Nocturnal

  Pookie nodded. “I think things could get dangerous.”

  John shrank in on himself a little, his head again lowering as his shoulders again rose up. “I’m not stupid. We’re digging up what someone wants to keep buried. If they find out, they might try to bury us, too. I know the risks. I might not be your partner anymore, but I still have your back.”

  Pookie wished he could go back in time, to six years ago, to that night in the Tenderloin when he’d had the drop on Blake Johansson. Pookie could have taken Johansson out, but he’d hesitated. Because of that hesitation, John Smith wound up with a bullet in his belly, a bullet that took a great cop off the streets.

  “Order up, BMB,” Pookie said. “Breakfast is on me.”

  Like Father, Like Son

  Bryan sliced into the second kielbasa link. A little jet of fat shot out and landed on the back of his thumb. It was hot, but not enough to burn. He grabbed a slice of rye bread, dabbed up the fat with it and shoved it into his mouth.

  “Glad to see your manners haven’t changed much, Son.”

  Bryan smiled despite a mouth full of food. Considering his dad had a bottle of Bud Light in one hand, a Marlboro in the other, and was sitting at the table in a threadbare T-shirt, white boxers and black socks, he wasn’t exactly the poster boy for social protocol.

  Bryan didn’t care that his throbbing body and sour stomach told him this meal was coming up later. The food tasted amazing. It tasted like home. He scooped up a forkful of sauerkraut. “Dad, when you write your book on etiquette? I’ll be first in line to buy it.”

  His dad laughed. That was what Bryan needed, some normalcy — Mike Clauser in a T-shirt and boxers, drinking beer and feeding Bryan kielbasa and sauerkraut at 7:00 A.M. because that was the only thing Mike knew how to cook. When Bryan had been a little kid, he’d sat with his father at this same chipped Formica table. Breakfast with his dad was a giant step away from the insanity of psycho dreams, burning kids and dealing with butchered bodies.

  “So, my boy, want to tell me what’s going on? You’re wound up pretty tight. I know the job is hard and all, but … well … you kind of look like shit. You feeling okay?”

  “Been a little sick,” Bryan said. He couldn’t tell his father any of it. Mike wasn’t a cop and he just wouldn’t understand. “And some stuff at work is getting to me, stuff I don’t really want to talk about.”

  Another kielbasa quarter went under the knife and into his mouth.

  “Work,” Mike said. “Sure it’s not girl troubles?”

  Oh, man, were they going to go over this for the umpteenth time? “Leave it alone, Dad.”

  “When are you bringing Robin over for dinner again? I’ll order Chinese.”

  “You know damn well I moved out of her place.”

  Mike Clauser waved the Marlboro-holding hand in front of him as if his son had just cut a nasty fart. “Son, I love you to death, but no way you can do better than that girl.”

  “Gee, thanks for the compliment.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What am I supposed to do? She told me to move out.”

  “Why? Did you cheat on her?”

  Bryan tossed his fork and knife onto the plate. He wasn’t going to talk about this, either. Why had she told him to move out? Because she’d wanted to hear the words I love you, Robin, and Bryan hadn’t been able to say them.

  “Son, I grew up with your mother. I asked her out in grade school and she said no. I asked her out in junior high and she said no. I asked her out in high school and she said no. That’s when I started calling her Stubborn Starla Hutchon.” Mike jabbed out his cigarette in an overfull ashtray, then slid his hand under his shirt to scratch his hairy belly. “I bet she turned me down ten times, at least, but I didn’t care. I asked her to our senior prom, and she said yes. The rest is history.”

  Bryan nodded at his father’s gut. “How could she possibly resist the physical specimen I see before me?”

  Mike laughed. “Exactly!” he said, then lit another smoke. “Just remember, Son, women are basically retarded. It’s not their fault. It’s genetic. They have no idea what they want when Madison Avenue spins their little heads around.”

  “A more rousing endorsement of women’s rights I’ve never heard.”

