Psycho Save Us (47 page)
Authors: Chad Huskins
Officer David
Emerson touched the radio on his lapel. “This is one-Adam-four, responding to
that five-oh-three. I am in the vicinity and presently conducting a search for
the suspect. En route. ETA, four minutes.” He flipped on his siren without
listening to dispatch’s confirmation, and turned left quickly at the next
stoplight. “I got you, Jack Ching. You’re mine, motherfucker. Gonna have me
a mounted jackalope at the center of my living room. You’re fucking
mine
.”
“Yo!
Porter! We got something!”
That was Agent
Stone, sticking his head out from the SUV’s driver side. Leon had been
standing next to Porter watching the coroners pull out the little girl. A
moment of silence had befallen the entire scene, all police officers in the
yard and across the street had removed their hats without being told. Most of
them had either heard the recording of the girl’s screams (if they had, in
fact, been hers, and even if they hadn’t there was no doubt this girl had
suffered tremendously) or had heard the others talking about it.
Porter dashed
across the street with Leon jogging directly behind. “What’s up?”
“Get in!
Mansell Road! He walked into a Penske manufacturing plant and drove right off
the fucking lot with one o’ their trucks!”
“A
Penske
truck?” Leon asked, diving into the back seat. He’d had the volume on his
radio turned low while the girl was being pulled out, and hadn’t heard the
update.
“Yeah.”
“They have a
heading?” Porter asked. “A visual on him?”
Stone cranked
the SUV just as Mortimer hopped in behind him. “Not yet. Two helicopters in
the area are sweeping with searchlights.”
Outside, the
other officers were getting the same update. Hennessey and his SWAT boys were
piling back into their large armored van, ready to be redeployed again
elsewhere.
“A big yellow
Penske truck?” Leon asked again. “That’s getting sloppy of him. He tossed his
phone so he wouldn’t be found, but those Penskes stick out like sore thumbs.
He had to know a stolen truck would be reported. He’s either gonna ditch it
soon, or…” Or what? Was he leading them someplace? Was he having just that
much fun? Leon had flashbacks of seventeen-year-old Colton Harris-Moore, the
“Barefoot Bandit,” who had evaded police with such mischievous glee and had
left notes and pictures in his wake to taunt them. Some men did strange things
in defiance of the law.
“Yeah,” Porter
said. “He must’ve gotten desperate, and he’ll definitely ditch it soon as he
can.”
Leon nodded
wordlessly.
At his phone,
Porter received another update. “Well, shit on me, we may have something
here.”
“What is it?”
“Avery Street.
You know it?”
Leon had to
think for a second. “Yeah…yeah, I think so. Never worked it, but I know it.
It’s a really obscure back street, surrounded by some underdeveloped
neighborhoods that got foreclosed on. Why?”
“Your boys at
Atlanta PD just sent an update, and Interpol’s all over it. The bureau just
got it that the APD interviewed a few guys from Keegan, and two of them said
that Pelletier stopped and asked them for directions to Avery Street.” Porter
tapped the screen on his phone a few times, then looked down in consternation.
“The map o’ that place looks screwy.”
“Yeah,” Leon
said. “That area’s kind of fucked up. It got zoned weird and divided into
different sections, some of which got cut off from other main roads but none of
them ever got officially renamed, so there’s a few different streets that
look
like different streets but essentially are fragments of old Avery Street. A
series of neighborhoods got foreclosed on; it wasn’t a priority to rename
anything.”
“Why not?”
Leon shrugged.
“Nothing gets delivered there anymore. No pizzas, no mail. Almost nobody
lives there.”
“Huh,” Porter
said, his tongue touching his upper lip thoughtfully.
“What’re you
thinking?”
“Probably the
same as you,” he said. “A thousand bucks says we find a whole group of
Russians taking up residence in at least one house. Stacked up like Mexicans.”
Nobody took that
bet.
The rain
suddenly started in even harder. It came down in great sheets. Leaning back
in his seat, Leon thought about Pat. He thought about Pat’s connection to
Pelletier, and how that might come back to haunt him. Leon thought about his
sister, Melinda, married to Pat. He wondered how this could negatively affect
her once all was said and done. He thought about the
vory v zakone
and
the Rainbow Room. He thought about the screams he’d heard come from those
speakers.
13
It had been
difficult to find, even with the directions the Keegan worker had given him.
There were
four different
Avery Streets, or at least it seemed so
because of a strange engineering anomaly where Avery Street, most likely an old
street, had zigzagged around this area and two other streets—Montpelier and
Crowe Street—had been laid along it longwise. Like a slinking, wavy snake that
had been cut while curling, there were now many different slivers, all of them
called Avery Street.
The road was
winding and hilly, with unchecked trees choking off some of the sidewalks.
Vines grew amongst the branches, and even reached out at the road, as if ready
to snatch up some unwary traveler.
The wind was
blowing lightly when Spencer stepped down from the truck’s cab and onto the
pavement, pocked with potholes. Cracked streets yielded a path for some
determined grass. Trees stood sentry on all sides, some firs, one oak, a
smattering of beeches. It was clear to Spencer this had once been planned as
an upscale neighborhood, but somewhere along the way someone lost it in a
bankruptcy, possibly during the big Housing Bubble that ruined everyone. It
was new old, or old new; one of the two. Some builder had lost his ass and
been forced to stop developing this area, leaving the few planted trees to grow
wild and selling the houses for whatever he could get.
