Psycho Save Us (33 page)

“That’s me. 
I’ve got it from here, Tyler,” he told the other officer.

“You sure, Sam?”
Tyler said.  He was a fat black man with chubby cheeks and fat hands.  Iron
hands that had seized Jovita and twisted her to her seat.

“Yeah, I got
it.  Just let me talk to her.”

“I’ll be right
over here.”  Officer Tyler Whoever-He-Was walked only five paces away and
leaned against the front desk.  A couple of other officers were coming down a
set of stairs and looking about frenetically, obviously responding to the
outburst they could hear from upstairs.  Officer Tyler waved a hand at them,
making a face that said it was nothing, go back to work.

“Sam,” Jovita
said, tears still streaming.  Her teeth were rattling.  The roots hurt with
each pulse of her heart.  She needed a fix, and soon.  “Sam, wh-where are m-my
babies?”  Tears came unbidden.

“Jovita,
we’re looking into—”

“I don’t wanna
hear
that shit, Sam!  Th-that’s all anybody’s been tellin’ me all night—”

“That’s all we
can tell you, Jo,” he said, lowering his voice and taking a seat in the foldout
chair beside her.  “That’s all anybody knows right now, okay?  Alright? 
There’s nothing more that I can tell you.  We’ve got a line on a few suspects,
we’re tracking them down now.  That’s all—”

“Sam, y-y-you
can do better than that.  Who’re th-these people?  The s-s-suspects, I mean.” 
Jovita could tell she was about to get more rejection.  “Sam, I’m they mama!”

Sam sighed. 
“Jo, I’m sorry, I really can’t tell you that.”

Jovita snarled,
baring her teeth.  “You were raised up the street from me,” she said.  “I
remember you cheatin’ off o’ Lydia Newton’s tests in fifth grade!  I was goin’
to church back when you got that disease—what was it, uh, uh, uhhhhh, spinal
somethin’.”

“Spinal
meningitis,” he said.

“Yeah, that! 
The church took donations an’ my mama was one o’ them that got that started so
you could get all the medical shit you needed,” Jovita said.  Lies came easily
to her these days, but this one was partially tinged in truth.  “Yo mama didn’t
have the money to help you so
we
did!  You wouldn’t even be alive if it
wasn’t fo’ us!  You hear me, boy?  An’ I babysat fuh yo black ass when yo mama
got sick an’ yo daddy ran out—”

“All right, all
right, just…God damn it, shut up, will ya?”  Sam sighed heavily and looked
about the lobby.  Officer Tyler gave him a look that, to Jovita, seemed to ask,
Do you want me to escort the crazy lady out of the building? 
Sam gave an
almost imperceptible look that told Tyler to stay back, that he would handle
this.  “Look, if I tell you a little bit about these people, will you promise
to stay calm for the remainder of the night?  Will you go home and sit and wait
for us to give you a call when we know something solid?”

Jovita nodded,
but wasn’t sure she could keep her promise.  She reached into her purse and
pulled out a tissue, shoved it up her nostrils, and stopped the leaks.

Sam glanced
around the lobby once more and then leaned in close, whispering.  “There’s, uh,
there’s a chance that the girls might’ve been taken by a group of Russians
called the
vory v zakone
.  That’s the rumor right now, okay?”

Jovita couldn’t
even pronounced their name.  “Russians?” she said.

“Yeah, I know.  It
sounds—”

“What…who the
fuck are they?”

“Russian
organized crime.  A weird group of thieves, got started back in old Russia,
back in, like, 1917 or something.  Back in Stalin’s
Gulag
.”

“Who the fuck is
Stalin?”

Sam made a
face.  “Joseph Stalin,” he said, as if this was some very important person
Jovita really ought to know.  “Premier of the Soviet Union back in…never mind. 
The important thing is these guys got started up way back then, and they’re
still active today.  We’ve never seen them very active in America until the
last decade or so.  A bit of stuff here and in New York, but that’s about it. 
Nothing like this.  And, uh…well, there have been reports of people being
snatched up off the streets, uh, young kids mostly, some prostitutes, anyone
that the
vor
don’t think will be missed.”

