Psycho Save Us (23 page)

But
the
vory v zakone
wouldn’t let him be.  They were with him now, like an irritant,
a speck of dirt in his eye.

They
think they’re untouchable, eh?
  For some reason, he just
couldn’t let it go, the same way he couldn’t let Miles Hoover, Jr. go.  Not
that day.  Not in the library of
Brownfields Elementary School.  Not at
that particular time.  That’s how they all found out who Spencer Pelletier
really was.  That’s how his parents found out.  That’s how his older brothers
found out.  That’s how the school found out.

If he were
present, Dr. McCulloch from Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary would remind Spencer
that psychopaths typically lacked realistic, long-term goals.  They make
decisions based on impulse, and though they lack standard emotions, they feel
very passionate about carrying through with their spontaneous decisions.

But Dr.
McCulloch’s advice did no good.  Like the Yeti in 448, Spencer had an itch,
too, and it needed scratching.  He was only human.

Resolute, he
started looking for yet another car to boost.  As luck would have it, there was
a black four-door Nissan sedan parked on the sidewalk almost as soon as he
stepped out of that short patch of woods.  He went over to test the car door,
figuring he’d need to bust the window.  But both Fate and Destiny had taken him
for a pet tonight, because the door opened right up for him. 

Spencer sat in
the driver’s seat and, just for a moment he thought this car looked familiar.  He
glanced into the passenger’s side seat, saw a comic book called
The Dark
Knight Returns
, as well as a folded copy of
The Atlanta-Journal
Constitution
.  He immediately disregarded this feeling of acquaintance with
the car and tore off the ignition cover with the same screwdriver he’d kept in
his back pocket for his three-hundred-mile run across the Bible Belt. 

The cell that
Basil had given him was a smartphone with full bars for Internet access.  He
found the appropriate maps online and within seconds he was bound for Townsley
Drive.

Leon moved
slowly, his gun still down at ready-low.  Hillside Apartments was a cauldron of
various gangs, drug dealers and random hoodlums, and he didn’t want to provoke
them unnecessarily.  He was approaching the door of apartment 448 when he
stopped in his tracks.  The SWAT van was pulling up.  The SWAT officers hopped
out the back and filed out quickly.  They moved in a direct line and did not
stop running until they were in position around the building.  The team jogged
up to Leon before the lead guy, a man that Leon knew named Hennessey, shouted,
“You sure he’s in there?”

“God damn, they
called
you
guys in?”

“Feds at the
station couldn’t get here fast enough,” Hennessey said, holding up a fist for
the rest of his eight-man team.  “He in there?”

Feds?
Leon wanted to
say, but instead addressed the most pertinent dilemma.  “Well, yeah, I’m pretty
sure our boy’s in there.”

“Pelletier?”

“That’s what my
source told me.”

That was all
Hennessey needed to hear.  He waved to his guys and they all filed in behind
him wordlessly.  Leon now stood to one side, a bit let down that he was going
to have to take a back seat for this arrest.

Lieutenant
William Hennessey was the man beside the doorknob.  Across from him was
Sergeant Gil Warwick.  Hennessey’s men were lined up as they approached the
door.  The lead man, Rorion Vaulstid, had his MP-5 up and aimed at the door. 
The man behind Vaulstid was Joey Heinrich, who had his Glock in his right hand,
and had his left hand placed firmly on Vaulstid’s shoulder.  Behind Heinrich
was Lawrence Klein, who had his hands and weapon similar to Heinrich.  Down the
line, all the men had their handguns drawn in their right hand, while their
left hand squeezed the shoulder of the man in front of them.  This way,
everyone knew the man behind was ready.

Hennessey nodded
to Vaulstid, who nodded back, and then three things happened at once.  The
Benelli combat shotgun disintegrated the doorframe at doorknob level, Lieutenant
Hennessey kicked the door in, and Warwick tossed in two flash-bang grenades
that he’d already pulled the rings off of, letting the fuses burn just long
enough so that when they hit the floor inside they went off almost immediately.

It all happened
within the span of two seconds, done exactly as they had rehearsed hundreds of
times before.  

SWAT moved in. 
The first two men in the line shouted as they moved in, “Atlanta PD!  Search
warrant!  Search warrant!”

They moved
through the doorway in what was termed a button-hook pattern: one man turned a
hard left, the next a hard right, the next a not-so-hard left, the next a
not-so-hard right, and so on.  They spilled into the room, each operator covering
his own sector of the room.  They could be fairly confident that the tremendous
bang and exploded magnesium powder would have deafened and blinded any
immediate resistance.

But they hadn’t
counted on the trash.  Rarely had the SWAT team encountered such a packrat. 
They moved as best they could around stacks of Tupperware filled with books and
random knickknacks, as well as a mound that would prove to be a sofa under
closer inspection later.

“Atlanta PD! 
Search warrant!” Warwick called out.  He was the last man to enter the
apartment.

Vaulstid had
been the first through the door.  “Clear!” he claimed of the living room, and
moved to the side of a hallway entrance.  So far, no sign of the tenant.

“I’ve got deep!”
Heinrich called out.  He took a position on one side of the hallway, and then
proceeded to “slice the pie” as he crept out from the hallway corner and held
his Glock out, slightly canted, waiting to see a sign of a bad guy waiting at
the other end.  “Clear!” he shouted once satisfied.

Lieutenant
Hennessey called, “Anyone down there, you better drop to the floor and don’t
make a move!  We’re coming in!”

The others moved
up.  They waited for the lieutenant’s signal.  He held up all five fingers on
his left hand, then squeezed them into a fist.

They filed down
the hallway in a bounding overwatch, advancing quickly and clearing a bathroom
that had a floor littered with the empty cylinders of toilet paper rolls and
grime growing up out of the shower and onto the curtain.

