, Oz.”

  “A fake passport?”

  “He could be lining up new identities all over the world. He could take a private plane out of the country and hop from one country to the next using various aliases and passports. It would take some work, but I think he could easily get lost amongst seven billion people.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “You’re thinking like a killer, Nicole. Not good.”

  “The question is, what do we do next? They’re paying you to find—what did you say it was? Ah, yes. ‘Opportunities to show reasonable doubt.’”

  “There’s plenty of doubt. Doubt that Franklin’s telling the truth. Doubt that they hired me to do legitimate PI work. Hell, I’m not sure why they hired me.”

  Despite the major hole in Franklin’s story, I didn’t have everything lined up. I told Nicole that more work was required before I confronted Winston and Franklin.

  “May not have much time, though, babe,” she said.

  I gave her a flat look. “You said ‘babe’ on purpose.”

  “You’re reading too much into it. Don’t bog. Back to the case,” she said, rolling her arm to speed up my response.

  “I hear you. Not much time. I’m guessing he’ll need at least a couple of days to put together a plan of the magnitude you described. Maybe more.”

  I knew my next step.

  I thanked her for the help and the brainstorming session. She said she could do some real work on her laptop from my apartment, and then, once Mackenzie got home from school, they’d go pick up Rainbow.

  “You’re the best,” I said, leaning over for a smooch.

  She held up a fist and waited until I bumped it with my own. “No kiss?” I said.

  “I’m not that easy all the time.” She winked and slipped out of the car.

  Now she was playing hard to get. This might be kind of fun.

  8

  After dropping off Nicole, I swung by Gartner Automotive. My car was running fine, mechanically.
I shut my car door just as Steve Gartner, owner of said business, walked out the open garage door. Not surprisingly, he was using a rag to wipe grease off his hands.

  “You ever going to get that piece of trash fixed?”

  “It runs like a dream. What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the key scratches and bullet holes. Looks like your Caddy was used in the great heist in that DeNiro-Pacino flick.” He rubbed his face, thus spreading grease as if he were putting on camouflage makeup.

  I patted him on the shoulder as I walked past him. “You’re thinking about the movie Heat. I didn’t know you were that old, Steve.”

  I smiled as I walked into the garage. Steve’s guys were mostly working on two cars hoisted up on car lifts. I say “mostly” because they moved around some with tools in their hands, pointed at various parts of an engine or chassis or some such, but it never really seemed as though anything was ever fixed. It’s not like I was auditing them, though. I really didn’t care about anything in Steve’s shop other than the twelve-by-twelve-foot space in the back left corner that was portioned off with flimsy walls and a couple of windows. My office.

  “I’m not as old as you think, Oz,” Steve said, catching up to me. He looked like he was sixty, but I’d never asked. Didn’t really care.

  I walked into my office, flipped on a light, and sat in my new chair—one that didn’t tip so far back that I thought it was going to flip completely over. The chair was ergonomic, but it had a little style. Faux brown leather also made it cheap, which fit my tight budget. I was just happy the place didn’t smell like molded newspaper anymore. Mackenzie and I had removed a multitude of papers, magazines, and newspapers a few weeks back—the previous owner of the PI firm, Steve’s brother Ray, was a hoarder. He’d bequeathed the business to me just before he’d been chased out of town. That was when I made the jump from the lawyer business to the PI business. Not that I had much choice. Novak and Novak had been shut down after federal agents raided the office.

  I’d once read where guys got married not when they found that perfect soulmate, but more when the timing in their lives was right. It was like our own “ticking clock.” In my case, the soulmate was my career choice. When Ray offered me the keys to Gartner Investigations, I thought: Why not?

  I could feel eyes on me. I looked up to see Steve standing in the doorway. Green, red, and orange lights were blinking off his face. Mackenzie, during our office-remodel work, had strung some Christmas lights along the plastic blinds to the window that bordered the shop. But it was the wall to my right that warmed my heart. Eight of Mackenzie’s pieces of artwork were hanging from the wall. There were paintings and a few sketches. She was gifted, and that wasn’t just the assessment of her proud papa. My old buddy, Tito, who was making a killing as an artist who painted mostly Christmas vignettes, had told me I had a prodigy on my hands.

  “What can I do for you, Steve?” I asked while logging into my computer.

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  I looked up again and saw his eyes dancing around the office.

  “Something’s on your mind, Steve. Spit it out.” He scratched his head, spreading the grease marks even more. Would the guy ever learn? He appeared to be sucking in his gut.

  “You think I look like I’m fifty-nine?”

  So, I had been close on the age. Seemed like he was having some insecurity about his age. Hmm. I propped my elbows on my desk. “How old was DeNiro when he made Heat?”

  “Uh…” He was tapping his fingers on his opposite hand while mouthing numbers. “I think about fifty-three.”

  I pointed right at him. “You look younger than DeNiro did in that movie. Does that help?” I was ready to move on to real work.

  “You think?” He cinched up his dirty green trousers.