The indignation
in Jovita Dupré threatened to become volcanic.  “Wait, what, you don’t think I
take care o’
my
kids?”

“That’s not what
I
said
, Jo,” he said, holding up his hands in a sign of peace.  “But if
the girls were out alone in the streets at night, there’s a chance that
they
thought the girls were, I dunno, homeless?  Orphans?  Something like that? 
They might’ve targeted Kaley and Shannon because of their perceived neglect.” 
Jovita saw it in his eyes.  The man was dancing around with words that masked
his own true belief.

He became a cop
. 
He’s one
o’ them now
. 
He thinks like them
. 
Well, I caught him jerkin’
off to an
Ebony
magazine in my best friend’s living room when he was
twelve, an’ I remember him slinging crack with his brothers when he was
fifteen, so I know this nigga better than he know himself
. 
I remember
where he come from, even if he don’t
.

And there was
something else.  Jovita’s mind might have been mush these days, but she knew
when somebody was holding something back.  She knew this because she had spent the
last twelve years watching her oldest daughter’s face.  Kaley
Alexandria Dupré
had been a strange young girl, there was no denying that.  Besides her constant
debilitating vertigo, which freaked all the kids and most adults out, she had also
been a careful manipulator.  She knew how to ask Ricky for things in a way that
would convince him to convince Jovita, and vise versa.  It usually had to do
with convincing others to do something for Shannon, who Kaley was intent on
spoiling.  It might be to get Shan a new pair of pants or some fancy new toy.

Kaley was a
careful girl, and she rarely spoke to her mother these days.  Jovita had come
to think it had to do with her brief but intense (and strange) relationship
with her grandmother.  They had gotten very close for a time, then after her
grandmother’s death something had changed inside of Kaley.  She wanted to be
left alone a lot, with just herself or with Shan.  They never got into any real
trouble, but the two of them were as thick as thieves, leaving Jovita out of
their play, always laughing and getting along until
she
stumbled into
the room.

“What else?” she
said.

“What do you
mean?” Sam asked, lying badly.

“What…
else
?”

He considered
her for a moment.  Then to her surprise, he was very forthcoming. 
“Interpol—that’s the International Criminal Police Organization—they’ve been
called.  Uh, Gary, a friend o’ mine in Missing and Exploited Children, said
he’s been talking with a detective works here name o’ Hulsey.  He says there’s
some FBI guys just showed up a few hours ago, and them and Hulsey are asking
questions about a group called the Rainbow Room.  Jovita, have you ever heard
of them?  Anything at all?”

“No,” she said. 
“Who are they, Sam?”

“Interpol’s been
after them for some time.  Years, sounds like.  They’re one of these secretive
groups, have people all over the planet, and they have this website where They…they
abduct kids and… take the kids, and they…um…”

Jovita leaned
in, digging her eyes into his.  “An’ they
what
, Sam?”

“Jo…listen, you
really don’t wanna know.”

“They’re my
babies
,
Sam.  I wanna know.”

The boy she knew
returned with his next sigh, and he folded, just as he had folded for Lydia
when she said he had to be her boyfriend if he was going to cheat off her
test.  “The Rainbow Room,” he began, “has a website that they change, move to
other servers, and keep on the go.  None of them have ever been caught.  They’re
hackers and, uh, and…well,
compilers
.  They compile pictures of
different stuff.  They change IP addresses, they move around, very organized. 
They’re not the first.  Interpol’s busted groups like this for years.  That’s
their big thing these days, human trafficking and child porn…”  He trailed off.

“An’ what does
this Rainbow Room
do
?  What do they
compile
?”  On some level, she
knew exactly what he was saying, because he had basically laid it all out.  But
Jovita’s mind wasn’t just foggy, it was the mind of a mother, and no matter how
bad of a mother one could be, imagining cruelty like she was being told here
didn’t quite register.  Surely there was something else Sam meant by his
words.  Surely there had to be.

