“We’ll put a description out on him and the truck he was driving,” David tried to assure him. Mac was breathing heavily now, though, forcing David to touch at his pepper spray and glance for his partner by reflex. Officer Beatrice Fanney, her of the round ass and unfortunate last name, had noticed the exchange. She’d finished placing the cones and called in an update to dispatch, and was now moving around the other side of the patrol car to back her partner up. “Call us if you think of anything else that might help us.”
“A fuckin’ AMBER Alert?” Mac went on. “That’s it? Yo, Officers, I read Time magazine an’ shit, an’ those AMBER Alerts are bullshit! They only ever work in, like, minor abductions, like when kids are taken by a noncustodial parent or another family member. Kids that get abducted by total fuckin’ strangers never get found by AMBER.”
David said nothing to that, because, of course, Mac was absolutely right. While the alerts were a good idea, and certainly couldn’t hurt, there was very little evidence to show that they helped. “Mr. Abernathy—”
“Just go, man.” No more “Officer” now, just “man”. Mac turned back towards his store. “You nuthin’ but a fake-ass nigga anyway,” he derided. “I guess I’ll wait on the fuckin’ detectives. If they even fuckin’ show,” he added.
David turned back to his partner and nodded towards the patrol car. Beatrice got in the driver’s side and David sat in the passenger’s, removing his hat and running a hand over his balding scalp. He looked at Dodson’s Store, saw Mac squeezing his way through the front door with shoulders slumped, defeated. So I’m a fake-ass nigga, huh? he thought. I guess that’s because blacks shouldn’t become cops. Who’d keep you, then, Mac? Huh? Who’d even give a fuck about—ah, fuck it.
After David finished calling in the descriptions for the AMBER, he and his partner both sat there for a moment finishing out their notes.
“Gotta hand it to him,” Beatrice said, cranking up the car and pointing at Mac, who was just visible through the window. He had already gotten to work stocking shelves full of cookies. “Two girls get kidnapped and six or seven people just dash. ‘Fuck the girls,’ they said. ‘I’m getting outta here. Not my problem.’ But he comes out with a Glock in hand, makes the call, and obviously has a lot of passion about finding them.”
“Guy like that shouldn’t be living in the Bluff.”
“If guys like that didn’t live here,” Beatrice said wisely, “who would’ve called it in?”
David smirked. “Good point.” Then a cloud came over him. “Fat lotta good it’ll do, though. If the kidnappers belong to who I think they belong to, those girls aren’t gonna pop up for another five or six years. They’ll be coked outta their minds, giving blowjobs to johns in skuzzy crack houses and so fried that they won’t be able to recall that it wasn’t their idea to become prostitutes.” He added, “If they’re lucky, that is.”
Beatrice nodded. “The Russians? The vory v zakone?”
David rubbed his eyes and pointed at her like, Bingo!
“If that’s the case, the girls might not even be in this country by sunup.”
Before they drove off, he glanced at the flickering sign of Dodson’s Store. He thought about Mac’s last words. If they even fuckin’ show. Unfortunately, the detectives never showing up was a real possibility, and something that never got reported on shows like Dateline. Those were the breaks for those who opted to eke out an existence in the Bluff. You can get your H fine and dandy, but you became what David called an Outlander. You don’t really exist out here. Everything from the plumbing to the policing worked differently down here in the Bluff; no one liked to admit it, but there it was.
The timestamp on Dodson’s security footage showed 10:58 PM as the time when the two vehicles pulled up to abduct the two girls. If it was the vory v zakone that had done it, then Officer David Emerson and his cohorts at the APD probably had less than twenty-four hours to find them. Maybe a bit more if it was the Juarez cartel boys or the guys from the Crips.
“Car one-Adam-four, this is dispatch,” said a friendly woman’s voice over his radio.
David touched the button. “This is one-Adam-four, go ahead, dispatch.”
