The Advocate's Conviction (22 page)

30

“So, how’s Louie?” Bob asked as he sat down at the table in the Pho Pasteur restaurant with Sabre and JP.

“Who’s Louie?” Sabre asked before JP could answer.

“He’s JP’s gay, beagle puppy.”

Sabre’s face lit up with a smile. “You have a puppy?”

“He’s not gay,” JP said seriously.

“The dog’s favorite toy is a pink flamingo,” Bob teased.

“You’re the one who gave it to him,” JP protested.

“Yeah, but he wasn’t supposed to become so attached to it.”

“I don’t think the dog cares much what color the toy is,” Sabre said. The waiter walked up, interrupting their silly conversation, and took their orders. Sabre shook her head at Bob and turned to JP, changing the subject. “So what did you find out about the car on the video?”

“I just may know who it belongs to,” JP responded.

“You were actually able to track that old Plymouth from a picture of just a fender and partial bumper?” Sabre asked.

“Actually, having part of the grill in the picture made a big difference,” JP said.

“But still, you tracked it from very little information.”

“I think I tracked it,” JP said, correcting her. “I’m not one-hundred percent sure it’s the same car. If we had a license number or serial number it would be very simple, but now I’m tracking what I think is a 1948 Plymouth from the Fontana area. I started by going backwards from the Las Vegas Museum.”

“Huh? I’m confused,” Sabre said.

“My friend, Skip, is an expert on antique cars. He’s the one who verified the make and model of the car from the photo. He said they made the same body style from 1946 to 1948. Then the grill changed, so he knows it wasn’t any later than that. He also told me that the only serious collector in the area was a doctor from Fontana, who had collected every Chrysler made in the thirties and forties, but that was many years ago.”

“Anyone could have an old car. It wouldn’t have to be a collector,” Bob said.

“True, but most people who have a refurbished car have more than one, and generally they register them. Collectors are an unusual breed, especially of antique cars. They like to show them off.” He paused. “You’re right. It could be a car that was bought new and handed down through the generations. If that’s the case, it’s going to be a lot harder to trace. This is the easiest place to start.”

Sabre asked, “So why did you start in Las Vegas?”

“I’m sorry. I guess I was tryin’ to feed the horse before I harvested the hay. Let me back up. In the fifties or sixties there was a small antique car museum in Fontana called Ro-Val. It had mostly cars from the twenties and thirties, but before they closed their doors, they had many cars from the forties as well, due partially to a generous donation from a wealthy doctor. The doctor in Fontana who had the collection of old Chryslers left all his cars to Ro-Val when he opened himself up a worm farm.”

Sabre wrinkled her forehead. “A worm farm?”

“When he hit the dust. You know, passed on.” He looked down at her, raising his eyebrows as if she should know what that meant. “Anyway, his cars went to the museum. Then William Harrah, the big casino boss, bought all the cars when the museum closed its doors.”

“When the museum opened itself a worm farm?” she teased.

JP shook his head slightly, but gave her a half smile and continued. “From there the cars went to the museum in Las Vegas. But when I checked on the Plymouths in Las Vegas, they had Harrah’s 46 and the 47 but not the 48. There was a 1948 Plymouth in the museum but it was purchased from a guy in Indiana and the car had never been in the state of California. It was added to the collection about five years ago, so it was never a part of Harrah’s collection.”

“So the doctor had all the Chryslers in his collection, but the 1948 didn’t make it all the way to Las Vegas,” Sabre said. “So maybe Harrah kept it.”

“That’s what I thought.” JP paused while the waiter set the food down in front of them. “But I was able to get a list of the cars in the Harrah Collection as well as a list of the cars Harrah bought from Ro-Val, and it didn’t appear on either list.”

“So, the doctor’s estate either kept it or the doctor never had it.” Sabre sat her chopsticks down on the side of her bowl.

