Psycho Save Us (11 page)

Once there, he
hadn’t stopped until he was in a city called Roswell.  There, he’d approached
an unsuspecting well-to-do-looking man in an empty parking lot and clubbed him
over the head with a tire iron he found in the back of the Tacoma, taking his
wallet.  Spencer had tailed the man into a gas station, watched him count out
some cash, and knew this was the guy.  He’d taken off in the Tacoma, leaving no
witnesses (as far as he knew) and perhaps leaving the man for dead (also as far
as he knew).

It had been a
long journey, and it had been fun so far.  In fact, reflecting on it now, the
mad dash to get away from Baton Rouge had been one of the most liberating
experiences of his life.  Second, perhaps, only to his escape from Leavenworth. 
And speaking of Leavenworth, it appeared Patrick Mulley had read his mind.

“Yo, Spence
dawg,” Pat was saying.  “Befo’ we get into any kind o’ business arrangement, I
just gotta know what up.  Ya feel me?”

“What’s up with
what?”

“Leavenworth,
playa.”

“You really
wanna know?”

“I asked, didn’t
I?”  He leaned forward, elbows propped up on his knees.  He reached into a mini
fridge beside his desk and plucked out an ice cold Bud, tossed it to Spencer
without asking if he wanted it.  Spencer caught almost without looking.

Spencer popped
the top of the bottle—and was glad it was a bottle, because it didn’t taste as
good in a can—but winced when he heard the
snap-hiss-pop
of the cap
coming off.  He’d never liked that sound.  It got under his skin.  Like Miles
Hoover, Jr.’s voice had done.  He took a sip, savored it.  “It’s been two
years,” he said.  “I’m sure ya heard it all by now.  It was on the TV for a minute.”

“Yeah, I heard,”
Pat conceded with a knowing smile.  “But I wanna hear
you
tell it,
playa-playa.  I wanna know what
really
went down.  ’Cause it went down a
bit differently than they reported it, didn’t it?”  Spencer smiled at him, and
Pat smiled wider.  “Didn’t it?”

Spencer leaned
back in his seat and put his feet up on a desk, knocking over a Burger King bag
and a paperback novel that looked like the binding had never been cracked.  “What
do you wanna know?”

“E’rythang.”

So Spencer obliged
him.

At 12:13
AM
, the Fulton
County Police car pulled up to 157 Beltway Street.  It was the left half of a boarded-up
duplex that had been built in 1965, with repairs performed repeatedly down
through the decades, but always to the plumbing and electrical work, never to
anything that reinforced the integrity of the structure.  Many times over
Atlanta City Hall had debated condemning the entire area around it and tearing
down the apartments, townhouses and duplexes that made up this section.  As one
city councilwoman once famously said of the homes there: “Those aren’t houses. 
It’s a bunch of cockroaches doing handstands on each other’s backs.”

Jovita Dupré didn’t
see the patrol car pull up.  She had been near the window, curtains drawn, but
the light that splashed across them looked like a white fire blooming against
her shut eyelids.  When she opened her eyes, Jovita blinked.  Her mouth had
been open while she was sleeping.  Her collar was soaking wet with drool and
her tongue was as dry as sandpaper.

The light from
the headlights pried her eyes open, slowly and painfully, until finally she
realized she was back in the waking world.  Back in the slowed down version of
reality.  Back in the uninteresting part.

Jovita’s bones
hurt.  She wondered how long it had been since she had moved.  She wondered
what time it was.  She wondered a lot of things.

As she stood up,
Jovita became faintly aware of the knock at her door.  Paranoia, distant but
familiar like an old friend that hadn’t called in a while, settled in for a
visit.  She blinked.  Her eyes felt dry, and her vision was blurry.  A stark
contrast to the sharpness she had experienced earlier, a distinction to the
vibrant colors that had defined her life.  There was also a cluttered mess in
the place where her former clarity had been.  Jovita’s thoughts moved
sluggishly, trapped on a freeway during a rainstorm where an accident had
happened way, way up ahead, too far to actually see.  The great importance that
she had felt for both herself and the world around her had now evaporated.  The
world was topsy tur—

Shan!  Kaley!

