The Replacements (13 page)

I stayed an arm's length away from Jonas. I hadn't patted him down for weapons, and I was still too close if he wanted to pull a knife. I'd be gutted and left writhing on the floor before I had time to react. But I didn't want him too far away in case he bolted. Too much depended on me doing this right. The lives of two little girls and probably a boy.

On his front hairline above his forehead, going back on his shaved scalp, Jonas had tattooed devil horns. Combined with his blue-gray eyes, he portrayed an aura of evil. How had Jonas devolved to such a monster? My thoughts naturally fled to our kids back home in Costa Rica. I wanted to run to the nearest plane, fly back, take them in my arms, and never let them go. The social welfare system had failed Jonas Mabry. I would not fail my kids.

The handheld FBI radio traffic intensified as the task force officers failed to pick up their target. When I wouldn't acknowledge their requests for updates, they became more frantic with the prospect of an officer down. I had little time left.

Jonas stepped through the doors first, with me close behind. I expected to see Mack leaning against Mary Beth's car, arms crossed with an angry, smug expression. I didn't see anyone who'd give us trouble. I guided us over to Mack's Thunderbird, stuck my hand under my shirt, took a couple of steps back, and tossed Jonas the keys. “Open the trunk and get in it or I will shoot you down like a dog.”

A smile slowly crept across his face, his lips parting to darkness where his teeth should have been. “You wouldn't shoot me, Bruno. You saved my life. You wouldn't take a life you've saved. That would be foolish. I owe you a life and I'm here to pay it back. That's what this is all about. Well, a small part of it, anyway.”

I thought I had figured out his game, and yet his words, when brought out into the world, shook me to the core. My mouth went dry. I struggled for the right words. “I know…I know all about the kids, the type of kids. They're replacements, aren't they? Get your ass in the trunk. Do it right now, or I'll shoot you in the knee and put you in there myself. Because you
are
going in the trunk one way or the other.” I held those strange eyes and couldn't look away if I'd wanted to.

He kept his smile. “That's right, me and Bella took those kids so you'd figure it out and come running. Bella thought of it. She wants to talk to you one last time. She was right, you're so predictable, Deputy Johnson.” He bent over and picked up the keys. “I'll get in the trunk. But this part is a waste of time. You will eventually do what we want you do to do.” He unlocked the trunk, left the keys in the lock, and got in, his movements more robotic than human. Drugs. He had to be taking some sort of downer, maybe even angel dust, PCP. I slammed the trunk deck and, for the first time, looked around. Luck still hung with me. Or had it? I now had the devil locked in my trunk and would eventually have to let him out.

I had not thought any further than grabbing Jonas. Maybe I didn't think I'd get that far. Now I needed a quiet, secluded place
to chat with him. Only I couldn't think straight. What Jonas had said rolled through my thoughts, over and over. Had coming back to the States and grabbing him really been a part of
his
plan? He'd asked for me in his note. He was obviously deranged and delusional talking about Bella, so the rest of what he said could be discounted as well.

I drove out to Waterman Avenue and headed north. In the trunk, Jonas was quiet, no kicking or yelling. Waterman went straight up into the foothills, and farther up into the mountains. I drove up into the mountains to a wide dirt turnout that led to a fire road blocked with a locked, metal-arm barricade. Others had gone around in four-wheel drive vehicles and knocked down a semi-path. I took Mack's Thunderbird around. The undercarriage banged and bumped. Still, not a whimper from the trunk. I would have liked it better if he had complained.

The dirt road had developed rain-eroded trenches that grew deeper the farther I ascended. I came to a point where the risk of getting stuck overruled any further travel. We'd gone far enough, no one would hear this far into the hills. I put the car in park right in the dirt path and got out. I stood at the back of the car and tried to get up my nerve to do what had to be done. Three years earlier, before I'd gone to prison, when I still worked with Robby Wicks on the Sheriff's Violent Crimes Team, this would have been standard operating procedure. I could hear Robby now behind me whispering in my ear: “What's the matter, pussy? You turn soft? You want your daddy to do this for you? Stand aside, you pussy, I'm only going to show you one more time.”

