Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (55 page)

Rideau’s father had once told her that people were like buildings.  They were always concerned about the upkeep
of their bodies, and for good reason, but in the end the structure always succumbed to time and the elements.

It was a stray thought that entertained while she nursed her cup of coffee and looked through the small doorway into the main lounge area, which gave her straight line-of-sight to the front desk.  Rideau had checked with the lady at the desk, who said that the man in room 533
had checked in earlier, but left, and, according to the people who cleaned his room, hadn’t returned.  Rideau knew that, because of the weather, the occupant might not be in for the rest of the night, perhaps the rest of the week: the talk was that this storm could last that long.  If Shcherbakov happened to be too far outside of the main city center when the storm hit, out in those areas not frequented by snow plows, he could very well be stuck.

He might even freeze to death someplace
. 
Now wouldn’t that be ironic?

Rideau sipped at her coffee.  With her free hand, she reached into her side pocket, and
nervously touched the handgun that Dominika had given her.  In the other pocket, there was a set of handcuffs.  Dominika had left the options up to her.

She sighed, trying to calm her nerves.  It wasn’t working very well.  Rideau was an agent of Interpol, and as such she had never made a single arrest in her entire
time with the agency.  Interpol agents were combination investigators, liaisons, facilitators, researchers, and coordinators.  They collated data, searched for convergences, liaised with the appropriate agencies of a region, and, whenever necessary, they did their best to coordinate arrests in multiple countries at once, so that few criminals could give them the slip and vanish back into the ether.  Toting a gun and carrying handcuffs was not their game.

But if Dominika is right, nobody else is going to arrest this man
. 
Not any time soon, anyway
.  The Grey Wolf would keep killing until FSB and Moscow Police had gotten their “big fish,” and then maybe they would tighten the noose around this soulless monster.

A small child was crying in his mother’s arms.  Rideau looked at the woman holding her son, patting him on the back.  “
Shhhhh-sh-sh-sh
,” the mother soothed.  “Hush now.  It’s okay.  It’s okay.”

Rideau looked around at the others in the lounge.  A couple snuggling in a love seat, chatting it up with three guys who’d wandered in.  Total strangers, getting along swimmingly. 
There was an elderly man watching the big TV near the front desk, conversing with two younger men who were both nodding, perhaps receiving sage advice from their elder.  Two small children, a brother and a sister, were snuggled together on a couch under a blanket, fast asleep.

Rideau saw all of this and knew that if Shcherbakov showed up tonight, she could not in good conscious try to take this man here in the lobby.  A monster such as he would not hesitate to shoot up a room full of innocents to escape.  She would have to follow him up to his room, she would have to
confront him, and she would have to do it alone.  For to alert hotel security would mean alerting the local authorities, and if Dominika was right, Shcherbakov’s people would know about her little ambush, and not only would he evade her, but she would likely be his next target.

I only get one shot at this
. 
One chance to get it right
.

In her pocket, her phone vibrated.  She expected it to be
Patricia.  It wasn’t.  It was Mitchell, calling from her office.  Rideau’s phone had one bar, and it was blinking on and off indecisively.  “This is Rideau,” she answered.

“Something strange just came down the wire,” Mitchell said, skipping greetings.  “All the way from Atlanta.”

“What is it?”

“Ruffa Docks.  Heard of them?”

Rideau searched her memory.  “Port of Chelyabinsk, right?”

“
Yes.  It’s a group of docks owned by various shipping companies out at the port.  They’re not very big, but we’ve always thought one or two might be owned by shell companies.  It turns out, maybe we were right.  I just got into the office, and we’ve got intel coming in right now about that area.  It might not have been enough on its own, but then our source mentioned Zakhar Ogorodnikov.  His name sound familiar?”

It did. 
A person of great interest where the Russian Mafia’s operations were concerned in shipping.  “Where is this intel coming from?  What’s the source?”

“Atlanta PD.”

“Where are
they
getting it from?”

“Remember the girls in Atlanta?  The ones the Rainbow Room took?”

