Psycho Save Us (25 page)

There was a
stall here, though.  The Yeti, half out of his mind from all the H and the
flash-bangs that had disoriented him, now seemed to drudge up something vital
from the deepest, darkest recesses of his brain.  Survival mode kicked in.  “I…I
need a lawyer first,” he said.  “I was read my Miranda, and I w-wanna see some
follow-through from that p-part where I’m guaranteed an attorney.”

Leon tried to
hide his frustration.  He furrowed his brow and, once more, counted on his great
size and deep voice to be imposing.  “Mr. O’Connor, I want you to listen to me
very carefully.  You can of course have your attorney, but what we’re dealing
with tonight is time-sensitive.  You understand?  Two small girls were
kidnapped earlier—Kaley and Shannon Dupré.  We believe Mr. Pelletier knows
something about that.  The better you can help us tonight, the better it’ll
reflect on you in court.”

Here, O’Connor’s
cloudy eyes seemed to have a moment of crystal clarity.  Something dawned on
him, and he said, “Is this about the Rainbow Room?”

“The what?” Leon
said, blanching.  His pen started writing automatically.

The Yeti looked
between all the law enforcement people standing around with uncertainty.  A
couple of SWAT officers loomed like towers on either side of him.  “You said it
was little girls,” he said.  “I h-heard these guys from L Street talking about
the Rainbow Room guys.  Th-they started off on Craigslist, then moved and made
their own website wh-when things got too hot for them there.  They move around
a lot b-b-because Interpol’s after them.  I hear they’ve got helpers in, like,
Germany an’ Australia, an’ some other countries.  They abduct kids, y-you
know?  Rape them.  Tape it all.  Put it on the Internet.  The more you make the
kids cry while, you know, fucking them, the higher your status in the Rainbow
Room.  The higher your status, the more access you get to all their videos.”

Leon just stared;
around him, the room seemed to grow quiet.  The Yeti had spoken about it all so
casually.  Leon had known human trafficking was on the rise in Atlanta, but
hadn’t known they had anything like this on their hands.  Could it be true? 
Certainly Interpol had been busting up operations like this all over the planet
in the last ten years, but nothing like it had yet come to Atlanta.  At least,
not to his knowledge.  “Mr. O’Connor, you
know
for a
fact
this is
going on?”

“No.  Like I
said, th-the guys on L Street were telling me.  I, uh…I sold them some IDs, all
right?  Okay?  A-and they were asking me how’s b-business, how’s the money
flowin’, shit like that.”  The Yeti licked his lips, and his neck muscles went
through spasms, causing his lips to press tight against his teeth and stretch. 
“They s-said these Rainbow Room guys were involved in some big g-g-gangster
types from overseas, and that they were looking for locals to help them get to
kn-know the city and snatch some kids off the streets.  S-s-s-sounded like
bullshit to me, but they warned me not to do business with no ch-child rapists,
and I s-s-said of course I wouldn’t.”

“Who were these
guys who told you about the Rainbow Room?”

“Couple o’ El
Salvador guys who’ve already split the c-country.  This was six m-months ago,
man.  I haven’t seen them since they split and I ain’t heard anything else
about th-the Rainbow Room since then, so maybe it was all bullshit.”

Leon started to ask
his next question, but here Agent Porter finally could contain himself no
longer.  “You mentioned a phone and an address that you gave Pelletier,” he
said.  “Give us those numbers.”

There might’ve
been a testy exchange between Leon and Porter if that hadn’t just so happened
to be what Leon wanted to know, as well.

At first, it
seemed like the Yeti wouldn’t reply, then he said, “You’re…you’re for real
about s-s-s-some girls gettin’ kidnapped, man?”  It once again amazed Leon just
how quickly criminals and cops could become allies, even if for a moment, all
because of the nature of the crime.  He shouldn’t have been so surprised,
though, because the most repugnant things in the criminal underworld were child
rapists, especially organized ones.

“We are,” Porter
said.  “We are for real about that, Mr. O’Connor.”

