Nocturnal

by Scott Sigler

  “Pooks, you don’t understand—”

  Pookie slapped the dashboard. “Shut up, Bryan.”

  Pookie wasn’t smiling now. Bryan closed his mouth. His friend wanted to be heard.

  “I’ve stood by you,” Pookie said. “You owe me. You’re not going in there without a plan, even if I have to knock you out myself.”

  “You can’t knock me out.”

  Pookie waved his hands dismissively. “That’s irrelevant. We’re going to get the vigilante, we’re going to expose Zou, we’re going to find the Zed-Y killer that’s still out there and anyone else who helped him. We’ll get to the bottom of this Marie’s Children bullshit, but I’ve known you for a long time and you’re way over the edge. Right now you’ll make bad decisions. I won’t. So we do this my way, agreed?”

  Bryan felt an urge to get out of the Buick, run back up those steps, kick in the door and let the chips fall where they may. He took a breath and fought that urge down. Pookie had backed him through all this crazy shit. That couldn’t be ignored. Pookie was right — Bryan owed him.

  “All right,” Bryan said. “What’s the next step?”

  “Let me think for a minute.”

  They drove in silence. Pookie didn’t cut anyone off. He turned at random, obeying all the signals. Finally, the Buick turned down California Street, heading toward the Financial District. The setting sun cast an orange-juice glow on the horizon, a glow that back-lit the enlongated pyramid that was the Transamerica Building.

  “We need more info on Erickson,” Pookie said. “Black Mister Burns is digging as we speak. I’ll also have Robin test the waters at the Medical Examiner’s Office, see if she can find anything.”

  “Okay,” Bryan said. “What about me?”

  Pookie smiled, nodded. “You, my little Terminator? I’m not going to ask you to stay away from Erickson’s house, because I saw how you were looking at the place. I don’t really want to hear you lie to me and tell me that you’ll steer clear. So, you do a stakeout, but you just watch, you do not approach. Give me your word you won’t move without backup.”

  It was one thing for Pookie to believe Bryan wasn’t a murderer, but another for him to go all-in like this. If the man had his head on straight, he should have cut ties long ago and moved on. Pookie showed loyalty, true friendship — you back your boy no matter what. And for that level of dedication, was Pookie really asking for that much in return? No matter how bad Bryan wanted to go in that house and find answers, he’d do what Pookie asked.

  “I just watch,” Bryan said. “I promise.”

  Pookie reached out his right fist. “Word is bond.”

  Bryan laughed, and the sound surprised him. “Dicker pricker fucker sucker,” he said, and bumped fists.

  Bryan felt better. And, he had to admit, Pookie’s way was just flat-out smarter — the archer had survived a six-story drop, then promptly killed a man with a freakin’ arrow. If that didn’t fit the description of bad motherfucker, nothing would. He was too dangerous to take one-on-one.

  Bryan settled back and looked out the Buick’s window. He watched the setting sun sink behind the Transamerica Building, counting the minutes until he could get out and hunt.

  Amy Zou’s Tea Time

  Chief Amy Zou took a sip of tea. The tiny porcelain Miss Piggy cup held only imaginary tea, of course, but nothing could taste sweeter.

  “Hmmm,” she said. “This is very good. Which one of you made this?”

  Her twin girls giggled.

  “We both made it, Mom,” they said in unison. It spooked the hell out of Amy when they did that.

  She sat in a little pink chair at a little pink table. Her daughter Mur sat on her left, her daughter Tabz on her right, and her husband, Jack, in front of her. He also sipped at a tiny teacup, his pinkie properly extended, a pink flower hat pinned to his thinning blond hair. The girls wanted him to wear it, so wear it he did.

  “Mmmmm,” Jack said. “I do believe this is possum guts tea? Tastes delightfully rotted and smells divinely stinky.”

  The girls giggled. They looked adorable in their little party dresses.

  Amy felt at peace. Almost at peace; she didn’t get many moments like this, and even when she did an internal voice taunted her, said these days are almost gone and you’ve pissed most of them away. With her job, she could never fully relax. And that job was never far away — her cell phone sat on the tabletop, looking horribly out of place so close to teacups and the Kermit the Frog tea pot.