Of course she did.  Rideau had memorized those names.  There were the Dupré sisters, Kaley and Shannon, and another girl named Bonetta Harper.  The horrors Rideau had heard described in their story had sickened her for days, especially knowing that the Rainbow Room was connected to her investigations into the Russian Mafia.   “I remember them, yes.”

“Well, one of them said she suddenly recalled something about the Ruffa Docks.
  I’m having Chelyabinsk Police see about a search warrant.  Might take a week or so to—hold on.  Thanks,” he said, perhaps receiving an update from someone on the other end.  “It might take a week or so to get the warrants, but I just thought you’d like to know about—”

“Listen to me, Mitchell.  You have to do it now,” she urged.  On the other end, Mitchell went silent.  “We won’t have a week.  If you know about this update, then the
vory
know, and they’ll burn the evidence and move their operations now.”

His tone went from conversational to very serious. 
“What’s going on, Rideau?”

“We were wrong.  We all were.  Me most of all.  Chelyabinsk and Moscow Police haven’t improved
, they’ve…they’ve just gotten more sophisticated with
appearing
like they’re cooperating, and probably better at doctoring their crime statistics.  I have a source,” she said.  “One I picked up while here.  I can’t say more over the phone, and you shouldn’t, either.  Just know that if you wait too long, an order called a ‘non-comply’ will be put on this investigation, and the police here will
bury
any relevant information and never share it with other agencies.”

“What…but why?”

“To save face.  They can’t appear weak in the eyes of the international community.  Now listen, I don’t care what you have to do, you have to get that order to search both the docks and Ogorodnikov’s residence,” she asserted.  “Do you hear me?  Do whatever you have to do.  Get the Director and the Deputy Director on the phone and tell them what I’ve told you.  If we don’t move on this now, we could lose a gold mine of actionable intelligence.  Tell them we’ve got to move before FSB issues their non-comply order and all local agencies shut their lips about what they find at those locations.”  After that happened, she imagined much of the evidence at both locations would be documented by FSB and sealed.

If they weren’t going to play nice and share with the rest of the international policing agencies, Rideau would make them, or die trying.

“Okay, got it,” said Mitchell.  “But there’s something else.  A little strange, but it came through the wire at about the same time.  It’s Pelletier.  Chelyabinsk Police are all over him.  His description was given after he stole a car, and some anonymous tips came rolling in with his name tossed around.  There have been a couple of high-speed chases, causing some wrecks, and two officers were shot dead.  The pieces coming together make it look like it’s all the same guy.  Rideau, he’s on a rampage down there.”

Rideau sighed.  “Well, at least I know local police won’t stand for that.  They can’t have an American making them look like fools
, so you can trust them to do that much.”  She glanced at the lobby, scanning the front desk.  A newcomer walked in, but it was a man too tall and too skinny to be Shcherbakov.  “Where is he now?  Do they know?”

“Uh, not exactly sure, but another anonymous tip just came down the pipeline.  They think he may be wounded and headed for some hospital, I forget which one.
  Police are heading there now, though, and hospital staff and security are being alerted.”

“Keep me posted.  And do as I said.”

“You got it.”

Rideau hung up, and when she replaced the phone in ther pocket, her finger
s touched the pistol.  A Glock.  She hadn’t fired one in over a year.  In her job, there just wasn’t much reason to hone her shooting skills.  In fact, never in her career had she ever had any reason to.  She hadn’t even ever pointed her gun at another human being.

Could she do it?  When push came to shove, and it was either shoot Yuri Shcherbakov or let him get away, could she really do it?

Her phone buzzed.  A text message had come in while she was talking to Mitchell:
You still doing okay?

Rideau
sighed, and sent her wife a reply.

At the reception desk of Chelyabinsk Emergency Medical Center, Liliya Vetrov was the one to answer the phone.  It was a man from Chelyabinsk Police, and he was very direct.  Had anybody come through recently with a gunshot wound?  No.  Had anybody come through under suspicious circumstances?  No.  Had there been any strange occurrences within the last hour?  Besides one of the doctors passing out from exhaustion, having worked a day and a half without sleep, no.  Had she seen a man with a scar across his face, wearing a long black coat?

