Nocturnal: A Novel

by Scott Sigler

  Crack across his forehead, then on his nose; he brought his arms up in front of his face.

  “Dirty!”

  Crack on his shoulder, a deep stinging.

  “Nasty!”

  Rex grabbed the overturned stool, tried to use it to help him scramble to his feet.

  Crack across his back, the flash of pain so bad he cried out.

  “I’ll teach you, you worthless little—”

  Rex stood and swung, did both things so fast he didn’t even know what he was doing. There was a sound like a bat hitting a softball, then he heard something crash on the floor.

  Rex blinked away tears. He opened his eyes.

  He was holding his stool by the base of one leg. The edge of the rounded seat … it had blood on it.

  And on the floor, Roberta. Moving slow, like she was drunk. Bleeding bad from her right cheek, her eyes glazed and unfocused.

  The belt was still in her hand.

  “Nas … tee,” she said. “Getting my … paddle …”

  This pathetic thing was the woman who had beaten him so many times? Why had he let her do that? For the same reason he had allowed BoyCo to ruin his life — because he’d been a coward, because he’d been afraid.

  But Rex wasn’t weak anymore.

  “You’re a bully,” he said quietly. “I hate you.”

  She puckered her lips and then puffed out, like someone trying to blow away a long strand of stray hair. Flecks of blood sprayed from her lips. She tried to sit up.

  She didn’t get far before Rex put a foot on her chest and pushed her to her back. He reached down and tore the belt from her hands.

  Roberta blinked; the glazed look vanished. She looked up at him with enraged eyes, grabbed his leg and tried to push it away.

  His leg didn’t move. How had he once thought of her as strong? Her hands and arms, so weak, they couldn’t even budge him.

  “Let me go!” She dug her fingernails into his calf.

  This time, Rex saw the pain coming. He let it happen and found it wasn’t that bad. He pressed his foot down harder.

  Her eyes widened. She dug deeper with her nails, so he pressed harder still. Now her eyes scrunched tight, her mouth opened in an airless scream. Her hands slapped at his foot and leg.

  Rex smiled. How exciting. All the things he’d felt when he made the drawings, they were nothing compared to the thunderstorm in his chest, the hurricane in his head.

  He dangled the belt so that the end slid across her face.

  “You like this belt, Roberta? You like it so much? Let’s see how much you really like it.”

  He took his foot off her chest, then swung the belt as hard as he could. The leather cracked across her face, leaving an instant red mark.

  Roberta screamed. She flipped onto her belly and scrambled for the door, crawling even as she started to rise.

  She’s running!

  His excitement spiked up to an impossible level. Rex ran after her. She stumbled into the hall and almost reached the front door before he kicked her feet out from under her. She fell hard, her face hitting the hardwood. He moved in front of her and blocked the door.

  “Where are you going, Roberta? Aren’t you going to teach me a lesson?”

  She lurched to her right, crawled into the TV room.

  He followed her. He caught her next to her TV chair. She started to beg, but only got out a few words before Rex wrapped the belt around her neck. Her eyes bulged, her hands shot to the cracked black leather.

  Yeah, yeah that’s it, come on, comeoncomeoncomeon …

  Rex pulled the belt tighter.

  The Golden Gate Slasher

  The department’s electronic records of the Golden Gate Slasher case had been spotty, at best. That didn’t surprise John Smith. The case was old enough that all initial reports had been done on typewriters or word processors, before the SFPD implemented a database.

  Reports that old had to be scanned or hand-coded into the system. With hundreds of thousands of pre-database cases, even high-profile records didn’t always get transferred. Vast amounts of the SFPD’s records still existed only on paper: slowly fading, degenerating, slipping away into the untouchable realms of lost history.

  The Internet didn’t give up much, either. The Golden Gate Slasher wasn’t even on Wikipedia. In a culture fascinated by murderers, a culture that celebrated crime, this serial killer had gone surprisingly unheralded.

