He pulled off his glasses and sucked on the end of one of the arms. Professor Thornbush scampered up next to him and meowed in protest of something.
“What the hell do you want?” he asked.
The cat began to scratch at the bottom of the chair. The doctor used to swat at him to make him stop, but it never did any good. In fact, when he was away from the house, the cat would usually piss or crap all over his Persian rug. Some asked why he didn’t give the cat away or even have it euthanized. He knew he couldn’t do that, though. Professor Thornbush was one of the few who could put up with his snippy comments. Most adults had learned to tune him out.
And that had been their greatest mistake.
He thought back to his conversation with Ozzie. That Jewish punk had always been a know-it-all, even back when he was just nineteen years old. And then, when he couldn’t handle the pressure of being asked to back his strong opinions with coherent thoughts, he went for a straight kick to the doctor’s crotch. Ozzie and his friends had made his life a living hell a decade earlier by breaking into his home, vandalizing it the way they did. It had created undue stress on him. Ozzie’s father had done his best to get his son out of trouble, but the doctor’s tenure gave him power. And he wielded it with great enthusiasm. Ozzie Novak was essentially forced out of the university, and eventually, they’d all moved on.
But the professor had never forgotten. No way. Instead, he used that rage to fuel his desires even more. Up until that point in his life, from the droves of young women who’d entered his classroom, he’d been able to use his powers of persuasion to impress them. Not just with sex. That was the easy part. But it was the kinky stuff that he was into. Every once in a while, he’d find such a lustful young woman.
“Rosie,” he said aloud. The moment Ozzie had mentioned her name, the memories slammed into the front of his mind. The countless games of sex roulette, and then yes, that one fateful night when more than a little weed was smoked. She started saying no. He laughed at her. Rosie never said no. No wasn’t an option. He ignored her, crammed a sock in her mouth. And then he and his two TAs had raped her all night long.
He’d been that lucky with only three other girls since then. Unfortunately, one had to die. She became angry at how rough he was on her, said that she was going straight to the police, allow them to run a rape kit on her. He couldn’t take the chance. So, he’d killed her and then stowed her body under a fraternity house. Eventually, weeks later, the smell became so bad that cops came and inspected the old home. Once they found the body, they investigated every boy in the fraternity. The investigation lasted more than a year. The police found so much dirt on each of the boys…oh, my, it was a sight to behold. The doctor had never had so much fun watching something from afar.
The case was never settled, but countless young lives were ruined. The mere thought warmed his heart.
He heard a bang. He paid it no attention. The old home was full of curious noises, almost as if some of the ghosts from his past had come back to haunt him.
Hogwash. He chuckled at his own imagination.
He felt around the bottom of the chair. Nothing furry.
Maybe the sound had been Professor Thornbush using one of his Hulk-like legs to open a cabinet in search for more food. The doctor knew if he didn’t feed the cat, he might wake up one night and find the damn thing chewing on his ear.
He set his book down and pushed up from the chair. He started to head for the door but stopped in his tracks. A smile toyed with his lips.
“I’d hoped you would return,” he said.
An orange flash, and the doctor’s face was blown all over his imperfect leather chair.
30
I had Ervin to thank for at least a brief time of peace. I turned off my phone, closed up my computer, and enjoyed the rest of the evening with Mackenzie. We cooked together—Hamburger Helper and green beans, one of her favorite meals. We worked on a puzzle together. I watched her sketch a waterfall from her home state of Hawaii. It was a glorious evening, I’d say, for both of us.
As I put her to bed and she brought the covers just under her chin, I told her one thing: “Sweet pea, I don’t want you worrying about me. This is a worry-free zone—got it?”
“But then why do you worry all the time?”
“I don’t worry that much.”
She dipped her head but kept her eyes on me. “Uh-huh,” she said in a sing-song voice filled with attitude.
“Look, part of it is just about being an adult. We worry about stuff. But it’s normal stuff. Nothing for a nine-year-old to be concerned with.”
“I’m almost ten. But you’re still avoiding it, Dad. I know when you’re not happy. And when you’re not happy, you worry. Make sense?”
I kissed her on the forehead. “Plenty.”
Surprisingly, my night of sleep was also peaceful, aside from an odd dream just before I woke up about a large, fluffy, playful dog jumping all over me, licking my face.
I got Mackenzie off to school—she sang some pop tune I didn’t recognize on the ride there.
When I made it back to the apartment, I had a decision to make: go into the office or work from home. When I thought of the office, my gut started to tighten. The whole space just stunk, for mental reasons as much as physical ones.
Dammit, I had to get my office up to a standard, fit for something other than a roach. Decision made. For now, I’d stay home, until the walls started closing in again.
I logged into my computer and turned on my phone. I expected to hear the buzz of messages pouring in. But there was nothing. I even rebooted my phone to make sure it was working. Still, not a damn thing. Not from Rosie. Not even from Brook.
No news, at this moment, did not feel like good news.
I sent off a text to Brook, asking what charges had been levied against Earl and if she’d heard from Rosie. And, because I couldn’t help myself and I wasn’t sure that Rosie had ever connected with Brook, I typed up a brief, professional text to Rosie: Please reach out to Brook or me. We need to make progress on important matters.
