Nocturnal

by Scott Sigler

  What mattered was the hunt.

  Rex felt alive, Rex felt strong, Rex felt like he could walk all night and into the next day. Sooner or later, Alex Panos would stop.

  And then, Rex would make him pay.

  The Arrowhead

  Robin prepped for autopsy.

  She’d had the overnight ME staff help her shoot the x-rays, then brought the body into Dr. Metz’s private autopsy room. Once the body was prepared, she sent the overnight staff out to pick up the bodies of Susan Panos and Issac Moses, leaving her alone in the morgue.

  The RapScan machine was almost finished with the tests on Rex Deprovdechuk’s sperm and the blood from Bobby’s assailant. She carried the machine into the private autopsy room so she’d get the results as soon as they came up.

  The private room was just a smaller version of the larger main room. It even had the same old-school wood paneling. There was enough space for a single autopsy table, an area to walk around it, and counters and cabinets along the walls.

  Robin was already regretting her decision to do what Bryan and Pookie had asked. Rushing a murder scene, leaving the scene — that was not the behavior of a senior medical examiner. And only now did she realize they hadn’t given a shred of proof to back up their claims.

  Had she really been foolish enough to think she didn’t love Bryan anymore? She would do anything for him; it had always been that way, probably always would. He didn’t return that love, and that hurt, but it didn’t change the fact that she would never be able to let him go.

  In the parlance of Pookie Chang, unrequited love sucked donkey balls.

  Time to get down to business.

  Despite Rich Verde’s dead-on description, she knew this wasn’t Bobby Pigeon’s killer. The body on the table was that of an out-of-shape slob, beer gut and all. There was no way he had the sheer strength needed to drive a hatchet through Bobby’s clavicle, part of his scapula, three of his ribs and an inch into his sternum. She also doubted the bearded man would have had the upper-body strength needed to tear off Oscar Woody’s arm. And, most of all, his teeth were perfectly normal — he didn’t have the wide incisors necessary to make those parallel grooves on Oscar’s bones.

  So this man hadn’t killed Bobby or Oscar.

  Robin flipped down her face shield. She stepped on a button that started her audio recorder, then picked up a scalpel from the tray next to the table.

  “Beginning autopsy on John Doe. Caucasian male, approximately thirty years old. One hundred eighty-six centimeters tall, one hundred four kilograms. Subject appears to have been killed by an arrow that penetrated the heart.”

  She saw two small, pink, puckerish scars on his chest. Her gloved hands traced them. She hadn’t noticed those in the dark and the rain. Could they … no, they were almost healed, they couldn’t be wounds from Bobby Pigeon’s final two bullets.

  “Subject appears to have two small puncture wounds on his left pectoral, incurred possibly a week ago. The first is at two o’clock and ten centimeters from the left nipple, the second is seven o’clock and seven centimeters from the right nipple.”

  She looked at her notes, checking positions of the two bullet wounds on the man’s back from where Bryan had shot him. Other than those wounds and the two marks on his chest, the man didn’t have a scar or a scratch on him.

  But those healed marks on the corpse’s chest … had she seen something on the x-rays?

  She reached over to the portable computer stand next to the porcelain table and called up the x-ray images. A bright white spot glowed directly under the healed wound near his right nipple. Could that be a bullet?

  Bobby’s bullet?

  She shook her head. Bryan had shot this man twice in the back; one of those bullets had probably bounced off a rib and come to rest here.

  She looked at the x-rays again. That was strange … there were three white spots.

  But Bryan had only shot him twice.

  Something else on the black, white and gray image caught her attention.

  “Subject’s ribs appear to be thicker than expected. In fact, all bones appear to be abnormally thick. Possible high bone density due to a mutation in LDL-receptor-related protein five. Will examine more closely after initial autopsy is complete.”

  None of this mattered if she didn’t get that arrow out of there in time for Pookie and Bryan to use it. That urgency now felt silly. What was going to happen? Would Chief Zou kick in the door to the private autopsy room and chase Robin out?