  So John had come down to the archives to see the real McCoy. A white cardboard box in a climate-controlled room was all that remained of one of San Francisco’s ugliest summers. Crime-scene reports, medical examiner notes, evidence tags … a ton of information, although it seemed very scattered and disorganized.

  Maybe John was too damn scared of his own shadow to provide any real help, but he could make himself useful digging through these files.

  He hated who he had become. Once upon a time in fairy-tale land, he’d been a real cop. He’d been a man. Now he was a glorified secretary. Every night he woke up in a cold sweat. Not with nightmares, exactly, but rather with playback memories so real they made that moment come to life all over again.

  Pookie had been obsessed with exposing a dirty cop named Blake Johansson, who was taking payoffs from gangs to ignore certain cases. Chief Zou had told them to leave Johnansson alone, but Pookie wouldn’t let up. He kept digging for dirt, kept banging away for that bit of evidence that would put the guy away. John had also wanted to let it go, let Internal Affairs handle it, but Pookie refused to stop — and like a good partner, John had been there every step of the way.

  A tip led them to the Tenderloin, where they hit gold — Johnansson taking a payoff from Johnny Yee, boss of the Suey Singsa Tong. Pookie had rushed things. Instead of calling for backup, he went in. There had been a moment when Pookie had Johnansson dead to rights, but that moment passed. Johnansson drew. Pookie should have put him down, but he didn’t. John would never understand why Pookie hadn’t pulled the trigger at that moment. If he had, things would have turned out different.

  It got crazy from there. Johannson fired, Pookie fired, John fired, then Johnansson ran out the back door. When John followed, he took a bullet in the belly. He never saw the shooter, didn’t know where the shooter was, didn’t even know if it was Johnansson.

  John crawled fifteen feet to a big plastic garbage can for cover. During the crawl, he took a second round, this time in the left calf. Pookie called out — he’d been hit in the thigh. He was pinned down, unable to come to John’s aid.

  For fifteen minutes John Smith cowered behind that garbage can, shoving his fist into the agonizing wound in his belly to try and stop the bleeding. That whole time, bullets kept on coming. John tried to find the shooter, looked at the buildings surrounding him, at the windows, at corners, at trees, but couldn’t see anything. He learned that plastic isn’t exactly the best bullet-stopping material in the world.

  Bryan Clauser had been the first to respond to shots fired and officer down. Bryan, somehow, found the shooter and found him fast — that exchange lasted all of a few seconds and ended with three new holes in Blake Johansson: two to the chest, one to the forehead.

  Since that night John’s life had never been the same. He couldn’t go outside without staring at every window, every door, without thinking that every stranger had a gun and was watching him, waiting for him to look away.

  The shrinks couldn’t do shit. John knew he was being crazy, but knowing it and fixing it are two different things. The constant, numbing fear made it impossible to be a cop.

  Months later, Chief Zou had reassigned him to the Gang Task Force as a graffiti expert. Same pay, same rank, but now his days were filled with computers and spent safely behind the walls of the Hall of Justice. Chief Zou had taken care of John when many people would have cut him loose.

  He sorted through the box containing case files for the Golden Gate Slasher. What he saw briefly made him glad he didn’t have to visit crime scenes anymore. Eight children,
ages six to nine, murdered over a ten-month period, yet the case hadn’t drawn the same kind of attention as other high-profile serial killers. In fact, it had received almost no national attention.

  John didn’t want to think of the probable reasons for the lack of media coverage, but it was obvious — all the murdered children had been minorities. Six black kids, an Asian and a Latino. Back then, the media didn’t really give a shit about niggers and spicks and slants.

  Not that things had changed all that much in the last thirty years. He could turn on cable news any day of the week and see the bias in full effect. A missing pretty white girl? National news for months on end, driven by angry women wearing too much makeup who screamed about it on cable. A missing black girl? Local paper, page five, running under an ad for Doritos, if she was mentioned at all.

  John flipped through a forensics summary report.

  “Holy shit,” he said quietly. “How can people be like this?”

