Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (54 page)

“Kaley?” he said, unable to keep the smile from his face.  “Of course I remember.  How are ya, little miss?”  He could not be angry with her for his situation.  It was not her fault at all what had happened.  It was Leon’s fault
, and nobody else’s, for not turning in his brother-in-law who owned the city’s largest chop shop.

The
re was a sound like sniffling from the other end.  “I’m at school right now, but I need to talk to you.  Something’s come up.”

The hairs on the back of his head stood up.  He didn’t know why
, only that he now shut the TV off completely.  “What is it?”

“You, uh, you told me to call you if
I ever remembered anything else about that night.”

Leon thought about that for a second.  “Kaley…I’m, uh…I don’t know how much you know about me, but I’m not—”

“I know you’re not a detective anymore.  They’ve got you on suspension, or something.  I saw it on the news.”

Shame burrowed deep within him.  “Then why are you calling, girl?
  If you have any information about the case, the Rainbow Room, any of it, you really ought to call the police.”

“They’ll just keep asking question after question—‘How do you know this?’ and ‘How do you know that?’—you
know
they will.  I need someone who can act.”

“Act on what?”

Hesitation.  Then, “I’ve been getting weird calls at night.”

At once, Leon started looking for pen and paper.  “What kind of calls?  Threatening?”

“Yeah.  They say they’re coming for Shannon.”

“
Coming for her, how?  When?”

“They say they’re gonna get her at school. 
Today
.”

Leon started taking notes.  “
Jesus.  Why haven’t you told anybody?”

“I didn’t take them seriously, but now I’m afraid.”

“Okay,” he said, fumbling wih the cap on his pen and biting back a curse when he dropped it. “All right, uh, I’ll call and tell the people at Cartersville Police, and then I’ll tell some of my guys at the precinct.”

“Good, but you come too.
”

“What?  Kaley, I can’t—”

“Just come!  Nobody else can protect her!  My Aunt Tabitha is like an hour away, and she can’t protect Shannon, anyways!  Not from these people!  You’re closer!  I know you moved here after they suspended you, my mom heard it from somebody. 
Just go and help Shan!
” she shouted.  At once, something shot into the core of his heart and soul, an immediacy that wasn’t there before.  Her words had a way of influencing.  “Detective Hulsey, I don’t care what you did wrong, you didn’t give up on looking for us that night, and I know you won’t give up on us now.”

How was he going to say no to that? 
“I…okay.  Okay, you got it.”

“
There’s something else, very important.  Can you get a message to that Interpol agency?”

He was on his way to his bedroom.  In the top drawer of the nightstand, his Glock was there, fully loaded with safety on
, and in its holster.  “Interpol?” he said.

“Yeah, the ones that busted up the Rainbow Room after it was all over?”

Leon wondered where this was going.  “Uh, sure.  I guess I could contact some people.  Why?”

“I’ve…I’ve been remembering some things.  Repressed memories coming back, or whatever.  A place called the Ruffa Docks, out at the Port of Chelyabinsk, in Russia.  And a couple of log cabins out in the middle of nowhere, belonging to some guy named Zakhar Ogorodvoff, or something like that.  Tell them…tell Interpol I heard Dmitry and the others talking about these places.  In Chelyabinsk.  Siberia, Russia.  Got it?”

Good thing Leon had learned shorthand.  “Yeah, got it.”

“And Pelletier’s there, too.”

That gave Leon pause.  He set the notepad down, and said, “Pelletier?  Spencer Pelletier?  You’re sure?”

“Just tell them.  He’s wearing a blue shirt and a slim black jacket, some Wrangler jeans, and black boots.  He’s also growing a scraggly beard.”

“How can you know all of this, Kal—”

“Please just do it!”

He sighed.  “All right.  I’ll make the calls on my way to get Shannon.  And Kaley?  I know you’re a smart girl, so you know whoever’s coming for Shannon, they’re coming for you, too.”

A brief pause.  “I know.”

“All right, well, hand the phone over to the closest adult to you.  I’m on it, don’t worry.”

A second later, a man came on the line.  “This is Principal Stephen Manning.”

“Mr. Manning, sir,” Leon said, running out the door, into the wind without a jacket.  “My name is Detective Leon Hulsey.  I’m with the Atlanta PD.  Did you hear everything Kaley Dupré just told me?”

“I did, yes.”

“Do you have a full-time security officer at your school?”

“We do.”