  “What can I say? You can listen to Doctor Phil or those stupid broads that tell women to be strong and be independent and all that crap, or you can listen to a man who’s been happily married for forty years.”

  “Thirty, Dad. Mom’s been gone ten years now.”

  Mike waved away another imaginary fart, then pointed to his chest. “I’m still married right here. She loved me like nobody’s business. I know you’re a skeptic, or whatever you Godless heathens call yourselves these days, but when I kick off and leave this splendor behind, I know I’ll be with her. Someday you will, too — she loved you so much.”

  When Mike talked about his wife, that ever-present light in his eyes faded, dulled. It was hard to see him so sad. Her death had left a deep hole in the man.

  “I miss her too, Dad.”

  Mike stared off for a few moments, then the shit-eating grin returned. “Robin reminds me of your mother. She’s got that spark, one of those broads that laughs before she stops to think about if she should laugh or not, you know?”

  Troubles with his love life weren’t high on Bryan’s current list of priorities. The more he avoided Robin, the better. He felt like he was already dooming Pookie, somehow — he didn’t need to spread his poison to her.

  “I know, Dad, Robin is great. But let it go. It’s over.”

  “So what now? You going to go find someone else?”

  Bryan sagged back in his chair. He wasn’t going to find someone else, because he didn’t want to find someone else. If it couldn’t work with Robin, it wasn’t going to work with anyone.

  Mike leaned across the table. For just a second, Bryan had a flashback to the look his dad gave him back in the day, when Bryan came home from yet another fistfight.

  “You’re not hearing me, Son. So she booted your ass to the curb. Get over it. Forget your pride. You only have so many days to spend with a woman like your Robin or my Starla, and no matter how many days you get, they aren’t enough. So you’re going to promise me, right now, that you’ll start up with Robin again.”

  “Dad, I’m a grown—”

  Mike slapped the table, making Bryan jump.

  “Don’t Dad me, boy. You’re too focused on your work, and what horrible work it is. You need something else in your life before this crap eats you alive. You promise me, now.”

  The look on his father’s face made it clear they’d talk about this, and nothing else, until Bryan conceded.

  Bryan was dealing with a probable serial killer, psychic dreams of murder that made his dick hard, strange symbols drawn in human blood, and it was all he could do to coax his agony-filled body through the day — yet despite these things, he still had room to feel guilty because his dad was mad at him?

  Maybe thirty-five years old wasn’t really all that far from thirteen.

  “Okay, Dad. I’ll talk to her.”

  Mike’s face relaxed. He nodded. “Fine. Now that I’ve won that battle, you want to tell me what’s going on at work? No offense, Son, but I know twenty-four-hour hookers that look like they get more beauty rest than you.”

  Bryan picked up his fork. He stabbed a piece of kielbasa, then absently moved it around the plate in a slow circle.

  “Bryan, I know I’m not a cop, but I can still listen.”

  His father had always been able to read his mind a little bit. It was spooky.

  “The stuff I’m seeing now, it’s …” Bryan’s voice trailed off. Maybe he couldn’t tell his dad everything, at least not yet, but it would feel good to share some of this burden. “It’s pretty bad. I kind of have some … thoughts.”

  “What kind of thoughts?”

  Bryan stopped his kielbasa circle, then reversed it the other way. “Like that t
here are certain people who deserve to die.”

  “There are,” Mike said. “Fuckin-A right there are. This about that gangbanger you killed in the restaurant? Pookie called me about that, you know.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Don’t go busting his chops about it,” Mike said. “If your partner didn’t call me once a week, I wouldn’t have any idea what was going on in your life. It’s not like it would hurt you to pick up the phone once in a while.”

  “Who is this little Jewish grandmother before me and where did she hide my manly-man father?”

  “Fuck you,” Mike said. “Know how your mother is gone forever? I’m not that far behind her. You don’t stop by enough.”

  There was no smart-ass answer for that. Bryan was lucky enough to have his father in the same city, yet he stopped by Mike’s place maybe twice a month at most.

