Psycho Save Us (20 page)

“Nothin’, man.”

“Don’t bullshit
me, brotha.”

“I
ain’t
bullshittin’, Lee.  I don’t got no people workin’ Troup County, an’ if anybody
brought me somethin’ from that county, or any other county that ain’t sure
about or where I don’t have an in with the local DMV, then I ain’t about it.  A’ight?”

Leon fixed him
with a look and studied him at length.  After a moment, he decided that his
brother-in-law was telling the truth.  He’d never lied to Leon, not once, even
though he lied to Leon’s sister often.  What the hell his sister had ever seen
in this man he would never know.  He certainly wasn’t faithful, and if all she
needed was a provider for her two kids from her previous marriage then she
could’ve relied on her little brother, and Melinda knew it.  But he suspected
she resented the idea of getting support from Leon, if only because he was her
younger
brother.  
So she went and married this winner
.  He said, “All right,
then.  Anything else happen recently?”

“Like?” said
Pat, with a barely controlled attitude.  Leon knew that if he wasn’t careful,
this could turn into a full-blown family-style argument.  Pat was a pugnacious
little prick at times, especially these days, since he was so used to getting
his way in their relationship.  Pat was an informant, but only for Leon, and
Leon had settled on turning a blind eye to his operations, rather than handing his
sister’s husband over to the APD.

“Like any
unusual visits.  Maybe some new guys from outta town?  Maybe some new
competitor?  Anything out of the ordinary for you.  Help me out here, Pat.”

“Various folks
come, an’ various folks go.  Can’t say anything particular.”

“What about a
white man?  About six feet tall, maybe a little taller?  Dark hair, blue eyes. 
Very pale.  Wearing a black hoodie, jeans, and Converse shoes.”

Pat said
nothing, just looked him up and down.

“That’s a yes,”
Leon said, reaching into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulling out his
notepad.  “Just give me something and it’ll never come back to you.  I’ll chalk
it up to one of my other street-level informants, I’ll say they spotted him and
your name will never be mentioned.  Now, who is he?”

Pat still said
nothing.  His hand fidgeted inside his pockets as he cocked his head back and
looked at the sky from one end to the other.

He looked down at
his brother-in-law more judiciously.  Leon knew that his height made him more
domineering in negotiations, and never hesitated to use it.  “Pat, you owe
me.” 

“Yeah?” he said,
folding his arms to ward off reason.  “For what?”

“You owe me,”
was all Leon said back.  And he did.  Big time.  In every way conceivable.

For a time it
seemed like Pat might just withhold what he knew for all eternity.  Then, at
last, he said, “His name’s Spencer.”

“Got a last
name?” Leon asked, his pen moving.

“Pelletier.  I
dunno how the fuck you spell it.”

Leon started
jotting that down, then stopped.  His pen hovered an inch above the paper.  “Pelletier…Spencer
Pelletier…why does that sound so familiar?” 

“He escaped
Leavenworth ’bout two years ago.  He was famous fo’ a minute.”

Leon shook his
head.  “No.  No, this was more recent, I think.”  He shook his head and went
ahead writing it all down.  “Spencer Pelletier.”  The name bounced around
inside his head in search of something to connect with.  “Leavenworth.  Two
years ago.  All right, when did you last see him?”

Pat smiled. 
“Let’s see, I guess it was about, oh, five minutes ago.”

“You’re shitting
me.”

“Nope.  He left,
an’ no sooner had I sat back in my office than you knocked at my door, Lee,”
Pat said, shrugging.

“How long did he
stay?”

“I’ow know,” Pat
said, shrugging.  “Thirty minutes?  An hour?”

“Which was it? 
Thirty minutes or an hour?”

“Man, I look
like a
God
damn timepiece?” Pat said, shrugging.

“What did he
want?”

“A job,” Pat
said, shrugging.

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much,”
Pat said, shrugging.  “That, an’ he wanted to sell me this shitty-ass minivan
he boosted.”

Leon stopped
writing and looked up at him.  “Wait…wait, he was driving that Ford Aerostar
minivan?”