“Good,” he said, clipping the Glock to his side.  “Tell them to keep her in a safe place, perhaps an office inside the library, or any another secure location you can think of where she can’t be easily found.  Uh, let’s see…”  He trailed off, massaging his temples, trying to think of the appropriate response.  “Okay, uh, make the call to Cartersville Elementary and tell the staff there to do the same for her sister, Shannon Dupré.  Can you do that?”

“I can.”

“Good.  Have someone else make the call to the Cartersville Police Department to tell them they need an escort for both girls.  In case they don’t know it, inform them that the Dupré sisters have been in contact with a dangerous criminal syndicate in the past and that that syndicate may be coming to do them harm today.  Do you copy?”

“I do, yes.”

Leon was back in the saddle again, like he’d never left it.  “All right.  I’m going to inform my people at Atlanta PD of the situation, and bring you some help should you need it.”

“Are the people coming after them that dangerous?” asked Principal Manning.

“Yes sir,” he said, sliding into his car.  It was the same black four-door Nissan sedan that Spencer Pelletier had stolen from him seven months ago.  “About the most dangerous people you can imagine.”

Leon Hulsey didn’t know how right he was.

Kaley watched Principal Manning hang up the phone.  He immediately looked to Vice Principal Lowe and said, “Look after her.  I’m going to find Officer Bauer.”  She watched him go, and wondered how effective her plan might be.

It felt better knowing she had others out there to help.  And it also felt better knowing that Spencer was about to get a lot more trouble than he bargained for.  She didn’t know what the Prisoner had meant, but if for some reason Spencer had promised him and the Others Shannon’s life, well, there was nothing else for it.  He was a monster anyway, and he might still have children as hostages, if he hadn’t killed them already.  And if the Others were after Shan, well, having police around her at all times was better than nothing at all, she supposed.

Then Kaley recalled Mrs. Cartwright and the events in the girl’s bathroom just three hours earlier, and wondered if anything could ever be enough.

Something plopped in the water behind her, like a pebble in a pond.  She turned, saw a large shadow moving in the Deep, then looked down at the water, which was now halfway to her knees. 
Please, God, do something
. 
Stop all of this
. 
Please do your job and stop this
.

12

“Turn…
left
…ahead…”

“
I’m…not…
blind
…you…fucking…
whore
,” Spencer mocked.  Kharlova Pereulok was a busy street, but because of the hospital’s presence the roads were well plowed and salted, making for a smooth drive.

A
head, the hospital shone brilliantly through the haze of snowfall.  Not only was every window lit up, but a very large sign was lit brighter than the Fourth of July, and pronounced the building
Челябинский центр медицины катастро
ф
:
Chelyabinsk Emergency Medical Center
.

The parking deck was around the
east side of the building.  Spencer composed himself as best he could, sat up straight, and drove up beside the booth’s attendant.  He leaned out the window, hoping to mask the fact that the window had been recently shattered, and had a wad of rubles ready in hand.  “
V kakuyu storonu?
” he asked, shivering as much from blood loss as from the cold:
Which way?

The attendant pointed and said, “
Tam, takim obrazom, vtoroy uroven
. 
Nalevo
. 
Zelenyy
.”

Spencer believed he was being told to go straight up the ramp, to the second-level parking deck, then
to take a left into the green zone.  He nodded.  “
Khorosho
. 
Spasibo
,” he replied, and waved his thanks as he pulled away.  The attendant shouted at him and ran to catch up, and Spencer came irritably to a stop.  The attendant jogged up to his window and handed him a green card to hang from his rearview mirror.  “
Spasibo
.”

So, up the ramp two levels, taking a left and looking for the green zone…
There
.  He eased into an available parking space and got out at once.  The parking deck was housed, so no snow or ice had made it in.  Still, a terrible cross breeze was coming through and snapping at his new coat, potentially exposing his bloody clothing underneath.

He made it over to an elevator just as a man and a woman were stepping inside.  The man held the elevator open for him.  “
Spasibo
,” he muttered, tapping the button for the front lobby with a knuckle.  Spencer kept his injured arm at his side, the bloody hand he’d sliced on the razor wire in his pocket.  With his left hand, he thumbed down the iPhone’s touch screen, looking at all that he would need to gather to effectively treat his wound.

Beside him, the woman and the man were whispering.  He caught snippets.  One of their friends seemed to be going into labor tonight, and they were discussing what a bad night to have to get
Alisa into an ambulance and take her to the hospital.

