Psycho Save Us
Chad
Huskins
NOTE: All characters and events in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to real people and events is purely coincidental.
PSYCHO SAVE US
Copyright 2012 Chad Huskins
All rights reserved.
Edited by William Fruman
Cover art by Axel Torvenius
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For those that have suffered.
It wouldn’t have mattered
Spencer Adam Pelletier
When she woke
Two years, three months, six days and seventeen hours
Pat pulled out a Caran D’Ache lighter
Though Spencer would never know it
When the black SUV pulled into Hillside
The foundation of every society
It was perhaps a long shot
He used the money he’d taken
“Who the fuck is Yevgeny Tidov?” Leon asked.
4:12 AM
The neighborhood along Avery Street
CNN picked it up first
AUTHOR’S NOTE
“[Psychopaths] exhibit a cluster of distinctive personality traits, the most significant of which is an utter lack of conscience. The number of psychopaths in society is about the same number as schizophrenics, but unlike schizophrenics, psychopaths aren’t loners. That means that most of us have met many.”
Dr. Robert Hare, 20th-21st century criminal psychologist
“The nature of some of their offenses can be so unbelievable that to normal people…we have to have an explanation. One of the most common explanations is, ‘They have to be crazy.’ But psychopaths are not crazy. They know right from wrong. If they were standing on a corner next to a police officer and wanted to commit a robbery, they would know not to do it as long as the officer is standing there.”
Mary Ellen O’Toole, FBI Supervisory Special Agent
“One of the things that the medical students with whom I’ve worked have noted is that they’re shocked at how normal psychopaths look, and how engaging they are. I do not know one clinician that has not at one time been fooled by a psychopath. [Psychopaths] can read an audience, or an individual, very well. While psychopaths appear to be speaking about themselves, they are constantly monitoring the facial expressions, responses from others, and other cues, and they will then ‘tailor’ what they say to see if they can get the response they want.”
Dr. Greg Saathof, FBI Consultant Psychologist
“We know that in some people who have a very high IQ, there is a cost associated with this high mental functioning.”
Dr. Paul Thompson, Neurologist
1
It wouldn’t have mattered which street they took home that night, it was going to end the same way. Later, when Kaley was huddled in a dark corner with her sister, a victim of violence, she would know this.
It wouldn’t have mattered if the man behind the counter at Dodson’s Store hadn’t shorted them and required Kaley to return to the store, either. Somehow she knew that, too. But the lack of math skills from the man behind the counter had served one purpose. It had put them in sync with perhaps the only force in the universe that could have saved them. The Lunatic. She knew this, too.
Kaley knew these things in precisely the way most people thought they knew things, but really didn’t. She had known them her whole life. Just as she somehow knew that her mother would not be alive for her wedding day. It was as self-evident to her as a scratch at the back of her throat meant the weather was about to change. Well, something else told her other things. She didn’t pretend to know what it was, but it was there. She had become so accustomed to it that she often forgot it was there, and lived to regret it.
Tonight was such a night.
In years to come, she would kick herself and hate herself for not paying more attention to this thing, what some foolishly called female intuition. But Kaley knew it wasn’t just listening to the tone in someone’s voice that told women the intentions of a man or another conniving woman. No, her “charm,” as her grandmother had called it before she died—God rest her soul—was a thing that had nothing at all to do with visual or auditory cues.
She did not listen to her charm that night, though it was there, all around her. She felt it even as she stepped out of the house with her little sister in tow. That would hurt the most. In the years ahead, between the times when she would be testing LSD and other mind-altering drugs to give her mind something to play with besides the guilt, she would never forget the soft, secure touch of Shannon’s hand in hers. The touch would signify sisterly trust that would never be broken, no matter what had happened to them. But so simple a thing would linger with Kaley forever: the way a seven-year-old girl could hold her big sister’s hand and just trust that no harm could come as long as she clung to that Anchor.
But all of those horrors were in their future. Presently, they were two sisters stepping out into the night. As they stepped out of the house, Kaley eased the door closed so that it didn’t squeak and slam, waking up their neighbors. Beltway Street was quiet this time of night. It might’ve been eerily quiet to some, but the girls knew it too well. Beltway Street had been their home since their dad left them there. (Nobody knew where he’d gone. He went out for drinks with his buddies one night and never came back. Somebody said he was in Denver now, working at a Costco.) It was here that they had developed their own world of imagination, one that Kaley was just starting to grow out of at twelve, but one that she still visited with her sister. Again, to maintain that Anchor, which was all important at this stage in their life. Their mother was addicted to meth, what Shannon so innocently called “meff”, and hadn’t taken an interest in either one of them for a couple years now.
“We’re gonna play ninja spies, okay?” she said presently. “That means we have to stay close together—”
“I’m the White Ninja!” Shan declared. For a reason that would remain forever obscure to Kaley, Shannon had developed a fascination with late-night kung fu theater on TV, and had learned to find lots of those kinds of movies on YouTube and was now obsessed with one called White Ninja Meets Shaolin Crane. She wanted to be the White Ninja all the time now.
