Psycho Save Us (7 page)

When a light
finally did switch on inside Pat’s Auto, it was at the back of the shop.  A
single light in a single window. 
Bingo
, he thought. 
Just in time,
too
. 
Down to my last smoke
.

Spencer checked
his watch—it wasn’t quite midnight—so he waited another ten minutes or so.  Just
about time for the third shift boys to start showing up and performing tasks
that the first and second shift guys would never dream of.  Pat’s Auto, while
having no clearly defined off-limits areas, was no less able to somehow convey
a sense of restricted ingress—a curb with no incline and a few junkers parked
at irregular intervals around the premises made the place
feel
off-limits.

“Here they
come,” Spencer said to no one at all.  First it was a navy-blue Nissan Altima,
which killed its lights a block up and pulled around to the back.  Next was a
red, four-door Pontiac Grand Am, an old one, possibly late 90’s.  Following
quickly on the Grand Am’s heels was an old, beat-up Buick that had probably
once been red, but was now every color conceivable.  The two cars pulled around
back and parked beside the Altima.

Spencer waited
to watch the figures step inside.  They were barely more than silhouettes under
a not-quite-full moon.  From where he was parked, he could only just make out
the back parking lot and its numerous junkers and other cars left overnight;
the latter being there to keep up appearances of honest business.  The three
drivers stepped inside a side door that Spencer couldn’t quite see, and a few
seconds after they were inside, more windows were filled with light.

Atlanta’s
premier chop shop is now open for business, ladies an’ gents
.

Spencer hopped
out of the car and crossed the quiet street.  Terrell Street was as vacant as
it would be after the Apocalypse.  One survivor of that event, possibly a
radioactive mutant, crossed the street in a slow limp, holding a bag no doubt
filled with his liquor for the night and illuminated only by a single dim
orange streetlight.  The desperate mutant paused only an at overturned trash
can to rummage through it, then soldiered on down the street and disappeared,
presumably off to scavenge the rest of the wastelands.

Yes, quite a
dead avenue.  Still, one never knew when the law would finally catch on to
Patrick Mulley’s secret, so it behooved Spencer to check up on the various
parked cars along the sidewalks.  There were three of them—a van, a station
wagon, and a truck—and he checked all of them for possible surveillance teams
before he finally walked right up to Pat’s front door and knocked.

The door was
made of glass and had faded stenciling on it.  The lobby through the glass was
pitch-black, not a single photon of light bounced its way from the work area in
the back.  He knocked again.

This time, he
heard something drop.  A wrench or a crowbar clattered to the ground, and
someone hollered something like, “Hear that?” or “What was that?”

Spencer waited a
few more seconds, still humming the Blue Öyster Cult song to himself and
thinking about the first time he had heard their music.  His older brother Brian
had introduced him to music of the 60’s and 70’s, back when they were still
talking, back before things changed and the family looked at the youngest and
favorite with new, terrified eyes.  Back then, Spencer wore turtleneck
sweaters, pants with suspenders, and even pocket protectors.  Brian had been
the hellraiser and chick-banger, and Collin his faithful sidekick and confidant. 
The two of them had given Spencer his first beer when he was twelve, in secret
and for his birthday, but had forbade him to ever act out as they had.  Mom,
the Christian fundamentalist, still swore that the music and that first taste
of beer had planted a seed.  She didn’t comprehend or believe in contemporary
psychology, and so couldn’t understand that what happened to Miles Hoover, Jr. in
the Brownfields Elementary School library had nothing to do with taking a
single sip of beer or Blue Öyster Cult. 
They’re called a
cult
for a
reason!
she had screamed while Dad sat in his rocker, backing her up by
saying nothing at all. 
These rock an’ roll creatures aren’t even tryin’ to
hide it!  They’re proud of it!  Don’t you see!  Same with these Nirvana idiots!
Tryin’ to seduce you away from God!  
That had come about because Spencer
was way into Kurt Cobain way after his suicide.

Spencer smiled. 
Funny how music sends one back in time
.

