Long Lost - James Scott Bell Page 0,23
tell you,” Johnny said. “It was the two-headed monster. With the horns. You used to hide your face when you saw them.”
That was right. That was exactly what Steve did. He never forgot the two-headed monster. You don’t forget the things that scare you as a kid. Or the losses you suffer when you’re five years old.
Johnny LaSalle had to be Robert. Had to be, or else he was the coolest liar on earth. Steve had seen some pretty cool ones before, but not like this. The echo of doubt was fading, but Steve wasn’t ready to stop listening. Still, Johnny’s face had changed. A moment before, Steve thought it potentially menacing. Now it seemed soft and open. Even vulnerable.
Quite unexpectedly, tears pushed at Steve’s eyes. He bit down and fought them back.
“Hey,” Johnny said. He put his hand on Steve’s arm.
“Sorry. You just don’t know . . .”
“I think I do. Listen, Bro, just listen. Life is a veil of tears, as they say. We’re part of that. But there’s a way out. Let me talk a minute.”
I want you to talk, Steve thought. I want you to talk your way back into my life and talk out all the pain. And talk fast so I don’t just burst the dam here.
“Here’s what happened,” Johnny said. “The guy who took me was named Cole.”
“Clinton Cole,” Steve said. “I looked up the story when I was a teenager.”
“Then you know a lot of it.”
“Not really.”
Johnny said, “Here’s how it went down. Cole was a guy who thought he was a demon. A chief demon of Satan. And it was his job to raise up apprentice demons. That meant little boys. Like me. He found me because he knew our father, did some construction with him. He decided I was going to be one of his boys.”
“Why didn’t he take both of us?”
Johnny shrugged. “I never got to ask. He wrapped me up and the next thing I knew I was in this place in the mountains, a real dive of a shack. Terrible.”
Steve swallowed hard. “Did he . . .”
Closing his eyes, Johnny nodded. “Yeah. Thank the good Lord above it never happened to you, Steve. It didn’t, did it?”
“No.”
“Well, somewhere along in there, I got rescued. By some guys who knew about Cole, knew what a bad guy he was. Some people might have called these guys a gang of some sort, but they were like family to me. A man named Eldon LaSalle took me in. Do you know that name?”
“I don’t think so.”
“All right. I’ll tell you more about him later. One step at a time.”
“Why didn’t this man bring you back to us?”
“It’s complicated. I don’t remember a lot from that time. I just know Cole had done a real number on me. Steve, I was really screwed up. Eldon LaSalle treated me like his own son. But he could only do so much. I got into trouble. No excuses. That’s just the way it was.”
As he spoke, Steve noticed him looking this way and that, never keeping his eyes locked on Steve for any length of time. Steve knew that’s how long-term prisoners act. In the slam they have to constantly be looking around in order to survive.
He could scarcely imagine what Johnny—Robert—had been through to this point in his life.
“I remembered you,” Johnny said. “But by the time I was fifteen, sixteen, I was into my own deal and I didn’t think about the past. But then things changed.”
Steve said, “Whose body was that in the fire? And how did they make it an ID on you? I have the autopsy report and it says—”
“How’d you get that?”
“I asked. The deputy coroner faxed it to me. It used dental records to make a positive ID on Robert Conroy.”
Johnny frowned. “I’ve never seen that. I don’t even know who it was in that shack. The kid I mean. The man was Cole. And good riddance.”
He looked down and was silent for a long moment. Then he looked at Steve. “I’ve paid my debt to society. At least that’s what they tell me. But this time I’m not going back. I want to turn my life completely around. How much do you know about my record?”
“Some.”
“I was into an Aryan thing. Pretty heavy into it. But the light broke through.”
Steve said nothing.
Johnny said, “Do you know the story of Paul and the road to Damascus?”
“A bright light or something.”
“Blinded him. Got his attention. That’s what happened