Nocturnal (10 page)

A one-foot, circular, stainless-steel flange marked the center of the room’s floor. Aggie saw three rolls of toilet paper sitting on the flange. Was that where he was supposed to shit?

Something really fucked-up was going on here, and Aggie wanted out. He might be a bum, might have phoned in all pretense of a real life many years ago, but the significance of being a black man in a collar and chains was not lost on him.

The woman started to cry. The little boy looked at her, then started to do the same and again buried his head in her bosom.

The man kept staring at Aggie.

“I got no idea what’s goin’ on,” Aggie said. “If you want help, ask someone else.”

A metallic noise rang from the walls and echoed through the small room. Three heads looked around: Aggie, the man and the woman, eyes searching for the source of the sound. The little boy didn’t look up. Another clang — Aggie realized it came from the holes in the wall.

Then the sound of chains rattling: Aggie’s collar yanked him backward. He stumbled and fell, banging his elbow, then choked as the chain dragged him across the hard, bumpy ground. He reached out, hands grabbing for anything, but his fingers found only blankets that offered no resistance.

The woman slid across the floor, her hands clutching her child tight to her chest. “Jesús nos ayuda!”

The man tried to fight, but the chain dragged him along as easily as it did the woman.

The little boy just screamed. The chains pulled him away from his mother. Their arms grabbed at each other, but they were powerless against the steady, mechanical force.

Aggie felt his back hit the wall, then felt himself pulled
up
the wall, the collar’s edge digging into his lower jaw, pressing against his throat and cutting off his air. He managed to get his feet under him just as the chain pulled the collar against the wall-ring, where it
clanged
home with a metal-on-metal authority. The yanking stopped. Aggie sucked in a deep, panicked breath. He grabbed the collar and tried to lean forward, but the chain wouldn’t budge.

All four prisoners were in the same predicament: collars pulled tight against stainless-steel rings. Hands grabbed at necks, feet pushed against white walls, but none of them could move away.

They all stood there, waiting.

“Mama!” the boy screeched, finally finding his voice. “Qué está pasando?”

“No sé,” she said. “Sea valiente. Lo protegeré!”

For some reason, Aggie recognized that last bit of Mexican.
Be brave. I will protect you
.

But the mother couldn’t do anything. She was as powerless as the boy was.

The sound of a big key ratcheting open a metal lock silenced them all.

The white prison gate swung out.

Was this really happening? Everything seemed to blur; the walls blazed with a white that couldn’t possibly exist in the real world.
A bad trip, a bad trip, that’s all this is, I’m tripping
.

When he saw what walked through the cell door, Aggie’s instincts took over. It didn’t matter if he was high, dreaming or stone-cold sober — he pulled harder than he’d ever thought possible, pulled so hard he almost choked himself out … but still the collar refused to budge.

Men in hooded white robes with rope belts tied around their waists. Only they weren’t
men —
they had the faces of monsters. A pig, a wolf, a tiger, a bear, a goblin. Twisted, evil smiles, beady eyes blinking away. Something primitive and raw inside of Aggie screamed for deliverance. Pig-Face carried a wooden pole, perhaps just over ten feet in length. The pole ended in a stainless-steel hook.

The five robe-covered monsters moved slowly toward the boy.

The boy, their child, like my daughter was my child, with her skin as smooth as melted chocolate. My daughter, please don’t kill my daughter
 …

The Mexican man screamed with rage. Aggie blinked, shaking away the memories that he’d worked so hard to leave behind.

The woman screamed, too, hers one of heart-wrenching fear. Her son mimicked the sound, his all the more hurtful for its high-pitched terror.

The boy saw the monsters coming for him. He thrashed like an epileptic, spit and blood dribbling from his mouth, his eyes so wide that even from fifteen feet away Aggie saw the boy’s full brown irises. The boy clawed at his collar, his fingernails cutting into his own soft skin.

The man continued to shout threats that Aggie didn’t understand, protective rage roaring out and echoing off the white walls.

The white-robed men ignored him.