  She picked up a scalpel with her right hand, a small hose with her left. She sliced from the right shoulder to the sternum, spraying the wound with water as she went. Diluted blood ran down the body to the white porcelain surface, then flowed into the grooves that carried it to the foot of the table, where it finally passed through a hole and into a drainage sink. She made an identical incision on the left side, creating a V anchored by the arrow shaft sticking straight out of the man’s chest. From the bottom of that V, she sliced down to the pubic bone.

  Robin then peeled and cut, peeled and cut, her scalpel scraping against the sternum, the ribs and the clavicle, separating skin, muscle and soft tissue from the bones. As she grabbed, pulled and tugged, she realized the corpse’s flesh felt different than she was used to … it felt strangely heavy.

  “Subject’s muscle mass feels denser than normal. Subject may have LRP5 mutation. Again, will examine in detail after initial examination is completed.”

  That mutation wasn’t uncommon; she’d read about it in several journals. Denser muscle could mean more cells per square inch, and more muscle cells meant more strength. Maybe she’d been wrong — could this guy have had the power necessary to inflict those horrible wounds on Bobby Pigeon and Oscar Woody? If he was Oscar’s killer, could the Zed chromosome be responsible for these mutations? And possibly for other mutations she hadn’t seen yet?

  Hell, if she didn’t get the CME position, she could probably make a living on the Zed chromosome alone. Nobel Prize winner Dr. Robin Hudson? That had a nice ring to it.

  She lifted the V-flap up over the perp’s face, exposing the neck muscles, then spread the side flaps open to expose the rib cage.

  Time for the bone saw.

  She lifted the solid, metal power tool. Its high-pitched buzz filled the air as she cut through the ribs where they curved down to the man’s sides. Blade on bone produced the smell of burning hair. After so many years at this job, that odor didn’t really bother her anymore.

  After she finished with the saw, she set it aside and rinsed the body down. She sliced through the diaphragm, then lifted the now-severed, arrow-pierced rib cage away from the body.

  The rib cage felt far heavier than she would have expected. Did the thicker, denser bone exist to withstand the stresses generated by stronger muscles?

  Holding the pierced rib cage in her hands, she examined the embedded arrowhead.

  “Arrowhead is a three-bladed broadhead configuration, approximately seven centimeters from tip to attachment point. Each blade’s cutting edge is approximately seven-point-eight centimeters. The blades are serrated. The bottom corner of each blade has a small hook, curving up toward the point.”

  Such a horrible weapon. The point had penetrated John Doe’s sternum, driving right into the heart. The arrowhead probably would have punched clean through were it not for those little hooks. That seemed counterintuitive, as it would do more damage the farther in it went. The way this was made, the way it embedded in the rib cage … it looked like the designer wanted it to stick.

  She set the rib cage aside.

  Robin reached for the heart — then stopped.

  The broadhead had sliced into the right ventricle, nearly severing the pulmonary artery. A kill shot, no question. But it wasn’t the heart that stopped her cold.

  “What the hell is that?”

  The private room’s door opened. Bryan and Pookie walked in.

  “Robin-Robin, Bo-Bah …” Pookie’s voice trailed off when he s
aw the corpse on the table. “Ew. That’s nasty.”

  She lifted her visor and waved them over. “Guys, look at this!”

  Bryan looked her up and down. “Don’t we need to suit up or something?”

  “Screw OSHA,” Robin said. “Come here.”

  The small room fit three comfortably. The boys walked up to the body. She pointed to the bloody, open chest, to a glossy, purple shape just above the heart. “What the hell is that?”

  Bryan and Pookie looked at it, then at each other, then at her. She saw Bryan’s right hand move to his chest, his palm lightly resting against his sternum, making a slow-motion circle there. He again looked at the purple shape, then leaned back a little as if the sight horrified him.

  Pookie didn’t look horrified; he looked excited. He leaned in close. “That’s his heart, right? Do I get a prize?”

  “No, you idiot,” Robin said. She pointed to the maroon-red heart. “That is his heart, and it looks normal.” She again pointed to the purple shape. “I’m talking about this thing. I’ve never seen it before.”

