Shame ON You (An Ozzie Novak Thriller, Book 4) (Redemption Thriller Series 16)

by John W. Mefford

  Somehow, we’d been able to peel away her nasty exterior and find something resembling a human being. My mind quickly went back to an earlier statement.

  “Jean, you said you missed Ally. You didn’t mention Chantel.”

  She’d begun to shift in her seat, but she paused for a second, her eyes wide. It was as though I’d uncovered a secret.

  “Jean?” Ivy got her attention. “You are aware that Chantel has been missing, right? Everyone wants to find her.”

  A deep sigh. She turned her head back to the pictures for a quick second; then she eyed us like she was sizing us up, maybe wondering if she could really trust us. Finally, she said, “Chantel came to visit me. Maybe a week ago or so. I’m not good with remembering days. I had no idea she’d been missing for two months, though.”

  Ivy and I both inched forward in our chairs. There was hope, real hope that we could find Chantel and reunite her with her parents.

  “This is great news, Jean. Can you tell us where she is now?”

  “No clue. She wasn’t in the best of shape.” She adjusted the shawl on her shoulders, but it wouldn’t sit just right, so she grabbed it and tossed it on the bed behind her.

  “Can you elaborate?” Ivy asked.

  “She was…” She took a swallow, tried to clear her throat. I saw a glass over by the sink. “Can I get you some water?”

  She flicked her fingers and nodded. I moved quickly and brought her a glass of water. She chugged it. “Thank you.”

  I felt privileged to have drawn such praise from Jean. “You were saying…” I motioned with my hand for her to continue.

  “Chantel was a mess.” She squeezed her eyes shut and took another sip of water. “She’s got demons inside of her no human being should ever have to deal with. I know she’s at least partially responsible, but I can tell you that addiction, in and of itself, is not a choice. That poor girl.” She brought a finger to her eye as tears welled.

  “What did the two of you discuss?”

  “I was so happy to see her. It had been a while. Too long. But she was a little paranoid. No, she was more than a little paranoid. Very skittish. Her face was pale, and she would drift off and start mumbling all sorts of nonsense. I think she was coming off some type of LSD trip. I wondered right then and there if I should have called a hospital to pick her up. But I know Chantel. If it’s not her decision, she fights it every step of the way.”

  I wondered about Chantel’s ties to Psycho Cobb. Find him, and we might find Chantel.

  “So, she just came by to visit?”

  She looked off. She suddenly seemed timid.

  “What is it, Jean? You can tell us,” Ivy said. “Everything little thing you tell us may help us find her before something happens.”

  She licked her thin lips. “I gave her some money.”

  “That’s why she came to see you…to convince her GT to give her money so she could run off and buy drugs?” Ivy shot back. She brushed locks of hair out of her face. I calmly put my hand on her chair, hoping she’d catch the signal to dial back the accusations. We couldn’t afford to have Jean go back to thinking of us as the enemy.

  Jean clenched a fist and brought it to her mouth. “Oh God, I hope not.” She dipped her head. I found a box of tissues and handed her one. She lifted up and kept speaking. “I wasn’t sure what to do, but she had nothing. Her clothes were filthy, her hair was a mess. She looked like she’d been living in a sewer.”

  “You were put in a tough position, Jean. I’m sure it’s not easy on you.” I could feel Ivy’s eyes searing into the side of my head. But, hey, I was sticking with the carrot instead of the stick.

  “I told her she needed to check herself into a rehab facility. I made her promise me that she’d do that.”

  “How did she respond?”

  “She started rambling on and on about Ally. She even began to cry.”

  “Ally?” I said. “What did you do?”

  She held up the tissue. “I gave her some of these. What else do you think I’d do, nimrod?”

  There went all the goodwill. But I acted like I didn’t hear her.

  “What was she saying about Ally?

  “Oh, how much she missed her, how much she loved her, and just rambling on and on about it. I couldn’t get her to calm down. I thought she was going to really lose it there for a second.”

  “What made her calm down?”

