Nocturnal (18 page)

The hurt in her eyes told the story.
If he doesn’t want to come home
really meant
if he doesn’t love me
.

Bryan stood. “Fuck this. I’ll wait outside.” He left the apartment, slamming the door almost as loudly as Alex had.

Susie stared at the door. “Your partner is an asshole,” she said.

“Sometimes, yeah.” Pookie reached into his sport-coat pocket, pulled
out his card and offered it to her. “Your son could be in real danger. If you see anything, hear anything, anything at all, let me know.”

She stared at him, her eyes a window to the soul of a heartbroken single mother. She took the card. “Yeah. Okay. I can text you at this number?”

Pookie pulled out his cell phone and held it up. “All calls and texts go right here. I never leave home without it.”

She sniffed, nodded, then put the card in her pocket. “Thank you, Inspector Chang.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Pookie left the apartment.

Bryan was already downstairs, waiting in the Buick. “We have to get to Eight Fifty,” he said as Pookie slid in. “Captain Sharrow called.”

“Right now? We still have to talk to Issac Moses’s parents.”

“Yeah, right now,” Bryan said. “Chief Zou wants to see us.”

A
ggie James sat on his thin mattress, pajama-clad arms around his pajama-clad knees. He was rocking back and forth a little bit, which he knew had to make him look nuts, but he didn’t care because he couldn’t help it.

He wasn’t high anymore. He still didn’t know if what he’d seen had been real. He figured he’d been down here for a day, maybe two, but it was hard to tell — in the white room, the lights always stayed on and time had already lost meaning.

The place still smelled of bleach. The chains had again drawn Aggie and the others back, then a hooded, white-robed monster with a dark-green demon face had rolled in a beat-up metal mop bucket. The thing had mopped up the long, bloody streaks left by the Mexican boy’s clutching hands. The demon hadn’t said a word, had ignored the Mexican parents’ endless pleas. Once the mopping and bleaching were done, the white-robed demon left.

There had been no visitors since.

The collar was driving Aggie crazy. His skin chafed beneath it, the muscles and flesh sore from being dragged across the floor by his neck. The bottom edges of his jaw, both left and right, felt swollen and bruised to the bone.

He needed a hit. That would make him feel better, so much better. Itchy tingling crawled up his arms and legs. His stomach felt pinched and nauseated — he’d have to shit real soon. Maybe whoever had taken him would let him get back on the streets and find what he needed.

All he had for company was the Mexican couple. The woman barely talked. Sometimes she would cry. Most of the time she just sat against the wall, staring out into space. The husband tried to encourage her, his tone ringing with
don’t lose hope, our son is still alive
, but she either didn’t hear him or just didn’t care to respond.

Sometimes, though, the woman would turn to the man, say something so quiet Aggie couldn’t hear. Whenever she did, he would slowly walk as far from her as his chain and collar would permit. Then he would stand in that spot, still as a stone, just staring at the floor.

For now, they said nothing. The man sat on his ass. His wife was asleep, her head in his lap. He slowly stroked her hair.

Aggie’s stomach suddenly flip-flopped, a sour, acidic feeling that was
like an internal alarm bell. He lurched off his mattress and crawled to the metal flange set in the white floor’s center. His neck chain trailed behind him, the tinny sound bouncing off the stone walls.

He pulled down his pajama bottoms as he turned and squatted over the hole. Cold shivers rolled over his skin. His body let go a blast of diarrhea. The wet, slapping sound echoed through the room. Cramps clutched his stomach. Sweat broke out on his forehead, bringing a wave of chills. He had to put one hand on the ground to steady himself, a three-point stance/squat, his naked ass hovering over the hole. A second ripper tore out of him, smaller than the first. The cramps eased off, just a bit.

“Usted es repugnante,” the Mexican man said.

Was that Mexican for
repugnant
? The beaner’s son had been taken by monster-men, and he was worried about poop?

“Go fuck yourself,” Aggie said. “If I didn’t have these chains on, I’d beat your ass.”

Which was a total lie. The man looked like a construction worker — thin, but with wiry muscles. And all them beaners knew how to box. Hard to box when you’re chained up like an animal, though.

