Blessed are the Dead (22 page)

 

Chapter 48

D
ESPITE MY PROTESTS,
they wheel me into the ER on a gurney. I'm trying to sit up and yelling that I need to talk to the police when suddenly, someone sticks a needle in me, and I fall back. They wheel me into a small room with a curtain across the sliding-­glass door. A nurse puts a big rubber sheet on me, sending waves of heat onto my body. Whatever was in the needle makes me super relaxed. I'm trying to fight it. I need to save Sofia.

A doctor pulls aside the curtain and enters my room. “How are you, young lady?”

He is fresh-­faced and slightly overweight. I'm positive he's younger than I am.

“Much better. When can I leave? I need to talk to the cops.” I struggle to sit up, but again my body isn't cooperating yet.

“They'll be here in a few seconds. Let's take a look at that cut first.”

He gingerly removes the bandages and peers over his Buddy-­Holly-­style glasses at my head.

“Well you're a lucky girl. Your blood pressure and heart rate have stabilized. I'm going to have to stitch the cut on your forehead. I'll use sutures, which will minimize the chance they'll leave a scar, but there are no guarantees.”

“Go ahead, Doc. I'm ready. I need to go to my niece. I need to talk to the police.”

“They're on their way. Let's just get this stitched up so you can leave.”

After he finishes the stitches, he tells me I'll be able to go home in a few minutes. I wonder if Donovan knows what happened to me? When the curtain opens again, I tried to hide my disappointment that it's Moretti, not Donovan.

“Moretti!” I sit up. “He's after my niece, Sofia. You've got to stop him. Send some patrol cars to their house. He's got to be stopped.”

Moretti shakes his head. I can tell by the look on his face that it's even worse than I imagined.

I get out of bed and rush over, the hospital gown flapping open behind me. I grab his hands and look up at his face.

“Tell me. Tell me now!” I grit my teeth as I say it and pull hard on his arms.

“She's already gone.”

I sink onto the floor. “She's dead? Oh God, no. Please no!”

“No, not dead.” Moretti pulls me to my feet until my wild eyes meet his. “She never came home from school. Your brother thought she was at her cousin's house until I called him just now. He's half out of his mind.”

“We've got to find her.” I'm clutching at his arms, and spittle is flying out of my mouth. “Go find her now!”

Moretti grabs my face this time and cups my chin as he looks in my eyes.

“I'll find her. But you need to take a breath because I'm going to need your help? Okay? Can you do this? Can you help me so we can nail this creep?”

His voice is firm and calm. I nod at him, wide-­eyed.

“We need to find Sofia and make this lowlife pay.” I have never seen Moretti so passionate. “For us to find him, I need you to tell me everything. I need you to pull yourself together and remember everything you can so we can find him.”

I start with Johnson's phone call earlier in the day. While I'm talking, I keep glancing at the door to my room. I don't know why, but I keep expecting Donovan to walk in the door. He never does. When I describe what Johnson said and did down at the harbor, Moretti's eyes narrow.

“Testa di cazzo . . . son a bitch . . . faccia di merda . . . asshole . . . figlio di puttana
. . .” He paces the tiny room. While I talk, he interrupts me a few times to speak into his radio. He orders a search of all freighters leaving the harbor, and dispatch issues a BOLO for Johnson's van. When he's done, he digs into his coat pocket and hands me my phone.

“By the way, the tugboat guy in the lobby says he found this on the ground. He thinks it's yours. Glad you're okay, kiddo. We'll find her. I'm heading out right now to coordinate the SWAT and K9 teams. Do you need a ride home?”

“No, go. Go find her. I'll call a friend,” I say. He's about to walk out when I ask him if Donovan heard what happened.

His eyes meet mine. “Yeah. Unfortunately, I called him. He's out on the streets looking for Johnson right now, but there's a problem.”

“What?” I say. I realize I'm holding my breath. I can tell he doesn't want to tell me this part.

