The Replacements (33 page)

“Bella,” I said again.

“He held Bella hostage. They negotiated for two hours while Jack held a gun to his daughter's head. They didn't have SWAT teams or trained negotiators back then.”

I finished the rest of the scenario because I had seen it before. “The cops shot Jack while he was still holding Bella. Her father, the one molesting her, died with his blood all over her.”

Barbara nodded. “Hit him with a shotgun close range.”

I looked away. Poor Bella.

I didn't have time to commiserate over this. I had to shift my thoughts to tactical.

Two conical towers rose on one side of the Victorian with windows around all sides, a perfect place to observe. I pointed to the tower. “Look, Jonas picked the house on Roswell because he could watch it from up there. He knows we're here. The lights are off to give them the advantage. We have to move.”

“I'll take the front, you two go to the back.”

Zack said, “Not to put too sharp a point on this, but you don't have a gun.”

Zack had brown hair and eager blue eyes, and looked young to be a special agent with the FBI, maybe twenty-six.

I held out my hand. “Gimme your backup.”

He hesitated, his eyes not leaving mine as he thought it over.

Barbara said, “Do it. Give it to him.”

He reached down to his ankle and pulled a Smith & Wesson five-shot snub nose. He didn't hand it over right away. “You can have this, but I go through the door first.”

“No deal, it's my wife in there.” I made a grab for the gun.

He pulled it away. “I'm wearing body armor.” He opened his blue windbreaker to display a new Second Chance vest, a threat level four, the best there was with the added trauma plate inserted over his chest.

“Take that off, let me have it,” I said.

“That's a no-go.”

“Your boss said to do exactly as I say.”

“I'm with Zack on this one,” said Barbara. “When's the last time you went through a door?”

I tried to think back. It'd been many years. But it was like riding a bike. You held your breath, kicked the door. You buttonhooked right or left, as long as you got out of the kill zone, the instant you went through the doorway—the window of death.

“I'll say it one more time. I have operational command of this situation. Give me the vest.” He wasn't going through any door and getting shot when I was the one that should be doing it.

He held my eyes for a long moment, handed me the gun, reached up, and pulled on the Velcro straps to the vest. “Okay, but I'm not taking the back. I'll go in right behind you. I'll be covering you.”

I took the vest and put it on over my head and strapped on the Kevlar to my chest. The vest was still warm. “Fine by me. That gives you the back, Barbara.”

“No one's going to run out the back. I'm going in right behind you two macho assholes. We're wasting time.” She opened her phone and hit speed dial. “This is Chief Wicks. We're hitting 12736 Pipeline. Have one patrol unit come down the alley to the west, the rest go to the front. I have two detectives with me in plainclothes. Advise patrol to watch their friendly fire.” She closed the phone. We took off running.

An untended hedge surrounded the front yard. Without water the bushes had died in spots and looked like the brown rotted-out teeth of a meth freak. I took the lead up the flagstone walk to the front door. The porch had been sturdy long ago, but time and lack of care let dry rot take over.

The question snuck in unbidden:
Had this been the position the detective took forty years ago when he shot Jack Dobbs dead as he held the ten-year-old Bella?

I forced out the distracting thought and pointed to one side of the door. Zack took it. Barbara took the other. I held up three fingers, dropped one. Dropped two. I rose up and kicked the door with everything I had.

The door flew open, banged hard against the wall, and bounced back only a little. Before I could rebound, before a fraction of a second passed, my eyes caught the image of an emaciated, semi-bald woman sitting in a wheelchair in the entryway right in front of me. Too late. The shotgun blast took me in the chest. The force of the nine, .32 caliber pellets striking
me in unison lifted me off my feet and threw me backward. I flew in slow motion.

Marie screamed, “Bruno!”

Zack rushed into the door opening, following his 9mm, firing, firing, firing. The shell casings flipped over his shoulder, slowly making their way to the ground, flying the same as me. The empty brass clinked on the flagstone.

Sirens.

Zack, move. Get out of the doorway. Get out of the window of death
.

His 9mm rounds continued to pelt Bella. Her body jerked. She dropped the shotgun. With each impact and thud, a fine bloody mist rose in the air.

I landed on my back.

From down beyond my feet, off to the side of Zack, on the other side of the doorway, a shirtless Jonas fired a pistol.

Time sped up again.

Zack spun and went down. I caught a flash of his expression—shock, confusion, and something else. His youthful eagerness had disappeared, stolen from him.

Jonas followed, still shooting, advancing. Coming out to finish us off. Barbara, her eyes alive with anger, stepped around from the side of the door, her gun pointed. She fired as she moved in. Not stopping, not afraid of this deadly threat. Her rounds struck Jonas, the first one in the throat, the next three in the chest over the heart.

Maybe three seconds had passed.

Shock shielded me at first. The injury caught up, sucked breath from my lungs. I should've been thinking survival, but instead, I saw only the tattoo over Jonas' heart, the heart tattoo brutally penetrated by Barbara's bullets. Bullets doing the job Bella's bullet should have done all those years ago.

Inside the house, down the entry hall, a side door crashed open with Marie holding a desk chair she'd used to ram the door down, loose rope hung from her wrists.

Then Marie, my Marie, was all over me, crying, trying to hold
me down. “Bruno. Bruno, are you okay? Say something. Breathe.” Her hand moved all over my chest until she found the Velcro strips to the Second Chance and pulled them. She took the panels off just as air entered my lungs in one large gasp. I grabbed her and pulled down, buried my face in her neck, and took her in, her scent, her feel. For one long moment.

I pulled away. “Help Zack, help him.”

Cop cars out front skidded up, their red and blue lights a kaleidoscope on the houses and trees.

Barbara ran out and yelled at the patrolman exiting his patrol car. “Roll paramedics, we have an officer down. Get an airship for immediate evac.”

Barbara went down on her knees by Special Agent Zack Price and put both hands over his bloody wound on his abdomen, applying pressure.

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.

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.