Spencer looked at the woman questioningly.  “Alisa?  I’m here to see someone by that name, too.  What’s her last name?”
  He’d probably murdered the Russian language trying to ask that, his focus was just that off.

It was the man who answered.  “
Rodchenko.”

“Ah, no,” he said, smiling pleasantly.  “Different Alisa.  But I hope everything is okay with her?”

The woman smiled and began explaining about how the ambulance got stuck twice in the ice and yatta yatta yatta.  Spencer was nodding and smiling as he glanced down at the phone and perused.

Let’s see
.  He was running through a checklist. 
I’ll need some chemical hemostats
. 
QuickClot, Celox, shit like that
.  Spencer had used some of that the night he fled Atlanta, dropping by Dodson’s Store one last time.  It wasn’t terribly uncommon, and could be found in many First-Aid kits.  Those ought to be on walls just about everywhere in the hospital.  If not, he could likely ask someone to direct him to a part of the hospital that had it.

The elevator door chimed, and he stepped out ahead of the man and woman.
  The lobby had only light traffic.  There was a large atrium with green marble floors, a tall ceiling, and a giant circular desk dominating the center of the room.  Three nurses were working behind the counter, fingernails clacking away at keyboards.  Above them was a giant clock.  It was 10:50
PM
.

Sp
encer was about to approach the nurses and show them his hand—he already had a story ready for the cut, and was prepared to speak urgently to get them to find him some clotting agents—but not five steps from the elevator, he spotted a First-Aid kit symbol, the universal cross sign, right on the wall beside the bathroom.  He stepped inside the men’s room and, sure enough, there was a First-Aid kit on the wall beside the hand dryer.  A man was washing his hands at the sink as Spencer walked over to the kit, tore it open, and fished out the QuickClot.  He checked it. 
Nice
.  It was the no-bullshit kind, the zeolite-based stuff that militaries had been using for years, and only recently released for civilian hospital use.

Spencer
took a pair of tweezers and a few paper towels from the dispenser and soaked them under the sink, then nodded politely to the gentleman at the sink, who watched him take the QuickClot into the handicap stall (so he’d have more room).  He locked the door and ground his teeth against the pain as he pulled off the woman’s coat, then peeled off Zakhar’s jacket.  Then, off came Zakhar’s shirt.  The blood had stopped flowing, and now that he had a chance to stop and look at it, it wasn’t that bad.  Though, it had torn straight through flesh and muscle, and if not disinfected and stitched properly, he could lose the arm.

Of course, prisons had doctors.

Fuck that
. 
Not goin’ back to the pen
. 
Not goin’ back there
.

After washing the blood and the wound with the wet paper towels, Spencer
checked the wound for foreign particles, such as pieces of the bullet or clothing, as per wikihow.com’s instructions.  All he could make out in the mess was a single shred of his shirt, a strip of cloth that needed removing.  He had enough strength in his right hand to hold the tweezers up while he heated them as best he could under the flame of his (Erik’s) cheap plastic lighter, also per the instructions on wikihow.com. 
All Hail the Internet, the Great and Powerful!
  He winced when the heated metal touched his wound, but after just five seconds he had removed the cloth, and tossed it into the toilet.

Okay
, he thought, looking down at his cell phone, perusing WikiHow. 
Next step
.

Shcherbakov turned sharply onto Kharlova Pereulok.  Chelyabinsk Emergency Medical Center was straight ahead.  He didn’t bother with finding a spot in the parking deck.  Instead, he brought the Escort up around the half loop of the emergency entrance, and parked it right beside an ambulance and bolted out.  He nearly smacked into the automatic doors because they didn’t open quite fast enough, then jogged down the hall, up to a nurse asking him if he had an emergency.

He paused long enough to ask, “Have you seen a man in a long, black coat?  Black hair, pale skin, a scar across his face, maybe bleeding?”

“No, I’m sorry, I haven’t.  Is he a patient or—”

He left her standing there.  Halfway down the hall, he came close to colliding with a man stepping out of his room and rolling his IV rack around with him. 
Shcherbakov found a doctor walking leisurely down the hall, reading a patient’s chart.  “Did you see a man come through wearing a tall black coat?  He would’ve had a jagged scar on his face?”  The doctor looked vexed, and replied, “No, sorry.  Is he a patient?”

Shcherbakov
darted down another hallway, following the signs all the way to an open atrium, the front lobby of the visitor’s center.  He went up to the circular desk and asked the women seated there, “I’m looking for a man who probably came through here, tall and with black hair, a scar across his face.  He was probably wearing a long black coat.  Did you see him?”

