The lumps of melted flesh found sizzling in the basement would never be identified with any one person. Footage would be found that would show the heinous torture and rape of thirty-seven children. Their bodies would never be found, though scant DNA evidence would find hair, blood and skin samples in the two rooms in the basement.
Bonetta Harper was found two weeks later, soaking wet and filthy, living in a culvert several miles away from Avery Street. She would need serious psychological care. Once her story was known, several celebrities donated secretly to her care.
The surviving members of the Rainbow Room would be put to the question in a media frenzy that would haunt viewers and terrify parents for a full year. Six weeks before the first vor was convicted, he would cut a deal with the prosecution and name all other cells and collaborators that he knew of. There was a baker who lived in Downtown, a tech guy who lived in Savannah, and even a few partners in Tallahassee, Birmingham, Frankfort, Houston, and Montpelier, and that was only in the U.S. Interpol managed to take information from computers and routers in all six houses on Avery Street and follow links, keystrokes, and e-mails to supporters in other countries. Customers of the Avery Room included two teachers in Ukraine, a mailman in Germany, a police officer in Australia, three nobodies living on the Dingle Peninsula, one of the most remote places in the world, and even a minor politician in China.
But the biggest surprise to many in the U.S. was something that wouldn’t come to light until a full year had passed. Vincent Pastone and Jerry Baker, a ten-year veteran of the Atlanta Police Department and a sergeant for Zone One respectively, were indicted on charges of conspiracy and collaboration with members of the vory v zakone, including the Ankundinov family: Boris, the father, and his children, Olga, Mikhael, and Dmitry. Though they would later claim they had no knowledge of what was really happening on Avery Street, they did confess to accepting money from dead drops to give heads up to any police activity involving their neighborhood, and Sergeant Baker was able to control frequency of patrols to that area, and rather easily since the place had long been forgotten.
Basements identical to those set up in the burned home were found in all but one of the other homes on Avery Street. Some had video equipment, others didn’t. They found large, steel cages in most. Confessions from survivors said that duties for handling captives were rotated, children were moved from one house to another to keep one group in one house from having to listen to all the wailing or handled feeding and cleaning the children.
Facebook pictures of some of the Ankundinov family would be on the news for months, and their faces would go on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for quite some time, since they had all disappeared without a trace and none of the Avery Street survivors claimed to know where they’d gone.
Two Rainbow Room members would hang themselves in their prison cell before the next year was out. Also, the Chinese politician would be poisoned, and one of the teachers in Ukraine found a razor to slit his wrists with.
The fallout would last for half a decade, one confession leading to another outlet of the Rainbow Room, which eventually would change its name to Angel’s Haven, then to Everyone’s Playpen, then to the Little Dollhouse, before it then fell, finally, into extinction.
Two years after the events on Avery Street, Patrick Mulley would get busted and his chop shop shut down, and it would come out that Detective Leon Hulsey was his brother-in-law and many suspicions would be raised over this. He wouldn’t be fired, but enough questions would be asked about how much he knew and when that he would eventually feel compelled to resign.
This was all yet to come. For Kaley Dupré and her sister Shannon, the night still wasn’t over.
Spencer drove them ten blocks away from the epicenter of all that activity. He found a bridge and pulled under it, remained there until a police helicopter passed over, then pulled on out. It was a green ’96 Pontiac Grand Prix, with leather interior. “Ya know,” he said, jumping back onto the road. “This year o’ Grand Prix was the last for the fifth generation. A sport package with five-spoke alloy wheels an’ dual exhaust. Somebody took care o’ this thing, she still hums but doesn’t rattle like the rest of ’em always did.”
In the back seat, the eldest girl said nothing. She glanced up and looked at Spencer’s eyes in the rearview mirror, then went back to rubbing her sister’s hand and sniffling.
He drove them south, where they crossed over two sets of train tracks and bounced up and down in silence. Spencer took them through an area with plants shut down on each side, which eventually gave way to dilapidated homes that looked long unoccupied.
