Marie wouldn’t leave me. “How are the children?” I asked.
“They’re all fine. Jonas and his mom never intended to hurt us. They just wanted to die together at the hands of the man who’d robbed them of the chance before. That’s what this whole messed-up thing was about. Psychotics, the both of them.”
“I’m okay, Marie. Help Barbara. Help Zack.”
“You sure?”
“I’m good. Go.”
Marie moved over to Zack to help out. I rolled over and fought to get on hands and knees. My body didn’t want to comply.
Marie said to Barbara, “The abdomen wound is serious, but if we don’t stop the bleeder on this leg it’s not going to matter. Give me your belt.”
With bloody hands, Barbara pulled off her belt. Marie wrapped it around Zack’s leg and tightened it.
I made it to all fours and struggled to my feet, fighting dizziness and a light head. Cops flooded in from the street.
Barbara stood. “Hold it. Hold it. The scene’s secure. Tape it off. You and you find a spot for the helicopter and keep it clear. You, check on the ETA of the paramedics. You, tape off the street two houses each way. No one comes in, no one, you got it?”
I staggered past them. Zack lay on his back with blood soaking his white t-shirt, a small black hole in his lower right abdomen. His eyes were closed, relaxed. If he had been wearing his own body armor-no time to think about it.
I looked down my knuckles, blanched white from gripping the revolver. I let the gun drop to the ground with a clatter. No one noticed. I grabbed the doorframe for support and stepped across the threshold. Bella couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds, her hair wispy and thin, her body ravaged with bullet wounds put there by Zack. Her head lay cocked to one side, her eyes and mouth open in death. On the floor, not two feet away, lay Jonas Mabry, the child I had scooped up twenty-five years ago and raced to the hospital. His open eyes stared at the ceiling. His mouth a dark vacant hole. I had somehow intervened in fate, and now fate had returned to make the correction.
The sound of whimpering brought me out of my funk. I followed it down the hall.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
All three children huddled together in the kitchen, half-scared to death from their ordeal, and now all the gunfire. They didn’t move when I approached them. They’d slipped beyond scared and teetered on the razor’s edge of shock. If they went over that edge, they would need immediate medical care. I cooed to them and stroked their hair until they calmed down. There wasn’t much time. I got down on one knee close to Eddie. “How are you doing, partner?”
He said nothing.
“We’re through the worst of it, I promise, really we are. But we have to get somewhere safe, you understand?”
His eyes wide, his mouth in a straight line, he nodded.
“I’m going to need some help. Are you up to it?” He shook his head. I didn’t blame him, not after all that had happened, those scars on his back from the electrical cord.
“I’m not going to leave you, I promise. But I need you guys to hold hands and walk with me, okay? Can you guys do that? We have to go now. We have to hurry.”
Sandy Williams all of a sudden came alive. “Well then, let’s get with it, let’s go.”
I tried not to react. She’d spoken. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it and said, “Good, good.”
I picked up Eddie. He resisted for just a second. “It’s okay, partner, no one’s going to hurt you. No one’s ever going to hurt you ever again. I give you my word on that. Shake on it.”
I held out my free hand. He hesitated, took it, and shook.
“All right, little man, let’s get out of here. Sandy, you take Elena’s hand.” She did. With trauma and shock, these eight-year-old kids acted more like four- or five-year-olds. Kids are resilient, and with a little bit of love and attention, they bounce right back. The courts and social services had already failed them twice, put them back into abusive homes. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, let that happen again.
“Come on, kids, what do you say let’s make like sheep and get the flock out of here?” Eddie giggled a little. He was already bouncing back.
We went out the back kitchen door and into the overgrown yard. I left the door open. We picked our way in the dark until we came to a cedar plank fence fallen over in long sections. We carefully negotiated past it and into the alley. The cop car Barbara had sent to cover the back must’ve been recalled and gone around to the front to help out and to get into all the action.
Eddie wiggled. I stopped in the dark. “What’s the matter, partner, you want down?” He didn’t want to be carried when the girls were walking. “Okay, say it. Say, ‘Bruno, please put me down.’” His eyes, shadowed in the dark, kept me from seeing how he reacted. “Okay, partner, I understand. If you want down, pat me on the shoulder.” He did.
I set him down. He immediately took hold of my hand. My heart swelled and a lump rose in my throat. How could a kid who’d been through so much go back to trusting that quickly? No time to ponder.
I turned us south into the alley. We had to hurry. We’d made it to the cross street Howard Avenue when Marie caught up. She didn’t say a scolding word or ask me where the hell I was going with the kids. She just fell in step and took hold of Elena’s other hand. We continued over to Roswell and to the FBI Suburban. We got in, buckled everyone up, and I steered us south.
With the threat gone, the kids leaned into each other and immediately fell asleep, a natural reaction. We hit the Mexican border in an hour and a half. Rosarito Beach in another thirty minutes. We abandoned the FBI vehicle and took a cab the rest of the way to Ensenada.
The next day, Marie went shopping and bought suitcases and the basics we’d need for the freighter trip to Costa Rica. In the hotel room, I watched CNN news as they covered the Sons of Satan clubhouse story and the shoot-out in Montclair. FBI agent Zack Price was hospitalized and expected to make a full recovery. Barbara stood behind her podium in full dress uniform, a hero in her city for taking down the kidnappers, for personally braving the gun battle. The investigation still continued for the missing children, and she said she would not rest until there was closure in the case. She looked up from the podium, and I thought for a brief second her professional demeanor cracked. She smiled, a small one at the corner of her mouth.
I watched Elena and Eddie and Sandy eat a huge room service breakfast. I told them they could order whatever they wanted. They didn’t believe me when I handed Sandy the phone. She looked at me funny. I took the phone back. “Okay, if you don’t want to order.” I started to order one of everything. She hadn’t said much to me since we’d been together. She smiled and I handed her the phone. All three huddled around the menu and ordered big. Eddie still had not said a word and could not be coaxed into it. He pointed to what he wanted. When the food came, they fell upon the cart like a starving horde.
I carried the phone into the bathroom and called St. Bernadine’s Hospital, told the nurse my name was Scott Drago and that I wanted to talk to my brother Karl.
“Hello, Franc? Is this Franc?” He pronounced it like the French dollar.
I didn’t know if Karl had a brother. I’d made up the name Scott. “No, Drago, it’s me, Bruno Johnson.”
Silence. Then faintly, “Bruno Johnson? Oh, yeah, yeah, the darkie. How the hell are ya, buddy? I’ve been watching the news and you really put the meat to the SS. I owe ya for that. Clay’s picture’s been all over the news. That son of a bitch finally got his. Damn good job. They’ll kill him in the joint, you know. Dumbshit kept all those pictures. What an asshole.”
“How you holding up, Drago?”
“Good. I’ll be out of here in a couple of days. They came by and took the restraints off, said I was free to go, said you took care of all the problems. I owe you big for that.”