I nodded. “What happened two years ago? Where did he go?”
“I thought he’d come back. I did. Still did, until just now, when you sauntered in fat and happy to ruin my life.”
She rocked some more and I waited.
“Two years back, his son, the spittin’ image of Micah, he come drivin’ up in a fire-engine-red car without any warnin’, nothing, not so much as a letter. Old Micah, he never talked about any family. Didn’t know he had any. Said, ‘May, this is my son.’ The boy said something like, ‘Yeah, nice to meet ya,’ or something, and turned back to Micah, and said, ‘Can I talk to you outside?’ Rude little bastard. Maybe twenty, twenty-three, too old to be rude like that.
“Micah, he came back in and said he had ta go, said he’d be back in a couple days. That’s goin’ on two years. Now you tell me he’s not comin’ back. I had a thing for that crotchety old man.”
The weathered skin sagged under her eyes, giving her a hound dog appearance. “I’m real sorry for your loss, May. We’re trying to find his son, and we could use your help.”
“Nothin’ I can do. I’ve had enough jabbering for one day. Now it’s time for you to leave.”
“Are there any of Micah’s things here? Anything with an address on it?”
“He had nothin’ when he got here, and he left with nothin’.”
“We’re looking for you to tell us anything, anything at all that might help us.”
She stopped rocking and looked right at me. “I can tell you that son of his was crazy.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Saw it in his eyes. When you’ve lived as many years as I have, you can tell by the eyes.”
“What did he look like? How did he wear his hair? Did he have any tattoos?”
“He had on a pair of nice trousers, the kind you wear with a suit, but he didn’t have on the suit. He wore his white button-down shirt open, no t-shirt underneath, kind of uncouth. He had two tattoos, like you said. One was very odd, that’s why I remember it. A heart with a lot of detail.” She pointed to her chest over her own heart. “Only in the center, colored real bright, he had a little yellow light, and inside that was a lump of scar tissue. Right below, scrolled in nice letters, was the name ‘Bella.’”
The wound in his chest, the place his mother had shot him. “And the second tattoo?”
“Big bold black letters across his stomach.”
“What did it say?”
“Couldn’t tell, his shirt flapped this way and that. And, to tell you the truth, I didn’t really care. The look on my Micah’s face…my Micah was hurting inside just looking at the boy. And that’s not right. That’s not right, I tell you. Not for a father to act that way toward his son.”
Back outside of the dark interior, sunlight blinded me for a moment. Mack leaned on the T-Bird’s fender, his arms crossed. “The old bag give up anything useful?”
“Not a thing.”
“That phone call was from Chief Wicks. She wants us back ASAP. They just got a ransom call.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Headed toward Montclair, I put the car seat all the way back and closed my eyes. “The ransom call come from Jonas?”
“Don’t know. No way to tell for sure.”
“So we don’t know if Jonas has help?”
“The call came in on the hotline. Wicks played it for me.”
“And?”
“The person was all over the place, started off low and concise and worked up to manic and screaming at the end. Said, among other things, that he wants an even million. He said, ‘Three hundred thousand a piece will do it, just make it an even million.’”
I sat up.
Mack said, “Yep, sounds like he’s grabbed another kid, one we don’t know about. A kid some parent hasn’t reported yet.”
“Three of them-those poor children,” I said.
“Bruno?”
I looked at him. “Yeah.”
“The FBI just came into it. They’re taking over the investigation. We’re on our way to talk to Wicks. She can’t run cover for you with the Feds crawling all over the place. She’s scared for you. She thinks you should head south where you belong. She thinks this was a mistake.”
“What do you think?”
He shrugged, didn’t take his eyes off the road. “You do have more skin in the game than anyone else, and for no real reason.”
If he didn’t understand, I wouldn’t be able to explain it to him. “She get anything on the rental car?”
“Did you hear what I just said? The Feds are in this now. It’s a different set of rules, all of them going against you.”
“Yeah, yeah, did they get anything on the car?”
“I didn’t ask her.”
I nodded and went back to mulling over the new information. Something niggled in the back of my mind. I’d read everything in the file on Micah and Jonas, read the crime reports, the forensic reports on the kidnappings, but I had purposely been avoiding the children’s profiles. I didn’t want to put a face to them. I didn’t want to make their lives any more real than they already were. I put my fingers on the tab marked “Elena Cortez” and knew what I would find before I flipped to her section. “What about Jonas’ mother Bella?”
“She’s in prison doing life times two. You think maybe Jonas went to visit her? Maybe he told her about his plans to snatch these kids? That’s a long shot, but maybe.”
I muttered, more to myself than to Mack, “Not unless he has a fake ID. Felons aren’t allowed to visit.” I continued to pinch the tab for Elena, too hard, not wanting to turn to the pages. Bella had shot herself in the chest, just as she had Jonas, with a.22, a small-caliber pistol that deflected off her breastbone. Like Jonas, she had come close to dying, but survived. Mack dialed his phone as he drove, got Wicks back on the line. “Hey, it’s me again,” Mack said. “You might have someone go visit Bella Mabry in the joint to check and see if Jonas came to see her.”
The rest of their conversation faded into the background of the passing cars, the miles of salt cedar that lined the freeway on the south side, and the rolling sand dunes. I flipped the tab and read.
Eight-year-old Elena was a foster child named Ellen Sims before adoption to the Cortez family, who legally changed her name. The Cortez family became the second family to adopt her. The first adoptive parent, Martin McGraw, molested her.
My stomach rolled and twisted in a knot. Who could this helpless little girl trust? Now, heaped upon poor Ellen’s trials-add kidnapped by a psychopath. She’d only been with the Cortez family a short time after the adoption was finalized before Jonas had grabbed her.
I flipped over to “Sandy Williams” for further confirmation. Sandy’s life did not read much better. Sandy Collins came to the Williams family only six months prior. Sandy, only seven, testified against her father, who had killed her mother with a knife, all but beheading the mother right in front of her. After the horrific incident, Sandy never spoke again. Her testimony in court relied on two flash cards, one “yes” and one “no.” A mute unable to, if the opportunity presented itself while kidnapped, ask anyone for help.
I looked at the pictures of the little girls and knew I was right. “Tell Wicks it’s a little boy. She should be looking for a missing little boy, not another girl.”
“She wants to know how you know that?”
“Tell her she can raise the money for the exchange, but it’s not about the money. He doesn’t intend to give the kids back. He’s going to take the money and run.”
Mack looked back at the road and said to Wicks into the cell, “What? You’re kidding. All right. All right. We’re about thirty minutes out.”