  “Well, I asked if she wanted me to call her mom to come pick her up. She started shaking her head and said she had things she had to do.” She put a hand on the top of her head. “She started to get up and walk out, and then she started talking to herself.”

  “Can you recall anything she said?”

  Now, both hands touched her temples, as if she were willing herself to remember more details. Then she shook a finger at us. “No one has believed me.”

  Ivy glanced in my direction. “We believe you, Jean. Tell us what you heard.”

  “What? No, that’s what Chantel was muttering—‘No one has believed me.’ She also said something about not believing in ghosts and that she couldn’t be afraid of someone any longer.”

  “Someone? Who, Jean? Who was she afraid of?” I was about to come out of my seat. It was Psycho Cobb. It had to be. Or maybe someone else from that drug-infested world.

  She opened her lips, but no words came out for a second; her expression was one of deep concentration.

  We waited. I was holding my breath and felt sure Ivy was too.

  “I don’t recall the name. Maybe I didn’t quite hear it.”

  I was prepared to wait until the cows came home. I didn’t want to feed her an answer and simply have her agree. Ivy, however, had other ideas.

  “Cobb. Psycho Cobb. Does that name ring a bell?” Ivy asked. I stared at her with wide eyes. She certainly didn’t lack assertiveness.

  “Nah. I would have remembered anyone with a name like that, like the great Ty Cobb.”

  Another baseball fan? Maybe we could hook her up with Captain Porter. We asked a couple of follow-ups, but Jean looked tired. She said she needed to take her morning nap. I handed her a card, and we walked to the door. My phone started buzzing in my pocket. I took it out, saw that it was Brook. I showed the screen to Ivy.

  “Oh, one more thing,” Jean said, holding up her hand. “When she was going on and on about ghosts, she said something about cemeteries. Wait…” A hand to the head again. I stared at the phone, eager to pick up the call from Brook. The APD could have picked up Cobb. Hurry up, Jean!

  “The Austin State Hospital Cemetery. Yep, she mentioned that one….at least I think she did.”

  We thanked her and asked her to keep in touch if she remembered anything else.

  The minute we made it to the hallway, I returned Brook’s call. I said, “Tell me you have Cobb in custody.”

  “I wish. But we do have a dead body. And you know this person pretty darn well.”

  21

  An APD uniformed officer ushered me and Ivy down the same alley we’d visited the day prior, when we were looking for Cobb. Because we’d found no one, including Cobb, we considered that a waste of our time.

  Apparently, we’d missed something.

  The officer walked just beyond the dumpster on the east side of the alley. We followed him through an open door.

  “Weren’t these doors all locked when we were here yesterday?” Ivy asked me.

  I nodded as we approached Brook and a woman who wasn’t speaking English. I could see Porter pacing near some crates a ways off, a phone to his ear.

  We were surrounded by officers and light stands. I saw a sheet covering a body over in the corner, near a metal counter.

  “De nada,” Brook said to the woman, who padded away with another officer.

  “You know Spanish?” Ivy acted as though Brook could speak pig Latin.

  “Kind of goes with the territory of my job,” she said.

  “So, tell me you were just teasing me on the phone. You don’t have
Cobb in custody, so I’m wondering if one of his fellow drug-dealing colleagues got pissed and he’s the one with the sheet over him.”

  “Nice theory,” Brook said. “But you’re wrong.”

  “So, who is it?” Ivy asked.

  “Turns out that guy in the abandoned apartment complex was telling the truth.” Brook extended her arm to the dead body. “That, my friends, is one Melvin Adler. Age twenty-one. A high-school dropout, served time in juvie for robbing a 7-Eleven to get his next fix.”

  I scanned the room. “How long has he been dead?”

  “The ME is guessing less than twenty-four hours. Maybe less than twelve.”

  “Cobb. He’s got to be the one who killed Melvin, right? I’m thinking that Melvin witnessed Cobb killing the woman, and then Cobb maybe saw him talking to us, or saw the cops show up at the apartment complex, and he thought Melvin had ratted him out. He knew he couldn’t risk a murder charge, so he killed the one person who could finger him.” The words tumbled out of me. I took a deep breath.

