Blessed are the Dead

by Kristi Belcamino

  Jack Dean Johnson watches me. He has no expression on his face. He doesn’t look evil. He looks average. He doesn’t appear to think that our conversation is anything out of the ordinary. He also must not notice my visceral reaction to what he is saying. I finally pull it together enough to speak.

  “How can you not feel bad about killing ­people?”

  “That’s kind of a hard question.” He leans back. His eyes gaze off behind my shoulder as if he is truly contemplating the possibility, and his left eye wanders. “I’ve gone out of my way to get lizards and bugs and kill them. I love nature and wildlife, but I wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in Bambi’s neck to put food on the table.

  “If I kill human beings, what’s the difference? Do I lose sleep and cry and have nightmares about killing? It’s not like what ­people say about closing your eyes and replaying what happened. I don’t have remorse like other ­people feel.”

  There it is. No remorse. He might hang up when I ask this question, but I’m going to ask it anyway.

  “So, are you saying you’re a sociopath?”

  “There are some things that would say that I’m a sociopath, and other things that would say I’m not.”

  Pretty much everything points to his being a sociopath.

  “Why do you kill? Do you do it for the rush? Is it a sexual thrill? Is it a control thing?”

  I can’t believe I’m asking a killer why he murders ­people. His matter-­of-­fact manner puts an unreal gloss on the conversation and allows me to detach from what he is saying. I start to feel normal again and surprisingly calm. My heart slows back down.

  “I’ve never really studied it. Is it sexual? Is it for the power? All the doctors would say yes, but I don’t know. I’m trying to get back in the mind-­set of what I think when it is going on. What part was the sexual aspect, what was controlling? I’m sure both those things play into it at different levels.”

  “How do you feel after?”

  “After termination, there’s a letdown. Anytime you get an adrenaline rush like that, there’s a letdown, hard enough where it puts you to sleep.”

  After termination. I can’t get past that phrase. I’m trying to formulate a new question when the guard comes in and motions for Johnson to leave.

  “Wait!” I am nearly shouting and he looks up with surprise. “Twenty-­two years ago—­in Livermore—­did you take a little girl named Caterina?” Her name slips off my tongue. I try not to cringe.

  “Caterina?” he says, and a slow smile spreads across his face. I instantly regret saying her name. I want to vomit hearing my sister’s name come out of his mouth.

  “Answer me!” I’m yelling now, almost shrieking.

  “See you next time, Gabriella.” He sort of drags out my name in his mouth and gives me another boyish, shy smile as his left eye veers off. I don’t know if I should smile back. I want him to keep approving my visits, so maybe a smile is all it takes. I try, but my lips curl up in a grimace. But then, before hanging up, he asks, “Why don’t you tell me about Caterina?”

  Pause. “Maybe next time.”

  Maybe one day I’ll decide I will trade this currency for the chance to find out what happened to Caterina. If I know he’ll tell me the truth, maybe one day I’ll sacrifice a piece for the chance to topple him later on. But not right now.

  I hang up the phone and watch the guard lead him away. He ignores the guard fastening his handcuffs on behind him and doesn’t break eye contact until the elevator door closes. Only then do I realize my entire body is uncontrollably shaking. I lean against one wall of the elevator with my eyes closed. Only when the door dings do I open my eyes again.

  On the way back to my car, Kellogg says they are going to hold the story—­an important verdict in a road rage case where a San Jose man who threw a woman’s dog onto the freeway just went down—­so I can come in and write it in the morning.

  ALTHOUGH I HAVE always felt secure in my apartment, I double-­check the locks on my door and pull my curtains closed tight. I’m going to call the sheriff’s office first thing in the morning to request a permit to carry a concealed weapon. As I’m thinking this, I get a call. When I glance at my cell, I don’t recognize the number.

  “Yes,” I snap.

  “Well, hello to you, too.”

  It’s Detective Donovan. I recognize the deep timbre of his voice and the tremor it sends through me.

