Blessed are the Dead

by Kristi Belcamino

  One of the most marked traits of a sociopath is his inability to empathize, especially in regard to the pain of their victims. Sociopaths can be charming but are truly incapable of feelings that other ­people have, especially love. It is also nearly impossible for them to consistently tell the truth. They feel “entitled” to certain things, believing their self-­serving behaviors are permissible in society even at the expense of others’ “rights.”

  If Johnson can find justification in a religion to murder ­people, he fits the mold in more than one way.

  “What’s done is done. A lot of things aren’t as traumatic as ­people make them out to be.”

  I fight the urge to glance at my watch. I know I’m running out of time. Black is waiting in the lobby and is going to have his turn next, I’m sure. This is probably going to be my first and last interview with him. As soon as his lawyer finds out about this interview, all bets are off. Just then, the guard opens the door to his side of the interview room. Our time is up. I’d been holding this back, waiting for the right moment to gauge his reaction.

  “I saw you,” I say. “I saw you on Main Street in front of Jasmine Baker’s building.”

  He just looks at me and raises his eyebrow at me as he shrugs. “I know.”

  What does that mean? The guard is tapping him on the shoulder now.

  “Did you take Jasmine?” I blurt out. “Is she alive somewhere? If you tell me, they can still find her—­then you’d only face a kidnapping charge instead of murder. This is your last chance to tell me.”

  He hangs up without answering. The guard cuffs him and leads him away. Before he goes, he looks back over his shoulder at me with a huge grin that makes me punch the elevator button again and again.

  Chapter 13

  MY WHOLE BODY is trembling when the elevator door slides shut. I press the button for the first floor. When I get to the lobby, Black is gone. His interview request must have been denied. Good.

  There’s also no sign of Detective Donovan.

  Back at the paper, I go into the zone, only looking away from my black-­and-­green screen to scan my scribbled notes. I get the rush that only comes when I’m furiously writing a story that is going to scoop the hell out of the competition. The only thing close is when I’m playing chess down on Market Street and get that same sense of flow, almost going into a trance. I don’t feel or think about anything except getting the words on the screen in front of me, and the hours fly by.

  I don’t leave the paper until midnight. May’s story about the press-­conference details, originally slated for A1, is bumped to an inside page. I can tell she’s pissed because she glares at me and whispers into her phone. My head is so into writing that I barely register this until later.

  They actually hold the presses waiting for my story. This has never happened to me before. The newsroom is empty by the time our editor in chief, publisher, and newspaper attorney review my story behind closed doors.

  It’s a bit anticlimactic as I wait. I was so absorbed in writing for the past few hours, I completely tuned out the newsroom’s bustle around me. Now, I pace, hoping I’ve gotten every word exactly right.

  Finally, the door slams open, and the publisher yells across the newsroom, “It’s a go!”

  A press worker goes scurrying out of the room toward the presses. Kellogg gives me the thumbs-­up. Before I leave, he pulls me aside.

  “Looks like it was a good thing you were punished by being sent to the jail,” he emphasizes the word “punished” by making quote marks with his fingers. “You did a great job getting that guy to talk. Now, get out of here and get some sleep.”

  As I walk through the newspaper parking lot, I can’t find my car. I walk down the wrong row and start to get nervous looking around me. I thought I parked near a dirt lot overgrown with bushes and weeds. Something crashes through the brush. I freeze and put my finger on my pepper spray. Holding my breath, I ease down into a crouch behind a car. The noise was a raccoon that tiptoes by me.

  Just then, a ­couple of press workers come outside to smoke. They are laughing and talking. I spot my car a few yards away. Before I unlock the door, I peer through the windows into the backseat. As soon as I’m inside, I lock all my doors.

  It takes me thirty minutes to find a spot close enough to my apartment for how I feel tonight. At my front door, I keep glancing around me as I hurry to unlock the dead bolts. It takes me longer than normal because I’m shaking and keep putting the wrong key in the wrong lock. Once I’m inside my apartment, I lean back against my locked and dead-­bolted door.