  Brook popped my shoulder. “I think we’re on the same wavelength or something. I’m leaning in that direction, and I have a little more evidence to back it up.”

  She led us over to a metal counter against the wall on the opposite side of the body. I saw drug paraphernalia scattered across it. “Don’t touch. In this mess are a few pieces of paper. Essentially, receipts or maybe just reminders of people who owe someone money. You see one right here.”

  I read the scribble: “‘Tasmanian Devil, 2Gs,’ with an arrow pointing to CJ.” I lifted my eyes toward Brook. “So you’re thinking Cobb used this as his office?”

  “At least part of the time, yes.”

  “So the Tasmanian Devil reference…is that some type of drug?”

  Ivy moved me out of the way, leaned over, and inspected the items on the table; then she turned to me and Brook. “A lot of the LSD packaging and, therefore, marketing, is around the Looney Tune themes. Bugs Bunny is the most popular.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I’ve been around a lot of messed-up kids, Oz. Also, I ask Stan lots of questions.”

  “How’s he doing?” Brook asked.

  “Stan? Oh, he’s still half of his prior self. I swear, he gets thinner by the week. He’s training like a mad dog for the Boston Marathon. Even while training, he and his cousin Nick are competing. I think they’re trying to come up with a great bet between them for the race.”

  “I would think that ‘survive’ would be at the top of the list. Lots of hills up in Boston,” Brook said.

  “You’ve been to Boston?” I asked.

  “My ex is from there. What I remember most is him and his foul-mouthed brothers sitting around drinking beers and pretending it was 1972, ordering women around like we’d been put on Earth to serve in their honor.”

  I loved her sarcasm. “You married a guy like that? I’m not sure I know that Brook.”

  “Temporary insanity.” She rolled her eyes. There had to be a deeper story, but now wasn’t the time to peel back the layers. Later…after we found Chantel and took Cobb off the street.

  “So, we’ve had the CSI guys pulling prints off everything they can find,” Brook said, leading us out of the throng of people near the crime scene. “With any luck at all, we might be able to confirm Cobb was here and wrote these notes.”

  I looked over at the sheet. Melvin wasn’t a violent person, from what we’d witnessed. He was just a desperate man who couldn’t find a way out of the vicious cycle of drug addiction. His death was sad, just like so many others who couldn’t find a way out. “What was the cause of death for Melvin?”

  “It’s ugly. Blunt-force trauma.”

  Ivy tilted her head. “Like the girl at the apartment complex.”

  “Similar, yep. Melvin has more damage to the back of his head, though, as if someone hit him from behind.”

  I looked around the dusty concrete floor. “Has your team already taken the murder weapon from the scene?”

  “Haven’t found it yet. Looked inside and out.”

  “Did you check the dumpster?” Ivy asked.

  “We did.”

  “Did someone actually get in and dig through the trash?”

  Brook put a hand on her hip. “Porter wanted me to jump in there. I told him to go take a flying leap. We got some rookie to do it.”

  We all smiled.

  I snapped my fingers. “What about the prints from the pipe that killed the girl?”

  “So far, nothing. Only your big shoe print. What size do you wear?” Brook asked.

  “Fourteen.”

  Brook arched both eyebrows. Porter pranced over and took her to the side.

  “Did you see that, Oz?” Ivy flicked her fingers off my arm.

  I looked beyond Ivy to the ME crouched over Melvin’s body. “See what?”

  She cupped a hand over her mouth but not so much that I couldn’t read her lips. She said in a low voice, “You’re being coy. Brook keeps giving off these signals. I think she’s into you.”

  “What? That’s crazy. Do you know how much of an age difference there is between us?”

  “Please don’t say that where she can hear you. That’s just mean.”

  “I don’t mean anything by it. I was just stating a fact. Brook is cool and quite attractive, but she’s just a friend.”

  “Well, fine, but if you want to remain friends and get her to help us, don’t mention her age.”

  I held up both hands. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I’m married, remember.”

  “Right. Nicole is in Italy learning the cha-cha-cha with some guy named Guido.”

