The blood path on the water had not mixed and was a small stream atop a river of water. My black boots swished it together to a consistent pink. I moved past an open bathroom door. The bathtub and sink ran over, their drains clogged and faucets running full out. Why had she clogged the drains and turned on the water? What could have possessed the woman?
The gun, heavy in my hand.
My socks soaked, sloshing in my boots.
In the first bedroom I found two dead, both shot in the head.
Young children. The young girls: Betsy and Sally. The older one, Sally, her golden hair in a fan on the pillow, her one whole eye locked open, staring at the ceiling.
These children had depended on their parents to keep them safe. My face turned wet with tears.
With each child I felt for a pulse, their skin waxy and stiff. And terribly cold.
Oh, so terribly cold. I turned and went to the last bedroom. One more. The same as the others. The youngest, the boy Jonas, five years old. Yet he was different than the others. Bella had not shot him in the head. He had blood on his chest, close to his heart.
One of my senses pulled me out of my trance. What was it? Focus.
Jonas’ skin had been warm and pliable. I turned back, fumbled at his neck, probing for a pulse.
Thready.
Thready, but still there. He clung to life. Five miles to the hospital. It would take longer to wait on the paramedics. I scooped Jonas up and ran. Water splashed up on the walls.
As I passed the first bedroom an image flashed in my adrenaline-fueled flight. Micah Mabry on his knees at the bed keening, a child in his arms.
Out front, Jonas in my arms, I only slowed to gently ease us into the front seat of the patrol car. I slammed the door and jammed the gearshift into reverse, smoking the back tires as I held the delicate child in my other arm. In drive, going forward, I brought my knee up to hold the wheel in place while I grabbed the mic and keyed it. “Two-fifty-five-Adam. I have a one-eight-seven with four down. I am responding code three to St. Francis. Advise St. Francis I’m rolling in hot with a critical child.”
The dispatcher replied. “Two-fifty-five-Adam, ten-four, I’m making the notification now.”
“Two-fifty-Sam.” Sergeant Foreman came up on the frequency. “Negative, Two-fifty-five-Adam, pull over and stand by for paramedics.”
I came out on Atlantic and dropped the mic, grabbed the wheel just in time to avoid hitting a Ford Taurus.
Back to the knee driving. “Two-fifty-five-Adam, I have heavy traffic on Atlantic northbound. Are there any Lynwood units available to block intersections?”
“Two-fifty-three-boy, Bruno, I got Alondra, twenty seconds out.”
“Two-fifty-one-Adam, I’ve got Compton, I’m there now.”
The station watch commander, the lieutenant, came up on the frequency. “Negative. Lynwood units do not block the intersections. Two-fifty-five-Adam, pull over and stand by for paramedics.”
I shot past Alondra, the intersection blocked by Two-fifty-three-boy, also disobeying direct orders. Deputy Ortiz stood outside his patrol car, arms raised, stopping traffic. I keyed the mic. “Is there anyone for Rosecrans?”
“Negative. Negative.” Lieutenant’s tone said there was going to be hell to pay. “All Lynwood units stand down.”
“Two-fifty-Tom-one, I got your back, Bruno, I’m shutting down Rosecrans now.”
I shot past Compton and Rosecrans making excellent time. I only had Century Boulevard left, the largest, most dangerous intersection-and there was nobody left.
The boy in my arm, held lightly against my chest, let out a little gurgle.
A bad sign.
“Come on, kid, hold on. We’re almost there.”
We came up fast on Century. The entire intersection was shut down with two fire trucks. Fire fighters stood in the street waving me on. I took the corner with five big blocks left.
I pulled into the back of St. Francis. Three nurses and two doctors waited for me with a gurney. They yanked open my door and took the child, ran with him on the gurney. They disappeared into the hospital. I couldn’t move. I shook all over. Blood soaked my uniform shirt. Feet cold and numb in wet boots, I sat there a long time before I was able to put it in gear and head back to my crime scene, one I’d had no right to leave in the first place.
CHAPTER THREE
Twenty years after the house that bled, I was tending the cabana bar at La Margarite in San José, Costa Rica. The usual suspects were in attendance, and I mean just that-four regulars who started around noon and stayed for hours, day after day. All four expats from the US. All four had fled under dark or morally corrupt circumstances. Like me, all four were criminals.
I’d brought my patchwork family to San José to dodge the law in the US.
The US could extradite those who sat at my bar, but instead, they worked under the theory that Costa Rica could deal with the nefarious and disreputable hiding out in their country. Only a few had been extradited since the treaty in 1992. Why bring them back for an expensive trial and incarceration?
Everyone who was not a local in the small village just outside San José had something to hide. I, too, had fled under unfavorable circumstances. I needed to know with whom I associated as a matter of self-preservation.
The first three of my regulars had been no challenge at all, not with my prior law enforcement experience. When time allowed I worked on the fourth. The last holdout, Jake Donaldson, was a hard nut to crack.
With the first three, I’d employed an elementary interrogation technique. When I had one of them alone, before the others arrived, and after he’d had a few drinks, I’d admit to my own culpability in a major criminal enterprise. Not the real ones, of course. Looking them in the eyes, trying for compassion, and then, when the time was right, I’d reach over and lay my hand on their arm. It was the touch that did it. They opened up every time, like little children standing in front of their mothers with their slingshots clutched in their fists behind their backs.
Mike Olivares and John Booth were both tax evaders owing $1.5 and $2 million, respectively, to Uncle Sam. With interest and penalties, that number would easily triple. Neither had to worry too much about the US government coming south to scoop them up. Not for taxes. Not for that paltry amount.
Ansel Tomkins, the most cunning of the three, had been a certified public accountant who’d managed a big movie star’s finances. An embezzler, he’d robbed the fat piggy bank and left the movie mogul with nary an IOU. I’d read about it in the LA Times, a paper they usually left lying around the bar. These men missed their abandoned lives and avidly pored over every inch of every column. Or maybe they just wanted to see if they had made the news again, craving an additional spotlight in their fifteen seconds of fame.
I hoped they hadn’t seen my ugly mug on the front page nine months ago. All of that mess had calmed down now. The bullet wound in my ass had healed. The scar tugged and pulled if I stretched to reach the Patrón Silver bottle high on the top shelf. Though it was likely the men had seen my picture and read the story, they never put it together. Lucky for me. Once given the information, the Feds would gladly sneak down on a black bag operation and snag me up in an illegal extradition. They were beyond mad that I had slipped through their fingers on the lam. The main reason why I wore shirts that covered my BMF tattoo, an identifier from another lifetime. I’d also changed my name from Bruno Johnson to Bob Johnson. Johnson was like Smith, there were tens of thousands of us. I always wore an old Cincinnati Reds ball cap and dark sunglasses. Not a great disguise, but enough that I didn’t think anyone so far south would identify me.
The hotel insisted that the television suspended from the ceiling remain on. When I turned to take some glasses out of the warm soapy water, Barbara Wicks, in a Montclair Police Department blue uniform, appeared on a CNN news item. For a long moment I stood there stunned, watching, unable to move.