Blood pooled inside Spencer’s mouth, and he spat it out the window. He’d found a rag in the glove compartment and had torn parts of a child’s shirt that he’d found on the floorboard, and tied the makeshift bandage around his grievous wound.
He checked his bloodied hand. Bits of brain still clung to it. Wonder which thoughts that part held? he mused. The capital o’ Kentucky? The date o’ the Emancipation Proclamation? Nah, probably somethin’ Russian, like Boris Yeltsin’s birthday. He let the piece hang there. Dr. McCulloch had told him that psychopaths rarely cared all that much about how they looked, but some few had intense grooming rituals. He figured he was more the former than the latter. “You listen to music?” he said, switching on the radio.
“Are you gonna take us to a hospital?”
“Hospital?” he chortled. “That’s a joke, right?”
“No, it’s not. You’re…you’re hurt. Your mouth is all slashed up. And my sister’s…she’s bleeding from her private parts.”
“You will too,” he told her. “Someday. Someday some lucky guy’ll do the same thing to—”
“She’s hurt! She’s bleeding! She could die!”
“Nobody ever died from gettin’ fucked. Besides, I take you to a hospital, an’ then there I am, a wanted man. Even if nobody recognizes me, how long before you an’ yer sister there start talkin’ about the white man who brought ya?”
“We won’t—”
“—tell anybody, got it. Yeah, heard that one before,” he chuckled, turning the radio dial. He had forgotten all the local stations, and so surfed through Stone Temple Pilots territory, Bonnie Tyler, Janis Joplin and Metallica before finally landing on Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody To Love.” He turned it up, and was just about to start singing along when he felt a fist slam hard into the back of his head. “Ow! What the f—”
“Stop this car, now!” Kaley shrieked, slapping him several times more.
Spencer slammed on the brakes, screeching to a halt and sending Kaley between the seats. Her little sister almost fell to the floor. He reached down and grabbed her by the throat. “It’d be a mighty tragedy if you were to survive all ya did tonight an’ then just die right here, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it!” Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She was choking to death. Spencer finally let her go, and then watched her gag and cough as she went back to seeing about her sister.
Once all was settled in the car, he put on the gas again. Behind him, a car honked at him to go faster. He held up his bird finger, and the car must’ve seen this via its headlights through the rear windshield because it flashed its lights. Spencer put the brakes on again and said, “Please get outta yer car. Oh, dear god, please let this motherfucker get out…” But the driver didn’t. Instead, he waited, and Spencer drove purposely slow and held him up even longer to let him know who was boss.
They drove another mile, slowly and obeying all the traffic laws. Spencer checked the glove compartment thoroughly while driving. “God damn it, not a single fuckin’ cigarette or stick o’ gum or nothin’. What do they do while they drive?”
His stomach growled. He still hadn’t eaten, and he was still losing blood. Not good.
“Please let us out,” said a tiny voice from the back, only this time it was the little sister. Shannon was her name, if he recalled correctly from what he’d…experienced while sharing their unique Connection, which was
now long gone and only like a faint echo between his ears.
Spencer glanced back at them in the rearview mirror. Kaley sat with Shannon’s head in her lap. They both stared at him with expectant, frightened faces. “Izzat all you two are gonna do now? Say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘would you be so kind,’ shit like that? Izzat how it’s gonna be?”
“How else are supposed to act?” asked the older girl, Kaley, a bit defiant. “What way would suit you?”
“Well, there’s no way to ‘suit’ me, per se,” he said. “But if there’s one thing that pisses me off more than the Miles Hoovers of the world, it’s the Roberto Castillos of the world.”
“The who?”
“Not the bullies, but the bullied. Nobody wants to fight back anymore. Everyone’s afraid o’ hurtin’ somebody else’s feelings. Instead o’ trustin’ their instincts an’ tellin’ some creep to fuck off, people just duck their heads in the earth like ostriches, hope that it’ll all be all right an’ that the bad men will pass them by, find someone else to fuck with.” He looked in the rearview mirror again. “That’s what happened to you, I’ll bet. Am I right?” Kaley said nothing. Spencer smiled. “Yeah, I’m right. But hey, ya fought back. Hell, ya just tried to smack the shit outta me. Guess that’s somethin’.”