The three women shook their heads.  When Shcherbakov took off running again, one of them hollered that he needed to sign in.

Spencer
used his teeth to tear open the gauze package.  The cream that it came with stung at first when he smeared it on the wound, but after a moment it dulled the pain significantly.  Spencer applied ample amounts, then carefully spread the gauze bandage apart and applied light pressure to make sure it stuck.

The entire process took about fifteen minutes, and was nowhere near what it needed to be for long term
healing—Spencer would need to find a real doc for that—but as long as he got the antibiotics and some thread to sew it up, he should be all right to last the night.  He figured he’d lost a pint, maybe a pint and a half, no more than was usually taken when folks donated it, so he also would be woozy if he exerted himself, might even pass out, and would need to eat. 
Fig Newtons and orange juice, so sayeth the Internet
.

Spencer went back to the First-Aid station and pocketed more QuickClot cream and strips.  Then, he
pulled on the shirt, then the jacket, and finally the coat.  This process took almost two minutes, but once he stepped back into the lobby he already felt a little better.  The arm still hurt, but it was just a painful throbbing now, nothing he couldn’t handle in the short—

Spencer felt the floor rising up at his face.  He blinked, staggered, and leaned against the wall before he
could fall.  Spencer took a deep breath, then took a couple of weak steps over to a bench and sat down.  He took more steadying breaths while looking at a sign next to him that reminded him, in many different languages, to make sure he got all his baby’s vaccinations.

After a minute, one of the ladies behind the counter started darting glances over at him. 
I’m probably a little pale
. 
Need to move soon, before they send someone over to check on me
. 
Probably can’t get past the front desk without checking in, though
.

A few more breaths, then he stood and
walked over to the counter.  “Excuse me,” he said, searching for the right words in Russian.  “Alisa Rodchenko?  She’s supposed to be, eh, in labor right now.  I’m afraid I’m all turned around, don’t know where I’m at.”

The woman could probably tell Russian wasn’t his first language, so she spoke slowly and told him where he could find the maternity ward—straight ahead, take a left at the big red wall with the poster of a child in a crib, go straight, take a left, then another left…

“Thank you,” he said.

“Oh!” she said.  “You need to check in.”

“Of course.”  Spencer signed, and was given a sticker nametag.  She gave him a marker to write his name on it, and who he was going to see.  He put the nametag on his right breast and gave his thanks, then turned to walk away.

The nurse called out,
“And if you see your friend, tell him he needs to come back and sign in.  We don’t like it when undocumented visitors are wandering about.”

Spencer paused, did a one-eighty.  “My friend?”

“Yes.  At least, I
assume
he’s your friend?  He described you exactly.”

A smile played on his lips. 
“Which way did my friend go?”

She pointed to where she had instructed Spencer to go.  “Down the hallway.
  I assume he was on his way to see your friend?”  She shrugged.

Now the smile found a permanent home. 
Spencer took a step closer to the counter.  “I’m not sure we’re thinking of the same person.  Could you describe him to me?”

The Grand Hotel Vidgof was tall and glittering.  Though, the buildings around it were dim—Rideau had heard from news reports that there were power outages all over Chelyabinsk tonight, as well as surrounding regions.  The storm was angry, and health and safety officials were issuing warnings about the cold.  Shelters with back-up generators were welcoming anyone whose heat and power had gone out.

The
Grand Hotel Vidgof, though, apparently had more formidable generators.  Rideau was nice and toasty in the lounge just inside the atrium, along with about twenty other people who weren’t patrons to the hotel, merely people caught out in the storm and who needed a place to take shelter.  The hotel staff was gracious enough to supply some hot coffee to their visitors, even a few blankets for some children lying on the couches.

Rideau knew that winters were always harsh in Russia, but the fact that the people were acting so surprised, and were seemingly
so unprepared for this, spoke volumes about the intensity of this particular storm.

She stood in a smaller anteroom connected to the lounge, where a
tiny television was mounted on the wall, showing journalists reporting live from Moscow.  The blonde-haired woman on the TV stood stubbornly in the storm with microphone in hand, and behind her was St. Basil’s Cathedral.  Apparently, ice was collecting so heavily that there was cause for concern of collapse in one of the roofs. 
Built on orders from Ivan the Terrible
, Rideau thought, remembering her history. 
More than four hundred and fifty years ago
.  Constant maintenance and government funding kept it up, but in one night a storm could destroy it.