53
Six days later, Bradley called Hood and told him he was back home at Valley Center. He said they needed to talk-now-use the gate code from the other night, Charlie. Hood heard a rare doubtful waver in Bradley’s voice, then he heard the clatter of the phone hitting something hard, and an explosion so loud it turned to static, then another. Gunning his Charger down the dirt road, Hood called the Valley Center Sheriff Substation.
When he got there, three San Diego County fire companies and a half dozen sheriff’s cruisers littered the barnyard and two helos hovered low over the hills. The barn was a smoking, blackened husk. Bradley lay sprawled faceup on the floor near the quad runners, most of his face and head gone and his entire body badly burnt. A semiautomatic pistol lay close by. And a cell phone. And a steel military-style fuel can lay scorched in the rubble. Hood recognized Bradley’s roasted leather duster and the remnants of the same fancy shirt and boots he’d worn the night he’d renounced his life of crime. Now he was a scorched corpse with a face that had collapsed into the violently emptied space behind it. Hood figured two shotgun blasts. At least. Armenta’s soldiers, catching up with him? Herredia’s enemies here in California, finding him out? Or something Hood might know nothing about-an old score now settled?
Back outside he leaned against his car in the good sun and looked out at the oak tree and the house and the pond. He wondered at the journey that had begun here and pulled him and others through their lives and had now brought him back to this death. A cool breeze hit him and he understood that it would blow through here for centuries unending and he hoped this bloody smudge of history and the people who lived it would not be erased and forgotten. Bradley Jones had been twenty-two years old.
54
By late spring, Bradley had been buried for nearly two months. Thomas was growing fast and Erin seemed oddly hopeful considering what she had been through. Hood was impressed, once again, with her calm strength, and the way that she could turn the catastrophes of life into the beauty of music. She had seven songs ready for the next CD. She moved back down to Valley Center on the first day of summer, declaring herself ready for “the next chapter.” Owens went with her. Hood watched them drive away down the dusty road and he saw both of their hands come up through the opened windows and wave good-bye.
Over the weeks Hood called acquaintances within the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department for updates on the Jones murder investigation. The deputies were not trusting of Hood and they offered him little more than what SDSD gave out to the media: death by shotgun, the fire apparently set to destroy evidence, no suspects and no clear motive. LASD said publicly that Bradley had been “questioned” as part of a larger investigation of Mexican drug-cartel activity in Los Angeles County and this angle was well covered by the Los Angeles Times.
The story of his outlaw mother, Suzanne, was exhumed and revisited, complete with videos of Suzanne in action. Her self-proclaimed relationship to Joaquin Murrieta was given enthused but skeptical attention once again, with learned historians weighing in on its great unlikelihood. A university professor from Davis said that the Joneses “were a clearly troubled family but blaming their exploits on a notorious outlaw is flimsy rationalization at best.” Hood thought of the head and gun and the saddle and the vest, of Suzanne’s and Bradley’s powerful lusts for danger and acquisition and lawlessness. A amp;E kept calling for an interview and Hood kept dodging them.
In the San Diego media, the flurry was over in less than one week, replaced by fresher woes and the county’s irrepressible passions for the Chargers and Padres. Hood was able to extract one unpublished fact from SDPD, though it was of questionable value: Bradley’s sidearm had contained nine of eleven possible shells and two brass casings had been recovered in the rubble. The two shells had been fired from Bradley’s gun, but because of the ensuing fire, they couldn’t say with certainty that he had fired them, and if so, when or at what.
In mid-July, Lonnie Rovanna was ruled unfit to assist in his own defense and housed in a high-security mental ward for treatment. Hood saw the video of Rovanna over and over, a staple on the San Diego news stations. They never showed any of the victims being hit by bullets, only Rovanna being tackled by Scott Freeman’s hefty associate. Hood’s own name continued to appear deep in several of the newspaper and magazine articles, linking Rovanna’s illegal possession of the fatal gun and a botched ATF operation. Dale Yorth kept Hood current on ATF musical chairs: Soriana bumped up to L.A., the L.A. Special Agent in Charge off to D.C., Fredrick Lansing demoted to a Justice Department job in Kansas City, Bly and three of the other fired agents filing a suit against Justice for wrongful termination. Hood enjoyed the information but didn’t miss the bureaucracy. He felt less like a law enforcer than an unemployed citizen-kidnapper.
Clint Wampler was charged with five murders, including that of Federal Agent Reginald Cepeda. Clint’s use of an explosive device in the bombing of the ATF field office, and the resulting death of Oscar Reitin, could qualify him for the death penalty. There was a news clip of Wampler also, limping into a room at the San Diego Superior Court, shackled at his wrists and ankles and held fast by two burly marshals. He looked as skinny and feral as Hood remembered him and he was ejected from his own arraignment for contempt.
• • •
Through summer Hood and Beth’s time together trailed off. She admitted considering a job offer in San Diego, and to spending more time with friends and coworkers. She refused to set foot in Hood’s home, telling him she’d either have to let Mike go free or call the cops so they could do it. She told Hood he would have to answer for Mike someday, then stopped mentioning him altogether. She spent two back-to-back, three-day weekends in San Diego, apartment hunting and bike riding in Balboa Park. She had such a blast. She implied that Hood should visit her often in San Diego, but the implication was faint and a direct invitation did not follow. She cried often and unexpectedly.
Beth left for her new position at Scripps Medical Center in San Diego late in July. It was a solid promotion and a vote of confidence and a nice hike in pay and benefits. A package arrived for Hood the day she left, a small rectangular box that contained a tissue-wrapped red apple and a note that said, “I love you.”
Hood saw himself as freakish and alone. He remained proud and encouraging of her, though what he felt most of all was flattened. He imagined letting Mike go free, then hustling off to San Diego, maybe apply at some car dealers for a sales position. The fantasy would linger for a few minutes or hours, then be dashed the next time Hood looked through one of the grates at the little man reading, watching TV, listening to music, reading, reading, reading, writing, writing, writing.
I can do this a lot longer than you can, Mike liked to say. He often wore a wry smile and even from the Hood-to-Mike distance his eyes were blue and clear and merry. He’d grown a beard and mustache and favored plaid flannel shirts with the sleeves rolled up, which gave him a woodsy, lumberjack kind of look.
• • •
Over the summer Hood traded phone calls with Mary Kate Boyle once a week. Today it was her turn to call and she told him opening night was just a week away and she’d have two tickets for him at will call. She gave him the address of the Lowell and the box office phone number, just in case he needed it. She was happy to have been promoted to front-of-shop supervisor at KFC, which was worth seventy cents more an hour, and she’d bought a used car, the first car she’d ever owned. They talked about the car, then there was a long silence. “Charlie? Just so’s you know? I’m not going to be badgering you or waiting around on you anymore.”