Why, yes, she had.

The officer informed her that she ought to initiate emergency lockdown procedures, and that she should connect him immediately to the head of their security personnel.

At the same time she was doing this, Liliya saw the automatic doors open at the other end of the lobby.  A pair of dark-gray dogs stood there, the doors’ sensors having detected them.  The animals stood there a moment, looking at her.  Liliya watched for their owners, prepared to tell them that they couldn’t bring the animals in here, but then the two dogs turned and slinked away, the automatic doors shutting.

She picked up the phone to transfer the waiting call to the hospital’s security personnel, and called Dr. Sitnikov to have him issue the emergency lockdown.

13

It wasn’t too difficult to spot a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep ready to stampede.  They got jittery, one cow mooed too loud, or one sheep baaahed a little too stridently.  There always came a shuffling of hooves, one animal bumping into another as the rumor of the wolf passed through their collective.  At first, the animals had no plan.  There was a buzz of activity as each animal tried their own hand at escape, but eventually they followed whichever animal happened to find itself in a lead position.  At least, that’s what Spencer reckoned it was like, he’d never actually been close to that many herds or flocks, especially not when they were about to stampede, but he’d seen enough
National Geographic
episodes, and he could imagine.

That same energy was in the halls
all around him.  As he passed each desk and checkpoint in the hospital, he saw phones being lifted up, male and female nurses speaking quickly to each other in Russian jargon, much of which was impossible for him to follow.  Spencer knew what was happening, even as he stepped around each station.  The rumor of the wolf was passing through the flock, and the sheep were getting jittery.

He
calmly headed down a hallway that had a sign clearly stating it was for doctors and nurses only.  He still felt a little lightheaded, and fought to keep his composure as he passed each station.

Spencer glanced at a few of the nametags on the breasts of each nurse
he passed, memorizing a few names:
Malvina Gulin, Nika Grebenshchikov, Olesya Venediktov, Natalya Polishchuk
.  Names were useful.  Names were tools and even weapons at times.  Names opened doors as easily as passwords and badges.  Names were spells to cast on others.  Names were as good as saying “Open Sesame.”

The panic a
ctually helped him out a bit.  At the end of the hall, a set of double doors stood in his way, locked and unyielding.  He stood to one side, waited for the inevitable doctor or nurse to come racing through those doors to see what was going on (the rumor of the wolf in their midst would compel them to do this).  When it happened, he surreptitiously put his foot up to the door to stop it from swinging back closed, and once the doctor was around the next corner he slipped inside.

Almost as soon as he was through the door, a nurse stepped out from a desk, on her way to some errand, and spotted
Spencer and approached him.  “Sir, you can’t be—”

“Nurses Polishchuk and Grebenshchikov sent me,” he said with confidence, in his best Russian.  At once, he had the woman’s
full attention.  The nurses’ names were the appropriate spell to cast.  “A friend of mine is in labor.  I believe you have her?  Alisa Rodchenko?”  Another appropriate spell cast.  He kept talking, not giving her time to think.  “A man is on the loose in the hospital.  He’s running from the police, and he may have a gun.”  The woman listened in rapt attention as Spencer gave the description he’d gotten from the nurse at the front desk: blonde-haired, stocky, wearing a dark-grey jacket.  “Please, spread the word immediately.”

This was the message he hope
d he got across, anyway.  Spencer’s head was still spinning a little, and the Russian language could be very tricky.  The nurse seemed to at least get the gist.  She nodded, and turned urgently back to her desk. 
Open Sesame
, Spencer thought.  The nurse hollered that he still wasn’t supposed to be here, but she cared less now that she was picking up her phone and making a call.

Such loose, feckless minds
, he thought, ducking down the next hallway. 
It doesn’t take much, does it?