  “Sorry,” Bryan said. “I’ll do better at that. But it’s not about that gangster in the restaurant. This is something … something else.”

  “Son, just remember that you’re a Clauser. I can’t pretend I know what it’s like to do what you do for a living. But at the end of the day, you’re a good man. You walk a line so that fat slobs like me can live in all this splendor. You have to weigh these bad thoughts against all the good that you do. Understand?”

  His father had no idea what he was talking about. And yet, in a misguided way, the words made sense.

  “Yeah, Dad. I understand. Look, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Do you mind if we just talk about the ’Niners?”

  Mike Clauser leaned back in his chair, tilted his head back and wrinkled his face like someone had not only farted this time but also crammed a turd nugget up his left nostril.

  “The ’Niners? Good God, Son, don’t get me started!”

  The next thirty minutes rolled by without one thought of bodies, dreams, symbols or death as Mike Clauser effortlessly solved all of the San Francisco 49ers’ problems and guided them to Super Bowl glory the following season.

  Goddamn Pookie. He’d known just what Bryan needed. Most of the time it sucked having a partner who thought he knew everything. But sometimes? Sometimes, it was fantastic.

  Parlar, J. —?

  Robin Hudson had awoken that morning after a whopping three hours of sleep, walked Emma next door for a play-day with Big Max and his pit bull, Billy, grabbed a large coffee from Royal Ground (no sugar, a single girl has to watch her waist), pounded it like a sorority girl in a drinking contest, then rode her motorcycle into work.

  When she arrived, work was waiting for her in the form of a list of five names up on the green chalkboard. Four NCs, and one question mark for Parlar, J.

  She walked to the body locker, opened the door and pulled out the sliding tray that held Parlar’s body. A question mark didn’t seem necessary — not much of a chance this was due to natural causes: broken bones and contusions; multiple lacerations on his abdomen; and about 20 percent of the body had been burned, from the abdomen up to the chest and face.

  The worst of the burns were on his face and hands, where there had been no clothes to protect him from the heat. Blisters covered his palms and the underside of his fingers — he’d had his hands up in a defensive position when the flames hit. An explosion or fireball of some sort, obviously. His hair was more burned off on the left side of his head than the right — he’d instinctively turned away when it happened.

  Robin read the crime-scene investigator’s preliminary report. Bryan and Pookie had been first on the scene again? They’d found a murdered teenage boy for the second morning in a row. Weird. The report said that Parlar, J., had not only been stabbed three times and badly burned, he’d also suffered a four-story fall onto a van.

  “Sorry, Jay,” she said to the corpse. “Rough way to go.”

  Robin thought back to Pookie’s call last night, asking if Bryan was capable of real violence.

  She looked at the body.

  What, exactly, was Pookie asking? If Bryan could do something like this?

  No. That was impossible. Clearly, Pookie was talking about something else altogether.

  Robin pushed the tray back in, shut the door, then walked to her computer. The karyotype results from Oscar Woody’s killer were waiting for her.

  The spectral karyotype showed four rows of fuzzy, paired lines, each set a different neon color. The image represented the twenty-three paired chromosomes of the human genome. The last pair, the one that determined sex, was usually an XX for female or an XY for male.

  Oscar Woody’s killer had an X, all right, but its partner chromosome didn’t look like an X or a Y.

  “What the hell?”

  She had never seen anything like it. It didn’t make any sense. Was it a bad test? No, the rest of the karyotype looked perfectly normal.

  It wasn’t Klinefelter’s syndrome; this was something else altogether.

  The information would help Rich Verde and Bobby Pigeon’s investigation. But Verde had basically told her not to run the test, and Chief Zou also didn’t seem that interested in getting to the truth.

  Maybe Rich wasn’t interested, but she knew someone who would be.

  Robin pulled out her cell phone and dialed.

  Too Cool for School

  Rex Deprovdechuk walked down the hallways of Galileo High. Not along the sides, not slinking around the edges the way he’d used to with his head hung low, hoping no one would see, wishing he were invisible.

  No, not anymore.