“We’ve sent a patrol car up to Beltway to give a knock on the door of the home where your abducted girls live,” she said. Beatrice had been updating them while she listened in on David’s interview with Mac. “They’ll notify the mother. All cars in your area have been notified to be on the lookout for your abductees and the vehicles—a red El Camino and a black Expedition.”
“Copy that, dispatch. I’ve got another one for you. Caucasian male driving a Toyota Tacoma. May be nothing, but then maybe something.” He gave the description Mac had given him: 6’ 1” or a bit more, 175 lbs, short black hair, blue eyes, pale white, wearing a black hoodie with blue jeans and brown Converses. David had no way of knowing if the white fellow had anything to do with what had gone down here almost an hour ago, but he was willing to bet someone would spot a white man driving that truck before they’d spot a pair of black girls in the Bluff.
“We’ll get that description out to cars in the area,” said the dispatch lady.
“Ten-four. We’ve just finished taking the only statement of anybody willing to give one, and we’re about to start canvassing the neighbors.” For what it’s worth, he thought but didn’t dare say.
“Ten-four. Will advise detectives.”
Will advise detectives, he thought. Advise them of what?
There wasn’t much to go on. The clock was ticking. But the AMBER Alert had been sent out, and a cop’s gotta eat sometime. The detectives would handle most of it from here. “Let’s cruise the area a bit, knock on some doors, see what’s up. If nothing turns up by the time the dicks get on it, let’s hit the Waffle House. What do you say?”
Officer Beatrice Fanney pursed her lips and nodded in a way that suggested it sounded like a plan to her.
3
When she woke, Kaley discovered that her pants were gone. They were on the floor next to her. She tried to sit up, and found that she had to use her elbows because she was handcuffed at the wrists and ankles. She kicked out against a phantom attacker. There was no one else in the room. Except…she heard a whimper, and turned to see a truly terrifying thing.
Shan was bound and gagged on the floor with her, and looking up at her big sister with huge, tear-dripping eyes. Kaley tried to say something, tried to yell, but found that she was gagged, too. Something soft and large had been shoved into her mouth, and something else held it there. Upon her first scream, she almost swallowed it, and would surely have choked on it.
Panicking, Kaley tried to wrench her hands apart. That didn’t work. The handcuffs were closed tight, cutting off circulation it felt like. It was dark inside the room. Bars of moonlight came through the shades of a window above her, casting her and her sister in zebra stripes. On the floor of whatever room she was in, toys lay strewn like so much detritus. There was a space heater, but it wasn’t currently running. A ceiling fan overhead blew on its lowest setting, giving off a light gust that in her latest dream had manifested itself as the wind blowing in her face as she stuck her head out the bus window on the way to school.
There were voices. Perhaps the echoes from before? No, new ones. These came from someplace. They came from somewhere inside the house. Sounded not too far away. An adjacent room. There were three or four different men, all jockeying for position in the conversation. She caught snippets of English words, but there was also plenty of some other language to conflate the topic being discussed. At times the voices raised, then lowered, and even whispered before rising again.
An argument?
Kaley kicked out with her feet again, trying to break free of the cuffs by sheer power. She had heard of people becoming uncommonly strong when they were under pressure, but she was issued no such magical powers now. She screamed through her gag and writhed in emotional anguish, and in frustration at herself for not listening to the charm.
> Beside her, Shannon sniffled. Fresh snot was moving from her nose and collecting around her gag. Her eyes were like saucers. She was missing her pants, too, but still had on her Powerpuff Girls underwear. Kaley crawled over to her and threw her cuffed hands around her neck, hugging her closely, briefly, hoping that this would assuage her long enough so that Big Sister could do what had to be done. “I have to leave you,” she tried to say. But what came out was, “Ah hah tuh luh yuh.”
