“Like?” said Pat, with a barely controlled attitude. Leon knew that if he wasn’t careful, this could turn into a full-blown family-style argument. Pat was a pugnacious little prick at times, especially these days, since he was so used to getting his way in their relationship. Pat was an informant, but only for Leon, and Leon had settled on turning a blind eye to his operations, rather than handing his sister’s husband over to the APD.
“Like any unusual visits. Maybe some new guys from outta town? Maybe some new competitor? Anything out of the ordinary for you. Help me out here, Pat.”
“Various folks come, an’ various folks go. Can’t say anything particular.”
“What about a white man? About six feet tall, maybe a little taller? Dark hair, blue eyes. Very pale. Wearing a black hoodie, jeans, and Converse shoes.”
Pat said nothing, just looked him up and down.
“That’s a yes,” Leon said, reaching into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulling out his notepad. “Just give me something and it’ll never come back to you. I’ll chalk it up to one of my other street-level informants, I’ll say they spotted him and your name will never be mentioned. Now, who is he?”
Pat still said nothing. His hand fidgeted inside his pockets as he cocked his head back and looked at the sky from one end to the other.
He looked down at his brother-in-law more judiciously. Leon knew that his height made him more domineering in negotiations, and never hesitated to use it. “Pat, you owe me.”
“Yeah?” he said, folding his arms to ward off reason. “For what?”
“You owe me,” was all Leon said back. And he did. Big time. In every way conceivable.
For a time it seemed like Pat might just withhold what he knew for all eternity. Then, at last, he said, “His name’s Spencer.”
“Got a last name?” Leon asked, his pen moving.
“Pelletier. I dunno how the fuck you spell it.”
Leon started jotting that down, then stopped. His pen hovered an inch above the paper. “Pelletier…Spencer Pelletier…why does that sound so familiar?”
“He escaped Leavenworth ’bout two years ago. He was famous fo’ a minute.”
Leon shook his head. “No. No, this was more recent, I think.” He shook his head and went ahead writing it all down. “Spencer Pelletier.” The name bounced around inside his head in search of something to connect with. “Leavenworth. Two years ago. All right, when did you last see him?”
Pat smiled. “Let’s see, I guess it was about, oh, five minutes ago.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. He left, an’ no sooner had I sat back in my office than you knocked at my door, Lee,” Pat said, shrugging.
“How long did he stay?”
“I’ow know,” Pat said, shrugging. “Thirty minutes? An hour?”
“Which was it? Thirty minutes or an hour?”
“Man, I look like a God damn timepiece?” Pat said, shrugging.
“What did he want?”
“A job,” Pat said, shrugging.
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much,” Pat said, shrugging. “That, an’ he wanted to sell me this shitty-ass minivan he boosted.”
Leon stopped writing and looked up at him. “Wait…wait, he was driving that Ford Aerostar minivan?”
Pat grinned. “Yup-yup. Ya saw him, I guess?”
Leon fumed. “God damn it, yes. I did. Where was the motherfucker going?”
“I’ow know.”
“Don’t lie to me, Pat—”
“I ain’t lyin’, Lee! This muthafucka didn’t tell me—”
“This asshole may be involved in the kidnapping of two children—two small girls—earlier tonight!” Leon shouted. He watched Pat’s expression change to one of serious doubt and deliberation. “Down by Dodson’s Store! Just snatched them right up off the street, Pat! It may be just a bunch o’ hoods, but it might also be the vor! Now, you gonna help me or not?”
His brother-in-law sighed, licked his lips, and nodded. “How sure are you he took them girls?”
“Not a hundred percent, but I think he knows something. He was there, I know that much. Pat, look at me.” Pat’s eyes had started to wander, not wanting to meet Leon’s, but now they locked on unblinkingly. “You know how these cases go. If we haven’t found those girls within forty-eight hours they’ll already be raped and murdered, and we won’t see them again until their bodies turn up in a landfill, if ever. If not that, then they’ll be shipped someplace else. God knows where. Now, tell me, where did this asshole go?”