“He's out looking for Johnson, Gabriella. But he's not looking for him as a cop.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I just found out that Rosarito PD suspended him this morning. Apparently, Channel 10 got tipped off that it was his fault Johnson was released.”

“But he shouldn't get suspended just for that,” I protest.

Having Donovan's screwup splashed across the news was bad publicity for the department, Moretti explains. They could have put that fire out. The problem was when reporters cornered Donovan, he got into a fistfight on TV.

“What?” I can't believe he would lose his temper so easily.

“Yeah, he decked a reporter, and it was all caught on camera. It's been airing on TV all day long. At that point, the department had to take some action. They suspended him without pay pending an Internal Affairs investigation.”

“Who did he punch?”

“That twerp from the
Tribune,
Andy Black.”

I cover my open mouth with my hand. “What does that mean? If he's suspended, and he's out there?”

“Well, it could be bad. If he does something to Johnson, and he's not officially a police officer, that could open up a whole can of worms.”

I don't care. I just want Sofia back. Any way that happens is fine by me. Then something else occurs to me. “When you told him what happened to me, he didn't want to come to the hospital?” Despite being nearly out of my mind with worry about Sofia, I also feel weary with disappointment that Donovan doesn't care about me at all.

“Gabriella, he's out for blood. I'm sure he wants to be here, but more than that, he wants to find Sofia.”

“Good.” Just hearing her name makes me frantic again. That's fine. I don't need him, but I do need my niece. And I need her back home safe. Now.

“Go find her.” I want to push Moretti out the door as he gathers his coat to go. As soon as he's out of the room, I get dressed. I'm a little dizzy but already feel much better.

I'm about to call Nicole for a ride when Lopez rushes into my room.

He just shakes his head when he sees me.

“Man, I'm sorry. You didn't tell me you were meeting that fucker there,” he says. “I show up, and the cops are everywhere.”

His tone becomes gentler when he sees my face.

“Sorry, man, it all went to hell in a handbasket. I was speeding down from El Cerrito and rear-­ended some guy and just so happens the fuzz was nearby and stopped and then I got cuffed cause they saw my gun. Showed them my carry-­and-­conceal permit, but they were jacking me around. By the time it was over, it was too late. I'm sorry.”

He looks at my face. “That fucker would not have walked away from that deal.”

I press my lips together to keep from crying and tell him about Sofia.

 

Chapter 49

S
QUAD CARS SURROUND
my brother's house in Livermore, with their blue and red rollers lighting up the neighborhood. Some of the neighbors are out on their lawns in their pajamas and slippers when Lopez and I pull up.

An officer waves us through when I tell him who I am.

The house is full of ­people. Detectives march from room to room, some collecting evidence from Sofia's room, bits of clothing and hair from her brush. I glance into her girlish bedroom as I pass and when I catch sight of her canopy bed, I am stopped in my tracks by a memory.

After they buried my sister's body, I stayed at my grandmother's house for several weeks. I remember being glad that the school year was over when I returned home so I didn't have to face whispering and strange looks at school.

When I got back from my grandmother's house, I went into my room and almost walked right back out. All of Caterina's things were gone—­her clothes, toys, stuffed animals. All gone. Our matching twin beds were replaced with a big four-­poster bed with a pink princess canopy—­the kind of bed every little girl dreams about.

I slept on the floor for a month. One day I walked in, and the canopy bed was gone. My old twin bed was back. But they never did bring Caterina's back.

The thought that Sofia might suffer the same fate sends a wave of cold fear shooting through me, making my limbs weak and forcing me to choke back the bile that rises into my throat. Through the crush of ­people in the small house, I see my mother and my sister-­in-­law, Nina, at the kitchen table talking to some detectives. I rush over, and my mother jumps up to hug me with tears rolling down her cheeks. I reach over and grab Nina's hand, and her face scrunches up as she begins to cry.