A light flicked in
a room at the back of a hallway, and another dark silhouette appeared at the
end of it.  Spencer looked at the unknown person, and the unknown person looked
at him.  The staring contest lasted a few seconds, and then the dark silhouette
approached the glass door slowly.  He couldn’t see much, just the teeth of the
man in the moonlight.  “Yo, dude, what’choo want?” the man hollered from the
other side of the door.

The voice was a
little different than Spencer recalled, but it was him.  He reached up and
pulled the hood back from his head and smiled.

It took a second
for the black man on the other side to imbibe his image—or perhaps he was just
trying to conceal his shock—but finally he said, “Sheeeeeeeeeyyyyyiiiiiit!”  It
was said with equal parts derision, surprise, humor, and trepidation.  He
called back to his cohorts.  “Hey, yo!   I’m gonna open this doe!  Naw…naw,
it’s cool, money!  I know this bitch!”  He fiddled with the lock a moment and
opened up, glancing left and right.  “What.  The.  Fuck?”  Patrick Mulley was
shaking his head ruefully.  “We got some lazy-ass fuckin’ cops in this town
when yo crazy ass walkin’ the streets an’ ain’t none o’ them snatched you up
yet.”

“I’m like a
sunburned penis,” Spencer said.  “You just can’t beat me.”

That made Pat
laugh.  Humor was the best path to Patrick Mulley’s heart.  Anyone that could
tell a good joke could easily slip into his life and start manipulating him, if
only they understood how to approach it.  And Spencer did.  He understood how
to approach anybody.

Patrick shook
his head again ruefully, as if he was already regretting the mistake he was
surely going to make by permitting Spencer into his domain again. 
He
already knows he’s gonna let me in
. 
He just doesn’t want to admit to
himself he’s that easy
.  It was funny this dance he had to do with “normal”
people.

“S’up, Pat?” he
said.  Each man’s right hand went wide, then slapped hard as they connected,
squeezing one another’s fingers and snapping as they came loose.  The
time-honored “street greet” might not ever go out of style.

“Not much, cuz. 
Work.”  He said this the way a family man of twenty years would describe his
days spent laboring in the factory. 
Same shit, different day
.  “S’up
wi’choo?”

“Not much. 
Work,” he replied.

“Uh-huh.”  Pat
didn’t quite smile.  He looked Spencer up and down, studying him for a beat,
then took another look up and down the streets.  “Izzat what brings yo white
ass to my humble establishment?”

“Man’s gotta
earn a living.”

“Uh-huh,” he
repeated, even more skeptical this time.  Another glance up and down the
street.  Spencer had noticed that so far Pat hadn’t moved out of the doorway. 
He hadn’t yet decided if he wanted to allow the wolf in.  Pat knew many of the
same people in Spencer’s world.  He’d done ample business with the guys up in
Kansas, and plenty with the boys in St. Louis, so he knew the rumors.  He knew
what had happened at Leavenworth, too.  Anybody who watched
America’s Most
Wanted
with even passing interest, or who visited www.fbi.gov just to check
out the Most Wanted List from time to time, would know what happened at
Leavenworth.

But does he know
about Baton Rouge?  That’s relatively recent
.

“You gonna let
me in, or leave me out here to freeze my nuts off the rest o’ the night?”

“It ain’t that
cold.”  He was right.  Spring was edging into summer, and one could feel it now
even at night.

“It is when you
don’t have a friend,” Spencer said, giving a frowny face and wiping away an
imaginary tear.  This earned him another rueful smile and Pat backed away from
the door just a smidgen, still not letting him in, but wanting to.  Apart from
being able to do what others felt was unconscionable, there was really only one
other benefit to being a certifiable psychopath, and that was the ability to
emotionally detach oneself so utterly from the outcome of any situation that
one didn’t panic the way others did when things weren’t going their way.  Thus,
total attention could be paid not to the “what ifs” (as in,
What if he
doesn’t let me in?  Where will I go?
), but to watching the subject
carefully to see what needed to be done, what action needed to be performed in
order to allow one to slip right on inside another person’s confidence.  This
sometimes took careful navigation, playing with a human being’s emotions, toying
with their tendency to believe in the inherit good in others, and trusting their
fear of offending another human being so that it would override their good
sense that would usually told them to turn and run.

