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

by John W. Mefford

  “Okay, I’ve deducted that you work for Franklin and his charming lawyer, Winston Palmer.”

  “I’ll give you that one.”

  “Cool. I’m one for one.”

  “You might want to stop while you’re batting a thousand.”

  He help up a finger, and I noticed a pen tucked behind his ear. He went on. “It’s not how many hits you get; it’s getting the biggest hit at the biggest point in the game—am I right?”

  “You want me to call you ‘Mr. October’?” That was a vague reference to what sportswriters had dubbed Reggie Jackson, of the New York Yankees.

  “I shouldn’t have brought up the baseball analogy. I don’t really follow the game. But I’m guessing that you came here to talk to Elaine about a possible alibi for Franklin.”

  My facial muscles didn’t budge.

  “Come on, Oz. I’m not exactly asking you to give me specific quotes. What I just said, a fifth-grader could have deduced.”

  “Fourth-grader.”

  “Huh?”

  “My daughter is in the fourth grade. She could have figured it out.” I slipped my phone into the front pocket of my shirt. Nicole would have to wait for now. “Look, it’s rather obvious that you want to know if Elaine was able to provide an alibi for her husband for the night of the murder.”

  I was almost certain Tracy knew nothing of the video. Unless he had a contact in the police department or DA’s office. Damn. It was possible.

  “I’ll be transparent,” he said. “Yes, I want to know if Franklin has an alibi. But…” He rubbed his face as if he had a five o’clock shadow. But he was baby-faced. Still, I could see him pondering how to phrase his next statement. For the first time since getting in the car, I considered the idea that he had information that I didn’t. Just saying it to myself sounded ridiculous.

  “I can’t tell you who, but I have a source who told me there’s video that shows Franklin on the same floor of the suite where Pamela Connor was murdered, near the time of death. That’s the DA’s big piece of evidence.”

  Damn. He was good.

  “Okay, so you know what I know then.”

  He nodded, stared me down. Then he said, “So you flew all the way up here to confirm if Elaine had an alibi for her husband?”

  We hit some traffic, and the cab slowed to a mere ten miles per hour. I felt trapped. I cracked the window, and cool air rushed across my face.

  “Are you going to answer or just ignore me?”

  This whole thing was becoming annoying. “Here’s the thing, Tracy. If I tell you anything you don’t know, then it will be front-page news tomorrow. My client’s case will be toast. The DA’s office will know everything that the defense knows…or will know very soon.”

  “I won’t print anything until you give me the green light. Honest. Swear to God on a stack of Bibles.”

  “Surprised you didn’t say your mother’s grave.”

  “That too. Throw in my dad, even Heather.”

  I chuckled. “Glad Heather didn’t hear you say that. Anything for the story, huh?”

  “It’s worked in the past. I held up my end of the bargain.”

  He was right. He was on the crime scene right after the FBI and police had shown up when Nicole and I had escaped the clutches of Calvin Drake. He’d honored our request to keep our personal lives—her affair—out of the story. So, there was some trust there.

  I thought more about what he might know, how he could help me. I needed someone I could trust who could filter information to me. Right now, it seemed like I was in the middle of the Gulf in the dark of night, with sharks swimming around me.

  “If I trust you, Tracy, then you know that if you betray that trust, my reputation will turn to shit. I’ll be blacklisted. No one will hire me. And as I told you, I now have a daughter I need to feed and one day put in college.”

  “I promise I won’t share anything you tell me with anyone. And I won’t print a word until you say it’s okay.”

  “Not even your bosses?”

  “No one.” He arched his back. Maybe that was symbolic of him being a straight-shooter with me. It was more likely that he was just champing at the bit to find out what I knew.

  “I’m almost there. But only if you share with me everything you know.”

  He twisted his lips. “Okay. Deal. So, did you confirm that Elaine Marshall could not provide an alibi for her husband?”

  “She gave me an alibi. She was in bed with Franklin at the time of the murder. By the way, in case you ever meet her, I’d advise not referring to Franklin as her husband.”

  He ignored my last comment and went for the prime meat: the alibi. “But how is that possible, Ozzie? There’s the video.” He grabbed his pen from behind his ear and began playing with it. “Unless…” He paused, his mental wheels churning. “Unless my source was lying, hoping I’d run with the story just to…I don’t know, maybe scare the defense.”

  “I saw the video.”

  He smacked the seat. “You saw the fucking video?”

  The cab driver looked back at us. I smiled and said, “We’re good.”

  The driver put an earbud in one ear and then started mumbling. Maybe he was on a call.

  Tracy continued in a calmer voice, although his eyes were bugging out. “You saw the video?”

  “Yes, I saw the video.”

  “How? Scratch that.”

  “Good. I can’t say. You have your sources; I have mine.”

  “Fucking A,” he said, a look of disbelief on his face. “So, again, how can he be on the video and in bed with his wife at the same time? Well, I guess I know the answer. She has to be lying.”

  “Possible. But I don’t think so. They’re going through a divorce. She’s put up with his cheating and lying shit for years. They have no money—he’s blown all of that. I can’t see any reason why she’d protect him.”