Shannon—poor, poor Shan—she got the gist of this and shook her head violently. She clung to her sister, who was trying to separate from her. Then, Kaley touched her forehead to her sister’s. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t speak, but had to make her sister see. She had to make Shan feel what Big Sister had to do. What happened next was closely akin to prayer, only not directed towards the heavens. For a moment, Kaley felt something. It was Little Sister Terror. Then, Shan’s body jerked, and she peed herself. But peeing herself was good, because after it was over it calmed her. When Kaley opened her eyes, Shannon was looking at her. Her little sister nodded reluctantly. She didn’t like it, but she understood. Big Sister must leave to go get help for Little Sister.
Kaley then pushed herself away from Shan and found the nearest wall. She couldn’t stand right up, of course, because her feet were bound. She inch-wormed until she got her back pressed against the wall, which was made of cheap paneling and had a ghoulish poster of Marilyn Manson half torn and hanging from it. Other than that, there was no other decoration to this room.
Kaley pushed herself up to her feet, and then hopped twice before the door swung open. “Dorogaya moya,” said the burly white man, half ensconced in shadow. “Kak vashi dela?”
Kaley screamed through her gag and dived for the window. It was closed, of course. On the other side of the shades were steel burglar bars. She had just enough time to ram them once with her left shoulder, hearing a pop from within the socket, and then the burly white man was on her. He snatched her by her hair, tearing some out and flinging her to the ground, landing atop her sister who wriggled to get out of the way but only made it halfway. Kaley landed in Shan’s urine, and quickly spun her feet around to face her kidnapper. She kept her knees bent, both her cuffed feet cocked and ready to kick at his knees or shins if he approached.
The big white man stood over her for a moment. And then he laughed. He laughed long and hard, even slapping his knee like he’d just heard the greatest yarn. He wore a black wife beater, gray khakis, and a chain for his wallet. His face had multiple piercings, and a tattoo of barbed wire or a twisted tree branch that went down the right side of his face. Another tattoo, this one of the crimson bear, was on his right arm. Kaley recalled that tattoo from her time in the floorboard of the Expedition.
A mountain of muscle, he towered over her like Oni from White Ninja Meets Shaolin Crane. For a moment, she thought insanely, We’re in his clutches. Oni has us. It was the kind of thought born of delirium. Her head still spun from whatever they had used to knock her out. Probably that stuff—what’s it called?—chloroform! She’s seen an NCIS episode where a woman got kidnapped by her ex-husband using that stuff.
“Ti takaya prelesnaya,” said Oni. He leaned forward, the moonlight revealing two tusklike protuberances at the edges of his mouth—large steel studs pierced there. Kaley saw that face grin at her ravenously, and she kicked up at his face.
Quick as a snake, he snatched up her feet, held both ankles in one big hand, and ran his fingers down the length of them. “Ya ischu devushku, kotoraya khochet lyubit i bit luybimoy,” he tittered. His voice was much higher than his size hinted at.
Kaley struggled to kick again, but couldn’t get her feet free of him. She felt…sick. It was on her again. The lust. The terrible lust. A thing so hideous it would make it difficult to trust another man for years to come. She shouted something obscene at him, but he only laughed and tickled her legs.
“Hey, yo!” someone called from down the hall.
The smile on Oni’s face died. He dropped her legs immediately and looked over his shoulder. He looked down at Kaley, tilted his head to one side, considering something. And she felt wanted. She felt his want of her. And the terror that rolled right off her little sister next to her swirled and mixed with this lust, causing an automatic cringe of revulsion from both. For a moment, she was the bearer of two great burdens.
Then, someone shouted something down the hallway, out of sight where Kaley couldn’t see. This robbed the white man of almost all his lust as he made for the door. He paused in the door, though, and through the pale moonlight, she could just make out his wink. He did something with his lip that caused the steel studs to click against his teeth. “Do vstrechi,” he said, and shut the door. From the other side, she heard it lock.
To her, his last words had seemed (felt) like a promise.
As soon as the door closed, Kaley reached up to her gag. She tried pulling at it, but it was tough. A sock or something like it had been shoved into her mouth, several loops of duct tape had sealed it tightly against her head and something like a zip tie had been added for good measure. Her sister appeared done in the same way. No matter how they both struggled, nothing loosened these gags.