  Tabitha reached for an imaginary piece of cake. Mur didn’t like the imaginary cake; she had said as much after the first imaginary bite. Tabitha preferred to be called Tabz because, as she put it, it was funner. Mary demanded to be addressed only as Mur for reasons Amy and Jack had never been able to pry out of the girl.

  Jack looked at the girls with a narrow-eyed glare of suspicion. “Wait just a cotton-picking minute. Did you two spike this tea with runny elephant poop?”

  The girls squealed with laughter, throwing their heads back and rocking in their chairs.

  “No, Daddy,” Tabz said. “It’s not elephant poop, it’s monkey poop.”

  Jack set his cup down with comedic rage, then crossed his arms and sat back, shaking his head hard enough to make the pink flower hat wiggle. God, but the girls loved that man.

  Amy realized with a start that Tabz was wearing her heavy, silky black hair in long pigtails. She had never worn her hair like that before. She’d always worn it down, like Mur’s was now. They had inherited Amy’s hair, not a trace of her husband’s thin blond locks.

  “Tabitha, honey, your hair looks nice.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.

  “Did you try that hairstyle out today just for the tea party?”

  Mur laughed and pointed at Tabz. “Ha-ha-ha, you’ve been wearing those stupid things for three days!”

  Tabz sank into her chair, little chin tight to her chest. She looked crestfallen.

  “Mur,” Jack said, “that’s not nice.”

  Mur didn’t catch the hint. “Mommy didn’t even notice,” she said to Tabz. “I told you it was stupid to try and be different.”

  Amy slapped the table, rattling the cups in their saucers. “Mur! You stop that!”

  Mur’s eyes widened. She shrank into her chair.

  Amy’s tone echoed in her own ears. She’d talked to Mur not like a mother to a daughter, but like the chief of police to a subordinate. Amy hated herself at that moment — couldn’t she put the cop away and just be a mom, even for a few minutes?

  Tabz stood suddenly and threw her teacup across the room. It landed noiselessly on her bed. “You didn’t notice, Mom, because you’re never home!”

  Tabz ran from the room, her little dress swishing with each little step. Jack stood. He took off his flower hat and tossed it on the table as he followed Tabz out. Jack would talk to the girl, leaving Amy to deal with Mur.

  “Mary, honey, I shouldn’t have yelled like that.”

  The little girl’s eyes narrowed hatefully, as only a little girl’s can do. “Don’t call me that. I like Mur. And why did she have to go and ruin the party? We never get to see you.”

  “Honey, I know, but you have to understand that Mommy’s job is—”

  Amy’s phone let out a tone. A special tone, three dots, three dashes, three dots. S.O.S. That tone represented only one person.

  She picked up the phone. He had texted her a picture. High angle, looking down onto a marble porch she recognized on sight and would never forget. The picture showed two men waiting in front of a closed door.

  Pookie Chang and Bryan Clauser.

  The text beneath the picture read:

  THEY ALSO STOPPED BY ALDER’S PLACE. TAKE CARE OF THIS.

  Amy felt her temper rising. She had told them to keep away. She had given them a chance.

  Even before the BoyCo murders, Robertson had wanted to bring Bryan and Pookie into the loop, wanted to tell them everything. Amy had said no, trusting he
r instincts that the men weren’t the kind of people who could properly manage the gray areas. The picture Erickson had texted showed — quite clearly — that her instincts had been dead-on. Bryan and Pookie were by far the best inspectors on the force, but they just wouldn’t listen.

  Just like another cop almost thirty years ago, right, Amy? Remember how you wouldn’t listen when Parkmeyer told you to back off? Remember what happened because you didn’t?

  She became aware she was alone in the room. Mur had left. Amy looked at the tea set, at the empty chairs. She was missing her daughters’ childhoods. They had been born only yesterday, it seemed. When had they grown so big?