Pat blinked, and made a decision. “I sent him to Basil.”
Leon thought for a second. “The Yeti? On Maple? Hillside Apartments, right?”
“Yeah. An’ he said somethin’ about the vor an’ this abduction bidness befo’ he left. He sounded curious himself. Maybe he just got mixed up with ’em by accident, ya know?”
“Maybe. But we won’t know until we ask…” He trailed off. Leon’s mind had just leapt to something else. All at once, he had the connection. It came out of nowhere, like an old baseball card collection that suddenly fell out of a dusty drawer when you went to clean the attic. A recent memory, hitherto lost in the attic, rejoined him, and the connection showed promise. It grew, reshaping Leon’s curiosity to something more akin to alarm. After a moment he said, “Wait a minute. Wait just a…Pelletier. That’s his name? Spencer Pelletier? You’re sure about that name, Pat?”
Pat shrugged again. “Yeah, that’s his name. Unless he been lyin’ to me all these years.”
“Spencer Pelletier…fffffffffffuck. Fuck me,” he said, and took out his cell phone. “Baton Rouge. God damn it. Fuck me sideways.”
“Baton R—hey! Where the fuck you goin’? This shit ain’t comin’ back on me an’ mine, is it?”
Leon had turned and bolted back to his car. The text message he sent was to Bernie Gibbons in Missing and Exploited Children. It was short and sweet: Maple Street. Hillside Apartments. Maybe caught a break.
He slid inside his sedan and plucked the radio from the cup holder between the seats where he’d left it. “Dispatch, this is Detective Leon Hulsey. Badge number eight-four-eight-seven. I have a beat on a wanted fugitive who may be at Hillside Apartments on Maple Street. Suspect’s name, Spencer Pelletier. Wanted for multiple counts of murder in Baton Rouge. Advise all units to consider armed and extremely dangerous.”
“Ten-four, Detective. What’s your twenty?”
“Terrell Street.”
“Are you heading to Hillside now?”
“Yes I am. Send all available units in the area. Over.” He tossed the radio into the passenger seat and instinctively touched the pistol at his side to make sure it was still there before he squealed out. Leon took one last look in his rearview mirror and saw Pat standing there, a lone silhouette on Terrell Street, waving a single hand for his brother-in-law’s return.
Or maybe it was a wave goodbye.
Leon looked at the lit-up dashboard. . His clock read 1:17 AM.
City lights streaked past the windows at irregular intervals. Kaley spotted a few cars on the road, and though they were just right there—right there—she couldn’t reach out to them and let them know her trouble. Kaley considered drawing the words HELP ME on the window with her finger, hoping it would be subtle enough that her captors wouldn’t notice, and yet noticeable enough that somebody else driving by would. Alas, she was squeezed in between two burly men, and could no more reach out to touch the window than she could reach for the moon.
And so they drove on, most of the world asleep, and even those who weren’t were oblivious, living their own dreamlike lives.
Once, when she was visiting her Aunt Tabitha, Kaley remembered asking if cities dreamed. Aunt Tabby had asked her where she got that crazy idea. Kaley told her she had read a story at school about a man who got lost inside a city’s dream and couldn’t find his way out. “If they dream, they have nightmares, don’t they?”
Sometime
later, Aunt Tabby had followed up on this topic with her. “I thought what you asked was very interesting, girl,” she had said. “I actually did some looking into dreams. Everything that has living parts dreams. We might be like blood cells moving through the bloodstream of the city. Like neurons in a brain. If that’s so, then we make up a collective thought, don’t we? A collective consciousness that is the city’s thoughts and dreams.”
Aunt Tabitha had seemed quite smitten with this concept, perhaps hopeful that her niece would grow up to take an interest in science like she had. Aunt Tabitha wasn’t a genius, but she was the smartest person Kaley knew. She had been a science teacher, and was now mostly retired and occasionally substituted. She had encouraged Kaley to think more deeply about things than the rest of the fools in the Bluff, those who scorned people who made good grades and mocked anyone who showed the least bit of creative talent.