Paranoia called
up his cousin, Fear, and they had a little get-together in Jovita’s brain just
then.  The last thing she recalled was that she had handed something to her
daughters.  Maybe some money?  Told them to go get something?  Groceries?  But
now they were gone.  Jovita searched the room for another kind of light, those
being the red numerals of the alarm clock on the living room table (the living
room had been her bedroom a lot lately).  But those reassuring red numbers were
nowhere to be found.

There was more
knocking, and for a moment she just put her head in her hands.  Nothing seemed
very important.  Then, she recalled her children again, and that became
imperative.

She fumbled in
the dark for the clock, even as the knocking grew louder and a part of her
somehow sensed that the knocking was more important than the time, but then
again it wasn’t.  The meth-addled mind knew so very little about itself when it
was coming down.

Jovita’s hands
found the familiar contours of the table in the dark, and her fingers did a
little nervous dance across magazines, food wrappers, a spilled milkshake, and
the remote to the TV before finally coming across the infernal clock.  When she
flipped it, she discovered it was 12:16.  But that didn’t make sense because
there was no light outside.  It took her a moment to recall that the light on
the clock that indicated
AM
or
PM
had gone out
long ago. 
Past midnight, then
, she thought. 
Where are my girls?

She sat there
for a moment, trying to concentrate.  Were they with Ricky?  No…no, that wasn’t
right.  Her brain had just brought up the old, corrupted file that reminded her
Ricky was ancient history.

The knock on the
door got louder.  “Ms. Dupré?” came an insistent voice.

Jovita started
primping herself.  It was then that she discovered she had no clothes on. 
Oh,
God, did I
…
?
 Her hand went down to her crotch to check herself. 
Once she felt around and made sure she hadn’t seen any of her customers
tonight, she relaxed a little and stood up.  Her balance was a little off.  She
pitched sideways on her way to the light switch and slammed against the wall.  Jovita
flipped the light switch up and down, her brain refusing to recall why the
lights wouldn’t work. 
Power bill?  No
. 
We paid that
.  Her
sister Tabitha had sent the money and she had paid for it this time, Jovita was
sure of it. 
Light bulb
. 
Yeah
…
light bulb’s blown
.

“Ms. Dupré?” 
More knocking.  No, it was hammering this time.  Someone was hammering on the
door.

Jovita stumbled
over to one of the lamps by the front door and managed to switch it on.  She
was proud of herself for this momentary coordination.  She almost opened the
door before remembering to check the peephole.  When she did, her old friend
Paranoia came back to reside.

Police
. 
What’d I
do?  Or was it somethin’ the girls did?  Maybe they got my girls!  Damn pigs!
 
Again, she almost opened the door, but stopped herself long enough to search
for some clothes.  “Jes a minute!” she hollered.  Jovita looked around in the
dim light, searching the cluttered floor of overlapping clothes, Ricky’s old
toolbox, a recliner with more duct tape holding it together than thread, and an
upside-down table that was missing one of its legs.  Ricky was supposed to fix
that before he left, but never did. 
Till death do us part, my ass!
she
thought, snatching up a shirt hanging from one of the table legs.

More hammering. 
“Ms. Dupré?”

“I said,
jes
a minute
!”  She found a pair of pants, but those were Kaley’s.  “Fool girl
needs to do laundry!” she cursed, still on the prowl for something to cover her
lower body.  She eventually found one of her robes, threw it on, and was still
tying it when she opened the door.  She didn’t remove the chain from the door,
though.  Jovita wasn’t stupid.  She remembered what happened to 92-year-old
Kathryn Johnson up on English Avenue, who got shot in her own home by Atlanta
PD officers who raided the wrong home.  The story made national headlines back
in 2006 was still fresh on the locals’ minds, and would always be.  “
What
?”
she snapped.