In the end, Robby had turned into a narcissistic asshole, but I still wished him to appear and help me with this unholy task.

I tried to keep out the image of the child, Jonas Mabry, bleeding in my arms as I rolled code three up Atlantic Avenue, the other deputies risking punishment to blockade the intersections. I shook those images off and pulled the Glock from my waistband, unlocked the trunk, and stepped back.

The trunk deck popped open. I half-expected an evil clown to bob up like a jack-in-the-box.

Jonas didn't move. Maybe when we bumped across those deep divots he banged his head. Maybe he was knocked out and needed emergency aid. I took a step forward to peer in and caught myself. Don't fall for a simple trick like that. I stepped back and leveled the gun at the opening. “Come out.”

From in the trunk: “What's the matter, big man? You
a scared
of a skinny, pencil-necked geek like me?” His voice mimicked a small child.

“Come on out or I'll shoot some rounds right through the side.”

His hand appeared over the bottom lip of the trunk. “Hold your water, big man. I'm coming out. But we both know you won't shoot. I'm too important to you right now.” His face appeared next, his smile full with the black hole. He swung his leg out. “You know this is all a waste of time. We should just skip this part and move on to the next.” He climbed out. “You know you can't make me tell you what you want. You can't threaten me with death. That's a bite without teeth. You can't kill me. You'll never find those cute little children. And, of course, the big factor with you is that I have super powers. You see, you'd never take a life that you saved, you'd never do it.”

I needed to take back control of the situation. “Turn around and assume the position.”

He held up his hands. “Or what, big man? What are you going to do?”

I rose up and kicked him right in the chest. He flew back. His head banged into the trunk deck as the rest of his body folded into the trunk.

“You aren't listening to me, are you? I said get out of there. Now.”

He gave a wilted cackle as he again climbed from the trunk, one hand holding his head. He stood on shaky legs and pulled a bloodied hand away from his head. Blood covered his hand and rolled down his wrist.

Scalp wounds bleed a lot.

“Now,” I said, “turn around and put your hands on the car. I'm going to pat you down for weapons.”

“Little late for that, don't you think? You asshole.”

Finally, some emotion
. He turned slowly. I helped out, kicked him again in the ass. He flew forward and banged his forehead on the open edge to the trunk deck. Another laceration. Blood ran down the side of his face.

His injuries didn't bother me, and I only had the urge to beat the shit out of him more as my anger rose. I had to control my emotions. I grabbed the back of his shirt. With my other hand I put the gun in the back of my waistband and patted him down.

Under his sock, taped to his leg, I found a dirk, a double-edged knife. A felony. Taped to the small of his back I found a .44 derringer. Two felonies. I tore it off. He had nothing else, no wallet, no bits of paper, just some money and a prescription bottle with four Demerol tabs.

I stepped back and looked at the gun in my hand, a reminder he'd made me nothing more than a pawn in his game. I hadn't played this smart. I should've patted him down before he went in. If he'd wanted to kill me, he could've had the gun ready when I opened the trunk. I thought of Marie and the kids back home. I kicked him from behind, right between the legs. He fell to the ground. His bloody head flopped in the dirt as he writhed in pain, his hands clutching his crotch.

“You going to tell me, or are we going to keep this little game of pain going until you're nothing but a bloody lump of flesh?” I asked.

He gasped. “You're an asshole, Deputy Johnson. And you're going to pay for everything you do here today. So think carefully.” He coughed and spit, got up on his hands and knees, his head
lolling, dripping blood. “I'm not telling you a thing. Think about it. Do you think I haven't mentally prepared for this? Do you think we've come this far for me to simply roll over and beg forgiveness? We want the money. You owe my mom and me a million dollars. Not money from the FBI. And not money from some person concerned over the little brats, but money from you. It has to come from you. Call it poetic justice.”