Spencer knew the
story. He knew it without even having to research it. He knew how they world
worked. He understood its ebb and flow, comprehended how its blood flowed
through its veins, the way thinking creatures thought, and the way the deck was
stacked against almost every single entity trapped in it. The game was the
same. Criminals would always take advantage in desperate times. They would
squat in houses that sat empty, or else buy them at a steal and turn them into
meth labs.
Or rape clinics
, he thought, smirking.
The houses on
either side of Avery Street were just short of those large ones that had been
such a quick and easy build that they had been the craze in the late 90’s and
early 00’s. Not quite McMansions, but pretty big.
Yep, definitely
pre-Housing Bubble
. The American builder had lost his ass in that shit,
and then had come a few Russians, ones with the money to answer his prayers
since no Americans had the dough to buy
any
house at that time, much
less these.
Avery Street had
four houses on either side, but at the cul-de-sac, where it ended, there were
two others, those being the most well kept in the neighborhood. The yards
looked regularly mown, and the waist-high fences, though as jagged and darkened
as a crackhead’s teeth, looked at least sturdy. Only the big brick one at the
end of the cul-de-sac had any lights on. However, Spencer did spot a trio of
white goons sitting in a swing and in some wicker chairs on the front porch of
the house closest to him.
“You ready,
partner?” Spencer said, taking his last toke of his cig and tossing it on the
ground.
There was no
hesitation this time.
I’m ready
.
The Connection
was still felt. Spencer had already gotten used to it. It was refreshing,
this new perspective on life. He’d enjoyed tasting the girl’s love for her
sister, had found her fear intriguing. “I’m on the move.”
So are we
.
He smiled. “There’s
a good girl.”
How is it out
there with you?
Spencer started
moving down the street. “Reminds me of that ol’ Western,
A Fistful of
Dollars
, where Eastwood was in a dying town with two feuding gangs living
on each side of a single street. Funny scene. Eastwood walks past the town’s
only coffin maker and tells him to get three coffins ready. He shoots four
dead, and walks back to the coffin maker and apologizes, saying he ought to
have said
four
coffins.” There was no response from the Voice, but he
felt her. He felt her fear, and for a moment he toyed with it. He found it
sticky, as sticky as she found his thoughts in general. “Don’t worry, I’m not
gonna shoot anybody. Least, not yet.”
Spencer nodded
and gave a polite wave to the three white boys on the porch. The one sitting
in the swing stood up and walked inside, alone. The other two remained seated
in their wicker chairs, watching him.
Twenty steps
later, a light came on in the upstairs window of the house on his left.
Another eight steps, and a light came on in both a downstairs window and an
upstairs window of the house beside it. Then, just as the first houses on his
right and left were behind him, he heard a door shut. Spencer glanced behind.
A man and a woman had stepped out of the front door of the first house on the
left and switched on a porch light. The man was bare-chested, and had
something in his left hand.
Now I’m stepping
into
their
parlor
, Spencer thought.
And it’s the prettiest little parlor
I ever did spy
.
Another light switched
on. Then another. A man stepped out onto the porch of the last house on the
right. Inside each house, calls were being made. Avery Street was its own
little nook, a rift in the fabric of the space-time continuum, where only a few
knew how to venture in and out of safely. Spencer’s sudden appearance was
probably a surprise to the inhabitants who probably rarely ever spotted such a
bold traveler.
“I don’t know
which house you’re in,” he muttered, looking at one of the white fellas who’d
wandered out onto his porch and taken a seat. “You there?”
I’m thinking
, said the
Voice. A few seconds, then,
It’s a big brick one, on the front somebody
spray-painted L-Ray runs this shit
.
That’s all I
—
oh
…
oh
God
…
“What is it?”
Fear bloomed across his mind, and he liked it. Then, all at once, the
Connection was lost. He no longer tasted the fear, the sadness, the shame.
Without knowing it, Spencer had started to relish it, much the same way as he’d
relished having Tidov dead to rights, but there was a key difference. The
sensation that came with the Voice was a little soothing. He felt like a man
in a desert who’d been granted a sip of water—the cleanest, purest, coldest
glass of water on Earth—and now it was gone. “Partner?” he said. “Partner,
you there?”
To his right,
one of the men had stepped off of the porch. He was a large man, also wearing
no shirt, and his big belly had tattooed letters:
Мир
ненавидит
нас
.
“The world hates
us,” Spencer said, half in wonder.
“Hey there!”
someone called from behind. He glanced over his shoulder, but never stopped
walking towards the big brick house. He spotted it from here,
L-Ray runz
this shit!!!
, and never broke stride. “Hey, man! What’s a guy like you
doin’ wandering around here at night? Huh? You a Peeping Tom? Eh? A thief?
Maybe you’re scouting us out. Is that right?”
Spencer kept
walking. He listened to the footsteps behind him and estimated their
distance. About twenty feet. The big guy with the round tattooed belly was
walking parallel to him on the sidewalk about twelve feet away.
“You gonna talk
to me, punk?”
“I’m meetin’ a
friend o’ mine,” Spencer said, making it to the fence and stepping right on
into the yard.
“Yeah? Who’s
that?”
“Dmitry. He
inside?”
“There’s no
fucking Dmitry lives around here, asshole. Sounds like you got yourself lost.
Time to turn back around—”
Spencer did turn
around. Smoothly, and with purpose. His right hand went to his waistline,
where he withdrew the Glock. The man walking behind him had a moment for his
cocky smile to linger while he processed how the world had turned on him here
on his own turf. Another young man was walking behind him, this one with jeans
and a Metallica T-shirt, who turned on his heels and ran a second before the
bullet ripped through his friend’s skull. The sharp bang caused a scream from
someplace. He heard a window break, strangely enough, and shots were fired at
him. At least, he thought they were.