I started to pull back and remembered Drago. I pointed the flashlight straight down. On the floor just on the other side of the new wall, Clay had done a poor job with instant concrete mix. He’d tried to cover the hole where the safe used to sit. The shadow outline of the golden doughnut, still painted lead-gray, rose a quarter inch from the concrete, hardly visible at all unless you knew what to look for, a true Bluebeard’s treasure. The doughnut would not draw any attention from the FBI forensic people coming to document and seize the evidence.
I pulled back out, stunned. Barbara stood close. I handed her the flashlight. She went up on tiptoes to look in the hole.
Dan moved in close and immediately put the key into my handcuffs. “What do you need? You name it. You can have all the manpower you want. I’ll even pull in all the officers from the Joint Terrorist Task Force.”
“I don’t have any time left for that. I find my wife and the kids in the next hour or it’s not going to matter.” I walked out, down the hall, and out to the front yard. The sun colored everything orange and yellow as it went down ending the day. I leaned against the closest Harley and closed my eyes. Now that I had freedom, the pressure of not going to prison, clearing Mack and Drago, I could think straight.
I was barely aware that Barbara stood close by. In my mind, I deliberately went over everything that had happened since Barbara Wicks came back into my life, step-by-step, scene-by-scene, from the time she walked up from the beach. I replayed the dialogue from each conversation.
The common denominator was the city of Montclair. Montclair continued to come up in all the information. Jonas rented a car and used the Montclair address. He used an underground doctor at a Montclair address. He used a Montclair address as a dead drop, a vacant house-
I opened my eyes.
“What?” asked Barbara.
I looked at her. “We have to go. We have to go right now.”
Her expression turned professional. One of the many FBI agents came out of the house, escorting a biker. She said, “I need your car keys, give them to me.”
He shook his head. “Not a chance in hell.”
Dan came out right behind him. Dan took hold of the biker the agent was escorting and said, “Go with them, do exactly what that man, Bruno Johnson, tells you to do. Do you understand?”
The agent nodded.
We ran for his car.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
I had to slow down to let the agent guide us to the right car. He beelined to one of the many navy-blue Chevy Suburbans parked on the street just outside the wrought-iron gate. I went to the front with him and said, “Give me the keys, I’m driving.”
“You’re not an agent. You can’t drive.”
Barbara, with her hand already on the back door handle, said, “Didn’t you hear what your ASAC just told you?”
The agent looked at me, his eyes falling to the BMF tattoo on my arm as he weighed the options. I couldn’t wait. I grabbed the keys from his hand and hit the fob to open the doors. I said to the agent, “You get in back. Barbara up front with me.”
This time he did as instructed. Barbara ran around and got in. I started up, put it in drive, and hit the gas. “Gimme me directions to Kadota off of Mission.”
She didn’t answer.
I had to concentrate on negotiating the huge vehicle in and out of traffic at high speed, and couldn’t look at her to see her expression as to why she’d didn’t answer.
“Bruno, that’s in Montclair,” she said.
“That’s right.” Then I caught on. If I was correct, the location would be in her city. “Snap out of it. We’re talking about Marie and the kids here. We can worry about public relations later.”
“Of course, you’re right. Go down to the San Bernardino Freeway and take it west, get off at Central and go south.”
“Right, now I remember.”
“Why do you think it’s back in Montclair?”
“Everything links back to Montclair, specifically, Mission and Kadota.”
I checked the rearview and caught the FBI agent dialing his phone. He was going to alert his fellow agents to this hot new lead.
“Barbara, take his phone.” She didn’t hesitate, whipped around, leaned in between the seats, and snatched his phone.
I checked my driving path and then looked back in the mirror. “What’s your name?”
“Price.”
“Your first name?”
“Zack.”
“Give him his phone back,” I said to Barbara. “Zack, I’m sorry, there’s a lot at stake right now, and I need you on my side. We can’t have a lot of cops swarming the area until I know for sure which house we’re going to. There are lives at stake. You understand?”
“Yes. If you want, I can call and have them stage out of the area.”
“Not yet.”
He nodded. Barbara handed back his phone.
“I had a detective and forensics check out the place on Kadota,” Barbara said. “It was vacant.”
“Forensics?”
“Yes. There were signs someone had been there, but the place had been wiped clean. I told you that house is a dead end.”
“What about the house the car came back registered to?”
“What car?”
“The Rent-a-Wreck with Micah’s body?”
“That house was neg-”
“What street was the car registered to?”
“Roswell.”
I looked at her as she deciphered the new information. “How close together are Roswell and Kadota?” I asked.
“Kadota’s the next block over. Oh my God, why didn’t I see that?”
“There isn’t any reason why you should have. It could just be a coincidence, but the coincidence is all we have right now.”
I hit the freeway and opened up the Suburban to 120. The sun was completely down and dusk settled in.
“So what are you thinking?” she asked.
“He’s used this same area twice. There has to be a reason why.”
“Maybe it’s because he’s familiar with it?” Zack said.
“Good. Can you have your people do a record check on Jonas? See if he has any friends who live in the area? Maybe Jonas listed someone on his booking form the times he was arrested, the ‘in case of emergency’ contacts.” I checked the mirror. Zack had already dialed, and the phone was up to his ear.
I came up on Central Avenue too fast and had to push the brakes so hard the seatbelt bit into my shoulder. I hit the off ramp, checked the intersection, and ran the red signal to southbound Central.
Zack closed his phone. “No luck.”
I said, “Call back and have them check…” I looked at Barbara and said, “Have them check what?” I was running out of ideas. If we didn’t come up with something, we were going have to go door to door, three blocks’ worth of houses. It was seven fifteen.
“It’s a long shot he’s even in the area,” she said.
I hit Mission and took a long sweeping right. “Point out Kadota.”
“Right there.”
I took a hard left, pulled over, and parked. “Let’s go on foot from here.”
We got out and met on the sidewalk. “Bruno, we checked this out. I’m telling you, there’s nothing here.”
“Jonas has been bold,” I said. “He let the FBI tail him. He hid in plain sight because he knew we couldn’t do anything to him. He knew our only way to get the kids was to follow him. He has to be right around here, and I’m betting it’s going to be right here in plain sight.”
“He didn’t know we were tailing him,” Zack said.
“Yes, he did. He wanted me to find him, to personally rub my face in it. He’s been three steps ahead of us the whole time.”
We came to the house with the Mercury Marquis parked in the front yard behind a chain-link fence. I went through the gate without hesitating. We were running into a dead end. What next? What else could we do?