The Yeti
swallowed hard, and his left eye twitched uncontrollably.  “The n-number to the
cell I gave him is programmed into my other phones.  Bring me one an’ I can
show you.  The address…I c-can’t remember it, but it was from the DMV.  I don’t
recall the license plate he had me look up.  B-b-but it’s the last thing my printer
printed out so I can recover it if you’ll let me at my computer.”

Though he didn’t
know it, Officer David Emerson still had a part to play on this violent night. 
A very important part.

The call went
out to all vehicles in the area, but it came in to car number 1A4 when Emerson
and his partner had pulled into a Steak’n Shake on Elm, just outside of the
Bluff.  They had finished canvassing all of the neighbors around Dodson’s
Store—a vain exercise if there ever was one—and had just placed their orders
when dispatch gave the all-points bulletin.

“All available
units in and around Vine City, please converge on 12 Townsley Drive,” came the
call from dispatch.  Beatrice hollered at the guy taking her order over the
speaker to hold up one second while they listened.  “Repeat, 12 Townsley
Drive.  Suspect is Spencer Pelletier.  He is believed to be at or on his way to
that address.  Suspected of multiple murders and wanted for questioning in the
abduction of two girls.  Move in without sirens or lights.  Consider armed and
extremely dangerous.”

“Well, damn,” said
David, half let down about missing his meal until he glanced at the computer
screen situated at the center of the dashboard.  The new computers linked
directly to a variety of networks, allowing more than just quick license plate
checks and the recording of witness statements.  Dispatch had sent a picture of
Spencer Adam Pelletier, which filled the screen.  An exact match of the
description he’d gotten only two hours ago from Terry “Mac” Abernathy.  Thirty
years old, Caucasian, very pale complexion, 6’ 1” tall, 182 lbs., black hair
and feral blue eyes. 
A predator
.  Pelletier stared directly at whoever
had taken his prison photo with the ghost of a smirk on his face. 
A
confident predator
.  “All right,” he said, tugging on his seat belt.  “Let’s
get moving.”

Beatrice didn’t
offer an apology to the drive-through guy for wasting his time.  She pulled
right out of the parking lot, flashing her lights briefly to get through a
stoplight that was immediately off the Steak’n Shake’s property, and then kept
them on for the time being.

“This is one-Adam-four,
responding to that call for Townsley Drive,” David said into the radio. 

“Copy that,
one-Adam-four.  What’s your twenty?”

“We are on that
side of town about three or four minutes away.”

“Ten-four.  Be
advised that others have called in, but they are farther out so you’ll probably
be first on scene.  Do not approach the house until backup has arrived. 
Detectives and SWAT are on their way.”

“Ten-four,
dispatch.”  David’s eyes had been grazing over Pelletier’s rap sheet.  The
computer was touchscreen, and he scrolled his finger to get an overview. 
“Jesus.  This guy’s been busy over the last decade.”

Beatrice checked
her rearview quickly, then zipped into the far right lane.  “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.  Armed
robbery when he was nineteen.  Then a bunch of GTAs, a couple of bank
robberies, a prison escape—from
Leavenworth
, shit—and some drug-slinging
days back in the beginning of it all.  FBI addendum says he’s now suspected of…waaaaaaait…holy
shit!”

“What?” Beatrice
said.  “What is it, partner?  Don’t leave me in suspense.”

“You heard about
that shit over in Baton Rouge?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re saying
he’s suspect
numero uno
in it all,” David said, reaching for his
pistol.  He glanced up to look at the street signs.  They were on Glenwood, a
mile and a half from Townsley, which he knew to be an out-of-the-way little
hole in the wall around Fenton Park, a failed dog park that had turned into a
failed community park a decade ago.  There was a small forest all around that
area and empty duplexes that were filled with crackheads.  APD sometimes had to
chase them out like cockroaches when the lights came on.  David had helped with
that a few times.

The trees hid
everything that goes on back there at Townsley. 
Like a bandit cove
, David
thought. 
It always reminded me of a bandit cove
.  Two dead bodies and a
stash of money found there within the last year helped that fantasy along.

