Psycho Save Us (27 page)

The house that
Oni had just stepped into had cracked windows.  There was a second storey, but
the windows there were all boarded up.  On one side of the house, someone had
spray-painted a large penis with testicles in white paint.  Someone else had
used black paint to send the message
L-Ray
runz this shit!!!
but someone
else
had spray-painted a big red X over that.

While they
awaited Oni’s return (at least, Kaley assumed they were waiting for him), Kaley
glanced up the street to the left.  She spotted three other houses, only one of
them with lights on and that was on the top floor of the farthest house. 
If
that person in that upstairs room only knew that we were here, and that we
needed help, we’d be all right
.

But Kaley
checked herself.  She didn’t know that for sure.  Whoever these men were, they
obviously had friends.  It might be that this whole neighborhood was loyal to
them.

She swallowed. 
Her jaw was beginning to seriously hurt because the gag had been biting into it
now for…well, what time was it?

Kaley looked at
the glowing clock on the dashboard.  2:13
AM
.

She heard
snoring behind her.  She looked back to see Shannon fast asleep. 
Good, let
her sleep through it all
.  Kaley was still fooling herself into thinking
that the vision she’d glimpsed tonight before stepping into Dodson’s Store
would not come to pass.  It’s important to hold out hope, and sometimes it’s
important to lie to oneself.  At least, this was wisdom she would stumble upon
much later.

The SUV remained
dead silent.

Umway Street
. 
Remember
Umway Street
.

Then, up front,
a phone rang in the driver’s jacket pocket.  He fetched it out and said, “
Allo
.” 
Someone said something on the other line.  Somehow, Kaley sensed that it was
Oni calling from inside.  “
Govori pazhaluista gromche
,” he said.  A few
words from Oni.  The driver glanced in the rearview mirror at Kaley, eyeing
her.  “
Ya ne znayu
,” he said.  “
Net
. 
Net
. 
Olga doma?
” 
A few seconds went by with Oni talking a lot on the other end.  “
Da
. 
Peredayte
ey chto zvonil
Mikhael
.”

In the silence
of the car, Kaley could make out the silence on the phone.  Oni wasn’t speaking
anymore.  When a voice did return to the phone, she could hear that it was
distinctly female.  “
Allo
.”

The driver said
something very rapidly.  When he was finished, he said, “
Ya bystro gavaryu?
”

He got an
answer.  It was short.  Then, he started talking fast again.  After a few
seconds, he hung up and said to the men in the back, “
Baz prablem
.”

One of the men,
the jaundiced one, said, “
Vsyo v poryadke?
”

“
Net
. 
Baz
prablem
.”

Kaley thought
that word
prablem
sounded an awful lot like
problem
.  She
wondered if there was an issue between all the involved parties here that she
might exploit.  After all, hadn’t Oni just killed half a dozen co-conspirators
of his?  Maybe there was something in this she could use.

The doors
opened, and Kaley was hauled out.  The jaundiced man kept an iron grip on her
elbow and had a pistol out, though so far he hadn’t pointed it at her.

Immediately,
Kaley’s attention was turned to the back of the SUV.  Her heart ached as she
saw her little sister and the other little girl lying there, both their eyes
shut, being grabbed by their arms and pulled out of the rear.  Shan barely
stirred.  Her eyelids barely parted as the bad men lifted her and put her on
the ground, where her feet touched so lightly that surely she was still half
asleep.  Shannon let out a single, somnolent moan. 
She’s really exhausted
to sleep through all this
, Kaley thought. 
Exhausted because it’s way,
way past her bedtime, or else emotionally exhausted by all the
—

That thought was
dashed in an instant.  Kaley felt what would happen next.    She both saw it
via the charm and felt it via the Anchor.  She was close enough for the
Anchor.  Something swelled up inside her sister, something tiny that quickly
became volcanic.  It hit Kaley like a fist to her gut.