  The report showed a detail that the cops had managed to successfully keep out of the papers — the children’s bodies had been half eaten.

  He thought of the Ladyfinger Killer. Both the Slasher and Ladyfinger were dead, cases separated by a decade and two thousand miles, yet both had that symbol, and both involved cannibalism.

  Forensic reports of the Slasher case also showed fork-and-knife marks on the children’s little bones. Some bones even showed gnaw marks. All eight children had been missing their livers. Most had limbs cut off … some limbs appeared to be chewed off.

  It was the chew marks that gave a positive ID. SFPD had matched the Slasher’s right upper molars to grooves in the bones of four victims. That reminded John of what Pookie had told him about Oscar Woody’s body, about marks made by too-wide incisors. John dug through the box until he found the perp’s dental charts — he didn’t know much about dentistry, but the charts seemed to show a perfectly normal set of teeth.

  John started putting the box’s contents into neat piles on a table: one pile for each child and a final pile for the killer. The crime-scene report for the Slasher’s death was missing. John found the autopsy report’s summary page. That report — signed by a much younger Dr. Baldwin Metz — said that the perp had committed suicide with a self-inflicted knife wound to the heart. John looked through the box again — yes, just the summary page … where was the rest of the autopsy report?

  He quickly flipped back through the files for each victim. Each case had missing information, particularly the initial scene descriptions where inspectors would have recorded strange drawings or symbols. Any paper file would be missing some information, sure, but this?

  This was systematic.

  John went back to the perp’s death report, or what little of it there was. Maybe he could find the name of the investigating officers. If they were alive, Pookie could track them down and get more details.

  He found what he was looking for — the Slasher task force’s lead inspector had been Francis Parkmeyer. John had checked that name right after Pookie called with an update about the fortune-teller meeting; Parkmeyer had passed away five years ago. No lead there.

  John read through the other names on the task force. Most had to be long since retired, if not dead.

  Then he saw the last two names.

  He read those names a second time. Then a third.

  “Ho-lee shit,” he said.

  John started putting the files back together. He still had to get over to the San Francisco Chronicle offices. Considering the sorry state of the police records, the newspaper archive was the only place left that would have the information Bryan and Pookie needed.

  A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

  Rex Deprovdechuk sat in his living room. The TV played an infomercial. Something about speed-reading.

  Roberta wasn’t moving. She was never going to move again.

  Rex didn’t have to worry about her anymore.

  Or Oscar Woody.

  Or Jay Parlar.

  Rex drew. He drew Alex Panos. He drew Issac Moses.

  Rex didn’t know how it worked, but he didn’t have to. Oscar and Jay were dead. Issac and Alex would be next.

  He’d skipped school again. He wasn’t ever going back.

  Rex drew.

  An Offer Aggie Can’t Refuse

  Hands shook Aggie James awake.

  He was old, recovering from addiction, hadn’t slept worth a crap in days, but there was no grogginess, no confusion.

  He knew exactly where he was.

  He knew what the hands meant.

  The masked men had come for him.

  Aggie jerked upright, his threadbare blanket flying away, his hands waving about in total panic without direction or purpose. He started to scream, but only managed to take in a big breath before a hand smacked him in the face, smacked him hard, snapping his head back as he fell to his ass. The room spun. His face stung like someone had pressed a hot iron against it. He blinked a few times, feet automatically pushing him away, sliding his butt across the floor until his back hit the white wall.

  A flash of pink fabric with white spots, a hand clamping on the back of his head, another across his mouth. He smelled household cleaners and faded smoke. In an instant, he registered her raw power — her hands were steel skeletons covered with warm flesh, hands that could snap his neck with no effort at all.

  Aggie stopped struggling. He stared at the old woman who held his head tight.

  “You be quiet,” Hillary whispered. A pink scarf with the white polka dots covered her thin gray hair. The scarf’s tied ends dangled below her chin. So many wrinkles on that face. Aggie thought about striking out, but she held him so hard he couldn’t move his head, couldn’t even open his mouth.