“Oh, the doctor had it all right. The word was he had every single Chrysler ever made for that two-decade span. Not only that, with a little more digging and the help of a young filly from the Las Vegas museum, I was able to get the original list of cars that was provided to Harrah when he first started negotiating with Ro-Val.”

“And it was on that list, but Harrah didn’t buy it?”

JP nodded his head. “Yup. By the time they actually made the deal, the doctor’s estate that had left the cars to Ro-Val bought two of them back, a 1931 Chrysler Imperial and a 1948 Plymouth.”

“Do you have the name of the doctor?”

“Dr. Ronald Cavitt. He was a bigwig at Kaiser Hospital in Fontana. For some reason, which I haven’t yet figured out, his estate bought those two cars back.”

“So who got the cars?” Bob asked.

“I’m not sure yet, but I do know Cavitt had three sons—Roger, Robert, and Richard. I’m thinking the boys may have been given the cars.”

“So why weren’t three cars bought back then?”

“Roger was killed in Vietnam. So that left only two sons.”

“Do you know anything about Robert and Richard?” Sabre asked.

“It appears Robert left Fontana after he graduated from Bucher High School. I haven’t been able to track him down yet. The youngest son, Richard, followed in his father’s footsteps and became a doctor. He went to UCSD Medical School right here in San Diego.”

“So he could be the owner of the car,” Sabre said. “He could still be living here.”

“He could be, but that’s as far as I’ve gone with my investigation, and as I said I’m not entirely sure we’re tracking the right car. I’m still investigating Richard. I don’t have an address or much information on him yet. I hope to have it by this afternoon.”

“Wow, you’ve been a busy boy.”

“I aim to please, ma’am,” JP replied in an exaggerated Texas drawl. “And now that I have a name I can see what cars are registered to Dr. Richard Cavitt.”

They all finished eating their rice noodle and pork dishes, the number 124.

31

When Sabre and Bob returned to court for their afternoon trials, JP drove to Poway to see his techie friend and pick up some enlarged photos of the portly man in the video. Some of them were pretty clear. Whatever he had done to enhance the photos definitely worked.

From Poway, JP drove back to his office to continue with his investigation of the Cavitt family. He made a few phone calls and did some digging on the computer. Although Richard seemed to be the most likely of the two boys to have the Plymouth, he searched equally as hard for Robert, or Ric and Rob, as he soon discovered they were called in high school.

JP’s search for Ric Cavitt proved to be a fairly easy trail to follow, although he failed to find any recent photos to attempt a match to the photo from the disc. He called his friend, Kim, at the DMV and left a message on her cell asking which cars were registered to Dr. Richard Cavitt.

Delving into the doctor’s educational background, he discovered Ric went straight from high school to college and then to med school. He received his BS in physiological science from UCLA. From there he went to graduate school at UCSD where he obtained his medical degree. He completed his residency at Scripps in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Ric’s work record was equally easy to research, partially online and the rest with help from two friends, one who worked for the U.S. Department of Justice and the other who freelanced … and was extremely good at hacking into government and other necessary records. JP determined that after his residency, Dr. Ric Cavitt stayed on staff at Scripps for four additional years. He was named in a law suit during that time and although the terms of the settlement were not disclosed, it likely resulted in a resignation of the doctor. Dr. Cavitt left Scripps in the early nineties and went to work at Alvarado Hospital Medical Center. After only two years there he moved on to a couple of local clinics, The Mountain Health Center in Campo and then the Clairemont Community Health Center. Approximately four years ago he appeared to be “retired.” He was named in two more law suits after Scripps. One of them settled and the other appeared to be still pending.

JP obtained an address for Dr. Cavitt from his friend at the justice department and then drove to the San Diego County Public Records Department on Pacific Coast Highway. There, JP’s research led him to the home that Dr. Ric Cavitt bought in the Clairemont area of San Diego in 1989. It was an older home but was located in a clean, well-kept residential neighborhood. He remained the owner of record.