It all happened
so fast she barely registered it.  One minute the driver was yelling something
to Oni, who had stepped out of the house for a minute and was calling to him
from the front door, and the next minute Shan suddenly punched one of the men
in his balls with a viciousness she had never seen in her sister before.  It
was all so sudden that the man holding her elbow let go and she was off.  He
would’ve snatched Shan’s pigtails at once if Kaley hadn’t acted.  Big Sister
threw herself bodily onto the large man, who staggered backwards, trying to
recover from the attack on his groin and Kaley’s dead weight.

RUN!
she sent to her
sister. 
RUN!  DON’T LOOK BACK!  JUST GO!

The nameless
other girl squealed and dropped stupidly to the ground, looking at Shannon’s
retreating little body with a mixture of hope and dread.

Kaley wrestled
with the big man, who finally grabbed her by the throat, hauled her off the ground
and slammed the back of her head on the pavement.  The wind was knocked out of
her, and she almost swallowed the bundled cloth in her mouth.  She twisted her
head around so that she could see Shannon get away from—

There was a
gunshot.  It was deafening.  Shannon dropped face first on the pavement, and
for a second Kaley screamed through her gag and almost choked on the cloth
again.  She knew her sister had been shot.  She knew it.  The little body lay
there, motionless.  Kaley hadn’t felt Little Sister’s death as she had Nan’s,
and didn’t feel the still-dying sensation as she had from those thugs back in
that house of death, but her mind told her the truth.

Shannon, her
gorgeous, most valuable possession, was dead.  Kaley’s life was over.  Without
Little Sister, there was no life.  Such a simple yet elegant truth, it could
never be denied, because Mom was no kind of mom at all.  Ricky was gone.  These
men were going to take her places, make her do things…and without Little
Sister—

It’s a mercy
, she told
herself. 
Better off dead than with these monsters
.

Then, her eyes
showed her something that her charm already knew.  Shannon moved.  She wasn’t
dead.  Kaley looked over to her right.  The jaundiced man was standing there,
pistol in hand, aimed at the air.  The barrel was smoking.  He had fired a
warning shot at Shan.  “Come back now, little girl!” he cried, and aimed the
gun down at Kaley.  “Or I kill sister!”

“It doesn’t
matter!” Kaley tried to scream.  “Run, Shannon!  Run!  Don’t worry about me! 
Just run!”  But nothing more than garbled screams came out, and poor Shan
probably thought they were screams of fear.  Little Sister perceived wrongly. 
She thought Big Sister was terrified for her
own
life.

Kaley’s heart
sank when she saw Shannon stand, turn, and take her first step back towards
them, almost as bad as it had sank when she thought Little Sister was dead. 
Oni ran across the yard, looking left and right, probably concerned with who
might’ve heard the shot.  He snatched Shannon up by her arms and flung her over
his shoulder.

Someone shouted
from somewhere behind Kaley.  It was a woman.  “
Vsyo v poryadke?
”

“
Da!
” Oni
shouted.  He pointed to the jaundiced man and the driver, and then pointed to
Kaley and the nameless girl.  He gave a quick series of commands that Kaley
couldn’t follow.  Shannon was handed off to the woman who came around the side
of the SUV.  The woman was tall and pale, with long, curly black hair with oily
bangs hanging in her eyes.  She wore an
American Idol
T-shirt and
tattered jeans.  For just a moment, seeing Shan handed off to a female gave
Kaley hope.  But then she saw the supreme look of disgust on this woman’s face,
and hope faded for the dozenth time this night. 
Not a safe female
. 
Not
a good one
.

“
Prostite
chto vas pobespokoil, Olga
,” said Oni.

Kaley had heard
that name said a few times now—at least, she thought it was a name, it was said
with a kind emphasis, almost barked—and so she started to think of this woman
as Olga. 
Who are you, Olga?
Kaley wondered as the jaundiced man jerked
her up by the arm. 
What are you doing with us?  What are you going to do to
my sister?

