Nocturnal: A Novel

  The muzzle flashes screwed with his vision for just a second. By the time he could focus on the roof again, the outline that might have been a man was gone.

  The rain poured down.

  Bryan turned back to look at the bearded man, at the arrow sticking out of his chest. Only then did he think to look for Alex Panos.

  But Alex was nowhere to be seen.

  The arrow had missed Bryan. Thank God. Pookie looked back to the archer’s position, but now the roof was empty — the cloaked man had vanished into the shadows.

  Had he just seen what he’d thought he’d seen? No. No way. Shit like that couldn’t happen. Maybe someone had slipped some acid into his coffee. Maybe he was tripping balls right this very second.

  Bryan Clauser was still standing. With no archer/sniper in sight, Pookie had to deal with the situation at hand. He climbed over the wall and onto the roof.

  Issac Moses was still there, but the wounded man wearing the mask was gone.

  Pookie’s gun snapped up to eye level. He quickly walked toward the center of the roof, to the small hut there that probably led to the building’s internal stairs. Pookie circled the hut, letting his barrel lead his vision. Nothing. He tried the handle: locked.

  There was nowhere else on the roof a person could hide. The roof door was locked. Pookie had come up on the fire escape, the only other way down.

  So where was the masked man with the arrow in his shoulder?

  The rain kept pouring. Pookie moved back to Issac.

  Oh, God …

  The kid’s chest and stomach were flat on the roof, but his head had been turned 180 degrees — Issac’s dead eyes stared up into the night sky.

  Susie Panos

  Pookie stood inside the apartment, looking down on Susie’s body. She was on her back, eyes wide open, an expression of shock etched onto her still face. Something had punched a half-inch circle through her chest and into her heart. Her pajama top had been driven into the hole as well; the blood-soaked fabric lined the newly exposed flesh and bone.

  Outside, patrol cars blocked the street. An ambulance had already arrived, but the paramedics had made quick work of declaring all three bodies dead on the scene, and all three as homicides. Crime-scene investigators were on the way, as was someone from the ME’s office.

  Such insanity. The things Pookie had seen — the jumper, the guy with the mask, Issac’s head turned the wrong way — hard to process it all. Alex Panos was poison. Whoever wanted that kid had followed him here, and now his mother was dead because of it.

  Pookie looked up as Bryan walked through the apartment’s shattered front door. Bryan paused to look at the exposed white wood where the hinges had once connected, then down at the cracked door lying on the living room carpet. He seemed to mentally catalog these things, then walked over to join Pookie at Susie’s body.

  “I called in a BOLO on the perp,” Bryan said.

  “Really,” Pookie said. “And how did you describe it?”

  “A guy in a green cloak, maybe six feet tall. Carrying a bow. That about right?”

  Pookie nodded. He kept staring at Susie’s corpse. Maybe she wasn’t the best mother, but she’d tried. She didn’t deserve this.

  “Sammy and Jimmy are here,” Bryan said. “Jimmy is down with the bearded guy. Sammy’s on his way up here.”

  Bryan knelt next to the body.

  “She looks really pale,” he said. “Maybe like she’s lost a ton of blood.”

  Bryan was right. Pookie had seen the corpses of people who had bled to death. They looked a lot like Susie.

  Bryan pointed to the hole in her chest. “Who did that to her?”

  “A guy wearing a blanket and a mask came out the window and chased Issac up the fire escape. Maybe the guy had just finished doing this to Susie.”

  Bryan nodded. “This the same guy that twisted Issac’s head the wrong way?”

  “Could be,” Pookie said. “Either him or the bowman.”

  “You’d have to be strong to break someone’s neck like that. This guy with a mask … you sure it was a mask?”

  “Not now, Bryan,” Pookie said. “I can only handle so much of this shit at one time, you know?”

  Bryan held up his hands palms-out. “Easy, Pooks, easy. Just tell me what the mask looked like.”

  It looked so disturbing my balls hid inside my chest was what Pookie wanted to say, but he didn’t. “Ever see the pictures of those plague masks doctors wore in the Dark Ages?”