  “For their kids?”

  I shrugged. “Possible, but I don’t think she sees him as a good role model. Hell, she thinks his whole family are a bunch of lepers.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Let’s not get sidetracked. Bottom line is, I don’t know how to reconcile what my eyes saw on the video with what she told me. But I believe her…mostly. I’ve seen all sorts of people lie before, people I thought I knew very well. So, I can’t put it at a hundred-percent certainty.”

  He stared at the back of the front seat, still flicking the top of his pen, on, off, on off. It was like he was taking notes, but in his mind.

  “It’s my turn for a question now,” I said, waving my hand to get his attention.

  He blinked out of his trance.

  “Why couldn’t you have just called Elaine’s parents’ house? Or maybe found another reporter up this way who could have knocked on the door? Isn’t that how you guys stay in business these days—you basically barter with other news outlets to cover all the stories?”

  He pressed his lips together. For a moment, he looked like a little kid trying to keep the truth from escaping.

  “What do you know, Tracy?”

  He did the pen-clicking thing again for a few seconds and then huffed out a breath. “Over-night, I received a text that told me this murder might be much bigger than a lover’s quarrel, or whatever it ends up being.”

  I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck go stiff.

  “I received a text that showed ten screen shots of notes. And I’m almost certain they belong to Franklin T. Marshall.”

  My heart vaulted into the back of my throat.

  “You look shocked. I was too,” he said.

  “Who sent them to you?”

  “No clue. Came from a number I didn’t recognize. When I called the number, I got an automated message that said the number was no longer in service.”

  I thought for a moment, trying to understand who would have done this, who would have the most to gain from throwing Marshall under the bus.

  “You’re shaking your head. Why?” Tracy asked
.

  I didn’t know I had been. Might as well put it all out there. “I received the same series of text messages.”

  “Fuck. Ing. A.”

  “So you came up here just as a first step,” I said, “to get as much information as possible on the entire story, hoping that something dropped into your lap about who might have sent those messages and why.”

  He nodded. “And you did the same?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “But why?” he asked in a pontificating tone. “Why send us this information that seems to identify Franklin as the middleman in Calvin Drake’s corruption scam with the FDA?”

  We stared at each other for a second and then turned to look out our respective windows. Traffic was creeping along I-495, but at least I could see some of the iconic DC buildings, including the Washington Monument and the dome of the nation’s capitol. Two unrelated thoughts came to mind. First, I’d learned years ago in middle-school history class that the Texas capitol was fifteen feet taller than the nation’s capitol. That strange-but-true fact had always stuck with me. Nicole once said my mind was filled with trivial information. I said, “Trivia.” And she countered by saying “trivial” again and then pinched my ass. She had been poking fun at what I naturally remembered or didn’t.

  My second thought went straight to the people who walked in and out of the US Capitol every day, interacted with congressional staffers, special-interest groups, and political-action committees. They all performed those activities to persuade people in power—or the public in general, so they would persuade those in power. Franklin was one of the best at his job. He wasn’t like Jack Abramoff in one important way, though. Franklin hadn’t been caught doing anything illegal. If he and Winston were to figure out a way to have the murder charges dropped, what would stop Franklin from picking up where he left off? Sure, his image might be a bit tarnished. But in the contact sport of politics, a “falsely accused” tag was much easier to explain away than the words “convicted” and “felon.” Murder, even in that world, got people’s attention.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Tracy asked, breaking the silence in the cab.

  “Someone wants to ensure that Franklin T. Marshall burns at the stake. Which means that—”

  “The person who sent us these notes could be responsible for making it seem like Franklin murdered Pamela Connor,” he said.

  We finally arrived at Dulles. He was flying United. I was headed to the Delta gate.

  “Keep me in the loop, Ozzie.”

  I asked Tracy to do the same. On the flight back to Austin, all I could think about was the number of enemies Franklin T. Marshall might have.

  17

  Just before boarding the plane, Nicole called. I told her everything, including running into Tracy and the new alliance I’d made with him. Unsurprisingly, she was most flabbergasted by the fact that Franklin appeared to have an alibi.

  “But the video…” she said.

  I told her more facts needed to be uncovered. Camera footage could be reviewed elsewhere in the city that could show (or not) a picture of Franklin’s car headed home near the time that Elaine had given: 1:40 a.m.

  “But the video…”

  “You’re repeating yourself.”

  “Because I saw it with my own two eyes. Is there any way she’s covering for him?”

  “I already had this conversation with Tracy and have thought about it myself about a dozen times.”

  “And who won?

  “Seven to six in favor of ‘he has an alibi.’” I thought I heard her snicker. “Hell, I’m just going with my instinct on this one, despite what my eyes saw. Needless to say, if we’re right, then whoever sent the text message could very well have altered the video. Not sure how. But that’s up to the IT department to figure out.”

  “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “It’s not me.”

  “Not me, either,” she countered.

  “I guess we need to hire an IT consultant, then.”