Spencer ducked down the next hallway and started opening doors.  A door into a broom closet, a door
into a room that held some plumbing supplies, a door into a room with some spare rubber gloves and scrubs, but no antibiotics or medicines.  Then, at last, he came into a room filled with shelves, and those shelves were stacked high with bottles and boxes.

On his way through the hospital, Spencer had been pulling up the various medicines he would need
on his phone, and put their names into Google Translate to get their Russian spelling.  However, many of the boxes and bottles turned out to have an English translation on them, as well.  It took about two minutes of rummaging past pill boxes of sumatriptan, odansentron, and various other nonessentials before he came across a large bottle of Demerol pills. 
That’ll help with the pain
, he thought, pocketing them.  A bottle of Rohypnol, some ampicillin.  Another minute of rummaging brought about a great find: cephalexin, an antibiotic pill that wikihow.com recommended he take 500mg four times a day orally.  He stuffed what he could into his pockets. 
That’ll have to do for now
.

Pockets rattling,
Spencer turned to leave.  On his way out the door, though, his eyes caught sight of Augmentin, a brand of amoxicillin.  “Somebody loves me,” he chuckled.  But as he reached for the bottle, his head spun again, the tile floor felt a little bouncy, and he collapsed against the shelf.  He only fell half to his knees, but reaching out to the shelf for help raked its contents off, sending them crashing to the floor.

Spencer
took a couple of deep breaths, steadied himself, and stood straight again.  He composed himself and pocketed the Augmentin, then stepped out into the hall, just in time for someone to make a garbled announcement over an intercom.  All Spencer could make out was “warning” and “lockdown procedures” and something about all nurses checking in on priority patients.

There came a loud whine.  Spencer glanced out a nearby window, out into the storm, and spotted a trio of police lights coming down the road, pulling into the roundabout at the side of the hospital.

Moving sluggishly, he turned down another hallway, and, spotting a fire alarm on the wall, used his elbow to smash the glass and pull the lever.  The alarm sounded at once.  Spencer kept moving down the hall until it terminated at a large, glass-enclosed viewing area.  He looked inside, and paused.  There were a dozen small beds, five of them filled with newborns, and another dozen empty incubators.  Two nurses were rushing inside to grab the beds and cart them out.  They hadn’t seen Spencer yet.

Spencer
waited, watching the nurses cart the two beds out of the windowed room and into some other room.  Presumably a safe area, in case of fire?  He spotted a white coat and some scrubs folded neatly on one of their desks.  As the nurses stepped through the door into the other room, Spencer jogged over behind them.

With the alarm going so loud, the nurses couldn’t hear his approach.  He had his Uzi out and aimed at them, in case they turned
around and saw him.  As soon as they were inside the room, he snatched up the scrubs and the coat, threw them over his shoulder, and stepped into the glass room.  Spencer selected a baby at random, lifting it without care because he only had one good arm, but he managed to keep it wrapped in its blanket.  He hustled out of the room and down the hall, where he spotted a bathroom and dipped inside.

Spencer laid the baby by the sink.  Having been roused from its sleep by alarm and mishandling, it was squalling.  He tore off
coat he’d taken from the woman in the street and threw it one of the stalls, but kept Zakhar’s jacket on for warmth. 
It’s cold as cucumbers out there, boys an’ girls
, he thought, remembering a random quote from childhood; it was from the DJs on the morning radio show when his dad drove him to school.  Spiffo and Danny in the mornings.  Spiffo used to always give the weather: “She’s hotter’n hot sauce out there, boys an’ girls.”

Funny what came to you in times of stress.

He tugged on the nurse’s shirt, but not the trousers—the shirt barely fit enough to cover the bloody shoulder of his jacket.  Then, he pulled on the white coat.  He felt something.  A heavy object in his new coat pocket.  He reached inside.  It was Droid phone. 
Nice
.

The baby started kicking, and screamed even louder than the alarm going off all around.  While it kicked, the wrap around its waist flopped down and he saw it was a boy.  “All right, little man,” he said, lifting it up against his breast, trying to mimic what he’d seen others do when handling infants.  “It’s you and me against the world.
  They’ll never take us alive.  Ain’t that right?”