  Although I usually shower in the mornings, I head to the bathroom, locking the door behind me before stripping down. I stand under the hot water with my eyes closed. I can’t stop soaping myself, over and over, then I lean against the shower wall, letting the hot water beat down. Finally, I slump to the bottom of the shower and let the water drip down on my face. I cover my eyes with my hands and sit there until the skin on my fingers turns white and wrinkly.

  Now I know. I know the face of evil. I know the kind of person who hurts small children. I now know that it was just as horrific as I’ve always imagined. I can’t, I don’t want to, think about Caterina. I can’t let my thoughts go there, or I’m going to collapse in a heap and not get up again.

  Before I crawl into bed, I double-­check the locks on my door and make sure there are no gaps in the curtains. I get in bed, but then hop back out, flipping on the bathroom light and closing the door so a crack of light escapes into the room.

  When I finally do drift off, I don’t sleep well. I wake periodically from murky nightmares. All I remember about them is Caterina’s image superimposed on Jasmine’s face. In the morning, the first thing I do is grab the morning papers. I skip my regular café au lait and drink straight espresso.

  Nobody has the Jack Dean Johnson interview except me.

  I’M PRETTY MUCH a rock star in the newsroom when I arrive this morning. The editors are ecstatic about my scoop. Other reporters give me high fives as I walk to my desk. The publisher actually sends me a rare e-­mail:

  “Great job on the Rosarito kidnap interview. It’s that kind of good old-­fashioned reporting that makes the Bay Herald essential reading.”

  Despite all of this, I have a hard time mustering any enthusiasm. The fact is, Jasmine has now been missing for one week. The chances of her being found alive are slim.

  “Get back up to the jail and see what else the big mouth wants to tell you,” Kellogg tells me when I check in with him.

  “I’m sure he’s lawyered up by now, but I’ll give it a shot.”

  This time when I arrive at the jail, there are news trucks parked everywhere, and it seems like every reporter in northern California is trying to nab an interview. When I get to the front of the line, I submit my interview request. After a few minutes, I’m told my visit is approved for tomorrow night. An entire twenty-­four hours away.

  When I find out that I don’t have to talk to Johnson today, the tension I didn’t even realize was there whooshes out of my body. I have a reprieve. I tilt my head up to the sun, feeling the warmth of its rays on my skin as I walk to my car. I put my key in the ignition and roll down all four windows. Soon, I’m flying down the highway with my hair blowing in the wind and U2’s “Beautiful Day” blasting from my speakers.

  A FEW HOURS later, I’m home, planted in front of my TV with the remote control, flipping from station to station to see if anyone got an interview with Johnson. Nobody did.

  For some reason, he’s only agreeing to speak to me. A smile spreads across my face when the TV reporters actually have to use the name of our paper and refer to my interview during their newscasts.

  Covering Jasmine Baker’s disappearance and meeting a man who kidnaps children is making me think of Caterina more than I have in years. Usually, I push back thoughts of her because it hurts too much.


  Tonight, I think about the folder in my desk at work. Maybe it’s time to do my own digging into Caterina’s kidnapping. My mind knows this is a rational, logical thing to do, but thinking of what this would do to my mother makes my stomach ache. I turn off the TV and curl up on my couch with my new book, The Art of the Chessmaster.

  It’s a beautiful night, warm and sunny, so I throw open the door to my balcony. I smell cigarette smoke wafting up from a balcony below mine, and my mind flits to my dresser drawers, where I’m pretty sure I have a hidden pack stashed. I push the thought away, stepping onto my balcony and taking in the view. In the distance, I can see a flicker of blue from the Bay. Across the park, I can see Saints Peter and Paul, my church—­my touchstone—­my connection to my family.

  My father’s funeral was held at the church. I can still remember watching my big, tough uncles wipe tears away as they carried his coffin down the wide stone steps. A few days later, they also carried Caterina’s small white coffin down the same steps.

