Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
FADE
Erez goes back to work at the beginning of July, though I don’t think he’s actually taking clients because he’s afraid that Zephyr will find something that would require him to leave without warning.
I miss his presence in my studio. Even though he only spent a month sitting in the chair I purchased for him, drawing and listening to me record, it feels like he was always there. Now, I look at the chair, and my chest tightens because he’s not there.
It’s a strange feeling, as if I’m seeing phantoms of a past lover, and it makes my chest hurt. That’s not the case. I know he’ll be back later, or I’ll meet him at Poison Ink. I’ve been going into Zeph’s office on the Van Doren Estate with him in the afternoons.
More than that, it feels like we’re doing “couple things” these days. Somehow, the past five years of dating that Erez has been oblivious to have now progressed to a relationship that he still doesn’t see unfolding around him.
On the one hand, I don’t want to interrupt the progression of what’s happening between us. If I let it keep going, we’ll eventually retire in a senior home, having spent an entire life together. I’m pretty confident it’s going to happen if I let it.
I want to let it. Truly, I do. But a niggling voice in my head says that we have to have a discussion. It needs to be mutual. It needs to be intentional.
“It’s not like I’m tricking him into sitting on my dick,” I mutter at the bowl of chicken salad I’m currently mixing.
Everything sexual has been by his prompting.
Hell, most physical interactions have been—especially when they first started.
Maybe I come onto him sometimes now, but it’s not like I wouldn’t back off if he said no.
Just as I’m finishing my sandwich, Erez calls. A smile tugs at my lips as I answer through a chew. “Hey.”
“Meet me at Zeph’s office?” he asks. “He found something.”
My heart jumps as I nod. “Yep. On my way. What is it?”
“Dunno. Something about the owner of the laundromat.”
“He found them?”
“Maybe? He didn’t say.”
I’m already moving through the kitchen, putting away shit that can’t be left out then grabbing a pre-mixed protein shake on my way out the door. “On my way. I’ll meet you there in twenty. You want me to pick you up?”
There’s a pause, then Erez says, “Yes.”
Grinning, I change my expected arrival. “Be there in eleven.”
Erez is waiting outside Poison Ink with his helmet in hand. He climbs onto the back of my bike and wraps around me tightly. I think he’s anxious for answers but nervous for what he’ll learn.
We’ve lived in a bubble for the past week or two. No new information that was worth anything. A tally on the number of faces that Alice painted being identified as real people. Who they are. What walks of life they come from. Their criminal records.
With no obvious leads on them besides Alice’s paintings, Zephyr hasn’t dug into anyone deeply yet. I’m not sure what trail he’s following, but I think he’s looking for something specific. Maybe it was the laundromat owner since that’s what he called Erez about.
Once we drive through the wall of shrubbery on the estate, I’m careful to head straight for the office building, especially when I see an unmarked white truck cross the road ahead of me in the distance. I don’t know who they are, but they respond quickly, coming out of nowhere.
I’m not in a huge hurry to meet them again. They didn’t come at me with weapons, but I had no doubt that they were the clean-up crew if need be.
Zephyr is in his office when we get to the seventh floor.
Lanzo is there today as well, though there’s a chilly silence in the air when we arrive.
I nearly choke on air when I see Aven’s face in the wall with their dick unicorn horn.
Now it’s hanging down between their eyes and ending at the tip of their nose.
“Oh. My. God,” Erez says as he looks at Aven. It’s clear that he’s struggling to fight laughter. “You figured out how to make that thing soft, did you?”
“My horn?” Aven asks. “Yes. Now it has a lot of different states of hard and soft. I can even make it an innie if I choose. Want to see?”
“Maybe later,” Zephyr says, lips twitching in amusement. “We have work to do, Aven. Remember?”
Aven sighs dramatically. “You’re no fun when you’re working.” Their face vanishes from the glass wall.
Zephyr shakes his head as he taps some buttons on the keyboard, and the wall behind him turns into a reflection of his screen. A man’s face appears.