  “I think so,” Bryan said. “Long, pointy nose that points down? Kind of like a beak?”

  “Yeah,” Pookie said. “Kind of like a beak.”

  Bryan pointed to the hole in Susan’s chest. “Something stabbed her there. You think this mask could have been strong enough to do that?”

  Pookie knew what Bryan was getting at — how likely was it that a hooked-beak mask could punch through a chest? About as likely that the fake teeth of a werewolf mask were strong enough to rip off an arm.

  “Pooks,” Bryan said, “I know I’m the last person in the world who should ask a question like this, but are you sure you saw that bowman jump across the street? The world-record long jump is something like thirty feet — the space between the two buildings is at least twice that.”

  “I know what I saw,” Pookie said. “Believe me, I wish I hadn’t seen it at all. I don’t know a damn thing about archery, but that guy hit the perp from across the street, ten stories up, in a rainstorm, at night, and he put that shot right over your shoulder.”

  Bryan nodded. “Unless he was aiming at me, and missed.”

  Pookie thought back to his brief shootout on the rooftop, to the cloaked man pulling two guns and blazing away. He’d had Pookie dead to rights — how could someone be that good with a bow and that bad with a gun from point-blank range? The answer was: he couldn’t be. He hadn’t killed Pookie because he hadn’t wanted to kill Pookie.

  “The archer wasn’t aiming for you, Bri-Bri. He was aiming for Bobby Pigeon’s killer.”

  Bryan’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying that since the guy is Bobby’s alleged killer, it’s okay to put an arrow in his heart?”

  “Did I say it was okay?”

  Bryan stared, then shook his head.

  “The archer is just another murderer,” Pookie said. “Far as we know, he killed Issac, too. It gives us one more person to look for — Rex, Alex and the archer. We have to focus and get what info we can, because Robertson could show up at any minute and kick us out of here.”

  Sammy Berzon walked into the room, a metal case in each hand.

  “Fellas,” he said. “Never a dull moment with you two around, eh? Jimmy is heading up to the roof. I got seniority, so his bitch-ass gets the rain. Boom. We’re done with the stiff down on the sidewalk. Shot through the heart, and who’s to blame, right?” Sammy’s head rocked back in a silent laugh. “We found a cell phone on him, but it’s a pre-paid. I’ll have the boys start running the call history, but don’t get your hopes up.”

  Pookie knew that Sammy was right; the phone would probably reveal nothing. Perps were smart enough to buy pre-paids with cash, meaning there was no personal information associated with them. A pre-paid phone calling only other pre-paid phones left almost no trail. The only thing they were likely to get were GPS locations of calls made and received. That might reveal a pattern, or possibly produce a specific place to investigate.

  “Get us call locations as soon as you can,” Pookie said. “What else you get off him?”

  “Nothing yet,” Sammy said. “We’re done with him. Hudson the Hotness has him now.”

  Bryan’s head snapped up. “Robin’s down there?”

  Sammy nodded. “That’s the fact, Jack.”

  Bryan started walking out. Pookie followed him.

  “By the way,” Sammy said just before they exited the broken door. “Whichever of you two comedians called in a BOLO on a guy in a fucking cloak should watch out. Robertson just canceled it. He said someone was in de
ep shit for playing games at a murder scene. FYI, eh?”

  Bryan snarled, then turned and walked out.

  The assistant chief of police had just canceled a BOLO on a murderer. Pookie wanted to be shocked and outraged, but he wasn’t that surprised; he was just too damn tired to get fired up about it.

  Pookie took one last look at Susie Panos. She’d tried to save her son, and in doing so proved an old adage — no good deed goes unpunished.

  Post-killing Scene

  Robin Hudson knelt next to the body. To her right, streetlights danced off rainwater that flowed fast down the gutter. The water spilled into a thick iron grate half clogged with leaves and bits of trash. Bubble-lights flashed from stationary cop cars, casting red and blue glows against the buildings and the wet black pavement. Sammy and Jimmy had set up portable lights to illuminate the body. They had put up a little tent over it as well — just four poles with no sides and a peaked roof, the kind of thing you might see at a street fair. A light breeze snapped at the tent top.