  She slid her left hand into the body and cupped her fingers under the strange bit of flesh — if felt firm, yet giving. Her right hand reached in with the scalpel. She carefully cut the purple thing free.

  “Blargh,” Pookie said.

  Robin lifted it out of the body. It was a shallow disc about the size of her palm, purple and slimed with tacky blood. She held it for Bryan to see.

  He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Is it a tumor or something?”

  “I don’t think so,” Robin said. “If it is, it’s not like any cancer or tumor I’ve ever seen, or even heard described. It could be an ectopic dysplasic organ — that’s a malformed organ that winds up in a different spot in the body than is typical. Sometimes, dysplasic organs are even functional, but … there isn’t any known organ that looks like this.”

  Pookie tried to lean in and look but he clearly didn’t want to come close enough to touch it. “What does it do?”

  Robin shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  She walked a few feet to the scale. She had to weigh all the organs, might as well start with this curiosity.

  “Hey,” Pookie said. He pointed to the man’s crotch. “This guy has no balls.”

  Bryan let out a dismissive huff of a laugh. “Figures you’d look there first.”

  “I’m serious,” Pookie said. “Look at Mister No-Nuts.”

  Robin did. She’d been in such a hurry to get the body in here and remove the arrowhead that she hadn’t paid much attention to the subject’s genitalia.

  “You’re right, Pooks,” she said. “I see no testicles.”

  “Ball-less,” Pookie said. “And he’s not going to get any dates based on the rest of what he’s got, if you know what I’m saying.”

  The subject’s penis was barely larger than that of a small boy. Robin lifted it and felt underneath.

  “No scrotum,” she said. “And there doesn’t appear to be any scar tissue, so he was probably born that way.”

  Pookie shook his head. “The poor, poor bastard.”

  “He has multiple mutations,” Robin said. “Thick, oversized bones, abnormally dense muscle and an unknown organ. You guys, this is a really big deal.”

  Bryan looked up to a clock on the wall. “It sounds important, but we need to hurry. Can we get the arrow?”

  “Sure, sorry.” Robin left the organ in the hanging scale’s tray.

  She picked up the bone saw and made a few more cuts to the severed rib cage, freeing the arrow. She held it point-up so they could all look at it. The room’s powerful lights cast glaring reflections off the bloody arrowhead’s bright metal. Robin noticed lines in the flats of the blades — blood had coagulated in them, showing an engraved symbol. It looked like a cross with little Vs at the end of each point.

  Bryan took out his cell phone and snapped a picture.

  Pookie poked the blade with a pen. “Bri-Bri, you seen this cross symbol before?”

  Bryan shook his head. “I’m … I’m not sure. I’ve never drawn it.”

  Drawn it? Robin had lived with Bryan for two years. She had never seen him draw so much as a doodle. She’d also never seen him afraid in that time, of anything, yet each new discovery from this John Doe’s body seemed to affect him even more.

  Pookie pointed his pen at the arrowhead’s base, where it connected to the wooden shaft. Robin saw another symbol there, a different one: it looked like a knife or a sword, pointing down, the blade partly hidden behind a big circle with a smaller circle in the middle.

  “Looks like a dagger,” Pookie said. “And the circle … that look familiar, Bri-Bri?”

  Bryan nodded. “It’s an eye.”

  It was a circle in a circle. In context with the dagger, Robin thought the circle might represent a shield, but Bryan seemed very sure. “How do you know it’s an eye?”

  “We’ve seen other symbols like it,” he said. “Stuff that’s directly related to the case. We’ll tell you about it later, I promise.” He pointed to the hooks at the base of the arrowhead. “This why it stuck in Blackbeard’s chest?”

  Blackbeard. She liked that. Much better than John Doe.

  “I think so,” she said. “I can do some math on it later — mass of the arrow and arrowhead, distance traveled — try to come up with some force calculations, but I’m sure this arrowhead is designed to partially penetrate, then stop. Stop and stick.”

