Nocturnal

by Scott Sigler

  “Slightly better,” John said. “Fourteen allegations of assault and three of resisting arrest. But here’s our trump card — he was charged and acquitted of one murder, convicted of another. Take a wild guess what the murder weapon was.”

  Pookie tried to calm the surge of excitement — a gold medal for archery was one thing, a murder conviction was another. “I’ll take what is an arrow for two hundred, Alex.”

  “Nicely done,” John said. “And now for our bonus round, where the stakes really add up. The arrow thing wasn’t in Erickson’s SFPD records, no surprise there. Maybe Zou has the City by the Bay on lockdown, but her power doesn’t appear to extend to certain correctional facilities. I found Erickson’s case files at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.”

  Pookie leaned back, shocked. “The CMF? The same place they kept Charlie Manson and Juan Vallejo Corona?”

  “Yeah, as well as Ed the Co-Ed Butcher Kemper and Kees the Deadly Dutch Marjis. Jeb Junior was declared unfit to stand trial, so they incarcerated him in the last stop for serial killers. They put him away twenty-eight years ago. After eighteen months of incarceration, a certain Baldwin Metz uncovered new forensic evidence that wound up overturning the murder charge. Erickson walked out a free man.”

  That would have put him back on the street just over twenty-six years ago … right about the time Amy Zou and Rich Verde put a whoopin’ on Mr. Biz-Nass.

  A knock on his door.

  “Burns, my kung pao is here. Daddy needs coal for the choo-choo. Anything else?”

  “That’s all I’ve got,” he said. “I’ll keep looking, though.”

  “Pookie, out.” He folded the phone, grabbed his wallet and opened the door.

  Standing there was a uniformed Amy Zou.

  Oh, shit.

  “Chief,” Pookie said, “I know budgets are tight, but moonlighting as a delivery boy?”

  “Inspector Chang,” she said, then walked inside. “Shut the door. We need to talk.”

  She looked as neat and pressed as she did in her office at the Hall. Pookie looked at the clock on his wall — 9:07 P.M. Did this woman ever put on a friggin’ pair of jeans?

  He shut the door. He suddenly thought of Mr. Biz-Nass’s thrice-broken nose. His eyes flicked to the polished gun holster hanging from Zou’s polished belt.

  His gun was in the bedroom. And he was wearing nothing but a towel. Awesome.

  Zou brushed off Pookie’s couch, then sat.

  Her eyes bore into him. “I told you to leave it alone.”

  Pookie thought of lying, but why bother? She wasn’t here for a slap and tickle.

  “Chief, we know about Marie’s Children. We know you deleted the symbols out of the database. We know you ripped up case files, we know you took all the Golden Gate Slasher info out of the newspaper morgue.”

  She crossed her legs. “The law doesn’t care about knowledge, Chang. It cares about proof. You have none.”

  She was right, and it pissed him off to no end. How could she be so callous about it, so casual?

  “We know about the Zed chromosome.”

  She smiled. “Do you even know what that means?”

  “Not really.”

  “Neither do I,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter, because that information went the way of the computer records and the newspaper articles.”

  Pookie shook his head. This woman disgusted him. “How do you justify letting a vigilante run free, above the law, murdering whoever he thinks did something wrong? How can you look your daughters in the eye when you kiss them good night?”

  The mention of her daughters hit a chord. Her eyes narrowed in anger. She stood.

  “How can I justify it? Because I saw the bodies!” Her hands balled up into fists. A lifetime’s worth of repressed rage seemed to explode. “Have you ever seen a half-eaten six-year-old? No? Well, I have, Chang. Dozens of them. Have you ever seen an entire family of five gutted, their intestines used to make art? Have you ever seen a row of severed heads in different stages of decomposition, the fucking trophies of a psycho killer the cops couldn’t find?”

  The outburst left him speechless. So much for the stone-eyed Chief Zou — she vibrated with anger.

  “Well, Chang? Have you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Until you have, don’t judge me, you got that? And I don’t have to justify anything to you. I am the goddamn San Francisco chief of the goddamn police! I’m sworn to protect this city and that’s exactly what I do! This saves lives, and you are trying your best to fuck that up!”