  After that, my mother still laughed with her friends at the park, but it was as if the laugh had traveled through a long, gray, cement tunnel first—­muted and a shadow of its former self. I would sometimes watch her when she didn’t know I was looking.

  I think of my family every time I see the towering white Gothic spires of the church from my apartment.

  Chapter 14

  THE RED STOOL squeaks obnoxiously as I slide up onto it. An older man with a bulbous nose looks up from his drink at me. I’m about to do something I’ve never done before an interview. I order a shot of vodka and throw it back. Then I order another. It hits me hard.

  I look around guiltily. The bar is a known reporter hangout since it’s close to the courthouse and jail, but I don’t see anyone I recognize. Before I began covering Jasmine’s disappearance, I had been careful about my drinking, sticking to two drinks max. Despite my mother claiming I was a child with an overactive imagination, I’ll never forget that the few times my father turned mean, there was always a drink in his hand. When we were little, my brother Dante would warn me that “Dad has gone bad again,” and I’d hide in my room. I also know that this, like Caterina’s death, is something taboo to talk about in my family.

  But tonight, thoughts of seeing Jack Dean Johnson make me abandon my caution. I slap ten bucks on the bar and down one more shot before walking the two blocks to the jail. The clouds in the sky above are streaked with red from the setting sun. A warm wind does nothing to erase the chill rippling across my scalp.

  Inside, I hand my ID to the jail clerk and hope she can’t smell alcohol on my breath. In the elevator on the way up to the interview room, I make the sign of the cross, button my shirt up to my neck, and pull my sweater tighter around me. I step out of the elevator and take a seat on the swivel stool to wait. It is unnerving to be in this room. The only light comes from interrogation-­type spotlights shining on three cubbies. Shadows intrude on me from both sides. I lean back and arch my neck to glance into the cubbies on either side of me even though I saw them clearly when I got out of the elevator. Of course, they are empty.

  I dig an antibacterial wipe out of my pocket and swab the phone. On the other side of the glass, a door opens. As the deputy unlocks the cuffs, Johnson grins at me sideways. My stomach churns.

  He limps his way over to the middle cubicle and pulls out his chair. He doesn’t take his eyes off me as he does his own compulsive cleaning of the phone with his shirt. I pretend to fiddle with my notebook, flipping the pages so I don’t have to meet his eyes. Then he taps on the glass between us to indicate I should put my phone to my ear now.

  “Hey.” He cocks his head, staring at me. “You seem a little different tonight”

  How can he know what is normal for me? How can he notice any change after a thirty-­minute interview the other day?

  “I’m fine,” I say in a brisk voice. “So, you’ve been busy with interviews.”

  The alcohol has made me brave. I don’t feel like buttering him up, so I just start going through my list of questions. “Let’s not play games. Are you going to tell me whether you took Jasmine?”

  His eyes bore into mine. “Yes.”

  My heart leaps into my throat until I hear what he says next. “It might be next week or it might be in ten years.”

  This guy doesn’t make sense. He likes to talk without saying anything.

  “Is Jasmine alive?”

  “Can’t answer that. I’m not hungry for the D.A. to come and give me more charges,” he says. “Let me tell you something off the record—­I try not to lie at all.”

  I have a hard time believing that.

  “Then tell me the truth.”

  He leans forward putting his elbows on the small counter. “A lot of ­people can’t handle the truth.”

  “Then tell me you didn’t take her. If you don’t lie, then tell me you are innocent.”

  “Doesn’t matter how guilty I am of any of this stuff. It’ll be a jury that’ll decide.”

  “You aren’t answering my questions. Here’s what I think—­Because you won’t tell me you’re innocent, that makes me think you’re guilty.”

  “Your intuition is good.” He leans back in his metal chair.

  His responses are starting to sound like he’s shaking a Magic 8 Ball. I keep pressing. I want to rattle him. Get a reaction.