“All right,” Kaley whispered. “But keep your voice down. You’ll—” It was at this point that Kaley first felt it. It started as a creep at the back of her neck, crawled up to the very top of her head, causing her hairs to stand on end. It was there for all of a second, and then retreated immediately. “You’ll wake the neighbors,” she finished. “Ninjas are silent. Remember? Jeez!”
“We have to get meff?”
Kaley paused at the end of their small yard and looked at her sister. She smiled, despite her displeasure with her sister’s pronunciation. “It’s meth. And no, we’re not getting any meth for Mom. She gets that on her own, remember?” But Shan didn’t remember. So far in life, things that were put to lips and made smoke were always meth. Their mother was inside smoking cigarettes, and had given Kaley money to go and get some things from Dodson’s Store, the only thing opened this late at night in the Bluff.
Shannon had witnessed the exchange of money between Kaley and their mom, but hadn’t yet developed the understanding that they were too young to fetch cigarettes for Mommy. Interestingly, though, Kaley had come to realize she wasn’t too young to buy meff, though she never would—in years to come, she would buy a great many substances, but never that.
It was easy to buy anything in the Bluff. It was a relatively small area, only about 1 ½ square miles, but
teeming with people leading the tail end of their disastrous lives. Though she was only partially aware of it at this stage in her life, Kaley had determined to leave these 1 ½ miles behind her someday. Tonight would cement that resolve.
“Watch out!” Shan shouted, pulling back on Kaley’s hand.
“Ninjas don’t shout—”
“You almost stepped on it,” Shan whined.
Kaley looked at where she was pointing. A beetle was scuttling across the sidewalk. Shannon cared for all the creatures of the world, even the nasty ones. Kaley had too, once, but was starting to grow out of it.
They hustled across the street, Shannon putting one hand behind her and crouching as she had seen the White Ninja do. Kaley felt stupid playing along, but sometimes in order to get her little sister to go along quietly, she had to play ball. They moved past Stephanie’s house, and Shannon briefly pulled Kaley into the shadow of the plastic garbage bin beside the decaying picket fence in the front yard. Here, Kaley indulged her little sister while she pretended to hug a wall and listened for bad ninjas to go past. Then, all at once, Shan stood up and yanked her big sister’s arm nearly out of socket and took off in a crouch again.
“Slow down!” Kaley said. In that moment, she saw it. She saw it crystal clear. It happened in a flash, and was over before she could think on it. The low-ceilinged basement where they would be held was as real as the touch of her sister’s hand. Indeed, in this charmed state, she could tell that Shannon was nearby, though not touching. She could smell…onions? And there was screaming…screaming from another room—
Another tug at her arm interrupted the vision, and Kaley did nothing more than shiver. Almost at once she had rewritten the future memory as nothing more than a combination of Big Sister’s Paranoia and a cold wind, one born on a late-night stroll down an empty street that she walked with her litter sister, whom she had always tried to protect from everyone. Including Mom.
“I said, slow down!” Kaley said. This time, she yanked back on Shannon’s arm, pulling the reins back on this little horsey. “Listen to me! Stop! Okay? Just stop it.”
“I wanna run faster! It’s not fair!” she pouted.
Shannon had entered the stage now where nothing was fair. It ended every sentence where she was arguing to get her way.
“We can play White Ninjas, but we have to be quiet—”
“There’s only one White Ninja, and I’m it! You’re Pan Lei! Remember?”
“I remember,” she sighed. Pan Lei was the name of one of the White Ninja’s few allies, a kung fu master who ran the White Lotus Clan. He was supposed to be a gifted kung fu man whose powers were undefeatable, or some such. “You’re a ninja, though, remember? If you’re too loud, you might alert the guards, and they’ll tell Oni.” Oni was the villain in two of the White Ninja films, a tattooed fat man who juggled several nefarious schemes at once. “Now, you gonna be quiet?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said her little sister dismissively. But she obeyed now, and moved in low a crouch, creeping along with one hand out, staying brave as long as the other hand maintained the Anchor.
Kaley made sure each time they crossed a street, she made Shannon look right, then left, then right again. A single car drove past them, headed in the same direction they were going. It was a black Toyota Tacoma. Kaley knew because she was getting into cars, a hobby that so far hadn’t extended any further than just reading about them and dreaming of her first car, but still made her a sharp eye for years, makes, and models. This one was a 2008 or 2009 TRD, and she marked it as strange immediately because she had never seen it around her neighborhood before, and there was never any reason for anyone new to visit her neighborhood at all.
Kaley held no illusions about where on Earth she lived. A decrepit neighborhood in the middle of Atlanta, one filled with apartments and townhouses for rent and nothing of real worth. She had seen enough reruns of shows like Modern Family and Family Matters to know that whatever was normal for the rest of America wasn’t normal for her. She’d never seen a sitcom depicting even one motherly figure that enjoyed crystal meth. And everyone on TV had a car, no matter how broken down—Kaley, her sister and their mother all took the bus. In this neighborhood, cars were little more than lawn decorations, propped up by cinderblocks, or else missing some vital component that rendered them inoperable.