  “Are these the kinds of ­people—­this Johnson guy—­that you deal with every day?” I say, flopping on my couch.

  He waits a second before answering. “Are you doing okay?” He actually sounds concerned. Maybe even a little worried.

  “I’m going to call and request a carry-­and-­conceal permit, but I don’t even know how to shoot a gun.”

  “Want to learn?”

  “You offering?”

  “Better that I show you than some Pleasant Grove cop who might shoot you by accident.”

  He gets the desired effect. I laugh. Rivalry always exists between certain departments. I have my fair share of enemies in the Pleasant Grove Police Department after writing about a crooked cop a while back.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” he says.

  “Learning to shoot a gun.”

  Before we hang up, I have to ask.

  “Did you tip off one of our reporters, a girl named May, about the arrest?”

  “Who? What? Are you crazy? Don’t worry, if I ever decide to go over to the dark side, you’ll be the first to know.”

  I smile and hang up, holding the phone close for a moment.

  Chapter 15

  RIGHT ON TIME, I pull into the parking lot of the Pinole Gun Range. Before I get out, I fix my lipstick in the visor’s mirror. It took me about four changes of clothing to settle on some dark jeans, high-­heeled boots, and a black cotton blouse with an extra button undone.

  Donovan is leaning against a small wooden fence. He has on jeans and a tight-­fitting black T-­shirt. His gaze makes me self-­conscious as I walk toward him from the parking lot. I’m trying to look seductive, but then right when I reach him, I stumble. I regain my balance, but my aplomb flies the coop.

  He starts laughing.

  “Yuck it up,” I say.

  “Sorry. It’s just that you remind me of a cat. Graceful. Until you’re not.”

  “I hate cats.”

  “ ‘Hate’ is a pretty strong word,” he says.

  “Okay. I extremely dislike cats.”

  “Fair enough.” His smile lights up his expressive, toffee-­colored eyes. I’d been wondering what color they were and what he looked like up close without his sunglasses. Now, I know. He is even more dangerously attractive than I imagined. Lord, help me.

  He hands me hard red earphones and some orange safety glasses. I spend the next two hours learning how to shoot his black pistol. He tells me it is called a SIG .40 caliber duty weapon—­the gun the police department requires him to carry. I also learn that the FBI, DEA, and Secret Ser­vice members carry this same weapon. At first, the gun feels surprisingly light, but before too long, it’s like I’m trying to hold a bowling ball in front of me. My arms begin to quiver with fatigue. It also doesn’t take long for my fingers to get sore from squeezing the trigger and my wrist to ache from absorbing the gun’s kickback. “The recoil on this weapon isn’t too bad,” Donovan tells me when he sees me trying to surreptitiously massage my fingers. “That’s why I didn’t bring my Glock. You wouldn’t have been able to handle it. You think your hand hurts now?”

  He’s a bit patronizing, I think, ignoring his comment. But I can’t help but get chills whenever he touches my hand or arm to demonstrate the right grip. At one point, I think he might be feeling the same way.

  “Here, put your fingers like this.”

  He’s by my side, positioning my fingers, and our cheeks nearly touch. His
warm breath on my cheek and the scent of his cologne make me want to lean back and press my body against his. But I don’t. I just want his hand to stay on mine, but he takes it away and orders me to pull the trigger. Who knew learning to shoot a gun could be so much work?

  I laugh and pretend to blow on the end of the gun when I make three deadeye shots in a row on the paper target.

  “I’m not surprised,” Donovan says. “Women are actually better shots than men though you won’t hear most men admit it.”

  In between instructions, we make idle small talk. We both grew up in big families centered on food and faith. Both our families are loud and boisterous.

  I learn that his father, who worked as a civilian contractor at the Alameda Naval Shipyard, died when he was little. His mother still lives in the small Alameda house where she single-­handedly raised him and his six sisters. I like imagining him as a boy. I bet he was adorable and that all the women in his house doted on him.