Pat grinned. 
“Yup-yup.  Ya saw him, I guess?”

Leon fumed. 
“God damn it, yes.  I did.  Where was the motherfucker going?”

“I’ow know.”

“Don’t
lie
to me, Pat—”

“I ain’t lyin’,
Lee!  This muthafucka didn’t tell me—”

“This asshole
may be involved in the kidnapping of two children—
two small girls
—earlier
tonight!” Leon shouted.  He watched Pat’s expression change to one of serious doubt
and deliberation.  “Down by Dodson’s Store!  Just snatched them right up off
the street, Pat!  It may be just a bunch o’ hoods, but it might also be the
vor
! 
Now, you gonna help me or not?”

His
brother-in-law sighed, licked his lips, and nodded.  “How sure are you he took
them girls?”

“Not a hundred
percent, but I think he
knows
something.  He was there, I know that
much.  Pat, look at me.”  Pat’s eyes had started to wander, not wanting to meet
Leon’s, but now they locked on unblinkingly.  “You know how these cases go.  If
we haven’t found those girls within forty-eight hours they’ll already be raped
and murdered, and we won’t see them again until their bodies turn up in a
landfill, if ever.  If not that, then they’ll be shipped someplace else.  God
knows where.  Now, tell me, where did this asshole go?”

Pat blinked, and
made a decision.  “I sent him to Basil.”

Leon thought for
a second.  “The Yeti?  On Maple?  Hillside Apartments, right?”

“Yeah.  An’ he
said somethin’ about the
vor
an’ this abduction bidness befo’ he left. 
He sounded curious himself.  Maybe he just got mixed up with ’em by accident,
ya know?”

“Maybe.  But we
won’t know until we ask…”  He trailed off.  Leon’s mind had just leapt to
something else.  All at once, he had the connection.  It came out of nowhere,
like an old baseball card collection that suddenly fell out of a dusty drawer
when you went to clean the attic.  A recent memory, hitherto lost in the attic,
rejoined him, and the connection showed promise.  It grew, reshaping Leon’s
curiosity to something more akin to alarm.  After a moment he said, “Wait a
minute.  Wait just a…
Pelletier
.  That’s his name?  Spencer Pelletier? 
You’re sure about that name, Pat?”

Pat shrugged
again.  “Yeah, that’s his name.  Unless he been lyin’ to me all these years.”

“Spencer
Pelletier…
fffffffffffuck
.  Fuck me,” he said, and took out his cell
phone.  “Baton Rouge.  God damn it.  Fuck me sideways.”

“Baton R—
hey
! 
Where the fuck you goin’?  This shit ain’t comin’ back on me an’ mine, is it?”

Leon had turned
and bolted back to his car.  The text message he sent was to Bernie Gibbons in
Missing and Exploited Children.  It was short and sweet:
Maple Street.  Hillside Apartments.  Maybe
caught a break.

He slid inside his
sedan and plucked the radio from the cup holder between the seats where he’d
left it.  “Dispatch, this is Detective Leon Hulsey.  Badge number
eight-four-eight-seven.  I have a beat on a wanted fugitive who may be at Hillside
Apartments on Maple Street.  Suspect’s name, Spencer Pelletier.  Wanted for
multiple counts of murder in Baton Rouge.  Advise all units to consider armed
and extremely dangerous.”

“Ten-four,
Detective.  What’s your twenty?”

“Terrell
Street.”

“Are you heading
to Hillside now?”

“Yes I am.  Send
all available units in the area.  Over.”  He tossed the radio into the
passenger seat and instinctively touched the pistol at his side to make sure it
was still there before he squealed out.  Leon took one last look in his
rearview mirror and saw Pat standing there, a lone silhouette on Terrell
Street, waving a single hand for his brother-in-law’s return.

Or maybe it was
a wave goodbye.

Leon looked at
the lit-up dashboard. . His clock read 1:17
AM
.

