Blessed are the Dead

by Kristi Belcamino

  “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

  SQUAD 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 t
he 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

  “NOW, 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.

  Chapter 51

  THE MOON IS setting in the west, so there is a little bit of light filtering onto the ground. Other than that, the surrounding terrain is black. The area is so still that the silence almost feels like a presence. Every once in a while, we are startled by the small sound of a creature in the brush nearby.

  Finally, we are at the top of the road, which leads into a wide cul-­de-­sac with a dozen enormous three-­story houses. I grab Lopez’s arm to stop him as I survey the homes. There are no lights. I scan the houses to determine which house would offer the best view of the ocean. It’s the one closest to me, on my right. I point toward it. Lopez nods and again cups his palm around the light. More weeds that are bent lead toward the house.

  Lopez motions for me to wait here. I try to argue with him, but he is firm. I’ll give him five minutes, then I’ll go in and find Sofia myself.

  He walks to the back of the house, his slight figure quickly disappearing into the shadows. I take the gun out of my jacket and cock it. The noise seems amplified in the quiet of the night. I imagine Johnson running out the front door of the house toward me and imagine firing the gun again, this time firing a
fatal shot.

  The dark is quiet and still. My ears strain from listening for a sound from the house. There is nothing. The moon has set behind me. The only light now is in the eastern sky in front of me. A slight lessening of the darkness begins to turn the sky a pale pink. It is almost dawn.

  What if Sofia is already dead? I can’t bear to imagine that possibility. What is taking so long? Is Lopez hurt inside? He has been gone way too long. I dial Moretti. Something went wrong, and I realize I can’t do this on my own. I need help.

  “Hey kiddo, how’s the head?”

  I speak fast, in a whisper, covering the phone with my other hand.

  “I’m in the old officer housing on Fort Ord, Moretti. Jack Dean Johnson is here. You need to send someone right away.”

  “Donovan’s already there.”

  It takes me a minute to process this. “What? Where?”

  “Fort Ord. You need to get the hell out of there right now. Donovan did some digging and found out that when Johnson was in the Army, he was stationed at Fort Ord. He was Special Ops. That means trained to hunt and kill other ­people? Do you understand? Remember Rambo? You don’t stand a chance, and neither does your friend. You need to get off that base right now. Let someone else handle it. I’m calling Donovan to tell him you’re at the officer housing. Go wait for him in your car —­”

  I hit the DISCONNECT button. “Sorry, Moretti.” I whisper into the dead phone line.

  Chapter 52

  I CREEP AS quietly as I can in the direction Lopez went behind the house, keeping my eyes on the dark windows. I can’t wait for Donovan. While I’m relieved help is on the way, it might be too late for Sofia. When I peer around the side of the house, I see Johnson’s van is in a corner partially covered by a tarp. A sliding-­glass door is ajar. Slowly, with the gun in front of me, I walk toward the door, stopping every few footsteps to listen. Nothing.