“I'm going to find her, Nina. I promise you.” My teeth clench together as I say this. I've never meant anything more in my life. I will find Sofia or die trying.

Then suddenly, I feel someone's stare on my back. I can tell because the hair on the back of my neck prickles. I turn to see my brother, Dante, across the room in a doorway. His red-­rimmed eyes are glaring at me.

“Get her out of my house.” He says it so venomously that the room instantly falls silent.

Nina jumps up and tries to hush him. “Dante, stop it! It's not Ella's fault!” My mother looks over, astonished, her mouth open wide.

But he doesn't back down. I see his hands ball into fists, flexing.

Slowly, I turn and walk away. My mother halfheartedly grabs at my hand but doesn't say anything, and I jerk away.

At the door, Lopez is suddenly by my side. I feel like I'm dreaming when I look at him, and say in a monotone voice, “Please get me out of here.”

Lopez grabs my elbow. “Come on, man. I'll take you home.”

When we are back in his car, I don't say a word, just stare straight ahead through the windshield. I feel numb. My mind doesn't seem to be working right. Instead, it is playing a loop of the image of my brother's glare filled with hatred. It's all I can see.

Lopez pokes me. I guess he's been saying something, and I wasn't listening.

“Huh?”

“I said I'm going to sleep on your couch to make up for letting you down earlier.”

I don't even answer. At one point, the car comes to a stop.

I vaguely register that we aren't in North Beach but in the parking lot of his Berkeley apartment. He opens my door and grabs my hand, pulling me up.

“I gotta get some protection. You're not staying in the car alone.”

My legs are wobbly as he leads me inside.

“Sit.” He leads me to the couch and flips on the TV. “I'll only be about five minutes. I'm going to grab some guns and make some espresso since I'm not sleeping tonight.”

I hear some clattering in the kitchen and am not really paying attention to what's on the TV until I realize I'm looking at Johnson's mug shot next to a studio picture of Donovan in his uniform. A blurb on the side says it's a rebroadcast of the eleven o'clock news. I grab the remote and turn up the volume.

Reporters are talking about Johnson's release and how Donovan was responsible for the foul-­up and is now on suspension. Then they cut to footage shot outside Donovan's apartment. Reporters swarm him as he walks to his car, asking him how it feels to be responsible for letting a child killer loose on the streets. He looks like he's ignoring them, but then suddenly he stops and turns around. Black is saying something to him. I can't hear everything, but I swear I just heard him say my name. I crank the volume up as loud as it will go, wishing I could pause and rewind television. But I do hear the next part.

“What did you say?” Donovan asks Black.

“You heard me,” Black responds.

Donovan's arm is a blur until it makes contact with Black's face. Black reels from the punch. Reporters surround the two men in frenzy, holding them back, while cameramen lift cameras above their heads, pointing them down into the ruckus. My mouth is wide open. Donovan clocked Andy Black?

The anchor cuts to national news, and my eyes glaze over briefly. My mind is whirling as I replay every conversation I ever had with Jack Dean Johnson. Where did he take his victims? He usually kept them around for a while, so he must have a hideaway separate from his old apartment. He told me he was taking me somewhere with an ocean view. I clench my hand into fists and start pounding the couch near my thighs.
Think, Gabriella! Think
!

It couldn't have been too far away because he still made it to his job as a Rosarito cabbie every day. I start frantically searching through the drawers on Lopez's coffee table in case he has a Bay Area map in there. The light of the TV is not enough, and I start to look around for a switch for an overhead light when something I hear makes me jerk my head toward the TV set.

I'd been barely listening to the TV reporter's story about how the Bush administration's proposed round of military base closures will reduce active-­duty military by sixty thousand ­people. But then it hits me, and I scream for Lopez.

I know where Johnson's hideout is.

 

Chapter 50

“N
OW, WHERE WE
going again?”

We're in Lopez's car, and I'm behind the wheel, barreling onto the freeway on-­ramp like screaming banshees are behind us.