  She stopped suddenly, her lips curled back, her chest heaving.

  Pookie had never heard her raise her voice, let alone blow up like this. She made Bryan look positively sane by comparison.

  Zou opened her hands, let them fall to her sides. The cold expression returned. “Sometimes, Chang, the right thing isn’t written in the law books.”

  “We don’t get to make that decision,” he said. “Cops enforce the laws, we don’t pick and choose which ones count.”

  She shook her head and laughed. “Jesus, you sound just like I did.” Her hands smoothed her coat at her stomach, a motion to help her regain control rather than to adjust her uniform. “I’ll give you one thing,” she said. “I’ll give you this one thing, then you never speak of it again. You know about Erickson, don’t you.”

  Pookie nodded. “Yeah. He was committed for murder.”

  Zou paused, seemed to think her words through. “Then look something up for me. Oh, pardon me, have John Smith look it up for you. Tell him to analyze San Francisco’s murder rate when Erickson was in the asylum. And by the way, you’re fired.”

  “What?”

  She held out her hand. “Gun and badge.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I warned you. You’re done. So is Clauser. Now, give me your gun, and your badge.”

  Pookie remembered the look of rage on Bryan’s face when Zou had confronted them over Blackbeard’s body. Remembered it, because Pookie knew he now probably wore that very same expression.

  He walked to a tray he kept next to his TV. He picked up his badge in its leather bifold and tossed it to her. She caught it, put it in her pocket.

  “And the gun,” she said. “No, actually, just tell me where the gun is.”

  “Nightstand next to my bed.”

  She walked into the bedroom. He’d imagined getting the chief into his bedroom more times than he could count, but not this way. Fired? Bryan was going to shit an egg roll.

  Zou walked back into the living room, then stopped and stared at him. “Step away from the door, Chang.”

  He realized he was blocking her path. He stepped aside, giving her plenty of room.

  She opened the door, made it halfway out before she turned. “You and Clauser are finished in San Francisco. Bay Area as well. Let’s just go ahead and say all of Northern California. But with one phone call, I can get you both homicide jobs in any city in the country. Think about where you’d like to go. That’s what you get from me if you stop all this bullshit and stay away from Erickson.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “Then maybe you should look into employment as a prison guard,” she said. “Because that’s the only way you’re going to see Bryan Clauser again.”

  She stepped out, then shut the door quietly behind her.

  Well, this had turned into one gigantic Mongolian cluster-fuck. Fired. What was next, a bullet in the back of his head? He didn’t have a shred of proof to go against her. No matter what he and Bryan said, it was their word against hers. Who would she have on her side? Only a chief medical examiner who the world thought walked on water, the assistant chief of police, and the goddamn mayor. What could Pookie counter with? An overly lethal homicide inspector, a medical examiner who would be portrayed as coveting the CME’s job and willing to discredit him to get it, and a computer nerd who was afraid of his own shadow and should have left the force years ago.

  Zou held all
the cards. She also held his gun.

  Pookie reached behind the TV, felt for his backup and found it. He pulled the Glock 22 holster off its Velcro strips. At least he was armed again.

  It was over. Amy Zou had won. She had gotten away with it and would continue to do so. Pookie had to break the news to Bryan and hope Bryan didn’t go ape-shit crazy in the process. Maybe some extra info could take the edge off, something to put a positive spin on this turd-in-a-punchbowl of a situation. What had Zou told him to look up? Oh, right: the murder rate when Erickson was in the loony bin. Whatever that was, maybe it could help make things more palatable.

  Pookie dialed Black Mr. Burns.

  And where the fuck was that kung pao shrimp?

  Come and Play

  Bryan waited.

  Bryan watched.

  He sat on an old five-gallon paint bucket he’d found on the roof, his head just high enough to see over the roof’s low wall. He’d positioned himself so a smokestack rose behind him — no silhouette, no outline. Six stories above Erickson’s backyard, just past midnight with a starless sky, and Bryan Clauser was all but invisible.