A few specks of
rain hit the windshield in a small burst.  Beatrice switched the wipers on then
off.  Townsley Drive was ahead on the left.

The neighborhood
wasn’t just quiet, it was dead.  Spencer killed the lights and pulled to a slow
stop as soon as he spotted the two familiar vehicles parked in the front yard
of the only house on the right.

He switched the
car off and sat there, taking a moment to look around.  There were lights on
inside the house, but no sign of movement.  His window was rolled down but he
heard no sounds, either.

There was a body
lying facedown in front of the porch.  “Huh,” he chuckled.  “You don’t see that
every day, either.”

Spencer had
found two packs of Tic Tacs and a pack of gum in the middle console while
driving.  He took out a piece of Wrigley’s spearmint and popped it in his
mouth.  A dog barked someplace off in the distance.  There was the distant roar
of a jet plane somewhere.  A fire truck siren blew far, far away.  Wind blew
lightly, pushing a forgotten page of coupons slowly across the street.

A song of the
night
,
he thought, reminiscing about another neighborhood he’d known like this.

He glanced
across the street to a dilapidated home that looked like it hadn’t been
occupied since the Great Depression.  The trees all around both homes ensconced
this little zone of the city from everything but a helicopter pilot’s view.

This was one of
those Forgotten Places.  That’s what Hoyt Graeber had called them.  Hoyt, ever
the criminal philosopher and the man that had introduced Spencer to the
criminal lifestyle, had spoken of places like these.  Wilderness survival
experts, some of which Spencer would encounter in his brief, one-year
fascination with primitive survival skills, called these areas “dead spaces,”
and said that some dead spaces were large and some were small.  They allowed
people to hide in plain sight.  A dead space might only be the corner of a room
that psychologically most people were
incapable
of looking at when they
first entered, or a dead space might be an entire neighborhood or road that
people drive by their whole lives and rarely look at, even if they live in the
area.

Forgotten Places
, he thought. 
Dead
spaces
.  Both were adequate descriptions here.

Spencer savored
the spearmint gum a couple seconds longer, then hopped out of the sedan and pulled
out his Glock.  “Here we go.”  He approached in a crouch, with his weapon at
ready-low position.  He moved first behind the El Camino, peeking through the
windows and seeing nothing but a sawed-off shotgun in the floorboard.  The
window was rolled down and he reached inside to lift it.  “Yoink,” he whispered
with juvenile glee after checking to see if it was loaded.  He moved on to the Expedition. 
Nothing of note inside there.

Spencer tucked
the Glock back in his waistband and held the shotgun firmly in his hands.  He
sidled between the Expedition and the porch, made it to the house, and pressed
his back against the wall.  He looked at the dead body at the foot of steps. 
It was a black man with cornrows wearing a black leather jacket and sagging
jeans.  They’d sagged enough upon his death to show the crack of his ass. 
Spencer smiled. 
Wonder if he knew how the sagging pants fad started
. 
Wonder
if he ever knew it was for fags advertising themselves for sex in prison
.

Still chewing,
he peeked through a screen door into a living room with more dead bodies.  The
first he saw was another black man lying face-up on the floor near the door,
his eyelids slightly parted, his head tilted unnaturally and in a way that allowed
Spencer to see that his eyes had rolled back.  “Fee-fi-fo-fum, how many motherfuckers
tried to run?” he chuckled.

This was
probably one of the most exciting moments of his entire life, second only to
the suspense he’d felt while walking out of Leavenworth, wondering if the
guards would recognize him and send him back inside.

He savored the
spearmint a moment longer, then tentatively opened the screen door. 
Thankfully, the hinges didn’t squeak too much.  He stepped inside and moved to
a nearby TV stand to take cover.

He waited.

After ten
seconds, he stood to move.  He saw a dead man relaxing in a recliner and a sad-looking
crumpled body lying dead on the other side of the TV stand, the man’s cornrows
drenched in blood.  He crept through the house, moving slowly at first, but
then faster and with more recklessness.  If anyone was here then they probably
knew he was here, too. 
Better to move quickly and take them by surprise
.