Psycho Save Us (31 page)

This wasn’t a
pleasant prospect.  Not at all.  Once Agent Porter had Pat Mulley’s name, he
would naturally want to do a thorough background check on the man.  He would
find out every place the man had worked in his entire adult life, would check
and see how much time he’d served throughout the years, and, of course, would
want to know about his friends and family.  It wouldn’t be long before he knew
Patrick Mulley’s wife’s, Melinda Mulley, wasn’t living with him anymore and
that her maiden name was Hulsey.  How quickly before Agent Porter figured it all
out?

Earlier, while
speaking about Pelletier, Agent Porter had said,
Coincidences are
only coincidences for so long
.  Eventually, he would determine that
this coincidence was no coincidence, either.  And then how long before he
figures out Detective Leon Hulsey, an iron horse of the Atlanta PD, had been
turning a blind eye to activities he knew to be detrimental to law and order,
as well as keeping information vital to countless auto theft investigations,
all because some of it involved his sister’s husband?  What would come next? 
Suspension without pay?  Criminal charges for aiding and abetting?  Melinda
would lose a brother and a husband, the only two men who could ever take care
of her high-maintenance ass.

“His name’s
Charles Gracen,” Leon lied.  “I can probably call him, set up a rendezvous.  He
moves around a lot, though, so no guarantees.”

“Fine.  Set it
up.”

“All right,”
Leon said, taking out his cell phone and walking away from them all.  “Give me
a few minutes.”  If Agent Porter detected any kind of deception he didn’t show
it.  He simply nodded and went back to his own cell phone, texting and talking
with the other two agents.

Leon walked half
a block up.  A shirtless, hobbling crackhead crossed the street, and a pair of
skanky women were peeking their heads out a window.  Three stories above them,
a few more heads poked out of windows.  All of them were drawn to the flashing
police lights and the aftermath of the shooting.

The phone rang
once, twice, thrice.  “C’mon, you skinny fucking crackhead,” Leon whispered. 
“Answer the God damn phone.”  Another ring.  Then another.  Then finally the
voicemail picked up.  “Hey, yo, you just reached Cee-gray.  Leave a message
at—”  Leon cursed, hung up, and dialed again.  Seven rings, then the voicemail
again.  He hung up, dialed again.  Same thing.

He did this six
times before finally a groggy, high-pitched voice answered, “Hey, what the
fuck, yo?  Stop callin’ me!  It’s like three o’clock in the goddamn moanin’—”

“Get your lazy fucking
ass out of bed,” Leon said.  “We’ve got work to do.”

“Whu…?”

“You heard me. 
And don’t talk back to me or I’ll make sure the ATF pays a visit
tonight
! 
You feel me?”

“What the fuck,
Hulsey?  What’s goin’ on?”

Leon glanced
over his shoulder, making certain no one was within earshot.  “I’ve got feds in
town, and they wanna meet one of my informants.  You’re it.  You gave me
information earlier tonight—”

“I ain’t seen
you in a
month
, motherfucker!”

“Yes, you did. 
You saw me earlier tonight.  That’s what you’re gonna tell them or I guarantee
I’ll find a reason to send you back to Georgia State Pen!  Are you awake?  Are
you listening to me?”

Charles Gracen,
better known as “Cee-gray” to his peeps, sighed heavily.  “Yeah, I’m
listenin’.  So, what did I
tell
you tonight when we had this mysterious
meetin’ that I’m suddenly recollectin’?”

Leon told him,
and after issuing one last threat, he hung up and walked over to the three
agents.  Porter was sitting in the front passenger seat of the SUV and checking
a few things on the dashboard computer.  Leon saw that it was a map of
Atlanta.  “Well?” he said, not looking at Leon.

“It’s on. 
Thirty minutes.  About three blocks up in a parking lot behind Grady’s Bar.”

“Great.  Hop in.”

Leon had
traveled with the agents in their vehicle since his was now evidence and needed
to be swabbed for prints.  A tow truck would get around to Townsley Drive later
to pick it up.