“I’ve got
movement!” shouted Klein.  “Runner!  Runner!  Out the window!”

The Yeti was
halfway out the bedroom window, stumbling blind and mostly deaf for the
moment.  Klein and Vaulstid got hold of him by his robe, yanked him back, and
flung him to his cluttered floor.  The big, skinny creature twisted and
screamed like a banshee caught, not knowing what had hold of him and clawing at
their helmeted faces.  Klein grabbed an arm and twisted it so that Basil
flipped over, and Vaulstid placed a knee on the Yeti’s lower back.

“This place
fucking stinks,” someone called out.  “I can smell it through my helmet.  How
is that possible?”

“Clear!” someone
else called.  Then others followed.

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

“You have the
right to remain silent,” Klein was saying as he was putting on the cuffs. 
“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of a law.  You
have the right to an attorney—”

“Hey-hey, look
at us!” Heinrich laughed when he came into the room.  “We caught ourselves a Yeti!” 
Everyone laughed.

Kaley was very
tired, but couldn’t fall asleep.  She was glad to see that Shannon and the
other girl could, though. 
Or, at least, they’re pretending to be
. 
Kaley actually hoped that was the case, because it meant they were trying to
lull their attackers into complacency.

This was actually
Kaley’s new plan.  She wouldn’t show any sign of aggression, no kind of
trickery.  She would appear docile. 
Playin’ possum
, as Nan would’ve
said, though Kaley still wasn’t entirely sure what that saying meant.  Living
in the Bluff her whole life, she didn’t think she’d ever seen a possum.  But
she had gotten the gist of what it meant. 
The guy on the
Discovery Channel
that one time said that if you ever get attacked by a bear, you should play
dead
.  Same principle as playing possum.  Trick the predators.  Lull them
into a false sense of security.  Then, when there was an opening, and the time
was right…

But, as much as
she was hoping Shannon was pretending, too, she couldn’t be sure.  Kaley wasn’t
close enough to truly sense what was going on inside Little Sister’s mind or
heart.  And the other girl, the familiar-looking one holding her locket, she
was too petrified to think or feel anything more than dread.

The vehicle
slowed down.  Kaley looked out the window.  They were in another unfamiliar
part of town, pulling into a row of buildings she didn’t know at all.

Oni, still in
the front, said something to the driver in that weird language.  The driver
laughed and looked in his rearview mirror at Kaley.  Kaley looked away.  She’d
been trying to recall all the landmarks she could in case she needed to
run—streetlights, a Waffle House, a liquor store that seemed to be simply
called Liquor Here—but most of it was starting to run together.  She had
remembered the number of turns, and the order they had been in, though: left,
right, right, left, right, left, and now right.

Her eyesight was
good enough to see the lit-up dashboard up front, too.  Kaley had watched the
green-lit mileage counter go from 46,819 to 46,828. 
Nine miles
, she
thought. 
Just nine miles
.  She hoped all of this information would be
useful eventually.

Kaley didn’t
know it, but she was trying to prevent her premonition from coming true.

7

When
the black SUV pulled into Hillside, Leon knew at once that it was a G-man’s
ride.

They were just
finishing putting the cuffs on the Yeti when the SUV pulled to a stop behind
the Aerostar minivan, which was parked without anyone inside.  So far, all he’d
heard on the radio was that the SWAT guys inside had found O’Connor alone.  That
meant no Pelletier. 
Fucker got away
.  For a moment, for just a second,
Leon wondered if Pat had called ahead to warn Pelletier.  But he didn’t think
Pat was that stupid.  He didn’t want any more trouble than this Pelletier might’ve
already brought him.

Two black men
and one white man hopped out of the SUV.  All of them wore street clothes.  One
of the black men had a beard.  These men doubtless performed various undercover
tasks, but tonight they were flaunting what they were.  Their jackets were the
only thing not normal street attire; they had the yellow FBI letters written
across the backs and the left breast.

The bearded
black man nodded at Leon and said, “You Hulsey?”

“That’s me.”

“Special Agent Jamal
Porter,” he said, shaking hands without looking at Leon.  The first thing Leon
noticed was that Porter’s cologne was very strong.  He had intense eyes fixed
on the doorway of apartment 448.  He introduced the others still without
looking at the detective.  “Agents Mortimer and Stone,” he said of the white
man and other black man, respectively.

“Guys.”  He
nodded to them, and they nodded back, saying nothing.

“Pelletier
inside?” Porter asked.

“Doesn’t look
like it.”

Porter hissed by
breathing in through his teeth.  “God damn it.  Anybody see him?”

“Got some
officers canvassing neighbors right now,” Leon said, trying to keep his tone
from sounding defensive and failing.

“Where’d this
lead come from?”

Careful, Leon
. 
Careful
. 
“Street-level informant.  One of mine.”  He knew that he had, on some level,
mentioned that last bit as a means to establish that he knew this territory
well.  It was another automatic defensive gesture.

“What’s his
name?”

“Deep cover. 
Can’t divulge it.”  Part of him counted on his large, imposing body to do as it
had always done, and shut the other man up.

“You
can if he’s got information about Spencer Pelletier, Detec—”

“He didn’t have
information about Spencer Pelletier specifically,” Leon lied.  He thought,
The
things we do for family
.  “He gave a description.  I thought it sounded
familiar.  I went to FBI-dot-gov and showed my informant the picture from the
guy who did the six guys in Baton Rouge.  I thought it was a long shot, but it
turns out I was lucky as hell.  He IDed Pelletier—and this informant is never
wrong—but said he didn’t know him by that name, and didn’t know him before last
night,” he lied again.  “He said the guy was looking for Basil O’Connor.”