“Take us to a hospital or let us go,” Kaley said.
“Please,” her sister added.
Spencer checked his driver’s side mirror, flipped on his left blinker, and merged left. “If I took you anywhere an’ left you there, you’d just tattle on me. Sooner or later, you’d tattle.”
“I give you my word,” Kaley said. “We won’t.”
“Only people in fairy tales keep their word, an’ even they spill their beans to the reader,” Spencer said. He glanced at them in the rearview. “Do you believe we’re in a story right now? Do you believe somebody’s puttin’ these words in my mouth right now? Or in yers?”
Neither one of them seemed to know how to answer that. “No,” Kaley finally said.
Spencer nodded, and swerved around a Mazda to merge right. He checked the skies for any sign of choppers, saw none. “Lotta times, rape victims blame themselves. You two gonna do that?” The big sister shook her head, the little sister made no reply. He nodded. “ ’Course ya will. It’s only a matter o’ time. Lemme save ya years o’ therapy. You are not what they say you are. Savvy?” This time, there was no reply from either sister. “See, they’re gonna tell ya that there’s something wrong with ya, that certain traumatic experiences are what changed ya, messed ya up, made it so that ya can’t trust anybody. Then they’re gonna lie to ya, tell ya that it’s all just perspective, probably recommend a few trust exercises an’ shit, an’ without a doubt there’ll be some expensive prescription drugs. An’ it’s all just to cover up one very simple fact.” He tapped the side of his head. “You’re fucked in the head.”
The girls said nothing.
Spencer laughed, and merged left. “It’s all right. Nothin’ to be afraid of. I’m there with ya. Only, I had the fortune o’ being born this way. I’m okay with it all. Never really had to struggle with it myself. You two?” He chuckled. “You only knew the world one way. Trust an’ neighborly love were the daily order. But it was a curtain, an’ now the curtain’s been pulled back. You’re about to see the world with new eyes. You’re gonna see how falsely they move, how hard they struggle not to let others see through the façade.” He added, “That means a false or superficial face.”
Kaley said, “Does all this mean you’re gonna let us go?”
Spencer pulled to a complete stop at a stop sign, waved another car to go on, and then turned right. “What all this means,” he sighed, “is that you’re in for a world o’ hurt. So much hurt, you can’t even believe it right now. You thought what you went through in that basement was tough? Sheeeeeyyyyyyiiiiit,” he laughed. “Being imprisoned, tortured an’ raped is easy. It’s like gettin’ married an’ havin’ kids, anybody can do it, it’s no great accomplishment. It’s what ya do after the kids leave. Can ya survive empty nest syndrome? Hm? Is there anything left after all the anguish o’ rasing kids an’ being raped? If not, if you’re only reason for livin’ was just to be done with it, then that’s pretty fuckin’ sad, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” Kaley said. “I just wanna go home.”
Spencer scoffed. “To where? To Jovita Dupré? Eh? That sounds like loads o’ fun.”
“You don’t know anything about us!”
“I know everything about you,” he said, losing all humor and looking into her eyes through the rearview. “I know all about you because I know all about me. Savvy? I sized you an’ yer sister up at that store. I sized up Dmitry the minute I saw his sorry ass. I knew what he was. I knew what the Bluff was. I knew the police were after me this whole night.”
“You didn’t know shit about shit until I contacted—”
“I been two steps ahead this whole fuckin’ night. I knew what was waitin’ for me inside that house before I knew what was waitin’ on me inside that house. Savvy? I won this fight before I woke up this mornin’.” Spencer held her gaze for a few seconds more, then finally looked back at the road. He’d drifted onto the shoulder, and now corrected. Spencer listened to Jefferson Airplane wrap up their song, then chuckled. “You’re right about one thing, though. Ya did help me out with Tidov. That’s quite a gift ya got there. Ya didn’t know ya even had it until tonight?”
Kaley did answer.
But Shannon did. “Neither of us knew. It just…happened.”