Spencer stepped out of the
bathroom and began searching for the nearest exit.

When the alarm went off, Shcherbakov knew exactly what it meant.  The hospital wouldn’t have pulled the fire alarm just because they had a tip that a wanted criminal
might
be in their midst. 
He’s trying to create pandemonium
.  It was astonishing how aware his target was.  Most people in the same situation would just run until they ran out of running space, or until they found an exit.  But this one was creative, and he knew it was important to place obstacles in his hunter’s path.

Except for a few nurses checking each patient’s room and locking them in, the maternity ward was mostly empty.  He asked another nurse if she’d seen a man matching Pelletier’s description, and this time he got a nod.  “He went through here a few minutes ago.”  She started asking him what his business was here, but he pressed her for Pelletier’s direction.  She pointed down an east wing hall, and he ran off without answering her questions.

Shcherbakov paused at a four-way junction, looked up and down each hallway at the doctors and nurses rushing a patient who had been out on a walk back to his room, as well as rolling another into his room on a gurney.

A security officer was jogging up to another check-in desk when his radio went off.  The fire alarm was a constant noise, but Shcherbakov was close enough to hear parts of the conversation.
  “We have…won’t tell…another possible suspect in the building…heavyset…blonde hair, wearing a gray jacket…”

Shcherbakov was walking past the desk when he heard this, and it didn’t quite compute until the security officer stepped around the desk and hollered at him.  “Stop!” he called above the alarm.  “Excuse me, sir, but I need you to stop!”

Shcherbakov did stop, and just before turning around, he realized what was going on.  He saw it all as if he’d watched it on camera. 
The son of a bitch knows I’m here
. 
He gave my description to a nurse or a doctor
.  Shcherbakov sighed.  There was no way out of a line of questioning, at least, no way quick enough that would allow him to stay on Pelletier’s trail.  They would detain him for questioning, and would want to know why he was so armed.  So, he made a decision.

Spinning, he whipped his coat open and slapped his gun in a master grip, jerked it straight up out of his holster, dropped his elbow, and fired two shots
into the officer.  The officer had reached for his gun out of reflex, but only got it half out of the holster before the two bullets slammed into his sternum and he dropped.

Screams.
  Nurses darting for cover.

Shcherbakov
rounded the next corner before the officer hit the marble floor.  He put his gun hand close to his side and began looking for an exit.

Spencer heard the shots.  He smiled. 
Got hemmed in, didn’t you, asshole?
  He wiped the smile off his face as he approached a group of young men in scrubs, probably interns, and all of them stunned by the sound of gunfire.

Spencer put on a look of concern.  “
Get out!  Get out now!  There’s a man with a gun!  Run!
”  Later, they might notice his iffy Russian.  Later, they might notice that, though he was wearing a scrubs shirt, he wasn’t wearing the trousers.  For now, all they saw was a coworker carrying a newborn infant, cradling its head in his hands, ostensibly as frightened as they were.

They
all ran out of the sliding glass doors.  At that exact moment, six uniformed police officers were rushing inside.  Spencer held the baby up and turned his face so that his scarred side didn’t show, just in case their description of him was that accurate.  He was about to scream “Someone is shooting!” but he didn’t have to because the young interns were doing that for him.  The officers never gave any of them a second look, only drew their guns and ordered them all outside, to safety.

Spencer rushed out with the interns, out into that bitch wind. 
The storm had decided to intensify again, and the sky was filled with a trillion falling stars, all spiraling and being chased by the wind.

More sirens were approaching
but their sound was nothing compared to the infant’s incessant wailing in his ear.  Spencer stepped over to one of the interns, and handed the child over.  “Here!” he cried urgently.  “Hold him.  I have to call the nurses, see if Venediktov and the others are okay!”

“You got it,” said the intern, not even questioning it a little. 
Open Sesame
, Spencer thought.  Another name dropped, another obstacle surmounted.  The intern accepted the squalling boy, rubbing his back and issuing
shhhh
noises.