“They, um, they
upload pictures of naked children, and of, um,” he swallowed briefly, “of
children being raped and—
hey
!”  Jovita had gasped despite the fact that
she believed she had prepared herself for the worst.  Wide-eyed, she fell from
the chair to her knees and stared at the tile floor.  Sam leaned down and
hugged her.  “God damn it, I
told
you you didn’t wanna know!  I
shouldn’t have told you!  Hey, it’s okay.  Listen, it’s okay.  We’re gonna find
them, hear?  We’re on it.  We’re gonna find them.”

Jovita heard
little more than her heart beating in her ears.

“My babies…my babies…my
babies…”

There was no
corneal abrasion.  At least, that’s what David kept telling the medics to get
them to leave him the hell alone.  His eyes hurt, especially his left, which
stung and watered every time he blinked.  He swore up and down that he could
still drive, that it would be no problem.  There was only a few cuts to his
face, and none that needed stitches.  Jeffrey Banks, one of the medics he’d
known for years, had plucked the two splinters from his cheeks and swabbed them
before putting on tufts of cotton with clear tape.

“How’s Bee?” he
asked Jeffrey.

“Half her hand
is gone,” Jeff said.  “How do you think she is?”

“I’m good to go,
though, right?”

“I’d recommend
that you take the rest of the night to—”

“They caught him
yet?”

Jeff sighed. 
“Nope.”

“My car still
here?”

“Yep.”

“Then I’m
helping to hunt the bastard.”  He pushed himself up off the top step, where
he’d been sitting ever since backup had arrived.  Chalk outlines, some yellow
evidence tags and the yellow crime scene tape now decorated a mostly forgotten
part of town.  Three detectives from Robbery/Homicide had been brought in to
start in with the scene, and forensics specialists were still arriving by the
truckload.  The street of Townsley Drive was fast becoming crowded.

Ahead of him a
forensic photographer was taking pics of the scene.  David staggered around the
photographer and waved back to Jeff.  “Thanks, Jeff.  You’re an eye saver.”

“I’m telling
you, man, get some rest.  They’ve got everyone out there searching for this
guy.  They’re going to find him sooner or later.”

“Another set of
eyes can’t hurt.”

“If you
had
a set,” Jeff said.  So, he knew that David’s left eye had a bad abrasion, but
he wasn’t going stop the cop from going back on duty.  David supposed if cops
let firefighters and medics get away with driving drunk, then the medics felt
it was their obligation to let the cops get away with a few items of
indiscretion from time to time, as well.  He also imagined that the AAR, or
after action review, would probably be forty-eight hours from now, which was
standard.  He didn’t need to do much more than file a bit of paperwork at the
end of his shift.  Until then, no one was going to begrudge him for going out
after the man who’d shot his partner.

The fire truck
was backing out when David hopped inside his patrol car.  Less than thirty
minutes ago Beatrice had been sitting here, driving the car. 

It was my
decision
,
he told himself. 
I told her that we needed to go and check it out
.  And
Bee had said nothing.  She hadn’t questioned him, hadn’t given him a look of
disapproval, nothing. 
And because of it, we’re out another good cop in Zone
One
.

Zone One cops
were hard to keep.  Nobody wanted to stay in the trenches of the Bluff and the
areas surrounding it.  Cops got out as quickly as they could, took a sergeant’s
test or an investigator’s test and then started trying to move their way on out
after a couple years of experience.  Beatrice had made a pledge to hang around
for the long haul.

Those words on
the wind came back to him.  “Fast as fast can be, you’ll never catch me!”

Why were those
words so familiar?  Where did they come from?  David found a bottle of Advil in
the glove compartment, popped two of them for the pain in his eye and gave it
some thought.  It came to him out of nowhere, a memory from his teenage years. 
It was from the jackalope on
America’s Funniest People
, a TV show hosted
by Dave Coulier and Arleen Sorkin.  He remembered Coulier had voiced the little
rabbit with the antlers—the jackalope—and recalled of all the times he’d
thwarted some idiotic lumberjack or an uptight businessman.  The jackalope
would hit them in their groin, or make them step on a rake that smashed them in
the center of their face.  Afterwards, the ever-elusive jackalope would dart
off to parts unknown, shouting in mordant pleasure, “Fast as fast can be,
you’ll never catch me!”