  She said she’d work on it. I told her the cops and the DA would surely reach this same conclusion once they spoke with Elaine, which might be in less than twenty-four hours. Once their IT department reviewed the video with a little technical skepticism, they might be able to determine if it was altered. I reminded her the cops were not the bad guys.

  “Really, Sherlock?” She laughed.

  “I thought a few weeks ago you wanted to be Sherlock.”

  “I got a promotion. Yippee for me,” she joked.

  I told her I was going to try to set up a meeting with both Winston and Franklin as soon as I got back. Knowing it would be late, I asked if she would watch Mackenzie. “You might need to feed her, even get her to bed.”

  “Cool. Girls’ night. We’ll have a blast.”

  I thanked her and said goodbye. Just then I saw people being escorted off the plane. They made an announcement that the plane had failed a quality inspection. We’d be delayed for about forty-five minutes.

  I spent my available time setting up the meeting with Winston and Franklin for when I got back. Initially, Winston pushed back, saying that it would interrupt his night at the spa with the other partners.

  I considered taking a selfie of me rolling my eyes and sending it to him, but then I thought that would be childish in a professional setting. I kept that one in my back pocket, though, to use on a friend.

  That got me thinking about Brook. I’d heard some rather alarming things today about her boyfriend from Elaine. You could categorize them as strong opinions, but they still got my attention. I might need to have a heart-to-heart conversation with Brook in the next couple of days. And then I recalled her warnings to me about Rosie—my blind spot from a few weeks earlier. Had I listened to Brook then? Uh…no.

  They finally loaded us on the plane, pulled away from the gate, and we taxied out behind a slew of other planes readying for takeoff. Then came the storm to end all storms. We didn’t budge for another two hours. The passengers were about to start a non-peaceful revolt when the captain came over the loudspeaker and announced we were finally taking off. Everyone cheered.

  I rescheduled my meeting with Winston and Franklin for early the next morning. Winston shot me back a text saying I’d caused him to miss out on the group massage. In this instance, technology was a good thing, because if he’d said that to me in person or even over a phone line, it would have been next to impossible for me to not fire back some type of comment that would get me in trouble. Especially since I was cooped up on a plane with two hundred other people.

  We landed in Austin three hours and twenty minutes late. And yet the crew still stood at the entrance, smiled, and said, “Thank you for flying Delta.” That took courage.

  It was after one in the morning when I drove the Cadillac into our apartment parking lot. Someone had parked in my so-called reserved space, so I had to park beyond the Sandbergs’ building. I shut the car door and lumbered across the grounds. The space was still. Eerily still. Not a lick of wind, no movement by anything at all. I half expected a zombie to pop out from behind one of the parked cars.

  If only I believed in such nonsense.

  But still, it was damn quiet. The kind of quiet you might feel if you were walking on a stage in an auditorium and the spotlights blinded you. You couldn’t see, and silence engulfed you. But you knew people were out there watching your every movement. That happened to me when I was in sixth grade and was asked to speak at the high school during a school-district history program.

  That same sensation washed over me now. I looked around the complex, my eyes darting from each apartment window to the row of dark, empty cars. I almost wanted to speak out loud, but that would be beyond weird.

  I found my way to the door. It opened before I got my key in the lock. “Hey,” Nicole said through a yawn.

  I told her how sorry I was for being late. I offered her another special wish, since she’d been so helpful. She patted my chest and kissed my chee
k. “Not tonight, big boy. I’ve got a meeting in less than six hours in downtown.” Another yawn as she walked past me.

  I gave her gentle slap on the butt.

  “Call me after you meet with Winston and Franklin in the morning,” she said.

  I watched her until she got into her car and drove off. I hit the sack, wishing she had stayed.

  18

  An employee of Lockwood, Engle, Adams and Palmer walked up to the front desk two minutes after I’d walked through the glass doors. Up till that moment, I’d received no more than a monotone, “Hold on for a moment,” from the same snooty receptionist I’d met the last time I visited.

  “Garrett, can you do me a favor and order some lunch for me and my client who’s coming in at eleven?”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Engle,” Garrett said with the enthusiasm of a motivational speaker. It sounded so sincere. Not.

  Engle walked off, but Garrett still ignored me.

  “I think Mr. Palmer is expecting me, Garrett.”

  A roll of the eyes. He pushed away from his desk. “Follow me.”

  I couldn’t understand his disdain for me. I was just glad our interaction lasted only a few minutes. He could move on with his day and be miserable as long as he so desired.

  He handed me off to Winston and Franklin, who were whispering over a pot of coffee and some pastries.

  They turned in my direction. Winston offered up a fake smile. “Ozzie, good to see you. I appreciate you being proactive and setting up this meeting.”

  “Cut the crap, Winston,” Franklin said. His brow was folded like an accordion, and his lips were twisted in disdain. Winston was about to speak but apparently changed his mind, deferring to Franklin.

  “I know you spoke to my wife yesterday, Ozzie. I thought we had an agreement, dammit.”

  Franklin was gripping his mug of coffee with two hands. He slurped from it with the manners of a horse. He looked different—he was uncomfortably casual. Pressed jeans, dress shoes, a starched shirt…with cufflinks, no less.