  “What you said the other day, about being a Buddhist—­you can’t really believe that justifies what you do?”

  “A long time ago—­say twenty-­two years ago—­something happened to me. I was living in Livermore, and something happened that turned me on to what Buddhism really meant. Helped me understand myself and my needs and my wants.” He gives me a knowing look that sinks my stomach like a cement block in the ocean.

  I look down, scanning my notes so he can’t see my reaction. The only thing I know that happened twenty-­two years ago in Livermore was that my sister disappeared from our front yard.

  “What happened twenty-­two years ago?” I try to seem nonchalant, but the tremor in my voice gives me away. I can tell by the way he cocks his head that he notices. He watches me carefully for a moment before he answers. I try to mask the emotions on my face. Placid. As still and quiet as a mountain lake.

  “That doesn’t ring a bell, but maybe my memory’s not that great, either.” He smiles as he says it. “I’m not quite sure. What do you think happened?”

  He startles me by bursting into laughter. The sound makes the hairs on my arms stand straight up. It is a high-­pitched cackle that trills through the phone and makes my scalp tingle. After a moment, the laughter trails off, and he grows eerily still. He stares at me. I stare back. We both are holding the phone to our ears, our eyes locked. There it is again. I didn’t imagine it last time. His eyes are dead, devoid of humanity

  No. I refuse to let my mind go there. He couldn’t have taken Caterina. I won’t believe it. I can’t. Looking at his dead eyes, I wonder whether I’d rather never know what happened to Caterina than even imagine for a moment that Johnson had her in his clutches.

  I need to get him to talk. To trust me. Thinking hard, I try to remember everything I know about killers and what makes them spill the beans. Then I hit on it—­I’ve heard ­people often want to talk about what they’ve done, either to brag or get it off their chests.

  “You want to tell somebody about it, why not tell me? I’m not a cop.”

  He looks me dead in the eye, and says, “I’ve been keeping in stuff worse than that for more than twenty years.”

  “Like what? What is worse than that? When you tell me that, it makes me think you have been killing ­people for twenty years.”

  Finally, there is a glimmer of emotion, a hint of life in his eyes, but it’s almost more chilling than the blankness he has shown so far. He takes a small pencil and wadded-­up piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. Slowly, he
smooths the paper, writes something, and then holds it up to the glass for me to read:

  1st kidnap 1979

  Rape

  Kill

  My heart is thumping up under my jaw. Caterina disappeared in 1979. He swiftly takes the paper down and scribbles over it, crossing out his words, then rips it into shreds. I stare at him. I quickly do the math in my head. He would’ve been twenty-­one. A heavy feeling like being smothered overcomes me. I can’t deny it anymore. He could be the one. It takes me a minute to ask him the next question.

  “Are you sure about the year?”

  He scoffs. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  I swallow hard. I must get him to trust me. I must keep talking. “How many?”

  “More than a dozen.”

  “Where are they? The bodies, I mean?” I find myself whispering the word “bodies.”

  “Some are up north . . . in the woods. Some are across the country. Sometimes I like to drive until I end up in a different state. It doesn’t really matter where. There’s nothing left anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No evidence. No bodies.”

  “You can’t know that,” I say. “Some DNA evidence can last for a long time. What about evidence in your house, your car?”

  “There ain’t nothing left. Trust me. I make up some chemical mixes to put on places where the bodies have lain and go through one of those big industrial car washes to suck the shit out of the car. There isn’t anything to give me up. I don’t save earlobes and fingers like some fuckers.”

  I am starting to feel like I’m dreaming. Everything seems a bit unreal. My hearing starts to distort, as if I’m listening to myself have this conversation from far away. My heart is beating erratically. Thud, thud, thud-­thud. Suddenly, I’m too warm. For a moment, I’m dizzy and grip the counter. Is it the vodka? Am I having a panic attack? How can he say these things so nonchalantly?