“Fort Ord.” I say, gripping the steering wheel with both hands.

“Okay, man” he says, leaning his seat back and closing his eyes. “I'm beat. Wake me when we get there.”

It's three in the morning. I popped 800 mg of ibuprofen before we left Lopez's apartment, and we each downed two espressos. That, combined with the adrenaline rushing through my veins, is keeping me hyperalert. That's like drinking a warm glass of milk for Lopez, who is soon snoring beside me. I keep an eye on the rearview mirror as I punch the accelerator, passing slower cars on this deserted stretch of Highway 101 South.

While I was watching the news, a few pieces of the puzzle clicked together like a clap of thunder when I heard about the military base closures: That Monterey woman, Jill, said that in 1996 Johnson had taken her to what seemed to be an abandoned house in an entire neighborhood that appeared eerily empty. She said he had stopped once shortly before they got to the house. And she said it was foggy so the house might have been by the beach. Johnson's comment to me that the place he was taking me had a spectacular ocean view; and a comment an FBI agent made to me a few months before.

He has to be at Fort Ord. And I know where.

There are hundreds of abandoned houses on the twenty-­eight-­thousand-­acre former military base. In the 1940s, the base was home to between thirty-­five thousand and fifty thousand troops. There are plans to convert the former military homes into affordable housing, but red tape is keeping them empty for now.

Five years ago, when Jill claimed to have been taken by Johnson, the base had been closed two years. Since then, CSU Monterey Bay has taken over some of the buildings and converted them to student housing, but there are still whole neighborhoods left to the animals.

I'd been there for the first time a few months ago to write the story on the FBI training at The Impossible City. If it weren't for a simple comment the FBI agent had made at the time, it would've been impossible to know which of the hundreds of abandoned houses Jill had been taken to. But I knew.

“That's the best view on the base,” the FBI agent had told me as we passed a locked gate on our way to the training area. He pointed up a steep driveway. I craned my neck and could see the tops of a few dozen houses. “That's where the top-­ranking officers—­the four-­star generals and such—­lived. We drove up there once. Nice digs, and the only place on the base high enough to get a view of the ocean like that.”

That's where Johnson is. I remember what he said. Spectacular ocean view. His bachelor pad. The place he takes his girlfriends “nowadays.” That's where I will find his lair. I know it in my bones.

At Salinas, I pull off the highway and start to navigate my way through the base, relying on my faded memory to get to the road that leads to The Impossible City. I take a few wrong turns, then we pass the mock city. About a mile past, I slow when a big metal gate across a driveway on our right-­hand side reflects my headlights.

“This it?” Lopez asks. He hops out and looks around, like a dog sniffing the terrain. Then he signals for me to come out.

“From here on out we're on foot,” he whispers. “Mute your phone. Are you sure you don't want to call the fuzz in?”

I pause. I'm tempted to call Moretti. But what if I'm wrong? What if they are close to where Johnson really is, and I call them off, and my hunch is wrong?

I'll confirm Johnson is here first; and then I'll call in the troops. Plus, I only want the cops to come if it is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, if some gung ho cops come flying in with all the bells and whistles, Johnson will kill Sofia, then himself. I know him. I know he meant it when he said he'd rather die than go back to jail. He can stage a suicide by cop—­if that's what he wants—­after I get Sofia to safety.

We need to sneak up on him. It's our only chance.

Lopez is waiting for my answer.

“Let's make sure he's here first.”

“Okay, man, it's your call.”

I pull on my coat, antsy to get started up the hill. Lopez checks the ammo in his guns before he puts one back into his waistband and hands me the other one to put in my pocket.

We scale the fence attached to the gate and start walking up the driveway as quietly as we can. The once-­paved road has sprouted patches of weeds and is sprinkled with potholes from water runoff. Lopez grabs my arm, and we crouch. He cups a small penlight in his hand and shows me how the weeds are bent down by tire tracks. My heart leaps up into my throat.

He's here.