I was pleased with how it read and sent it. I held my breath, wondering if I’d receive a quick reply from either woman. Maybe even a “Hey, what’s up?” from Nicole.
Who was I kidding?
I moved my sights over to my computer and logged onto Tracers Info, one of three key PI databases. I’d been lucky enough to find Ray’s log-in and password information scribbled on a portfolio he’d given me before he left town. This particular database was a treasure trove for asset location, court records, business records, identity verification, and information on relatives.
The password worked, but the user interface sucked on this site. Google and Amazon, the two largest search engines in the virtual world, could give the folks who ran this site a few lessons on creating an intuitive user experience. It took me a good thirty minutes before I figured out how to conduct a basic search.
I typed in “Billy Dixon” and hit “enter.” More than one hundred thousand results came back. I had to narrow my search.
I added the state of Texas to the search criteria. Now we were down to just over five thousand results. Progress. Then, I narrowed the window to the Travis County area. Just over a hundred hits. I began to sift through the data and wondered how long it would take me to locate the correct Billy Dixon. Then an idea hit me.
I picked up my phone, found the number for BloodCorp, and dialed it. I said I worked for a mortgage lender and had to verify Billy Dixon’s income. She connected me with Human Resources. A youthful, perky gal answered the phone, which told me one thing: might not be as experienced or as savvy as, for example, someone who’d worked there since the dawn of time. Whether this would be true or not, I would soon see. I gave her a few details about the Dixons buying a new home and that I needed verification on a handful of things. She said she would be happy to help out. I asked her to verify his full name and address. She did.
Then I hung up.
Billy
Joe Dixon. With the name and home address verified, I then started to follow the trail. He was thirty-three years old. The Fourth of July was his birthday. A real patriot. I rolled my eyes. He was born in Fall River, Massachusetts. I opened a map app and found the city. Last census showed a population of almost ninety thousand. A blue-collar city at the southern edge of Massachusetts, near one of the many rivers and only a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean.
A quick flash back to a month earlier. During my frantic chase to locate Mackenzie, I’d been instructed by her kidnappers to travel from Plymouth to New York City. I recalled seeing a sign for Fall River. Eventually, I had been kidnapped and taken to some remote camp in the hills of Pennsylvania.
I learned that Mackenzie was being held by a fanatical religious cult run by Joseph Klinger, who was obsessed with a man called Malachi. Three decades earlier, Malachi had started Camp Israel, a cult that made the Jonestown group from years earlier seem like a nice gathering of like-minded friends. Just a year ago, Malachi’s operation was exposed, and hundreds of lives were saved in the process. Malachi was still in prison. Klinger, however, believed that if he could drink the blood of one of Malachi’s relatives, then somehow the essence of Malachi would be within his soul, and he’d have the power and wisdom to lead the world to a new path—whatever that meant. As it turned out . . .
Malachi, whose real name is Eldridge Kaufman, is my father.
The whole idea made my stomach turn. The past was definitely left there, in the past. I couldn’t help who my biological father was. But I wasn’t responsible for that connection. I wasn’t sure I believed it all anyway. Something I would probably never research. Didn’t care. Didn’t want to know.
Back to Dixon. He was born just forty miles west of Plymouth, which was Eldridge Kaufman’s birthplace. Could there be a connection between the two? The Kingdom, Klinger’s moniker for his own cult, seemed to have a simplistic, if not backward, approach to life. On the other hand, Dixon seemed to be all about brown-nosing his way up the corporate ladder, making more and more money and showing off his shiny objects, including his trophy wife of the day.
I pushed myself off the couch, walked into the kitchen, and made myself a smoothie. It was the third one I’d had in the last twenty-four hours. Healthy, but my mouth and jaw wanted to chew on some chips of ice. Thankfully, my brain put up a stop sign.
Wish it could have done the same with Rosie.
I meandered back to the couch and stared at the map. After a couple minutes, I realized the Dixon-Kaufman-Cult connection didn’t work. It was convoluted and filled with holes. Yet, I refused to rule it out. I continued digging through the mass of information.
Again, the user interface slowed my progress. Block paragraphs, very few headings. It was giving me a headache.
Then something made me pause. I put a finger to the screen. “CEALDT, a Delaware company.” Billy was listed as an officer of the company. Brook had told me that the financial trail of Billy’s latest large transactions were going to a Delaware company.
The description of the company was, unlike the rest of the information in this massive database, concise. It read: CEALDT focuses on the development of processes and procedures around the multiple layers of the governmental procurement function.
Do what? That made some of my old law-book material sound interesting. And while I really had no idea what all that meant, it didn’t provide any kind of insight into the life of Billy Dixon.
I tapped my chin and instantly regretted it. I drank some of my smoothie to chill the nerve endings in my mouth. Then a deep breath.
I pulled up Google and typed in “CEALDT.” The results were all over the place. Nothing that related to a company in Delaware—or any company, for that matter.
My phone buzzed and rattled on the coffee table. Before I picked it up, I went back to the browser window for Tracers Info. Only one other person was listed under the company name, a Sara Saunders.