  She wanted to be with them, but she had a job more important than anyone could ever know. Not even Jack knew all of it. Amy stood, gave the table one last, longing look, then headed downstairs.

  Time to put an end to this.

  Closing In

  Rex sat in a plastic garbage can. Rex waited. Rex watched. Where had this sensation been all his life? How many hours had he wasted drawing pictures, when the real thing made him feel alive, made him feel complete?

  His tummy tingled inside.

  His boner had been hard for hours.

  The garbage can was across the street from April Sanchez’s house. It was one of those big brown kind, wedged into a space between two houses along with the blue recyling kind and the green one people were supposed to use for compost. The garbage can smelled, but Rex didn’t care. There had only been one bag inside, which he’d moved to another can. Squatting inside, he could peek out just under the lid and watch for April.

  April the meth-head. April the slut.

  She had rich parents. They didn’t own part of a house, not just a single floor — they owned the whole thing, all three stories and a garage.

  The kids in school talked about April behind her back, talked about how ugly she was. They called her Shrek. She wasn’t fat like Shrek, most druggie girls weren’t, but her face bore a passing resemblance. April had been the one who told Alex about Rex’s drawing. It was her fault Alex broke his arm.

  The cops had to be looking for Alex, and here he was with a perfect place to hide. Last night, Rex had followed Alex here. Since then he hadn’t seen anyone but April enter or leave. She fetched pizza, bags of groceries, probably whatever Alex wanted.

  Darkness was falling, but even then Rex would wait. Marco had said not to move before midnight. Rex hadn’t listened to Marco, and now Marco was dead because of it. Rex had learned a valuable lesson from that — some things needed to be done in the dark.

  Marco had also told Rex that there was a real family out there somewhere, a real home. But without Marco, how was Rex going to find it?

  He didn’t want to be alone.

  His dreams had reached out and connected with people, made them do the things he wanted done. Rex wondered — could he do the same thing when he was awake? It was worth a try. And anyway, it was a long time until midnight and he had nothing else to do.

  How could this work? Did he … what … throw his thoughts? Maybe if he just focused, really concentrated on his need to find these people.

  Rex closed his eyes.

  He took a long, deep breath.

  Find me, he thought. Find me.

  The Stakeout

  Bryan walked around the block for the sixth time. West on Jackson, south on Gough, east on Washington, north on Franklin. Then reverse, go back the other way. A slow walk, looking all around at everything, looking for places to hide.

  There were eight- and ten-story apartment buildings on the other side of Franklin Street. He could go up on those roofs and watch the front of Erickson’s house. But big apartment buildings meant a lot of windows, and that meant any number of people could be looking out those windows at any hour of the night. If the archer wanted to enter or exit the big gray Victorian, he wouldn’t go out the front where so many people could potentially see. He’d have an exit behind the house, or maybe out on the roof and down the side … something hidden.

  Bryan used his phone to call up a satellite map of the house and the block. The top-down view might give him ideas. Erickson’s house had a backyard, a pretty big one by San Francisco standards. Tall buildings surrounded that backyard, hiding it from view. Could he get up on one of those buildings? He flicked his fingers on the screen, zooming in on the map. There, on Jackson Street, a tree that looked taller than the building it was next to. He traced the route with his fingertip — if he could scale that tree, he’d be on the roof of a building that abutted Erickson’s backyard. Bryan would be four stories up, giving him a perfect view of the rear of Erickson’s mansion.

  He nodded. Yes, that was the spot.

  He couldn’t shake a persistent adrenaline buzz. This guy, this Savior, he was a real challenge.

  Big game. He’s big game because he’s a killer — that flips all your switches and turns all your dials to eleven.

  Bryan walked to Jackson Street to check his target. He slowly walked past his tree, following the trunk up with his eyes, seeing how he’d climb it to reach that roof. It wasn’t dark enough yet, but soon he’d circle back, climb to the roof, and set up his hunting blind.

  Then the fun would begin.

  Tard

  High up on an apartment building across the street from the mansion, a very still, very quiet person watched the man in black circle the block again. The man was checking out the monster’s house, Tard just knew it.