  “That’s weird,” Pookie said. “Wouldn’t it do more fucking-shit-up if those big-honkin’ blades just went all the way through?”

  Robin nodded. “If the arrow hadn’t lodged in Blackbeard’s sternum, it would have sliced his heart in half.”

  Something caught her eye. She reached out with her scalpel and scraped the flat of one of the broadhead blades. The gooey blood moved, of course, but the scalpel tip also made a tiny trough — not in the metal itself, but in a gray smear on top of the metal.

  “There’s some kind of paste on here.”

  Bryan leaned in. “Poison?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll have to analyze it.”

  “Sure,” Pookie said. “Of course. Why not? If the giant-ass broadhead won’t kill a brotha, you better poison him too, right?” He pulled out his cell phone and snapped several close-up photos. “I’m going to call Black Mister Burns and have him run these new symbols.”

  Pookie walked to the door, opened it, then turned and smiled. “I’ll just go call him right now. Don’t you kids do anything I wouldn’t do while I’m gone. See what I did there? ’Cause I would do all kinds of stuff. It’s clever in that I’m saying you can fuck if you wanna.”

  Robin couldn’t help but laugh.

  Pookie closed the door behind him.

  “Amazing,” Bryan said. “There’s a cracked-open body on the table, and he thinks we’re going to play spin the bottle?”

  She was alone with him again. She didn’t know if she’d get another chance to help him open up, to find out what was happening to him. It wasn’t the time to be selfish and focus on her own needs, her own feelings — Bryan needed someone. Even if it hurt her to the core, she would be there for him.

  “There’s more to this than a cover-up,” she said. “I know you, Bryan Clauser. I know who you are and how you think, or at least I did until all this started happening.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I know you’re scared.”

  He turned away, not looking at anything in particular, just looking away from her.

  “Bryan, whatever this is, you can tell me. We broke up, sure, I get that, but I will always love you.”

  He turned to face her. She expected to see his usual blank stare, but instead there was pain in those eyes, pain and frustration.

  “Robin, I …”

  Come on, let me in. Let me help you.

  She waited.

  He closed his eyes, rubbed at them slowly with his left hand. He dropped his hand and blinke
d a few times, seeming to gather himself.

  “Okay,” he said. “Man, where do I even start? This seems impossible, but—”

  In the corner of the room, the RapScan machine beeped. Robin looked at the briefcase-sized machine; the karyotype tests had finished.

  She turned back to Bryan. “Go ahead, you were saying?”

  He tilted his head toward the machine. “That’s the results from Birdman’s killer?”

  Robin sighed. The moment had passed. No way he’d talk now, not with those results waiting. Well, she’d tried. She wished he would confide in her, but that wasn’t what he wanted. It hurt, and it was out of her control to do anything about it.

  She stripped off her gloves and stepped to the machine. Bryan followed.

  The top of the monitor showed a notification icon:

  BOBBY PIGEON ASSAILANT SAMPLE COMPLETE.

  “This sample is from the blood spatter in Rex’s apartment,” she said. “The other two samples will finish any second now. Let’s see what we have with this one.”

  She hit a key to bring up the karyotype results. The colorful horizontal lines played across the flat-panel screen. Bryan pointed to the last box, the one that displayed the sex chromosomes. “A Zed,” he said. “So Bobby’s killer is also Oscar Woody’s killer?”

  When she looked at the markers, she felt a rush of excitement, of pure discovery. She pointed to the second sex chromosome. “This is an X. Bobby Pigeon’s killer is Zed-X. Oscar’s killer was Zed-Y. Bryan, this means we have two people with the Zed chromosome!”

  “So … they’re related?”

  Related? One case, two killers, both with the never-before-seen Zed chromosome — what were the odds they weren’t related?

  “Hold on.” She worked the touch-screen to enter new commands. “I’m telling the machine do a high-level scan for common sequences.”

  “What will that do?”

  “It will tell us if their Zed chromosomes are identical. If they are, they’re brothers.”

  “Brothers?”

  Robin hit enter. The machine returned a result almost instantly — the Zed chromosomes were identical.