My anger rose up again, and I kicked him in the ribs. The air blew out of him in a huff. “I'm the asshole? I'm not the one who's kidnapped three helpless little children, huh? And, putting all that morally corrupt mess aside, how, exactly, how do you figure I owe you a million dollars?”

He coughed and choked and let out a crazed laugh. “You know, asshole, you know.”

“I don't, so tell me.”

He looked up, blood running in his eye. “Because you had to be a big man that day. You had to kick our door in. If you'd have done your job the way you were supposed to, you should've just walked away. But no, you had to be the big man and kick the door in. We would've died like we were supposed to, me and Bella. Me and my mom would've died with my sisters like we were supposed to. Instead…instead look at me. You created me. You're a son of a bitch, a monster maker.” He kicked out and missed.

I took a step back, awed at the intensity of his insanity.

Another piece to the crazy puzzle fell into place: Micah Mabry. The only person who could've told him about that day, about kicking in the door when I didn't have to, was his father. I said, “Did you kill your father?” Micah Mabry was old and could have succumbed to age. The government had not done an autopsy.

Jonas rolled over onto his back, chest heaving. “I would've killed my old man, believe me. I would have. I planned on torturing him, just like you're doing right now. Only he told me about you without any prompting at all. He told me what you'd done, the whole dumb-assed story. Then I told him what I was
going to do to you for what you did to me and Mom. He died right there, grabbed his chest and keeled over like some kinda weak pussy, asshole.”

“That was two years ago. Why did you wait two years to do this?”

“What? Wait a second, you don't know, do you?” He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, that's a good one. Believe me when I tell you, that's really a good one. You're not only an asshole, you're a big dumb asshole. Come on, big man, break me up a little more, let's get on with this little dance. Figure out that I'm not going to tell you shit about those cute little children so we can get this thing going.”

He'd been planning this for two years. I didn't know the significance of those two years, what they had to do with his plan, but it showed his resolve. I realized he wasn't going to give up the information. The sun beat down, draining my strength. Hopelessness crept in. What was I going to do now?

Jonas saw the shift in my resolve. “We done here? What a pussy. That's the best you can do? I expected a lot worse from you, of all people, a BMF, a Brutal Mother Fucker. That's right, I did my research.”

His words made the BMF tattoo on my shoulder burn and tingle. Mistakes and poor judgment would haunt me the rest of my life. I could've had the tattoo removed, but left it as a reminder.

He used that word again, the one Robby would have used: pussy. I walked over and shot him in the foot.

He screamed and rolled around in the dirt. The dirt stuck to him like a Foster Farms chicken, dusted in flour before Dad dropped it into the hot grease.

I tried one last time. “You going to take me to those children?”

He groaned and continued to flop around. I dragged him back over to the car and shoved him into the passenger seat. What choice did I have?

He tossed around in the seat, fumbled with his prescription bottle, and popped two Demerols into his mouth. I headed down off the mountain. In ten minutes his agitation calmed. “Take me to Mission, west of Central in Montclair,” he said.

“Why? Do you think I'm done with you? I could be taking you to the FBI.”

“Really? We going to keep playing this game?”

“I don't want you to hurt those children.”

“You do what you're supposed to do and I promise you—I give you my word—nothing will happen to them.”

No way did I believe him.

We drove on for a few minutes. He wiggled until he got his foot up onto the seat. He gently peeled off his Nike. Blood was everywhere and his foot looked horrible. I felt bad and regretted the course of action I had taken. He took off his shirt and tied it around his foot. The tattoo the old crone from Landers had described, the heart with the bullet scar in the center, covered his left breast. As he moved, I spotted a larger tattoo in Gothic lettering across his abdomen: “Mama Tried.” Right below that: “Patricide, try it.”

“Please, tell me why you're doing this?” I asked.

His eyelids drooped from the narcotic, the muscles in his face slack. “You're a smart guy, you'll figure it out.”

“Tell me.”

Out the window he watched the passing landscape. “I need the money. I need the money because you ruined my life.”

That logic, of course, didn't make sense. I had saved his life. “How can you be mad over what I did?”