“Misery loves company,” Aunt Tabby had said. “They don’t want you to escape because they haven’t escaped. If you escape, then they’re all alone with their failures.”
Kaley sensed that now from the other little girl sitting in the back next to Shannon. The girl was indeed miserable, and didn’t want either Kaley or Shannon to leave, despite the fact that leaving would be a good thing; it would mean being able to get help for her. She wants us here. If we leave her, then she’s alone with her suffering. She sees compatriots in misery. She hopes to bond. She hopes to have friends, like a stray dog edging towards a human, hopin’ to be allowed into the home.
But Kaley’s responsibility was to her sister. If she could find a way of getting them all out, she would of course, but priority one was Little Sister. And the Anchor. If Kaley had to make the decision between escaping with Shan and remaining here to make sure the other girls was okay, she would escape with Shan at her first chance and never look back. Well, maybe not never. She would always carry that frightened girl’s misery with her, all the way to her grave.
She looked out the windows on either side of her, watched the streetlights standing sentry at regular intervals. Kaley might’ve recognized the area if it were daytime and she wasn’t so confused about how far they’d come already, but at the moment she didn’t recognize a single landmark. All storefronts were closed and the windows were dark. A few people walked the streets, and every so often the buildings parted to reveal skyscrapers off to her right, but she still couldn’t orient herself.
Whimpering from the back. She turned her head, saw Shannon, as well as the familiar-looking girl lying in a fetal position next to her. And then she heard a grunt from one of the men sitting on either side of her—it was the man with the jaundiced skin—and it seemed to warn her about making eye contact with her sister.
The vertigo-like sensation kicked in again, causing the world to tilt. Kaley knew what was going to happen next, and instead of listening to her charm (as she promised she would from now on) she fought it still, because she didn’t want it to be true. For a moment, there was an image crystallized so perfect in her mind, a set of teeth smiling wide, blood leaking from the upper lip, and a background smattering of distant screams. She pushed it away. She was willfully oblivious, looking down at her feet, then out at the streetlights, then back to her feet again.
If cities do dream, she decided, they must have nightmares as well. Tonight, Kaley, Shannon, and the other terrified little girl were caught in one.
6
Though Spencer would never know it, the flaming car that he passed by on Dixon Avenue was just one more cog in the machine of tonight that would bring about so much death. This particular cog happened to buy him the time he would need to escape.
The car-b-que was off to one side of the road, popping like fireworks. Red lights flashed behind him. The fire trucks were already on the scene, as was a HERO truck. Spencer’s minivan was one of the last vehicles to get through before the roadblock was set up, and pedestrians from the nearby crack houses and apartments were gathering either beside or in the streets, despite warnings from a man with a bullhorn.
If anybody’s in there, sucks to be you, Spencer thought as he coasted past the smoking vehicle and delivered a salute. It was a yellow Eclipse. Fire licked out of each window and smoke plumed from the slightly parted hood. There was no sign of an accident. No other car was nearby. Spencer concluded that either someone was ditching a body or ditching a car they needed to get clean of. Dangerous night to be out, he thought. But maybe this was normal for the Bluff.
He turned down two more streets before he finally made it to Maple Street, which was as far as most white folks ever got to Hillside Apartments, and cruised right on over to the complex where a couple of late-night get-togethers were going on. A few young black youths were sitting on a second-storey balcony while their music blasted from a stereo system inside. Another small assembly, this one peppered with a few females, was outside of one of the terraces. Again, music boomed from an open door, and the thrumming bass drowned out all other instrumental nuances.
Spencer found the apartment building labeled APARTMENTS 0400-0500, and slid into the only available parking spot. He hopped out of the van. Two older black guys were stepping out of their apartment and Spencer lifted his chin at them by way of greeting. One of them mumbled “S’up,” and they kept on towards their car.
He wasted no time at 448. He didn’t knock with his knuckles, he pounded with his fist on the door with its peeling white paint and faded number 8. “Yo, Basil! It’s Spence! Open up, assfuck!” he shouted. Ten seconds went by. Nothing.