They stopped a few feet from the boy. One of them produced some kind of remote control and hit a button. The boy’s chain loosened. He shot forward, but only made it four feet before the chain yanked taut again and his feet flew out from under him. The boy fell hard on his back. He rolled to his hands and knees, screaming, crying, bleeding, trying to get up, but the five were on him. Black-gloved hands reached out from white sleeves and held him tight. Pig-Face reached down with the pole and slid the steel hook through the back of the boy’s collar.

The one with the remote control hit another button. The boy’s chain went completely slack and slid free from the hole in the wall. It hit the
floor with a cascading rattle, one end still connected to the collar, the other end connected to nothing.

Pig-Face gripped the pole and walked to the door, dragging the boy along behind him. The loose chain trailed along like a dead snake, links ringing against the stone-and-brick floor.

Aggie wanted to wake the fuck up, and wake the fuck up
right now
.

The mother begged.

The father roared.

The boy’s clutching fingers left thin red smears against the white floor. Pig-Face walked out the door. He turned right and vanished behind a corner. The boy slid out behind him, dragged by the pole. The last sight of him was his chain, pulled out of the room with a final, thin ring when it clanged against the open, white jail-cell door.

The other monsters walked out. One by one, they turned the corner and were gone. Goblin-Face was the last to leave. He turned and pushed the cell door shut behind him. It clanged home, the metallic sound echoing and fading as the mother’s screams went on and on.

R
ex sat in the waiting room of St. Francis Hospital, a new cast on his broken right arm. The cast ran from above his elbow down to his hand, wrapping across his palm, leaving his thumb peeking out of a white hole. Stupid thing would be on for at least four weeks.

A feeling of pure dread hung in his chest and head, dragging his chin down almost to his sternum. The arm had been bad, real bad, but now Roberta was coming.

Alex Panos had nothing on Rex’s mother.

He sniffled back tears. They didn’t have money for this. They didn’t have insurance. But Alex had
broken his arm
 … what was Rex supposed to do?

She came through the doors, saw him immediately and made a beeline right for him. Roberta: too skinny, nasty wiry hair that smelled like cigarettes, and that disgusting skin.

She stood in front of him. His chin tried to dig itself even deeper into his chest. She stared. He wanted to just die.

“So you were fighting again?”

Rex shook his head no, but even as he did it, he knew better.

“Don’t lie to me, boy. Look at your goddamn nose. You were fighting again.”

He felt the tears coming. He hated himself for crying. He hated her for making him cry. He hated Alex for all of it.

He hated his life.

“But they attacked me, Mom, and—”

“Don’t you call me that!”
Roberta’s voice carried through the waiting room of St. Francis, drawing stares from the walking wounded awaiting treatment. She saw the glances, lowered her voice to a nasty hiss. “You just stop it right now,
Rex
. Do you have any idea what this is going to cost me?”

Rex shook his head again. The tears streamed down his face.

Roberta huffed and strode over to the billing desk. Rex tried to slink even deeper, but there was nowhere left to go. Roberta and the woman behind the counter exchanged words, then the woman handed Roberta a bill.

Roberta read it.

Then she turned to look at him, and the world grew colder.

Rex hid his face in his uncasted hand, tears wetting his palms. He rocked back and forth. He didn’t want to go with her, but he had no place else to go.

He had no one.

C
lauser.”

Someone shook his shoulder. Bryan tried to say something to the effect of
leave me alone or I’ll kill you
, but all that came out was a three-syllable mumble.

Another shake.

“Clauser!”

Captain Sharrow’s voice. Bryan blinked awake.

“Clauser, this isn’t the place for a nap.”

Damn … he had fallen asleep at his desk.

“Sorry, Captain.”

Jesse Sharrow glared down. His white hair and bushy white eyebrows framed his weathered scowl. Bryan started to stand up; his butt cleared only one inch of airspace before aching muscles and bones froze him in place, then promptly dropped him back down on the chair.

“Good God, man,” Sharrow said. “Wipe that drool off your chin, will you?”

Bryan touched his cheek: cold and slimy. Well, that was certainly a way to score points with your boss. He wiped away the spit.

Sharrow pointed to the stack of paper on Bryan’s desk. “Reprint that.”

Spots of drool had soaked into Bryan’s report.

“Sorry,” Bryan said.