“Do you recognize him?” Zephyr asks.
I’m sure he’s not talking to me, but I shake my head anyway. Erez does as well.
“He doesn’t remind me of any of the men Alice painted,” Erez says.
“He is and he’s not.” A handful of pages from Alice’s journal appear, but they’re not the worst content. Most of the time, this man is standing, looking down at the person whose perspective we’re watching from. Disapproving. Angry. Indifferent.
One thing’s very clear, though. That man is the same as the image of the living man in the photo Zeph pulled up.
“He’s an observer of abuse?” Erez asks.
“I think he’s the organizer of the operation,” Zephyr says.
“He’s the owner of the laundromat, which wasn’t easy to figure out.
The name on the lease was that of a person who doesn’t exist, which means I went down a rabbit hole of all the leases of the strip mall to see what other shady business was going on.
How could it have tied in? Then I looked into the corporation that owned the strip mall and the one that managed it, figuring maybe that would give me leads. ”
“Did it?”
Zeph grins. “Yep. There were legitimate businesses there. I’d say two-thirds of them were legitimate and legal, but the others were all fake people.
Non-registered businesses without licenses to operate in the state of Arizona.
I actually think that they sold the strip mall not because businesses were failing—that was just an easy and believable explanation—but because police were beginning to poke around and they wanted any evidence of illegal activity destroyed.
“However, I digress. Following all the names of people who don’t exist was an endless trail. One leads to another fake identity and so on. I found pretty quickly that they were almost always circulating around each other, though. Whatever they were doing, they were doing it together.”
“What are the names?” Lanzo asks.
Zephyr taps rapidly on his computer a few times, and a long list of names appears off to the side.
“That’s… a lot of fake people,” I say as my eyes scan it.
Zephyr nods. “It is. This is the puzzle I’ve been following.
Last week, I whittled it down to this.” The single list splits into seven smaller lists.
“These smaller lists each represent a single person, seven total. While following any of them would probably lead me somewhere… interesting… I was looking for the owner of the laundromat specifically. That’s the location in Alice’s journal, so I think that needs to be our starting point.
She was either kidnapped from there, or that’s where this operation was based. ”
“Probably both, given what’s in the basement,” Erez says.
“I agree,” Zephyr says. “Sparing you the many dead ends I met as I tracked this man down, I’ll cut to the chase.
This list of people represents one man. The owner of the laundromat and the shop beside it.
It’s curious to note that while the names on the licenses were fake, they were both legitimate businesses.
I found this important because it was weird.
Once I found him and could financially tie him to the laundromat as the owner, I dug into him specifically. ”
“What about the rest of these lists?” I ask.
“I’m sure they’re all tied together in some way, and I anticipate that there’s going to be something huge and ugly that will be uncovered when I get there, but right now, I’m interested in the message Alice left.
I’m looking for her truth. I know this man is involved.
I’d rather spend my time investigating someone I know is involved than a whole lot of unknowns. ”
I nod. That makes sense even though I would bet my left ass cheek that at least two of these lists are involved too. If not all of them.
“His name is Herman Trumpstein. He’s got a laundry list of failed business endeavors for which he accepted money then failed to fulfill promises.
Equally long is the number of businesses he’s run into the ground.
He has a long criminal history—fraud, sexual assault, tax evasion, etc—that he’s somehow managed to snake his way out of with little more than fines.
Honestly, he has all the hallmarks of someone that needs to be looked into.
“So I did and found that he, still and once again, owns a handful of legitimate businesses with proper licensure but all under false names.”
“How are they approved when the name is fake?” Lanzo asks.
“Seems to me like he has someone in the local and state government in his pocket, but again, that’s not a path I’m looking into right now.
This is a very big, sprawling path of endless directions I could branch off into, so every time I get to a point where I could literally look down half a dozen avenues, I ask which one is most likely tied in with Alice. ”
Five business fronts pop up on the wall, with the most relevant information becoming larger as the less relevant information shrinks and moves to the side. There’s another laundromat, I see. A shelter. A convenience store, jewelry boutique, and a coffee shop.