  He watched the back of the old Victorian, at least what he could see through the darkness and the trees. The small green space looked almost like a terrarium: trees reaching up high but hemmed in on all sides by concrete, glass and painted wood far taller than the trees themselves. The surrounding buildings left the backyard in shadow most of the day — at night, the area under the trees was as black as the overcast sky itself.

  He could see something through the trees, something soaked in deep shadow at the base of the house, something … slanted. The leaves and branches obscured the shape, but that shape bothered him. It was important; he didn’t know why.

  At the back of the yard, opposite the Victorian, a narrow space slid between the building Bryan was on and one across from him, a thin alley of grass and trees that led into other backyards. He’d checked the satellite map and knew that one could come out the back of the Victorian, go through the backyard, walk between the buildings and — coated in shadow the entire time — reach Gough Street to the west. A perfect setup. The archer could use that path to come and go unseen.

  To go out and hunt.

  He’s just like me. He hunts killers, the deadliest game there is.

  Movement at the base of the house drew Bryan’s attention.

  Through the obscuring tree, he saw a change in the shape that disturbed him so. The shape … it was opening. He sucked in a breath and held it, eyes wide with the fresh fear of last night’s terrifying dream.

  The shape was a cellar door.

  A cellar door that led down.

  Drenched in thick shadow, he saw something come out of that door. The door shut, then that something moved. Smooth movement. Effortless movement.

  In his pants pocket, Bryan’s cell phone let out a boo-beep. He twitched a little, suddenly afraid the something would hear, would come for him, but he was six stories up and the phone’s sound was little more than a whisper.

  The moving shadow crossed the yard, then stopped, vanishing beneath a tree. Bryan waited. The shadow moved to another tree, where it stopped again.

  The shadow was making sure no one was watching.

  Another few steps, almost between the buildings now. A thin bit of light fell upon the figure and Bryan saw it—

  A dark green cloak.

  The cloak hung almost to the ground, big hood pulled up over the wearer’s head. Slipping beneath the cover of nighttime trees, the cloak was a silent shape sliding across the grass.

  The cell again let out a boo-beep. Pookie, trying to reach him. Bryan ignored it.

  The shape moved to the base of Bryan’s white building. Bryan leaned out, carefully, but couldn’t see anything in the shadows down there — the cloak, and whoever was in it, had vanished.

  Bryan hadn’t seen a bow. Had there been one somewhere under that cloak? He knew better than to give chase; by the time he got down to the street the perp would be blocks away in an unknown direction. Calling in a BOLO would be futile — Zou or Robertson or Sharrow would just cancel it, and know exactly what Bryan was doing.

  The cloaked figure was gone, but the house wasn’t going anywhere. This could be Bryan’s chance to find some answers. Maybe the vigilante had information on Marie’s Children. At the very least, he might find some custom-made arrowheads that could connect Erickson to Blackbeard’s murder. Something that would let Bryan and Pookie push back against Zou.

  No one is above the law.

  The cell phone let out a third boo-beep. Bryan looked once more to make sure he’d lost sight of the cloaked figure — he had — then pulled out the phone. He didn’t want to mess with the stupid two-way button, so he just dialed instead.

  “Bryan!” Pookie answerd. “You okay?”

  “Pooks, I saw him, he’s moving.”

  “I’m already on my way,” Pookie said. “I’m in the car now. Don’t do anything.”

  Bryan forced himself to whisper, as it was the only way he could control his excitement. “I can’t believe it, I saw a guy in a big-hooded green cloak. He came right out of these storm-cellar doors in the back of Erickson’s house, and the way he moved, man, like a … wait, you’re already on the way?”

  “Ten minutes, tops.”

  Something was wrong. “Why are you on your way before I called you to come get me?”

  A pause. A long pause.

  “Pooks,” Bryan said, “answer my question.”

  He heard Pookie let out a big breath. This didn’t sound good.

  “Bryan, it’s over. Zou came to my apartment. She’s kicking us out of San Francisco. She said if we quit now, she can get us a job anywhere in the country.”

