Authors: Chad Huskins
Psycho Save Us (8 page)
David figured
Mac was one of “those” kinds of people in places like the Bluff. A lone spirit
who despised his surroundings, wished people would act right, and would never
up and leave it. “So, you
don’t
have an address. Have a street, or a
description of her house?”
Mac nodded
enthusiastically, like he’d just been invited to go up there himself with the
two officers and smash Ms. Dupré’s head in. He looked like he would enjoy that
very much, and David believed he would. “She up on Beltway. I forget which
house, but it’s one o’ them where ya pay based on how much ya earn a month.”
“Public
housing,” David said, nodding as he jotted that down. There weren’t many other
kinds of houses or apartments around here. The Bluff was the pinnacle of
poverty in all of Georgia. “Got it. Descriptions of the girls?” Mac gave
approximations of their age and height, as well as what they were wearing. “Did
you see anything else? License plates on the vehicles? Special rims on the
tires maybe? Distinguishing marks on the men who did this?”
“I didn’t see
shit, Officer. ’Scuse me. By the time I got out here, they gone.” David went
to jot that down, and then Mac added, “They was this one muthafucka, though.
White boy. Drivin’ a pretty new black Tacoma.” David glanced up at this,
interested. White was unusual for the Bluff, especially this late at night,
and especially driving a new-looking truck. “He came in an’ bought a burger
an’ a Dr. Pepper from me, walked out about the same time all o’ this happened,
an’ then dipped when he found out I was callin’ the police.”
Mac had
pronounced it
poh-leece
. Internally, David was just grateful Mac didn’t
refer to the police as “po-pos,” at least not in his presence. “Description?”
he said.
“White,” he
said. “An’ I mean like
white
white, Officer. As in as pale as that
moon over yo head. I mean, not albino, but fuckin’ white, ya feel me?”
David nodded.
“What else?”
“Tall, thin.”
“How tall? How
thin?”
“ ’Bout six-one,
six-two, an’ maybe one seventy-five. Nazi poster boy, ’cept fo his black hair.
Blue eyes an’ tall an’ German-lookin’. Ya feel me?”
Again, David
nodded. “Clothing?”
“Blue jeans.
Brown shoes. Converse, I think. He wearin’ a black hoodie. Pulled it up over
his head befo he left.”
“He say anything
to you before he left?”
“Yeah, a whole
lotta shit. Talkin’ this an’ that. He ran his mouth a lot. Talkin’ about my
name, how big I am, an’ tol’ me I oughtta buy a new jersey because Michael
Vick’s a dog-fightin’ fool. I pretty much tol’ him to kiss my ass an’ he
left. When I came out, I started to call 911, an’ he got the fuck outta here
like his head was on fire an’ his ass was catchin’. Ya feel me?”
Once more, David
nodded. “And you said that the only other witnesses were some guys who bolted,
and a couple across the street that walked away a few minutes after all this
happened?”
“Yeah, word. I
don’t know who the fuck they was, but the four bitches who cut an’ ran were
some fools I know from Vine, near MARTA.”
He meant Vine
City’s MARTA station, which meant David wasn’t likely to find or get much out
of those four black youths tonight. That area held nothing but people who were
supremely mistrustful of the police, slamming doors anytime the word “warrant”
wasn’t specifically uttered. A land of people who’d gotten to know the Atlanta
Police Department so well that, despite sky high on meth and H all the time, most
of them could quote civil rights laws back to the officers who appeared
warrantless at their doorstep. It was ranked as the number one most dangerous
neighborhood in Atlanta, and number five in the entire United States. David
had only been working Atlanta for a year, had never gone to that area once, and
didn’t know many cops who did. That’s how he knew it was a lost cause looking
for those witnesses.
Which means
probably a lost cause for those girls
. He didn’t like to admit it, but
history was history, and facts were facts.
David sighed,
and closed his book. “All right, I think we’ve got your full statement. A
detective will probably be around in a short while, so—”
“Ho, wait, you
leavin’?” Mac said, taking a step forward and forcing David to take a step
back. He didn’t like being made to take a step back. “You can’t just let this
up an’ slip right now, Officer. We can’t wait on no detectives to show up four
hours from now—”
“Mr. Abernathy,
I understand your concern,” David said mildly. “Believe me, I do. But right
now the quickest way to get some results is for us to put this on the AMBER
Alert system, get the description of the girls and their names out in public,
as well as the two vehicles associated in their abduction.”
Mac’s eyes went
wide in supreme disbelief. “You gonna wait for a snitch around
here
?”
“We’ll keep
looking. My partner and I will patrol this area, and for the rest of the night
we’ll be looking for the vehicles you described. In the meantime we’ll put the
descriptions out so that maybe an aware citizen—” He paused when dispatch
called something out over the radio attached to his chest.
“All units in
the vicinity of Madison and Dawnview, please be advised of a 211S in progress—”
David turned the volume down. A 211S was a silent robbery alarm going off.
Madison and Dawnview weren’t anywhere near him. He turned back to Mac and
started to finish his sentence.
“An aware
citizen,” Mac said skeptically. He took a step back, and started stroking his
chin. “Man, I’m tellin’ you, you can’t come at it like that, Officer Emerson.
I mean, no disrespect or nuthin’, sir, but these muthafuckahs was organized an’
shit. They came up on those little girls an’ moved with a purpose. They had
dat shit
planned
, yo. Ya feel me? An’ that white boy, he probably a
scout or some shit for ’em. You know, scoutin’ out easy victims an’ all that?”
“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
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.