It was nearly 4:00 p.m. as JP headed to the courthouse to research Cavitt’s marriages. He drove to State Street, parked the car in one of the Ace Parking lots, and walked to the courthouse. He entered through the main door on Broadway, looking around to see if he recognized any of the sheriffs on duty, but he didn’t see anyone he had once worked with. They all looked about twelve years old. Heck, he’d been gone from the force half of their life. He passed through the metal detector, took the escalator to the second floor, and entered the first door to his right. The records department was a large room with a long counter about ten feet inside that stretched across the entire front of the room. The fifty feet or so behind the counter was filled with desks manned by clerks. Only three of the twenty stations were open at the front counter. Earlier in the day they would’ve been all buzzing with clerks serving the public. A row of computers lined the front wall stretching from the door to each end of the room. JP turned toward the wall just inside the door and typed in the names he was looking for. After using the computer to narrow his search, JP took the elevator downstairs to the basement where the archived files were housed.

He handed the clerk a small form he had filled out upstairs for the file he was seeking. After waiting about ten minutes, the clerk returned with a manila file folder about two inches thick containing the records for Dr. Cavitt’s first marriage and subsequent divorce. The marriage had taken place in the summer of 1986 during his residency. Two children were born of that marriage, a son born in January of 1987 and a daughter in 1990. The son was diagnosed with Down syndrome. Eleven years later the marriage dissolved in a messy divorce. Dr. Ric was awarded the house but was ordered to pay large monthly child support payments as well as alimony. The alimony had to be paid until his ex-wife died or remarried.

JP made copies of a couple of documents, wrote some notes in his notebook, and then returned to the second floor and requested the files he needed from the clerk. Dr. Ric had been married twice. His most recent divorce took place in 2003 from his then twenty-five-year-old wife and mother of his one-year-old daughter. The marriage had only lasted a little over two years. Although Dr. Ric again retained the house in the settlement, he added five years of alimony to his monthly payments and hefty child support payments each month until his daughter reached eighteen, or nineteen if she was still in high school.

JP simultaneously tracked Rob Cavitt’s life, but his education and career took quite a different direction. However, both brothers appeared to be living locally at the present time. Rob was eleven months older than his brother Ric, but because of when their birthdays fell, they started school at the same time. JP couldn’t find any DMV records, college, or work employment records for several years after Rob’s graduation from high school. JP figured that he was probably moving from place to place, traveling abroad, or just bumming it at home. By 1980, while his brother Ric was graduating from UCLA, Rob had settled in Colorado in a little town called Florissant near Pike’s Peak. He lived there for approximately one year and then returned to the Inland Empire in southern California. In his early twenties, he enrolled in Riverside City College. Before the school year ended, Rob dropped out and started working for a small trucking company, driving eighteen-wheelers cross country. Three trucking companies and eight speeding tickets later, he found himself without a driver’s license or a job. For a couple of years there were again no employment or criminal records in existence for him. Then he reappeared in Colorado Springs, about an hour’s drive from where he lived previously. There he picked up a DUI and a marijuana possession charge. His employment in Colorado consisted primarily of construction work.

In 1999 he moved to Ramona, a suburb of San Diego, and shortly thereafter he went to work for Home Depot, where he was apparently still employed. JP hadn’t yet verified his most recent home address. His personal information was pretty sparse. There was nothing listed in the public records that showed ownership of a home. And according to the local records, Rob had no divorces or marriages—none that took place in San Diego County, at least. JP would have to search elsewhere to find out if Rob had been married or had children, which he decided may or may not be important to the issue at hand.

JP had one more thing to do before he made his evening jaunt around the park looking for Cole. He knew that was probably a waste of time, but he had nowhere else to look. The thought of that little boy out on the streets, lying somewhere dead or possibly being tortured by some sick pervert, turned his stomach. He brought his mind back to Cavitt as he pulled onto the bumpy pavement in the parking lot at the Clairemont Community Health Center, Dr. Ric’s last place of employment. He picked up his hat on the front seat and after exiting the car, placed it on his head.