He took a seat
in the back with Agent Mortimer, the white man who was sitting quietly to
himself behind the driver’s seat and looking deeply concerned with something on
his iPhone’s screen.

“So, I’ve had
people back at the bureau looking into this Rainbow Room,” Agent Porter said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.  Wait’ll
you hear this.”

9

It
was perhaps a long shot, but one worth trying.  Spencer had his phone out and
was thinking about the story he would give to the Parole Commission’s office. 
A brief check on the Internet had given him the number to the Valdosta branch. 
Now he only needed a plausible excuse to search the name.

The excuse was
right at the front of his mind, but it was hiding in shadow.  This wasn’t like
him.  It was the third time tonight he’d gotten distracted by a thought that
wouldn’t leave him alone, and it was terribly frustrating.

The thought that
had so constipated his regular fluid thinking was an image of a fat man.  It
came to him out of nowhere, but stayed like it had import.  He’d been drinking
earlier, and sometimes when he got a little buzz on he would think about the
past.  Spencer was susceptible to that kind of thing, being as “pensive” as he
was (thank you Dr. McCulloch for that wonderful word).  The fat man in his mind
was sitting on a throne…or no, a sofa.  His face was in a haze, like how a spot
disappeared thanks to your blind spot, but the belly was this great, voluminous
orb, and on it was a message.

Is it a message
for me?

Spencer pushed
the thought aside and started dialing the Parole Commission in Valdosta.  Then
he paused.  He couldn’t think of the next number.  He couldn’t think of
anything besides the fat man.  
What the fuck is this shit?  Am I high?  Were
Pat’s cigs laced with somethin’?

“The only way to
deal with your demons is to face them.”  That was Dr. McCulloch’s advice.  No,
wait…no, that was from that asshole at that wilderness therapy program he’d
been put through in the North Georgia Mountains, way, way back when some people
in Spencer’s life had still been convinced there was a chance to lead him away
from the road he was on. 
What was that guy’s name? 
Spencer smiled. 
Gary
something
. 
Ehrlich?
 
That’s it!  Gary Ehrlich
. 
I called
him “Gay Lick
.
”  Fucker hated me worse than cholera
.

The memory was a
fond one, and Gay Lick’s advice was good advice.  “Meet the demons head-on,” the
councilors had said around their usual circle jerk that Gay Lick called the
“Circle of Truth,” where everyone shared what was their mind.  None of the
councilors had liked this confession period when Spencer spoke, and neither did
any of the kids, no matter their disposition.

What
the fuck am I seein’?  A tattoo of
…

Letters. 
Strange font.  The letters and font were both familiar, yet different.

“All right, all
right, Spence ol’ boy,” he said out loud to himself and the piles of lumber all
around him.  “Face those fuckin’ demons head-on.”  And so he closed his eyes
and took deep, steadying breaths just like Gay Lick had advised.  Back then, it
had worked surprisingly well, though he’d never given Gay Lick the satisfaction
of knowing it.  And it worked now, too.  Spencer saw…well, he wasn’t sure what
he saw.  The letters looked familiar in some way, perhaps he’d seen them in a
movie before.

He definitely
saw a big letter
M
, but then there was a reverse letter
N
:
и
.  Then there was a small
p
. 
Mnp
didn’t spell anything that he knew of, and neither did
M
и
p
. 
All right, what’s the rest?  Just
get it outta yer head, Spence ol’ boy
. 
It’s like a bad acid trip
. 
Just
ride the shit and get it over with
.  There was an
H
, then a
lower-case
e
, and then another capital
H
.  And then a lower-case
a
. 
Then a capital
B
, and then a…a…

What the fuck is
that?
he thought.  Some kind of a…an
A
, maybe?