A group of four guys in their early twenties scooted by, hollering and laughing. One of them chucked a bottle into some bushes. Another glanced in Spencer’s direction, fixed him with a look, then turned away.
He banged on the door again. “Yo, Basil! Open up!”
Again nothing.
Behind him, a door opened. Spencer turned reflexively to touch the Glock tucked and hidden at his waistband. A Hispanic woman was stepping out of 449 across the hall. She wore stockings and a garter, along with an oversized fake fur coat. As she walked past, Spencer noticed that a price tag still hung from the coat’s left sleeve. She lit a cigarette and gave him the briefest of appraisals, gauging his interest, and then discounted him when she saw he had none.
Spencer took in the narrow corridor he was in. He heard shouting from behind closed doors down the hall. A man and woman kind of fight. There was the sound of something hitting the wall. That’s about to get bad, he thought, and hammered on 448’s door again. “Basil! I’m gonna kick this door in, man! You wanna lose your deposit?” Spencer took a step back, and slammed his right Converse hard near the doorframe. “I’m comin’ in!”
“Hold on! Fuck me! Hold on!” someone called from inside.
Spencer jiggled the doorknob. “You got maybe five seconds, Yeti. Maybe.”
“I said hold on, man!” There was the sound of a chain rattling on the other side of the door. Spencer touched the Glock again, just in case there was a surprise waiting for him. When the door parted, it did so slowly. A tall, anorexic sasquatch stood on the other side. At least 6 ½ feet tall, the sasquatch had been shaved only around his eyes and some of his forehead. There was gnarled brown hair that descended from his head and merged with a scraggly beard, which created a great mane that captured the occasional crumb. The top of his head had random bald patches. Where you could see skin, it was red, like a dog with the mange. The sasquatch wore a black robe that hung from its skinny body like a long coat would hang from a coat rack; it had no form, wasn’t filled out at all. Besides the robe, which he wore open, the sasquatch had only a pair of white briefs. “The fuck, Spence? Man, it’s like, after one o’clock an’ shit. Almost one-thirty.”
“Fuck you,” Spencer said, stepping inside uninvited. He paused at the threshold for a second, holding his breath against the smell.
The apartment was a landfill, just like every other place that Spencer had known the Yeti to reside. Styrofoam containers, mostly empty, lay atop ba
lsawood tables that looked ready to buckle. Black curtains clung to one window while bed sheets blocked out the light from others. There were various pillows and blankets on the floor to indicate someone slept there, but it was questionable who and how many. An N64 and a PS2 lay with wires strewn across the floor almost like trip wires. Replica paintings were stacked by the dozens against a wall, but none appeared to adorn the walls themselves. Though it was hard to tell, between the mountains of refuse and a carefully arranged stack of cereal boxes, there was little wall to see. There was a similar stack for Motor Trend magazines against another wall. There was a pile of clothes in the shape of a couch at the center of the room, and a variegated assortment of stains across these clothes. Bits of carpet could be seen here and there, but the floor was mostly covered by cardboard boxes, empty water bottles, Sprite cans, old newspapers, Japanese swords (lying on the floor without much care), chewing gum wrappers, four of the seven Harry Potter novels, eight broken lamps, six car stereos, a toolbox (opened and with most of the contents strewn about), a Bowflex with a food tray balanced on it, and perhaps most dubious of all, forty or so empty tampon boxes arranged neatly beside the door. There were medical dictionaries and college study books collected in one corner, along with folders bursting with papers and CD cases of Rosetta Stone’s series “How to Speak Mandarin.” There was a 20-inch TV sitting atop an old box of a 52-inch TV (presumably broken and now serving as a table), and all around that there was a smattering of keyboards, computer monitors, CDs, printers, copiers, fax machines and scanners. A radio played a familiar Fiona Apple hit from the late 90’s.
“God damn, Basil.”
“I know, man. Sorry about the mess.”
“Mess doesn’t begin to…you got my shit or not?” he said, deciding not to get sidetracked.
“Um, yeah. Yeah, let me just…” The Yeti now started frenetically digging around the room seemingly at random.
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