They started the
march inside the house.  Kaley walked in between all the men, utterly
surrounded.  Olga, with Shan in her arms, had taken the lead.  At the porch,
Shan looked up with tearful eyes.  She blinked hopelessly, not knowing what she
should do,
if
she should do anything.  Kaley tried to send out waves of
reassurance, but again, she had to feel it
herself
if she meant for it
to feel genuine at all.

Behind her, the
other little girl whimpered.  Kaley glanced back, and saw that the jaundiced
man was walking right in behind her.  He had raised up the back of her skirt
with one hand and was pinching her butt with his other.  Kaley saw the
nauseating fear on the girl’s face, and for a moment was infected with it
herself.  The nameless girl wasn’t just scared as Kaley was scared, she was
near paralyzed.

The screen door
creaked open and they stepped inside what would become a true house of horrors
that night.

For everyone
involved.

The first
ambulance to arrive at 12 Townsley Drive had just now sedated Officer Beatrice
Fanney.  Leon had arrived in a squad car driven by an old beat cop friend of
his named Edmond Rosario.  He’d radioed dispatch for a lift once he realized
his car was stolen.  It had pissed him off to no end, but confusion had
replaced anger when Edmond had gotten the call from dispatch, saying, “Uh,
Officer Rosario, have you Detective Leon Hulsey in the car with you?”  When
Edmond had confirmed that he did indeed, the dispatch lady had said, “Then you
can tell him we found his car.  It’s at Townsley Drive.”

Leon now stood
staring at his car.  It didn’t make any sense at first.  None at all.  The
flashing red-and-blue lights from all the cop cars now present splashed against
his Nissan as he went through it all.  He found nothing missing.  Nothing at
all.  It wasn’t until bodies were being pulled out from the house and the
ambulance was speeding Officer Fanney away from the scene that he finally
stepped out and said the obvious to himself.  “Son of a bitch stole my car.”

Special Agent
Porter was standing on the porch talking with his fellow agents, who then
stepped inside the house.  The three of them had arrived way ahead of Leon
because he’d been carless.  Now Porter walked silently over to him and said, “Seven
dead altogether.  Fucker who did it was a decent shooter, too.  He was firing pretty
tight groups.  At least he did on the thugs.  He fired willy-nilly with a
shotgun at the officers.”

Leon nodded.  He
put both hands on the roof of his car and fumed for a moment.

“Find anything
missing?  Any guns or extra ammo you keep—?”

“No, nothing
missing,” Leon said.  A fire truck honked behind him for one of the patrol cars
to get out of its way.  “Didn’t take my comics or my newspaper.  Far as I can
tell, nothing’s wrong except damage to the ignition cover and the wiring.”  He
took in a deep breath, and fought screaming.  Then, he lashed out and kicked
the door, denting it significantly.  Agent Porter just watched him.  “Motherfucker
stole my car. 
Had
to be a coincidence.  But what are the fucking odds?”

“
Maybe
it
was coincidence,” Porter said, shrugging.

Leon pushed
himself away from his car.  “But you don’t think so.”

Again, Porter
shrugged.

“Tell me. 
What’s going on here tonight?”

“Nothing out of
the ordinary for this individual,” Porter said.

“I’m going to
have to ask you to try better than that, Agent Porter,” Leon said, taking a
step towards the other man.  Leon knew he was a big man, and had always noticed
how people moved out of his way whenever he walked, well,
anywhere
. 
Hallways, restaurants, sidewalks, anywhere.  But Agent Porter had obviously
seen a lot in his time, had been intimidated by some of the best, and worst,
pieces of shit that the street could regurgitate.  He didn’t back away even a
noticeable millimeter when Leon loomed over him.  “Beatrice Fanney is a damn
good cop.  Always backs up her partners without flinching.  All the women
and
men at APD respect her.  David Emerson is my friend.  A good cop.  Cares more
than most would about the assholes in the Bluff.  So I’m pissed off.  But
there’s also seven bodies to account for, all murdered.  Who the fuck is this
guy?  I’m not gonna ask you again.”

“Con man, escape
artist, psychopath.  That’s all I can—”