“Here’s what I found most interesting,” Zephyr says, and boxes burst out of the five businesses. “Here are the security feeds. What stands out to you?”
Erez and Lanzo get to their feet to approach the wall and study the live security feeds, so I join them, moving from one business to the next. I haven’t gotten to the last yet when Lanzo says, “These feeds are useless. They’re not pointing anywhere important.”
“Exactly.”
The wall changes again, and the animal shelter gets large, as well as the four feeds.
One is pointed at the counter, facing the person working there, not the customer that comes in.
The other three are watching the kennels in the back.
We’re looking at the animals, not in any position to see anyone’s face.
“Are there feeds on a different circuit?” Lanzo asks.
Zephyr nods then shakes his head. “That was my thought too. I couldn’t find any, so I asked Aven to look. They didn’t find any either.”
“We need to check it out,” Erez says.
In the middle of his sentence, there’s a knock on the door. It opens, and Zephyr’s partner, Liam, walks inside with a minute smile at everyone looking at him.
“We are,” Zephyr says. “Liam and I are going with cameras. Depending on what we find, we’ll send someone else in.”
“I’m going,” Erez says.
Zephyr grips his arms. “No. Not this time. I really need you to stay here and watch the screens of our cams with Lanzo. You will go next time if we find that it’s worth looking into.
There’s a chance that this is also a dead end and everything that feels like evidence of somewhere to investigate is circumstantial and happenstance.
It’s an animal shelter, not somewhere with coveted pharmaceuticals or large amounts of cash on hand or priceless jewelry.
We’re seeing holes in the feeds, but maybe they just don’t think it’s necessary for this type of business. ”
Erez hates this, but he takes a seat, scowling at his brother. “Fine.”
Erez and I watch as Lanzo hooks Liam and Zephyr up with concealed cameras—in glasses for Liam and a pendant for Zephyr.
Lanzo uses Zephyr’s computers to get the feeds of both in live time on the wall.
Not the same wall where the information Zeph had laid out for us is, but the wall behind the table Erez and I usually sit at when visiting.
They leave, and we’re left in the office. Erez is annoyed as he stares at the camera feeds.
“Do they have sound?” I ask.
“Zeph’s does,” Lanzo says. “Liam’s are visual only but a crisper view.” He’s tapping away at his tablet while he answers, not watching the camera feeds. I split my attention between the feeds and Lanzo, wondering what he’s doing.
I practically fall out of my chair when Aven appears on the table, dick horn now fully erect. I think it’s fucking glittering at the tip.
They give me a grin as I climb back onto my chair, hand over my chest. I’m never going to get used to an intelligent hologram popping up in the middle of the table like a solid figure.
“While we wait for the boys to arrive on site, I thought I’d share with you what I’ve recently found in the feeds of these five businesses.
” A screen suddenly floats in the air between us.
Five calendars appear. As they speak, dates on the calendars turn red.
“Like a broken record, the security feeds shut down for twenty-four-hour increments, seventy-two hours apart. Not the same days but they overlap.”
“Every three days, security goes down for at least one of the businesses,” Erez says. “What does that mean?”
“In about thirty minutes, we’re going to find out since the shelter’s feeds are going to shut down,” Aven says.
“Did you tell Zeph?” Erez asks.
“I did. They’re going to make sure to get inside and visit some animals in that window. Then they’ll hang around when their visit is over and see what there is to see.”
This is it. I may have low stakes in this other than it’s deeply important to the man I love, but chills raise gooseflesh all along my body. We’re going to find some answers.
My attention turns to Erez, who’s staring at the feeds as if he’s under a spell.
Zephyr and Liam just pulled up to the shelter.
I have a feeling this isn’t going to be good.
Whatever they find is going to haunt Erez more than Alice’s death already does.
I’d love to hide him away and take care of it without him being involved or knowing the details.
He’s already spent a decade punishing himself, and I imagine that punishment is only going to get worse when he learns the true depth of how Alice suffered.