  No. Not now, not when he was so close. The nightmares, the killings, the connection with Rex, the weird Zed chromosome … the answers might be right inside that house.

  “Bryan? It’s not so bad. I hear Hawaii is great. Honolulu Homicide has a real nice ring to it.”

  Zou had fired them? But the house … there had to be something in the house.

  “Bryan? You there? We’re done, did you hear me?”

  “I think the house is empty, Pooks.”

  “Do not go in there, man. If you go in there, we’re done as cops, for good, and trust me, she will send your ass to prison. Just get the fuck out of there.”

  None of that mattered. Bryan knew he was on the edge of madness. He didn’t care about his job. He didn’t care about prison.

  All he cared about was finding the truth.

  “Bryan, dude, I am begging you. Wait for me, please.”

  The slate-blue Victorian called to Bryan. I know what you don’t, come and play … come and play …

  “Bryan! Answer me, man. You can’t go—”

  Bryan hung up. He turned the phone completely off, put it in his pocket, then headed for the tree that led down to the sidewalk.

  Tard’s Job

  Tard tried to put it all together, but it was confusing. His skin itched. This roof always made him itchy. But he dare not scratch, dare not even move, because the monster had left the house.

  Tard’s job in life was to be terrified. Every night. Every single night he watched the monster come out of the house and disappear somewhere out on the streets. Tard never knew where he went. The monster could double back somewhere, close in on Tard and then it would be too late — Tard would feel an arrow, or a knife, or a bullet.

  The only time Tard could breathe easy was for about five minutes when the monster returned to the house’s back door, but then the feeling slipped away — maybe the monster had another door, a secret door, maybe it slipped out, circled around the block, scaled a building, and …

  Tard forced the thoughts away. Focus. This was an important job. Sly had told him so. Important, and tricky, like James Bond. That’s what Tard wanted to be, like James Bond, all smooth and stuff.

  Tard’s hands trembled as he reached down — slowly —
to pick up the cell phone. He couldn’t have it on his body, not when he was hiding, so he just set it on the ground.

  He dialed.

  Sly answered on the second ring.

  “Chameleon,” he said. “How goes your mission?”

  Chameleon. That’s what Tard wanted to be called, but no one called him that. Not without laughing, anyway. No one except Sly. Sly never laughed.

  “Sly, he left the house.”

  “Good man,” Sly said. “Just stay there, call me when he comes back in.”

  “But can’t I join you guys this time?”

  “You need to stay,” Sly said. “Something glorious is happening, Chameleon. It’s happening tonight. We must know when the monster returns. We can’t do this without your bravery.”

  Tard wanted to go with Sly and the others. He was sad he could not. But Sly said this job, the watching, was very important.

  “Okay, Sly, I’ll stay. I’ll be brave. Has Marco come back yet?”

  “No,” Sly said. “We think the monster got him.”

  Sadness. Tard wanted to cry. First Chomper, now Marco. The monster murdered people. And Tard was up here all alone.

  “Sly, I’m scared.”

  “Just stay there,” Sly said. “If you stay still, the monster won’t find you. And if you move around, what happens if Firstborn finds out where you’ve been all these nights?”

  Firstborn. Firstborn could make you go away. Forever. And Firstborn had said no one was to go near the monster’s house.

  “Do you really think he’ll find out?”

  “Not if you stay there,” Sly said. “When the monster comes back, call me.”

  Sly hung up.

  Tard slowly set the phone back down on the roof. So slowly — if you didn’t want the monster to take you into his basement, it was best to not move at all.

  Fear of the monster. Fear of Firstborn. The need to go out, to find a won’t-be. Wanting to be brave so Sly would like him, so Tard could make some friends. Too many things to think of.

  Sly had said only the bravest of Marie’s Children could watch the monster. The monster had killed everyone who went near the house. Many brothers and sisters had tried to kill the monster, sometimes with guns and everything. None of them ever came back. So watching the house, well, even that was just dang dangerous. But if you could do it, if you could watch, Sly said, then everyone would know you were brave and everyone would like you.