  “You be quiet. I can kill you, easy-peasy, you understand?”

  “Mm-mm,” Aggie said.

  “Good,” she said. “Tomorrow night, we come for the Chinaman.”

  She turned his head so he could see the Chinaman, who was sound asleep.

  “I let you go now,” she said. “You make any trouble for me, they will take you instead. Understand?”

  “Mm-mmm,” Aggie said.

  She let go of his head, but her face stayed close to his. “After the ouvriers come for the Chinaman, I will come for you. I will show you what happens if you do not do what I ask.”

  Aggie shivered, both in fear and in hope. “You mean … you mean maybe I don’t die?”

  Hillary nodded. “Maybe. If you do what I say.”

  Aggie nodded violently. “Anything,” he whispered. “Anything you want. What do I gotta do?”

  She stood and stared down at him. “You help save the life of a king,” she said. “You do this, maybe you live.”

  She walked away. Aggie couldn’t stop shivering. He’d resigned himself to a brutal end where those freakish masked men dragged him out of the cell. But now, her words allowed a sliver of hope to pierce his soul. He gently fingered his jaw. It was already swelling.

  Maybe he could get out of this insane dungeon.

  Maybe … maybe he could live.

  All he had to do was help save a king.

  BMB, B & P Trade Notes

  Pookie watched Bryan shovel a forkful of chocolate-chip pancakes into his mouth. Before even chewing, syrup still dripping from his beard, Bryan also crammed in two full strips of bacon.

  “Yeah, Bryan,” Pookie said. “Now I see why a hot piece of ass like Robin Hudson can’t stay away from you. It’s the charm.”

  “Fa you,” Bryan said, chewing with his mouth open.

  “And dirty talk, too? You’re the total package, Clauser.”

  Bryan grabbed a piece of toast with his right hand, smashed it into a ball and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.

  “So sexy,” Pookie said. “Are you still sick?”

  Bryan nodded, then shook his head. He took a big sip of coffee to wash down the obscenely huge mouthful of food. “I still hurt all over, but not as bad,” he said after a big swallow. “
I’m not feverish anymore. I think I’m over it, whatever it is. Man, I’m so hungry.”

  “Eat all you want, little fella, as long as you don’t hurl on me.”

  Bryan answered by shoveling in more pancakes, more bacon, and another balled-up piece of toast.

  Pookie felt a sense of relief. Bryan was clearly feeling better. He still looked tired and pale, but the spark had returned to his eyes. He really had to trim that beard, though. Despite the improvement, Bryan still wasn’t back to normal. Pookie wondered if normal was something Bryan could ever be again. Hell, had he ever been normal? Still, an alert Bryan was the Bryan that Pookie needed. The case wasn’t going to solve itself.

  Pookie heard the roar of a motorcycle engine approaching. The sound lowered to a gurgle as a purple Harley pulled up outside. The driver backed it into a parking space, then took off a dark-purple helmet to reveal the bony face and mottled, bald head of one Black Mr. Burns.

  “That bike looks awesome,” Bryan said. “He did that work himself?”

  “I think so, yeah,” Pookie said. “The guy is great with mechanical stuff.”

  “At least he’s awesome with something.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Bryan slathered red jelly on a piece of toast and shrugged. “You and he went through the same shit. I don’t see you driving a desk.”

  The comment pissed Pookie off and also stirred up his guilty feelings. Bryan was being dismissive of a friend and former partner. That made Bryan a dick. Pookie was probably an even bigger dick, because as much as he hated to admit it, sometimes he felt the same way about John.

  “The guy got shot,” Pookie said.

  “So did you,” Bryan said. “You’re out there every day, walking the line.”

  Pookie didn’t really have an answer for that. “What the fuck do you want the man to do, Bryan? If he could be out there, he’d be out there.”

  Bryan shrugged again, ate half the toast. “He’s drawing the same salary as you,” he said as he chewed. “Same salary as me.”

  “Yeah, because he earned it,” Pookie said. “Here he comes, so shut up about this, you got it?”