“Hush, Shan.”
“That’s somethin’ else,” Spencer said. “One in a trillion. Some real awesome shit.”
Shannon asked, “Was that…hell?”
“I said hush, Shannon,” her big sister said. “Don’t talk. Especially not to him.”
“Listen to yer big sister. Ya really shouldn’t talk to strange men. An’ nobody’s stranger than me. Ha!” He glanced in the rearview, saw that this got a smile from her, and part of him warmed, if only for a second. Spencer dismissed it. It was probably echoes of their Connection, that’s all. “I tell ya what, though. I’ve seen a lotta shit in my time, but that one took the cake. I dunno if it was hell, but if it wasn’t, then it was hell’s red-headed stepchild.”
Kaley swallowed. “It couldn’t be hell,” she said. “It…it came after that police officer that saved us. Probably killed him.”
Spencer smiled. “Still sore about leavin’ him behind, huh?” He snorted. “Well, just because it took a good guy down with it doesn’t mean it wasn’t hell.”
“God wouldn’t let that happen—”
“Yeah, probably right. Probably wouldn’t let little girls get kidnapped an’ raped, either. What the hell was I thinkin’?” Neither one of them said anything for a while. “Either one o’ you ever heard o’ Epicurus? He was a Greek philosopher. He said that if God is unable to prevent evil, then he’s not all-powerful. If he’s not willing to prevent evil, then he’s not good. If he’s both willing and able, then where does evil come from? And, if he’s both unwilling and unable, then why call him God at all?” Spencer laughed. “Fucker’s an absentee landlord. You’ll see. You’ve got lifetime o’ prayers that I’m sure you’re gonna send his way. That Aunt Tabby o’ yers, she’ll tell ya one of two things: if yer prayers are answered, then it’ll be ‘God be praised.’ If yer prayers aren’t answered, it’ll be, ‘It’s God’s will, we can’t question it, Thy will be done.’ It’ll beg the question, ‘Then why do we pray in the first fuckin’ place?’ The truth will elude you till yer dyin’ day, an’ the hard reality is that we just saw hell, an’ it doesn’t care if you’ve been naughty or nice. If it gets its teeth in you, you’re ass is grass. If God’s an absentee landlord, then hell’s his pitbull that he left pent up in the apartment with nothin’ to eat. It’s got no master anymore, an’ boy is it hungry!” He cackled, and turned right.
“Maybe he’s not absentee,” said a small voice from the back. Sh
annon had lifted her head. “Maybe he sent you. Maybe you’re the pitbull. You’re…you’re the Portia. The spider that eats other spiders.”
Kaley looked at her sister.
Spencer smirked, and spat out another mouthful of blood. His stomach growled again. “I like people who wear their thinkin’ caps. So then, you think I’m like Genghis Khan?”
“Who?”
“Genghis Khan. A warlord. He said, ‘I am the punishment of God. If you had not created great sins, God would not have sent punishment like me upon you.’ If Genghis Khan was right about himself, then he surely killed lots o’ folks who didn’t deserve it on his way to the folks that did. An’ that police officer tonight…well, I guess that just goes to show that yer God believes that ya can’t make an omelet without breakin’ a few eggs. My kinda son of a bitch!” he laughed, and finally pulled onto the interstate.
I-75 was a major north-south interstate that would take him all the way to the Great Lakes of Michigan if stayed on it long enough. He checked the fuel gauge. He had plenty of gas to last him. But eventually he would need medical care, there was no way around that. And so would the wee girl if infection was to be prevented.
Spencer toyed with the idea of taking them to the hospital the way that a tongue will toy with the empty socket of a missing tooth; for no other reason than to toy with it. “Ya think Jovita’s really gonna being missing you two?” he asked. He spotted a chopper with its searchlight, and pulled off the next exit and turned left onto a familiar road. “Ya think she’s worried herself sick over you guys?” No answer from either one of the girls. “I’ll take that as an ‘I’m not sure.’ Makes ya wonder, doesn’t it? If Mommy don’t care, then who will?”
Psycho Save Us Page 38