Another buzz from my phone. I finally picked it up. Didn’t recognize the number.
“This is Ozzie.”
“Hey, Oz. It’s Tracy. I’m in the car with Heather. You’re on speaker phone. Heather says hi.”
Then she chimed in with, “Hi, Ozzie.” They both sounded ridiculously jovial.
Rah rah. “What’s going on?”
“Well, we’re about to embark on our first cake-tasting event,” Tracy said. “Heather says we’ll get to sample from ten different cakes. Can you believe that? It will be like heaven.”
“Sounds like fun. Hey, Heather, I know you’re busy with the wedding-planning activities, but have you been able to—”
“That’s why we called, silly,” she said with a giggle. She seemed to speak in giggle snippets.
“I spoke to one of my old homies,” she said…again with a giggle. “Homies. I crack myself up.”
“Come on, baby. Don’t leave Ozzie hanging. He’s got work to do.”
Thank you, Tracy. “Anyway,” she said. “She did me a solid and checked into your question about who visited the Dixons after the birth of their son. I have the names of nine people. Ready?”
I set the phone down, put it on speaker, and readied my hands over the keys of my tablet. “Go ahead.”
She rattled off eight names. They all had Dixon or Goldman as the last name. Goldman was likely Billy’s wife’s maiden name. “And the last one?” I asked.
“Someone named Rosie Avila.”
A chill went through my body. Avila had to be Rosie’s maiden name. Billy had been telling the truth. My mind scrambled to make sense of it. Why would Rosie ever go see the baby of the man who’d emotionally tortured her? Could it be something as simple as Rosie finding it within herself to forgive Billy and open herself up to participating in the joy of the occasion? Possible, yes. Probable, no.
I’ve seen Rosie’s manipulative—rather immature—side, even as I remained open and sympathetic to her plight. Her stories. She was my client. Yet, she’d shown some serious fangs.
“So, not to make you feel guilty or anything, Ozzie,” Heather said as she was laughing, “but I had to promise my old homie that I’d let her be a bridesmaid in our wedding.”
“What’s another one at this point?” Tracy said. “You already have ten.”
They both laughed now. The wedding of the century. I thanked both of them. Just before I hung up, Heather said, “Don’t worry, Oz. We have you on the guest list. You and three hundred other people.”
We ended the call to the sound of her laughter, and I sat there in the silence, thinking.
Didn’t take long.
31
My phone rang again. I saw the name on the screen and answered with a question. “Have you forgotten about me?”
“Even if I try, Oz, you’re always on my mind,” Brook said. “Not sure what I’d do with myself if you didn’t hand me these psycho cases.”
“It’s my honor. What do you have for me?”
“I’m pulling into your parking lot.”
“My parking lot. Why?” I walked over to the front blinds.
“You’re connected to the victim of a murder, so we need to talk.”
Lovely. More shit to deal with. “I have no idea who’s making the connection, Brook, and, frankly, I’m a little taken aback that you would think that—”
“Put a lid on it. Just standard protocol. We need to talk.”
“Well, come on in.”
“Not at your place. We can talk on our way to the crime scene.”
I would have to set aside my additional research on this Billy/Rosie connection until later. I agreed to meet her outside in five minutes. Moving at the pace of a ninety-year-old—please see: jaw, head, ribs, hip—I made myself presentable, throwing on a pair of jeans and the first T-shirt I could find. It was another San Francisco T-shirt. I had a dozen of them, if not more. I gave my hair the five-finger wet rake, and then made my way to her car. She pulled out of the parking lot, but not before doing a double-take on my appearance.<
br />
“Please, no comments about my clothes.”
“No, it’s just your chin. Still looks painful.”
“It is, but better than yesterday. Have you heard from Rosie?” I asked.
“No. I was hoping you had.”
“So, you interviewed Earl—”
She took a hand off the steering wheel, even while she was making a left turn. “And his prick of a lawyer.”
“Him too. So, Rosie didn’t help you with corroborating evidence.”
“You got it. We were hosed going in there, but I still had hope.”
“You tried to break him?”
“It was more about fooling him into thinking we had more than we did. I couldn’t throw out Rosie’s name. She has not confirmed, to me, at least, that she’d overheard Earl threaten to have Stuart Benson killed. And I knew, if I used her name, she would instantly become a target.”
I felt my shoulders drop a bit. “Unfortunate, but smart move.”
“Well, dammit, because of her going AWOL on us, we had to let Earl walk.” She pounded the steering wheel.
We passed under the shade of a large oak, and I thought about Rosie’s demeanor when I’d last seen her, after she’d humiliated Nicole and then asked me if I wanted to commence in a revenge fuck. Hearing the phrase echo in my mind made my blood boil—at Rosie, and especially at myself. I turned to Brook. “I don’t know where her mind is at right now. Maybe she decided to take whatever money she has and run off to where she can’t be found.”
“Possible. But if she runs, Earl will know that we’re looking at him again, now because of her being missing. She better get her ass into a police station so we can put her in protective custody, and then we can go back and nail Earl.”
ON The Rocks (An Ozzie Novak Thriller, Book 3) (Redemption Thriller Series 15) Page 13