  How exciting!

  Tard watched the monster’s house every night. Aside from regular bursts of sheer terror when the monster left, or sadness when the monster came back with one of Tard’s badly wounded brothers or sisters, nothing interesting ever happened.

  But this was interesting.

  Who was this person?

  What did he want with the monster’s house?

  Tard watched the man in black turn left on Jackson and vanish from sight. Would he be back again?

  Tard hoped so.

  The Delivery Boy

  Pookie showered, hoping the hot water and rough scrubbing might somehow take the edge off his lack of sleep. A nice, thirty-minute shower, the perfect way to finally get a little alone time. Delivery kung pao shrimp was on the way. Some food, a twenty-minute power nap, and he’d be right as rain.

  Sure, as if he could ever be right again.

  Mutants, vigilantes and murderers. Oh my. Add in Bryan playing fast and loose with sanity, and Pookie considered his dance card quite full, thank you very much. Bryan did seem better, though — following the clues from Biz-Nass to the Jessups to Erickson’s house had given the guy direction and purpose.

  No longer were they just reacting to a batch of random dreams; now they had a target. Even though this wasn’t an official investigation, they would still use the process and tactics they’d use in any other case. What would they do when they found evidence they could actually use? Were judges in on this? Was the DA?

  Maybe, but maybe the assistant DA wasn’t in on the loop, just like Robin hadn’t been in on it. Pookie would have no choice but to arrange a meeting to make sure of that.

  Well-well-well, Miss Jennifer Wills from the Land of Sexy Shoes and Short Skirts, maybe you and I will be spending some time together after all. With our clothes on, sadly, but the journey of a thousand Chang Bangs begins with a single coffee …

  Pookie stepped out of the shower and toweled off. He would make some calls and put Robin and Mr. Burns to work, mow down on the kung pao, then promptly take a nap. Nap, shower and food: the magical trifecta that could right all wrongs.

  He tucked the towel around his waist, then found his cell phone and dialed Robin.

  She answered immediately. “Pooks, you guys okay?”

  “We’re fine,” he said. “You know, just doin’ that poh-lice work thing. How about you?”

  “Good news and bad,” she said. “The good news is I went to work this morning like normal, and no one said a peep. Metz wasn’t there. I got an email from
the mayor saying I was expected to carry on as before.”

  At least Robin wasn’t fired. That was something. “That’s great. So were you able to get any more info from the bodies?”

  “That’s the bad news,” she said. “Seems there was a little clerical error at the morgue. The bodies of Blackbeard, Oscar Woody and Jay Parlar were cremated this afternoon. All their personal effects are gone as well, including Blackbeard’s phone.”

  Pookie’s heart sank. Metz had deleted the computer records, and now all physical evidence was also gone for good.

  “Two positives, though,” Robin said. “Metz apparently didn’t call the RapScan people to tell them I’m persona non grata. I snuck one of the portable DNA analyzers out of the morgue. If you find any other likely candidates, we can use the machine to test for the Zed chromosome.”

  Ah, that Robin — such a clever girl.

  “How long will we have that gadget?”

  “Don’t know,” she said. “Metz and I were the only ones to use them so far. When he returns, I’ll have to sneak it back in. We probably have it for as long as he’s out.”

  Pookie’s phone chirped with the theme music from The Simpsons — Black Mr. Burns calling.

  “Robin, I gotta go. Great job, but there’s nothing else you can do right now. Lie low and don’t make waves.”

  “Got it,” she said. “Take care of Bryan for me.”

  “Will do.”

  He switched to the other line. “Black Mister Burns, tell me you have more info on Erickson.”

  “Do I ever,” John said. “Jebediah Erickson has a criminal record that you’re just going to love. And in case you couldn’t tell by his real estate holdings, he’s loaded. Old Jeb is actually Jeb Junior. Between cash, holdings, the Jessups’ place and the house on Franklin, Jeb Senior left his boy around twenty million bucks.”

  “Rich kid with a criminal record? What did he do, steal monogrammed towels from the country club?”