  I typed in my user name and password to the TLO website, one of three valuable tools for any private investigator’s toolbox. Ray, thankfully, had left the login information in one of his folders. I was still in the process of securing my PI license—actually, it was more like I was dragging my feet. It probably had something to do with committing to this type of work for the long term. Parts of it I enjoyed—like not being in a courtroom with a pompous judge all day—but there were other parts that didn’t mesh well in my new life, the one I shared with Mackenzie. I wasn’t sure how to resolve the issue. So, I stayed noncommittal.

  A thought came to mind. I’d never been afraid to dive in with Nicole. She used to be the other side to my letter “V.” If the other one wasn’t fully committed, then you’d fall back on your ass. Which I did, right after she dumped me for Calvin Drake, a pharmaceutical CEO who turned out to be a despicable, greedy asshole and a maniacal killer. I wondered if I’d subconsciously tied my reluctance to fully re-pledge my faith in Nicole and our relationship to that of my PI business. I wasn’t sure how they were related. I was probably just being a wuss about the whole thing.

  Steve was still standing there, apparently looking for more affirmation. “Steve, what’s really going on?”

  “I think the missus might be, you know...” His head twitched toward his shoulder.

  “You think she’s messing around on you?”

  His face coiled into something that didn’t look human.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing, Steve.”

  “But it’s not nothing. She usually has dinner ready for me every night when I get home. Last four nights in a row, she told me to fix it myself.”

  “Have you asked her why?”

  He shifted his eyes away, then looked back at me. “No. Our relationship doesn’t work like that.”

  Communication. One simple word. But for Steve and countless other men and women, using it was like asking them to use chopsticks with no fingers.

  I really didn’t have the time or desire to hold a therapy session with Steve. “Here’s what I think you should do, Steve.”

  His face lit up, and he moved to the chair on the other side of my desk, about ready to sit down. I held up my hand. He took it as a stop-moving sign. “Leave work early today.”

  “Do you know how many cars we got stacked up out back? I might be here till ten o’clock tonight.”

  “Steve...”

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “Let all your guys work late. You should leave the shop early and go pick up some flowers.”

  “Right. On my way home, I can stop at the grocery. I saw a bundle of flowers for less than five bucks when I was buying my beer the other night.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t do that. Go to a florist. Have them arrange it. Spend some money. At least fifty bucks, maybe a hundred if you can afford it.”

  He jerked his head back as though I’d just asked him to pay off the national debt. “That’s eating into my Spurs money. Are you kidding me?”

  “Spurs?”

  “I split a season-ticket package for the Spurs with some buddies. I know they’re more than an hour away, but I love my hoops.”

  “Steve, do you love your wife?”

  “Well, yeah, of course.”

  “Then don’t be so cheap. Leave early, get some flowers…with a vase. Spend at least a hundred bucks. Before you go, do some research online, and find a nice restaurant that she will love.”

  He nodded.

  “That can’t be a restaurant with dozens of big screens so you can watch your sports.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Did I really have to say that? “Take the flowers home, tell her you love her, and ask if you can take her someplace special.”

  “You think that’ll work?”

  I nodded and went back to my laptop.

  “Thanks, Ozzie.”

  “No problem.” I typed a name in the search box and clicked Go. Then I remembered something. “Hey, Steve. Before you guys go out, take a shower.”

  “Thanks for the reminder. Flowers, restaurant, shower. I’m on it. I knew you were good to have around.” He chuckled and walked off.

  I g
lanced at my screen. The results page had just posted. I found the entry I was looking for, and then I clicked three more times until I found his closest living relative. Next to that, her address.

  I shut my laptop and walked out of the office. I wasn’t going to call anyone and get their approval. I wanted to have an unfiltered, face-to-face conversation with the mother of Noah and Franklin T. Marshall.

  9

  I pulled open the screen—the bottom half had been kicked in—and knocked on the wooden front door. The doorbell button was cracked. I’d tried pressing on what little plastic remained, but it didn’t light up. I figured it was broken, like so many other things on this house and in the neighborhood. I stepped back from the front door and noticed two shutters lying on the ground in front of a window. Weeds were sprouting upward through the slats, which told me the shutters had been in that same position for quite a while.

  The other homes in the vicinity were in the same condition. Any paint that had been applied had faded, most mailboxes were nothing more than containers sitting on a stack of rocks, and any home with more than one shrub looked overdone. The place was depressing.

  A couple of cars passed by. One was an old pickup that was choking out exhaust like a locomotive. Probably not street legal. The other one stood out for a different reason. It was a new-model Camaro, black with a thick gold stripe down the side. It looked like it had just been driven off a dealer’s showroom floor. I thought I picked up the sound of someone yelling. I checked my hearing aid—it was turned up all the way. I spun around, trying to get a bead on where the sound was originating. No idea. As I completed my second rotation, the front door opened, and a lady in a faded yellow robe yelled, “Noah!”

  I waved my hand and tried to give her a pleasant smile.

  “Who are you?” she growled. Her pale face drooped as if weights were attached to her loose skin.

  I couldn’t afford to play games, so I went for the direct approach. “I’m Ozzie Novak. You must be Rhonda Marshall. I work for your son, Franklin.” I braced for the door to be slammed shut.