  Rex walked down the middle of the hall.

  He’d heard it on the news that morning. Jay Parlar was dead. Alex Panos and Issac weren’t in school. Maybe they knew what Rex could do. Maybe they would just stay away.

  Or, maybe Rex would find them.

  He walked with his head high, staring at everyone who looked his way, daring them to make eye contact. These people had all stared at him, talked about him in whispers as he walked by, thought they were so much better than him. They despised him. They treated him like garbage.

  But now Rex had friends.

  He didn’t know who they were, not yet, but they did what he wanted them to do. They made his pictures come true. They killed his enemies. They gave Rex Deprovdechuk control over life and death.

  They gave Rex the power of a god.

  So he walked down the middle of the hall. People didn’t exactly get out of his way, but they weren’t knocking him around, either. Did all the other kids know? Did they know that Rex Deprovdechuk — Little Rex, Stinky Rex — could wish them dead? Did they know that if he drew their picture, they were doomed?

  He didn’t belong here anymore. He had never belonged here. Fuck school.

  Rex headed for the front doors. He’d been here for two hours already, and that was plenty.

  Tonight, maybe he’d draw some more people.

  Maybe he’d draw Roberta.

  Rex was done being a victim. Those days were over. No one was going to hurt him, not ever again.

  The Rulebook

  Robin Hudson checked her appearance in the body refrigerator’s steel door, behind which lay the corpse of Oscar Woody.

  The reflection wasn’t flattering.

  Big Max was right — she did have circles under her eyes. She wasn’t in her twenties anymore; age and the job’s long hours were catching up with her.

  She ran a hand through her black hair, untangled it as best she could manage. She hadn’t talked to Bryan in six months, and this was how he’d see her?

  But why should she care how she looked for him? He’d moved out and hadn’t even called her once since. Two years they had shared her apartment. They’d dated six months before that. Two and a half years together. She hadn’t nagged him about getting married, even though she would have accepted his proposal without thinking twice. All she’d wanted was to hear the words I love you.

  But he hadn’t said it. In all that time together, he’d never said it once.

  The two-year anniversary of his moving in with
her triggered some kind of realization that she needed to hear him say it. She couldn’t think about anything else. He loved her, she knew it, he just needed a little push was all, something to make him look deep inside and realize what they had together. She’d made it simple for him — if he couldn’t say he loved her, then he wasn’t in love with her, and he had to go.

  But even with that ultimatum, he still hadn’t said the words. Only at the end did she realize she’d projected her desires onto him. She wished she could forget that final fight. How she had screamed, the things she had said, and he just stood there, calm, quiet, barely saying a word as she raged at him. Cold-eyed Bryan. The Terminator. He hadn’t loved her. Hell, maybe he wasn’t capable of love.

  She’d told him to leave and he had. Unlike in the movies, he hadn’t come back.

  He was probably out fucking anything that moved. She should be doing the same, but she just didn’t want to. Six months later, she still wanted only him. The way he could make her feel — no one else had ever been able to do that to her. She was afraid that no one else ever could.

  The morgue door opened. Bryan Clauser and Pookie Chang came through.

  “Hey, Robin,” Pookie said. “Damn, girl, you look sexy.”

  “Right. I’ve had about four hours of sleep, but flattery will get you everywhere.”

  Pookie grinned. “Come on, if I really wanted to get in your pants, I’d do something like pick you up those oatmeal biscuits from Bow Wow Meow that Emma likes so much.”

  “Yeah, that would probably work.”

  Pookie reached into his pocket and pulled out a zippered baggie filled with thick biscuits. “Cha-ka-pow! There you go, toots, now lose the bra.”

  She laughed and took the bag. “What, you carry around my dog’s favorite treat?”

  He shrugged. “Knew I’d see you sooner or later. They were in the car.”

  “Pookie, how the hell do you remember this stuff?”

  He pointed to his head. “There’s a lot of useless information floating around in here.”

  “Well, I thank you, and so does Emma.” She put the bag in her pocket.