  The rain had soaked the victim long before they’d put up the tent. Beads of water stood out on his thick beard. His blue jeans looked nearly black from the wetness. An arrow shaft stuck up out of his sternum. Water had diluted the red stain surrounding the shaft, turning the blood-soaked white fabric a diluted pink.

  Robin was about to start her examination when she saw Bryan and Pookie approaching. The pair had been first on the scene — again. It was getting to be more than coincidence. She needed to find out exactly what was going on.

  “Robin,” Pookie said. “Don’t you look official.”

  She started to ask him what he meant, then she remembered what she was wearing. “Oh, the uniform?”

  Pookie nodded. “No sloppy windbreaker for you, I see. Just like the Silver Eagle.”

  She smiled and looked back to the body. Yes, she wore the formal ME’s jacket, even though the windbreaker was an acceptable option. If Metz felt the uniform was an important part of the job, then so did she. And besides, she liked brass buttons and the gold braid around the cuffs.

  Bryan knelt down next to the body. Robin couldn’t help but look at him, at his green eyes, at the dark-red hair that looked rumbled and ratty, the way it had when he’d spent the day in bed with her. Then she remembered that there was a corpse on the ground between them. How blasé had she become? This wasn’t the time for a love connection.

  Pookie leaned in. “Long beard, wife-beater, hatchet — he fits Verde’s description perfectly.”

  Robin pulled out a collapsible probe. “Verde’s report said Bobby shot his killer at least once. That was a few hours ago.” She slid the probe under the tank top’s left strap and lifted. “Take a look, fellas — aside from the arrow, there’s no bullet holes in the chest. I don’t think this is the guy.”

  Bryan stared at the body. He seemed so distant, even more so than normal. Whatever ordeal he was going through, it had gotten worse. “Maybe Bobby hit him somewhere else,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Robin said. “I’ll be able to tell when I get him on the autopsy table.”

  Bryan reached out and gently took the probe. He dragged the tip lightly across the arrow’s feathers. As soon as he did that, Robin saw what had caught his attention.

  “Real feathers,” she said. “Aren’t they usually plastic?”

  He nodded. “I think so.” He looked up at Pookie, who leaned over both of them. “Don’t most arrows have plastic feathers?”

  Pookie made his pfft noise. “Why are you asking me? Do I look like a fletcher?”

  Bryan’s eyes wrinkled in annoyance. “A what?”

  “A fletcher,” Pookie said. “A dude that makes arrows for a living.”

  Bryan shrugged. “Maybe all fletchers are pudgy Chinese dudes, for all I know.”

  Pookie rubbed at the belly that stretched out his white button-down shirt. “Naw, there’s only so much of that sexy to go around. Bo-Bobbin, I’ll be shocked if this isn’t Bobby’s killer. What’s the status on the blood samples taken from Rex Deprovdechuk’s house?”

  “Already running,” Robin said. “They came into the morgue with Bobby’s body. I also started running Rex’s sperm sample, so we’ll know if the blood is his.”

  “It’s not,” Pookie said. He nodded toward the bearded corpse. “It will match this guy. And I bet it will also match the samples you took off of Oscar Woody.”

  “You think this man killed Oscar?”

  “Probably,” Pookie said. “He tried to kill Alex Panos, so odds are he whacked Oscar and Jay Parlar as well.”

  It seemed obvious when Pookie laid it out. “I’ll start this guy’s tests right now with a machine we have in the van. You should have all three results in about an hour.”

  Bryan nodded, then slid the probe up the feathers again.

  Pookie took the probe and did the same thing, as if he just wanted to see for himself.

  “Maybe this arrow is custom-built,” he said. “The way that guy shot, I’m guessing he doesn’t buy his archery supplies from a discount bin at Dick’s Sporting Goods. If we find out who made this, maybe we can find out who bought it. Robin, how soon can you get it out of his chest?”

  She leaned in, turning her head this way and that to examine the wound. She lightly touched the notch just above the feathers, then gave it an experimental push. The shaft itself flexed a little, but the arrowhead didn’t move a bit.