The two officers
standing on her doorstep were black.  It was mostly black officers that came
down to the Bluff these days. 
White man don’t wanna see what he’s done to
us
, she thought, looking the traitor niggas up and down.  “Are you Jovita Dupré?”
the lead nigga asked.

“I—”  Her voice
caught.  Her mouth and throat were very dry.  How long had she been coming
down?  It seemed so much easier these days to sleep through the periods of her
life where meth was scarce.  These periods of rest became longer and longer,
though.  She was getting exhausted in her late thirties.  Soon, she’d have to
start sending Kaley out to fetch her stuff for her.  Jovita was not proud of
that fact, she was just a practical woman.  She cleared her throat, swallowed,
and said, “I…I am.  What’s this about, Officer…?”

“Jameson,” he
said.  He was a big, barrel-chested nigga who looked like he made time for the
gym every day.  He glanced over his shoulder at his partner, a slightly smaller
version of himself.  “This is Officer Manning.  Can we speak with you, ma’am?”

“What about?”

“Your children,
ma’am.  They—” 

He stopped
speaking when she slammed the door in his face, undid the chain, and flung it
open wide.  “Where they at?  You got ’em?  I’ll tan they little hides, an’
yours too, if you got ’em handcuffed in that squad car!”

Officer Jameson
raised his hands in a gesture that told her to ease up, a gesture that she had
seen directed at her many times in her life from men of all sorts, and always
thought insulting. 
They all think I’m crazy
, Jovita thought bitterly. 
“Ma’am, are you telling me that your daughters are
not
at home with you at
this time?”

Jovita scoffed
at him.  “I think I
know
where my damn kids are and are
not
,
Officer Jameson—”

“So where are
they?”

“I sent them off
to the sto’,” she said.  As quick as she’d needed it, the memory suddenly surfaced. 
Yes.  Yes, indeed, that
was
where she had sent them, wasn’t it?  Yes, Jovita
felt certain of that.  It was so.  Just before the haze had taken her, just
before things had started to be less interesting, she had given Kaley some
money and sent her with her sister to get a few things.  She was hungry and
Shannon would need something for lunch tomorrow.  Sandwich stuff.  Yes, that
was it.  That was it.

“You sent them
to Dodson’s Store up a couple blocks?” the officer inquired.  A notepad and pen
had magically appeared in the hands of the officer behind him.

“I did.  Where
they at?”

“Ms. Dupré,
there was an incident at Dodson’s S—”

“What kind o’
incident?” she demanded.  Then, Jovita sighed.  She realized what it must be.  “Shit,
did Shan try to put somethin’ in her pocket?  I thought that girl done grew
outta that already!  Bring her out here!  I’ll tan her black ass—”

“They didn’t
steal anything, Ms. Dupré.  They made a few purchases and got on their way. 
They turned back around for some reason and went back.  Possibly they forgot
something at the store.  It was at that time that two vehicles approached
them.  A few men got out, grabbed them—at least, we are fairly
certain
it was your daughters now—and put them in a car.  The two vehicles took off. 
We got their descriptions, but—Ms. Dupré?  Are you listening?”

“Yeah…”  But she
wasn’t.  Once things became a dream, why pay attention anymore?  It’s all just
bullshit anyway.  Officer Jameson had started talking so quickly and casually
about “the incident” that Jovita was now confident that it couldn’t be
happening at all.  Nobody could talk about such a horrible thing with such
nonchalance.  It just wasn’t possible.

“Ma’am, could we
step inside to finish this conversation?”

“I…I d-don’t
think you…”  Jovita swallowed sandpaper.  She tried licking her lips, but her
tongue felt as dry as her skin.  Only now her skin wasn’t so dry.  She was
sweating.  Sweating profusely.  She felt nauseous.  “What…what’re you
sayin’
,
Officer?  I don’t…I don’t think you’re makin’ yourself very clear.  You’re not
very good at your job…”

Officer Jameson
swallowed this pill and said, “We believe your daughters have been abducted. 
We need to know if you know of anyone who might have reason to—Ms. Dupré!”  He
rushed to catch her as she was falling.