  I looked at her with a blank expression. “I thought you’d be pissed that I said that about Nicole.”

  “Oh, I completely ignored that part of it. I just realized, though, that you’re finally catching on to my brand of sarcasm. Up top.” I raised my hand for a high-five.

  She turned and walked out the door.

  22

  Before Ivy and I made it back to our car, Porter caught up to us and said the least we could do for calling in favors with Brook was to scour the area, looking for the murder weapon. Apparently, three other violent crimes had all occurred that morning, and he’d lost every other available detective.

  It was nice to be needed but not for three hours.

  “Should we charge the city for this work or the Gibsons?” I felt a few drops of rain on my head and saw a dark cluster of clouds moving in from the north.

  Down on the ground, running her hands through some tall weeds, Ivy leaned backward, her face etched with discomfort. “Damn, I’m out of shape.” She looked up at me. “The city. But I think Porter will laugh if he sees an invoice from ECHO or from Gartner-Novak. By the way, when are you going to come out of the closet and finally tell the world you’re a solo PI firm?”

  She smirked at her play on words.

  “Soon,” I said. “Just need to get my website up and running, and then I’ll be ready to take that final transition step.”

  Brook came out and rescued us, said we could leave. We didn’t put up a fight.

  We picked up Mackenzie from Tito’s art studio. She was in the middle of painting a surprise for me. I saw the proof in colors of red, white, and orange paint on her hands and face. She instantly begged me to bring her back the next day. Tito shrugged. “No sweat off my back. Luella might drop by while I catch a game. But Mac is welcome any time. I love seeing her work her craft.”

  Mackenzie ran off to the car. I was halfway out the door, but I stopped and spun on a heel. “You called my daughter ‘Mac.’”

  He turned his palms up. “Yeah, and?”

  “Her name is Mackenzie.”

  “Haven’t you heard she likes to go by ‘Mac’ now? Doesn’t matter to me. I was just trying to go with the flow, knowing kids go through all sorts of changes.”

  Mac. It didn’t sound right. And it didn’t fit the cutest girl in the world. Once we reached home, I walked into Ma
ckenzie’s room. She was looking at something on her phone, giggling. “If you have a minute, I’d like to talk to you about your desire to change your name.”

  “Now? I’m kind of busy.” She rolled onto her back and laughed again at something on her phone.

  “Mackenzie, I’m not real thrilled with you being on the phone all the time.”

  She peeked her eyes above the tiny screen. “I’m just in a group chat with some friends. Ariel’s cracking me up.”

  “You should do something else—not be on your phone all the time.”

  “You mean like go paint for a few hours?” She grinned. Sarcasm from my own daughter. Wonder who she got that from?

  “She’s got a good point, Oz.”

  I turned around and snorted out a laugh of my own. Ivy was in some type of body suit that covered her head. She looked like she was going deep-sea diving. “New fashion trend?”

  “I’m going for a jog.”

  “It’s starting to rain.”

  “That’s why I’m wearing this get-up. Saul gave it to me for Christmas. I’m not real big on working out, but Stan motivated me a little. I can tell I need to get my blood pumping. Back in thirty.”

  She ran out the door. Before I turned around, Mackenzie wheeled past me, grabbing her coat. “Where are you going?”

  “Ariel’s house.”

  “Don’t you need to ask first?”

  “She said her dad is cool with it. He likes having kids over.”

  “I meant me.” I crossed my arms and tried to act serious. I don’t think I pulled it off.

  “May I please go over to Ariel’s?”

  The rain was coming down rather hard, and it was dark outside. I grabbed the umbrella and said I’d escort her down to the Sandbergs’ apartment. Once outside, she put her arm around me to stay under the umbrella. The rain pounded the metal carport. To me, it sounded like a herd of wild bulls. I noticed a few of the lights in the parking lot were out, and then I recalled that Ivy was out in this weather.

  “She’s fricking crazy,” I said to myself.

  “What did you say, Dad?” Mackenzie yelled.

  “I’m wondering if Ivy is running or swimming in this rain.”