They wound up clutching one another again.
Emotions swirled about Kaley. Her sister’s terror was the most powerful. She was redolent with it. But other emotions ebbed and flowed throughout the house, permeating the walls and permeating her. Like wading through water at first, but then someone had added cement to the mixture. It was thick and oppressive on her. Distrust, lust, and anger welled in her. She felt the abductors falling apart already.
Minutes later, Kaley and her sister heard more raised voices. Then the door flung open again and in walked three men. One of them was the burly white man from before, but the others were black men. This gave her hope. She hoped they were men from her neighborhood who would recognize her, realize they’d made a mistake and grabbed the wrong kids (who were the right kids?) and would set them free with the promise not to tell anybody.
But this didn’t happen at all. Instead, the men said nothing as they dragged both Big and Little Sister over to the space heater. More handcuffs were produced, and though Kaley struggled the whole time it didn’t stop them from cuffing her and her sister to the space heater.
One of the black men, a tall one built like a basketball player and wearing gold chains with a cross about his neck, turned and said, in the most rational voice one could imagine, “Let’s see her kick you now.”
The white man, who before had spoken in the foreign language, now spoke in strained English, “She not a problem. Not problem for me. I not worried. Room secure. My people—”
“Yo people call you a regular fuck-up,” the black man said, wearing a half smile of satisfaction. “That’s why yo ass got some help tonight. Now get the fuck in the livin’ room an’ let’s talk the rest o’ this out like men do.” But the burly foreigner with steel studs in his mouth didn’t go anywhere.
Another black man, this one short and skinny and wearing pants pulled so low his underwear was showing, waited by the door, shifting his weight back and forth, fidgeting. He touched the pistol tucked in his waistband impatiently, glancing up the hallway like he was expecting someone to show at any time.
The bigger black man knelt so that he was eye level with Kaley. “This yo sista?” Kaley didn’t move. “This yo sista.” It wasn’t a question this time. “Imma kill her if you try anything again. White boy over there says you tried to dip. Don’t.” He pulled out a pistol. Kaley didn’t know what kind it was. Cars were the limit of her boy stuff knowledge. He touched the gun to Shannon’s head. Oh, God, it was touching her sister’s head! “I won’t kill you, I’ll kill her. Got that, lil’ girl. Now, I’m very sorry this had to be you tonight,” he said, and Kaley sensed immediately that he wasn’t sorry for anything, “but that’s how this cookie right here crumbles tonight. A’ight?”
Kaley nodded vehemently.
He gave
her a second, judicious look. “Stay cool, an’ this’ll all be over soon,” he said. She didn’t think so, but she certainly felt that he believed that.
The two black men filed out quickly, and Kaley watched with mounting terror as they all left. She was terrified because she knew what was going to happen. She knew the same way she’d known this was all going to go down like this tonight, only now she was listening to that charm her grandmother had passed down to her instead of ignoring it like she always did.
The burly foreigner with the avid eyes and the red bear tattooed on his arm and the steel studs in his lips was going to kill them. He was already thinking it. She shouted through her gag, trying to warn the two black men. He’s already thinking it! You can’t let your guard down around him! He’s waiting for you to let your guard down and then he’s going to kill you and then…he’s…
The look the white man gave her before he shut the door told the gruesome story. He knew exactly what he intended to do with the two girls. He knew it. Kaley knew it. And even Shan probably knew it. Everybody knew it except the two black men. They thought they had a deal. They thought they were going to get something out of this. They didn’t know how this was going to end, but Kaley’s charm told her that if she could help them survive then this would all go differently.
She tried to reach out to them before the door closed, but the farther they got away the harder it was to feel what they were feeling, thus it became impossible to influence them at all. The charm was too dim for that kind of connection. If, that is, Kaley wasn’t totally insane and only wishing the charm was all that her Nan had made it out to be. It has to be! It needs to be! If we’re going to survive this, we have to reach someone—
Psycho Save Us Page 6