Like the two
little girls earlier
,
he reflected.  He thought on how people got themselves into such trouble by not
knowing themselves.  Those kind of people condemned creatures such as Spencer,
claiming there was something wrong with
him
. 
I’m not the one getting
raped right now, though
, he thought with a smile.  A line out of
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream
suddenly came to mind:
Shall we their fond
pageant see?  Lord,
what fools these mortals be
.  Billy Shakespeare
knew what he was talking about.

The smile was
right on time.  He’d aimed it right at his old acquaintance—not a
friend
,
psychopaths didn’t have or understand friendships, but knew how to mimic them—and
it had done the trick.  Pat backed away from the door and said, “Get the fuck
in here ’fo the five-oh sees yo stupid ass on my doorstep.”

“You’re the
boss.”

“God damn right,
son.”

Officer David
Emerson and his partner, Officer Beatrice Fanney, were the first on the scene,
and the first to start taking statements.  David stood in front of the titan
that had called in the 207: possible kidnapping.  The only man to call it in,
and so far the only person in the area who had reported anything at all tonight. 
He might’ve thought the big fucker Terry “Mac” Abernathy had made at least some
of it up, but then there were some telltale signs in the area.  Skid marks
aside, there were the spilled groceries, and the footage taken from the outdoor
camera, which unfortunately took everything in one-second stills and not smooth
continuous video.  Still, it showed a couple of automobiles come halfway onscreen,
a brief struggle between two or three blurry assailants and a pair of equally
blurry small children, and then a speedy getaway.  Not enough exposure in the
camera to catch the license plates.

David glanced
over at Beatrice, who was taking out the small orange cones from the patrol
car’s trunk and placing them at intervals around the sidewalk, around where the
best of the skid marks were.  A detective would have to haul his ass down here
in the next hour or so to start taking pictures, but David doubted it would
happen even that quickly.  No investigation he’d ever heard of happened quickly
in the Bluff, no matter which side of Joseph E. Boone Boulevard you were
standing on.

“So, you didn’t
actually see the abductions yourself,” David verified, scratching the back of
his ear with his pen.

“Naw, man.  Like
I said, I was inside watchin’
SportsCenter
,” said Abernathy, who had
first introduced himself as Mac.  David had to wonder if the nickname came from
the famous McDonald’s sandwich.  “I heard this commotion, knew somethin’ was
up, ya feel me?”  David nodded that, yes, he felt him.  “I heard screamin’.  I
heard some kid sayin’ ‘Run, run, run,’ an’ I heard some men yellin’.  Got up,
got my Glock, headed out the front doe.  By the time I got outside they was
squealin’ off.  I barely got a look at ’em.”

“El Camino and
an SUV of some kind, right?”

“Yeah. 
Full-size, fuh sho.”

David updated
dispatch with the information.  When he was done, he licked his lips and looked
back at Mac.  “And you’re pretty sure it was these girls you know?  What were
their names?”

“Kaley an’
Shannon Dupré,” Mac supplied.  “Yeah, it was them.  Had to be.  That’s they
groceries right there, Officer.”

David glanced at
the smashed orange juice container and the paper bags that spilled ham,
pretzels and Pop-Tarts.  “Home address for the girls?” he said.

“I don’t know
they address, but I know they be livin’ with they mom, Jovita.  Fuckin’
meth-head bitch.  ’Scuse me, Officer,” Mac put in, proving that he was a rough
but congenial giant, which David found both unusual and refreshing for the
Bluff. 

“Jovita Dupré. 
Got it.”

“She always
cooked outta her damn head, don’t pay them kids no mind like she should.  She
need her ass whooped lettin’ them kids walk out here alone like that!”  He
fumed for a moment.