  It’s lunchtime when we finish. My arms ache, my throat is dry, and I’m hungry.

  Donovan leans on my car and fiddles with his keys.

  “So, did Jack Dean Johnson have anything interesting to say?” Donovan looks away as he asks the question.

  So, there it is. Is that the reason for our “date”?

  I wait until he meets my eyes. “Are you pumping me for information on Johnson? Is that why you offered to teach me to shoot?”

  He looks embarrassed. “That wasn’t why I called.”

  I continue to stare him down.

  “Okay,” he says. “I confess I’m a bit curious about what this guy has to say. I wouldn’t be a good detective if I spent half the day with you and didn’t ask about him.”

  I glare at him.

  “I should have just asked you up front,” he says.

  My face is like stone.

  “Can I prove that wasn’t the only reason I called? Are you free for dinner tomorrow? I know I’m not Italian, but I do know my way around the kitchen a bit.”

  “Okay, if you promise you won’t try to pump me for information.” I’m only half joking. “Besides, that’s my job.”

  He nods and turns to leave but then turns back.

  “By the way,” he says. “Funny you asked me before about tipping off that reporter at your paper because she called me this morning. Asking about Jack Dean Johnson.”

  “What? You didn’t talk to her, did you?”

  He just gives me a look. “She called me on my cell phone. As far as I know, you’re the only reporter in the world who has that number.”

  “Are you serious? I haven’t given anyone your number. Nobody. Especially not her.”

  “I just thought it was a little odd. Don’t worry, I told her to call Roberge. See you Friday.”

  Driving back to the office, I can’t stop thinking about Donovan and how he was trying to pump me for information. I guess I would do the same thing in his shoes. But I’m still uncomfortable about how much we have in common. I agreed to dinner at his place because, despite my unease, I can’t resist seeing him again. When I think about him, I’m overwhelmed by contrasting emotions—­vague alarm, slight irritation, and desire.

  As soon as I get into the office, I remember what Donovan told me about May’s calling him. Ever since she snooped in my notebook and found out the details about the dad in drag, I’ve kept my notebooks locked up. Now I wonder if May got Donovan’s number by snooping through electronic files on my computer at work. I have one file with all my sources’ phone numbers in it. I had never worried about security in the past. But now I had better watch my back. I have to watch what I say in front of her and keep all my files and phone numbers out of her reach. I immediately transfer all my electronic files on Jasmine and my sources’ numbers to my laptop and delete them from my desktop computer, worrying that it’s too late.

  Chapter 16

  “COLLECT CALL FROM the Rosarito County Jail. Will you accept the charges?” the automated voice says. The warm feeling I have from spending the morning with Donovan instantly evaporates, replaced by a cold chill. It’s Johnson. I can hear my blood pumping madly in my ears.

  I don’t give him time to talk. “I need you to tell me if Jasmine is alive somewhere. Maybe you can help save her. A kidnapping charge is a heck of a lot better than a murder rap.”

  “You know I can’t say anything about that,” he says. “And here I thought you’d want to ask me about Caterina? Who is she? Was she a classmate? A friend of yours? A family member, a cousin, a . . .”

  I interrupt, not wanting to hear the word “sister” come out of his mouth. I’m not ready to tell him who Cat is. I quickly grab a list of questions I scribbled the other day.

  “You said your first time was about twenty years ago. I’ve been wondering what made you do it.”

  “Because I felt like it. We were partying, having sex. I got tired of it, killed her, and got up to go. I guess there is no way to make it not sound callous. It was something that popped into my head at the time. I remember there was a lot of blood.”

  “How did you kill her?”

  May has just arrived and is booting up her computer. When I ask this, her head swivels toward me, and her eyes widen.

  “Buck knife.”

  “Did she die right away?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” he says. “It was pretty loud for a while.”