“Go home, Clauser. You’re a dumb-ass coming in here like this, bringing your germs in with you. You want to put the whole department down?”

“I wasn’t planning on making out with anyone, Captain. Except for you, of course.”

“Blow it out your ass,” Sharrow said. “You’re so ugly you make my wife look hot. And that’s saying something.”

“It sure is.”

Sharrow snarled and pointed a finger a Bryan’s face. “Watch it, Clauser. Don’t talk bad about my wife.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Seriously, go home.”

“But, Cap, I still have paperwork for the shooting review board to—”

“Shut your piehole. Get out of here. In fact, don’t bother reprinting that report, just email it to me — I don’t want to touch anything that’s come anywhere near you. Be out of here in the next ten minutes.”

Sharrow turned and stormed off.

Bryan hadn’t taken a sick day in four years. But falling asleep at his desk, drooling on paperwork … maybe it was for the best if he cleared out. With both hands flat on the desk, he pushed himself to a standing position, every muscle screaming the biological equivalent of horrid obscenities.

A crumpled-up twenty-dollar bill landed on his desk.

Bryan looked up. Pookie had thrown it.

“Take a cab,” Pookie said. “I’m not driving you.”

“Don’t want a sick guy in your car?”

Pookie let out a
pfft
noise of disgust. “You’ve already been in my car. I’m not driving you because you said you’d make out with Sharrow and not me. I have feelings, you know.”

“Sorry about that.”

Pookie shook his head. “Men. You’re all pigs. Do I need to call you an ambulance instead of a cab?”

“No, I’m good.”

Bryan shuffled out of the office and headed for the elevator. The sooner he got to sleep — in an actual bed — the better.

A
rare, quiet moment at home.

Robin was taking advantage of the time to sit on her couch and do nothing. Nothing but scratch the ear of her dog, Emma. Emma’s head rested on Robin’s lap.

Emma wasn’t supposed to be on the couch. She knew that, Robin knew that, yet neither of them was motivated enough to do anything about it. Robin was home so little these days she didn’t have it in her heart to scold the sixty-five-pound German shorthair pointer for wanting to be closer. Robin slowly swirled the dog’s floppy black ear. Emma moaned in happiness with a doggie equivalent of a cat’s purr.

As Robin’s responsibilities grew, so did her time at the morgue. Thankfully, her next-door-neighbor, Max Blankenship, could almost always swing over to take care of Emma if Robin worked late. Max would take Emma to his place to play with Billy, Max’s gigantic pit bull. Max was sweet, kind, clever, handsome, sexy as hell and had a key to her apartment — the perfect man, if not for the small fact that “Big Max” was as gay as gay gets.

Robin’s cell phone rang. She looked at it, but didn’t recognize the incoming number. She thought of ignoring it, but it might be work related so she answered.

“Hello?”

“Doctor Robin Hudson?” asked a woman’s voice.

“This is she. Who is calling, please?”

“Mayor Jason Collins’s office. The mayor would like to speak with you. Can you hold for a moment?”

“Uh, sure.”

The phone switched to elevator music. The mayor’s office? It was ten o’clock at night. And more than that,
the mayor’s office
? Why would the mayor be calling her?

Because it was the mayor who appointed the chief medical examiner.

Oh, no … had something happened to Dr. Metz?

The on-hold music clicked off. “Doctor Hudson?”

She’d heard his voice dozens of times on newscasts. This wasn’t a prank. Holy shit.

“Yes, this is Robin Hudson.”

“This is Mayor Collins. Sorry to bother you so late at night, Doctor Hudson. Do you prefer to be called
doctor
or can I just call you Robin?”

“Robin is fine. Is Doctor Metz okay?”

“Sadly no,” the mayor said. “Doctor Metz suffered a heart attack earlier this evening. He’s at San Francisco General.”

“My God.” Her heart suddenly pounded at the thought of never seeing her friend again, of death taking him away forever. “Is he going to make it?”

“They think so,” the mayor said. “He’s in stable condition, but he’s not out of the woods yet. I’ll have my office put you on the notification list. The hospital calls me with any information, I’ll be sure to relay that same information right out to you.”

“Thank you, Mister Mayor.”