Without really
realizing it, Spencer had already opened his eyes and started moving his
fingers across the keys on his phone.  He felt like that guy in that urban
legend who had woken up suddenly in a bathtub filled with ice, only to discover
he’d been kidnapped and left there with one of his kidneys removed.  The story
went that that guy started off quite calmly looking down at himself,
half-dazed, unwilling to believe what he was seeing, and then with increasing
alarm he’d fumbled through the hotel room piecing together what had happened to
him.

A part of
Spencer did not wish to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, he was losing it. 
Dr.
McCulloch always said it could get this bad if I didn’t try to keep it in check
. 
“A messy mind makes a messy life,” he had said.  It had been just one in a
string of useless platitudes.

His fingers
moved across the phone’s keypad until he’d pulled up Google Translate.  He was
able to find a menu that showed all sorts of alphabets.  Greek, Chinese,
Japanese, Latin.  He cycled through them all, looking at samples of them until
he landed on Cyrillic, where he saw the weird backwards
N
and the
not-quite-
A
-looking letter.

Using his finger
on the touchscreen, he typed in the letters he saw in his vision:
Мир
ненавидит
нас
.  He figured
he’d get just a bunch of gobbledy-gook.  Spencer was surprised when he got the
English translation: 
The world hates us
.

With rain starting
to fall again and smearing his screen, Spencer read the message again and again. 
What’re the odds that I came up with Cyrillic letters that just so happened
to form a complete, coherent message?
  Perhaps it had always been there, at
the back of his mind, a message someone had given him a long, long time ago,
maybe one of the assholes back in the pen.  Spencer thought about the fat,
grotesque belly he was seeing this tattoo wrapped around.  Was it maybe someone
from cellhouse A?  Somebody he’d half known and his memory of them was just now
bubbling to the surface after two beers and a bit of nicotine?

It took a few
seconds of pondering to make him suitably bored of the topic.  As pensive as he
could be, he was also prone to just dropping something whenever an immediate
answer didn’t present itself.  Dr. McCulloch had always told him that
psychopaths showed that tendency for quick boredom and a constant need for
stimulation, and warned that it would continue to get him into trouble if he
didn’t attempt to control it.

It took a few
seconds to get past the befuddled.  Then, Spencer recalled what excuse he
wanted to use with the Parole Commission and started dialing again.

Two rings was
all it took, but it was an automated machine that picked up, telling him to
hold for the first available representative.  After a few minutes of listening
to the soft but ominous musical stylings of Phil Collins with “In the Air
Tonight,” someone finally picked up.  “U.S. Probation Office, Valdosta,” a
woman’s voice said.  “How may I direct your call?”

“Yeah, uh, hi. 
My name’s Wagner.  Stewart Wagner,” said Spencer.  “And I had a complaint to
file against a man I believe to be on parole,” he said.  It was a long shot,
but many criminals were either on parole or had once been.  And the dying punk
back on Townsley mentioned serving time with “my boy” Yevgeny.  A long shot,
but one worth checking out.

“All right. 
Maybe I can help you.  What’s the name?”  Spencer could hear long fingernails
clicking at keys.

“See, now,
that’s the thing.”

“You don’t have
a name?”  She said it with dismay.

“No.  Well,
maybe.  See, I can’t quite pronounce it.  I think it’s Russian or Ukrainian or
some shi…sorry, some
such
.”

“Hm.  That could
actually help narrow it down some, if you could remember even a bit of his
name.”

Spencer sighed. 
“It’s something like, um, Yevgeny?” he tried.  “I’m not sure if that’s a first
name or a last name.  I
think
it
might
be the first, and his last
name might be something like Tiddlov, or Tidiv maybe?  I dunno.”

“Let me try a
few different spellings,” the woman said.

“Thank you,
miss.  I really appreciate this.”  Spencer paused for a moment, taking deep
breaths.  A sudden nausea had come over him, and he wasn’t sure if it was all
the excitement, the burger from Dodson’s Store, his anger at the man with the
bear-claw tattoo, or a combination of all three.  Part of him knew that the
nausea wasn’t his, though.  Somebody had sent it to him.  Somewhere out there,
someone was very, very sick.