  With my headphones on, I’m hands free, and so I type as fast as I can, trying to capture our conversation word for word. My adrenaline races. My heart skips a beat, and my face is flushed, but I don’t stop to think how I feel. I only have a few minutes before we are disconnected. It’s like playing blitz chess. Every move has to be fast and has to count.

  “How long until your next one?”

  “Not too long. Maybe a month or two. It’s not like when you kill once, you get out your calendar and plan the next one. Not everything revolves around that. It revolves around having to go to work, pay the rent, pay the bills. It’s just an activity brought into it. A lot of it is spur-­of-­the-­moment. It’s an urge just sitting there for days, but it wasn’t driving me daily.

  “And sometimes, once you open the floodgates to satisfy that urge, you can’t get enough and want to do it again as soon as possible. And if the opportunity presents itself, it can happen again . . . sooner than expected.”

  My heart starts beating up in my throat. Good God. He’s talking about the short period of time between when Jasmine disappeared and the kidnapping of the other little girl who escaped his clutches.

  “So, someone who gets another opportunity right away after another . . . uh situation, might take that opportunity?”

  “Exactly. You’re a lot smarter than you let on, Gabriella.” He draws out my name, lingering on it. I swallow the bile that has risen in the back of my throat, but my mind keeps rationally looking for ways to win this game—­to outsmart my opponent and find out what I need to know. Just like when I’m sitting down on Market Street playing chess. Except the stakes are a lot higher here. Instead of walking away with twenty bucks in my pocket, I may be able to find Jasmine still alive somewhere.

  “Why children?”

  “It’s just what tickles my fancy at the time,” he says. “There’s not a label or category that fits neatly into it. Yes, I do prefer short females. All of my relationships have been younger than me. For some reason lately, I have gotten seriously interested in small, blond women. But, yes, there are still full-­grown women who sexually turn me on.”

  My skin is crawling. I need to keep him talking.

  “How do you choose . . . the ­people you kidnap? Do you know ahead of time, then figure out exactly how it is going to take place?”

  “It’s not like in the morning when you wake up, you open the closet, and say, ‘What am I going to wear today?’ There’s not a plan. When you have a plan, th
ings will go wrong. It’s not that neat.”

  I know we’re running out of time on this call, so I speak fast. “I need to know. Is Jasmine tied up or trapped somewhere. If she’s still alive, you can tell me. I can save her. Please tell me.”

  “Can’t.”

  The phone gives a warning beep. It actually seems to disconnect us for a minute.

  “Jack? I thought you hung up on me.”

  “Don’t think I would ever hang up on you. Even if I got mad at you, I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Okay.” Yuck. His familiar tone creeps me out. We are not friends. Just like when he says my name, it sends a chill down my spine. He does that so often, it almost seems like he knows this.

  “By the way, Gabriella, do you want me to tell you about Caterina,” he says, and pauses. “Your sister?”

  The word hits me like a punch in the gut. Good God, he knows. How in the hell does he know? A shudder runs through my body. Suddenly, I realize something, and it makes my muscles weak. I slump in my chair. He’s been toying with me. Playing with me. He’s known all along. I’ve been a fool.

  “Gabriella.” His voice sends a wave of fear over me, and I close my eyes. I hate how much he uses my name. “Why do you think I agreed to see you that first time in jail? Why did I say no to all the other reporters? Think about it. You know why.”

  I remain silent.

  “But I’ve got a question for you. One I want you to really think about. Does it really matter who took your sister? Me or someone else? Is that going to make a difference to you? I’ll let you in on a little secret—­there are hundreds more ­people just like me out there. In fact, if I’m sent to the big house, I’m gonna make it my job—­my sacred duty—­to teach others everything I know. And if I ever get out . . . well, then I continue on my merry way, business as usual. I get bored a lot faster than I did in the old days. I need a little more . . . uh . . . stimulation than I used to. Let’s just say lately I’m more into quantity over quality.”