But the Tacoma, even in the dark it shined. No scratches or detns, no screeching of metal on metal as it rolled past. The truck was around the corner and out of sight within six seconds, and Kaley gave it no more thought. Although, some part of her did consider it. It was the charm, of course. She would come to know that many years from now. It revealed something to her. A cocksure smile, worn by a man she wouldn’t want to rescue her in a million years, but one she would run to in time.
“Shhh,” Shannon said. “I think heard the guards.”
Kaley sighed. Still playing the game, she crept in behind the White Ninja, slinking along and ducking from phantoms.
Dodson’s was two blocks away from their house. Just two blocks. One day, when she went for her criminology degree, Kaley would learn that most crimes, including kidnappings, happened within a mile of the home.
The truck pulled to a sudden stop. The driver had just spotted the first lights on at an eatery of some kind, and an open sign. The first open sign for the last five miles or so. The hankering had come on him so abruptly his hands had started shaking on the wheel. Or maybe that’s just yer conscience, Spence ol’ boy, he mused, smiling. That was funny, because the docs at Leavenworth all said that he didn’t have one.
He had parked the truck at the curb, just beside Dodson’s Store. A few of the letters weren’t lit up on the sign, so it looked like D ds n’s St e. He pulled out a pack of Marlboros, one left by the owner of the truck. He lit it, inhaled gratefully, and exhaled just the same. He glanced into the rearview mirrors, gauging what sort of neighborhood he was in.
This was the Bluff, notorious throughout Atlanta for being the hub of heroin, meth, cocaine and prostitution. It was bounded by Donald L. Hollowell Parkway to the north, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and the Atlanta University Center to the south, Downtown Atlanta to the east and Joseph E. Lowry Boulevard to the west. Splitting her in half was Joseph E. Boone Boulevard, creating the two distinct Neighborhoods of English Avenue to the north and Vine City to the south.
Up the street was a car title pawn shop called Strike Gold, and standing on the street outside of it were two young black boys, probably no older than fourteen. Spencer was sure they were holding.
On up the street a ways was a pair of cars, one a red El Camino and the other a black Expedition. Spencer reassessed the set-up. Naw, the boys take the money, the men in the cars are the one’s holdin’. They drive up, drop a bag, probably some fake shit made out of baby powder and mixed with Clorox to smell.
Spencer smiled and took another toke. It was funny how the game never changed, no matter where one went in the wide world. Baton Rouge, Biloxi, Leavenworth, Atlanta, all the same. He wondered who it was that had first thought of recruiting kids to hang out on corners while the adults hung back, too afraid to reveal themselves to the cops who no doubt patrolled this area with the occasional undercover sting. Whoever thought up recruiting kids was a fucking genius.
He glanced up through the windshield when he spotted a helicopter swooping by, its searchlight flashing down. It was nowhere near him, but he stopped smoking for a moment, wondering, as he had for the last five hundred miles, They lookin’ for me? He’d been very careful, using any back roads he could find on the GPS and changing cars every fifty miles or so.
When the helicopter moved on further west, Spencer leaned back and relaxed a bit. He took a few more tokes, glancing at the closed car wash across the street. Next to that was a closed tanning salon. Next to that was a gas station, closed at these hours, but a sign out front still declared in bold red neon letters LOTTERY TIX SOLD HERE.
Standing just outside Dodson’s Store were four youn
g men. Black men. Niggers. A nigger neighborhood. What did I expect? This was Atlanta, after all. Though his work had often taken him to places like this, Spencer typically proscribed such areas. He supposed even traveling salesmen had to get used to life on the road, and nurses had to get used to looking at blood and piss and shit. Every job had its drawback.
Spencer hopped out of the truck and locked it behind him, marking the look that the four black men were giving him and the truck as he stepped inside. “S’up, fellas?” he said. Conversation, hitherto clandestine but active, now ceased. Though they had been gazing at him in his truck with indolent eyes, there was a degree of intelligence in them—predatory intelligence, but intelligence just the same. They had made sure he saw them, so he made sure they knew he saw them.
He stepped inside, a jingling bell over his head had the musical accompaniment of Akon, saying he would “smack that.” A waft of half-cooked meat met him, as well. Dodson’s was part convenience store, part burger joint, it seemed. Leave it to a nigger neighborhood to create such a nonsensical amalgam, he thought. The word “amalgam” came to mind courtesy of the Leavenworth Rehabilitation Program. In the reading portion, Spencer had excelled at remembering the word of the day and its meaning. You’re a gifted reader, Spence, Dr. McCulloch had told him. If Spencer recalled correctly, he had replied, You’re a good bullshitter, doc.
Sad about McCulloch. Not a bad fellow, him.
The wall to his immediate left had a single stand full of books—romance and erotica novels with black people on the front, some Penthouse magazines with a dubious dash of Tom Clancy peeking out here and there. A spill on aisle three hadn’t been cleaned up. Wires hung from the paneled ceiling.
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