  “It’s in there good,” she said. “I’m going to need a bone saw to get it out.”

  “Shit,” Bryan said. “How fast can you make that happen?”

  First Zou had rushed things, then Verde, now Bryan and Pookie? It was their investigation, but it was her job to do things correctly, methodically.

  “Guys, Sammy said there’s another body upstairs and a third on the roof. We have to get all three in the van and take them back, so I’m going to be here awhile.”

  Pookie knelt. Now all three of them were low around the body, as if the corpse were a small campfire on a freezing night.

  Pookie looked around quickly to make sure no one was near, then spoke quietly. “Robs, you’re in charge of the department, right?”

  She nodded.

  “We need help,” he said. “Can you get wife-beater here to the morgue right away, then have another ME come and handle the other bodies?”

  “But keep it quiet,” Bryan said. “Don’t tell anyone you’re taking this guy back, just load him up and go. Can you do that for us?”

  She looked at the two men. That kind of action wasn’t illegal per se, but it wasn’t protocol. If people started questioning her decisions, and those questions got back to the mayor’s office, it would damage her shot at permanently taking over Metz’s job. But at the same time, Pookie and Bryan had never asked her for anything like that before. They seemed desperate.

  “That’s not how we do things,” she said. “I could make it happen, but before I go off the reservation, you have to tell me what’s going on.”

  “We can’t,” Bryan said. “Just do this for us. It’s important.”

  It’s important, and so is your health, Bryan — so is your sanity.

  “You guys want something from me, I want something from you. I need to know more.”

  Bryan’s eyes hardened. “It’s best you don’t. Just trust me.”

  She shook her head. “You guys are asking me to do something that could jeopardize my career. So cut the let’s protect the delicate flower bullshit. Convince me.”

  Bryan stared at her, then looked over at Pookie. Pookie shrugged.

  Bryan turned back to Robin, looked at her over the body on the ground between them. “We think Chief Zou and Rich Verde could be part of a cover-up,” he said. “She’s protecting someone involved with the murders of Oscar Woody, Jay Parlar and maybe even Bobby Pigeon. She could also be involved in a cover-up of those old Golden Gate Slasher murders.”

  Bryan and Pookie both looked intense, focused — they weren’t kidding. But the chief of police?
Covering up murders? “Why would Zou do something like that?”

  “We don’t know,” Pookie said. “We only have theories, and don’t have time to go into them now. If Zou or Sean Robertson or Rich Verde shows up here, we’ll lose the chance to learn more before they shut us out. We need a good look at this arrow. Please, get this guy back to the morgue and start the autopsy immediately.”

  Autopsies weren’t usually done at night. Bodies collected in the evening went into the storage area for the MEs to work on the following morning. Another deviation from the norm, another potential question about her reliability as the next chief medical examiner.

  Not so long ago, she had trusted Bryan Clauser more than she’d trusted anyone in her entire life. Maybe he wasn’t the most emotional creature in the world, but he was a world-class cop — he wouldn’t ask for this if he didn’t believe it was absolutely necessary.

  She nodded. “All right. I’ll take the body back, then send someone else to pick up the other two. Meet me at the morgue in an hour.”

  Bryan smiled at her. It was forced, but it was still a smile. He and Pookie walked off, giving Robin room to do her job.

  The Hunt

  Rex stopped walking. He knelt to the sidewalk and leaned against a building wall. He sat very still.

  Rex waited.

  A block ahead, a boy in a dark sweatshirt stopped and looked back. His head moved, his eyes searched, but after a few seconds, the boy turned away and kept moving down Laguna Street.

  Rex waited a few seconds, then he followed.

  Even in the rain and the wind, Rex smelled something that made his brain buzz, made his chest all vibratey.

  He smelled blood.

  Alex’s blood.

  Marco was probably dead. Rex felt sad about that. Marco had been a nice guy. He had obeyed. Rex had watched the brief fight between Marco and the man in black, then that arrow hit Marco in the chest. And just after that, Rex saw Alex running away.

  Maybe Rex could have helped Marco, but he could not, would not let Alex Panos escape.