City lights
streaked past the windows at irregular intervals.  Kaley spotted a few cars on
the road, and though they were just right there—
right there
—she couldn’t
reach out to them and let them know her trouble.  Kaley considered drawing the
words
HELP ME
on the window
with her finger, hoping it would be subtle enough that her captors wouldn’t
notice, and yet noticeable enough that somebody else driving by would.  Alas,
she was squeezed in between two burly men, and could no more reach out to touch
the window than she could reach for the moon.

And so they
drove on, most of the world asleep, and even those who weren’t were oblivious,
living their own dreamlike lives.

Once, when she
was visiting her Aunt Tabitha, Kaley remembered asking if cities dreamed.  Aunt
Tabby had asked her where she got that crazy idea.  Kaley told her she had read
a story at school about a man who got lost inside a city’s dream and couldn’t
find his way out.  “If they dream, they have nightmares, don’t they?”

Sometime later,
Aunt Tabby had followed up on this topic with her.  “I thought what you asked
was very interesting, girl,” she had said.  “I actually did some looking into
dreams.  Everything that has living parts dreams.  We might be like blood cells
moving through the bloodstream of the city.  Like neurons in a brain.  If
that’s so, then we make up a collective thought, don’t we?  A collective
consciousness that is the city’s thoughts and dreams.”

Aunt Tabitha had
seemed quite smitten with this concept, perhaps hopeful that her niece would
grow up to take an interest in science like she had.  Aunt Tabitha wasn’t a
genius, but she was the smartest person Kaley knew.  She had been a science
teacher, and was now mostly retired and occasionally substituted.  She had
encouraged Kaley to think more deeply about things than the rest of the fools
in the Bluff, those who scorned people who made good grades and mocked anyone
who showed the least bit of creative talent.

“Misery loves
company,” Aunt Tabby had said.  “They don’t want you to escape because
they
haven’t escaped.  If you escape, then they’re all alone with their failures.”

Kaley sensed
that now from the other little girl sitting in the back next to Shannon.  The
girl was indeed miserable, and didn’t want either Kaley or Shannon to leave,
despite the fact that leaving would be a good thing; it would mean being able
to get help for her. 
She wants us here
. 
If we leave her, then she’s
alone with her suffering
.
 She sees compatriots in misery
. 
She
hopes to bond
. 
She hopes to have friends, like a stray dog edging
towards a human, hopin’ to be allowed into the home
.

But Kaley’s
responsibility was to her sister.  If she could find a way of getting them all
out, she would of course, but priority one was Little Sister.  And the Anchor. 
If Kaley had to make the decision between escaping with Shan and remaining here
to make sure the other girls was okay, she would escape with Shan at her first
chance and never look back.  Well, maybe not never.  She would always carry
that frightened girl’s misery with her, all the way to her grave.

She looked out
the windows on either side of her, watched the streetlights standing sentry at
regular intervals.  Kaley might’ve recognized the area if it were daytime and
she wasn’t so confused about how far they’d come already, but at the moment she
didn’t recognize a single landmark.  All storefronts were closed and the
windows were dark.  A few people walked the streets, and every so often the
buildings parted to reveal skyscrapers off to her right, but she still couldn’t
orient herself.

Whimpering from
the back.  She turned her head, saw Shannon, as well as the familiar-looking
girl lying in a fetal position next to her.  And then she heard a grunt from
one of the men sitting on either side of her—it was the man with the jaundiced
skin—and it seemed to warn her about making eye contact with her sister.

The vertigo-like
sensation kicked in again, causing the world to tilt.  Kaley knew what was
going to happen next, and instead of listening to her charm (as she promised
she would from now on) she fought it still, because she didn’t want it to be
true.  For a moment, there was an image crystallized so perfect in her mind, a
set of teeth smiling wide, blood leaking from the upper lip, and a background
smattering of distant screams.  She pushed it away.  She was willfully
oblivious, looking down at her feet, then out at the streetlights, then back to
her feet again.

If cities do
dream, she decided, they must have nightmares as well.  Tonight, Kaley,
Shannon, and the other terrified little girl were caught in one.