Maybe the guy had to say something to someone — he’d lost his boy.

You know that feeling, so cut him some slack
.

A metallic noise echoed from within the walls. Were the monster-men coming back? Aggie grabbed a wad of toilet paper and quickly wiped himself, then pulled up his pajama pants and sprinted for the hole where his chain led into the wall. Another cramp hit hard like a fist in the gut. He turned and pressed his back to the white stone — when the chain yanked his collar tight, it only jerked him a little.

The man and woman had been pulled back as well, dragged to their spots along the wall. Rage twisted the man’s face. The woman’s expression combined terror with sleepy confusion.

The ringing of the chain retractors stopped.

The white cage door opened.

Aggie held his breath, expecting to see the white-robed demons come through, but instead it was an old lady pushing a slightly rusted Safeway shopping cart. She rolled the cart into the white room, one wheel squeaking out a slow, high-pitched rhythm.

She was chubby and a bit hunched over. She shuffled along with short steps. A plain gray skirt covered her wide ass and hung down to her calves. She also wore a brown knit sweater, simple black shoes and loose gray socks. A scarf — dirty yellow, printed with pink flowers — covered her head, leaving just her wrinkled face and a little of her gray hair exposed.
She wore it like a babushka, tied under her chin so the two ends hung down past her breasts.

She looked perfectly normal, like some old lady he might see waiting at a bus stop. She smelled of candles and old lotion.

She stopped her squeaking Safeway cart a few feet away from him. Inside the cart, he saw Tupperware containers and sandwiches wrapped in clear plastic. She set a red-lidded container and one of the sandwiches on his mattress. She reached into the cart again — a juice box joined his lunch.

She looked at him. Something about her deeply wrinkled face, her deep-set, staring brown eyes, made Aggie want to run,
fast
, to go anywhere his feet would carry him.

She shuffled closer.

“Lemme go,” he said. “Lady, just lemme go, I won’t tell no one.”

The old lady leaned forward and
sniffed him
. Her nose wrinkled, her eyes narrowed. She seemed to hold the sniff for a moment, think about it, then she blew out a breath. She turned, waving a hand dismissively at him as if to say
you are not worth my time
.

She pushed the cart to the Mexicans. She left a container, a sandwich and a juice box on each of their mattresses. She walked to the man, but stayed an inch or two out of kicking distance. She sniffed deeply, then shook her head. She turned toward the woman.

The babushka lady sniffed again. She held it in.

Then she smiled, showing a mouthful of yellow, mostly missing teeth.

She nodded.

She turned and pushed her squeaky cart out of the cell. She slammed the white-painted door shut behind her.

The chains relaxed. Withdrawal made Aggie feel like shit, but he grabbed the sandwich and tore off the wrapper. He wasn’t worried about poison — if they were going to kill him, they would have done it already. He bit off a big chunk. The welcome tastes of ham, cheese and mayo danced across his tongue. He opened the Tupperware container — hot, steaming brown chili that smelled beefy and delicious.

His stomach pinched hard, and he set the food down.

He already had to shit again.

P
ookie Chang sat in a chair in front of Chief Amy Zou’s desk, patiently counting the minutes until he could text Polyester Rich Verde a detailed variation on
YOU ARE MY BITCH
. That would be a brief moment of joy in an otherwise messed-up situation.

Bryan sat on Pookie’s right, slumped in his chair, a withdrawn ghost of himself. They’d been in this same spot just over twenty-four hours ago. One day later and their world had changed.

Once again, Chief Zou sat behind her immaculate desk. And once again, in the center of that blank desk, sat a manila folder. Nothing else except for the three-panel picture frame showing her family.

Assistant Chief Sean Robertson stood on the chief’s immediate left, almost like he was waiting for her to get up and go to the bathroom so he could sit down and take over. He also held a manila folder.

To the right of Zou’s desk, Captain Jesse Sharrow sat in a chair against the wall. He, too, had a matching folder in his lap. Whatever the hell was going on, it was clear that Zou, Robertson and Sharrow were all using the same playbook. Sharrow sat ramrod straight. He definitely had something on his mind, something that didn’t make him happy. Even his usually immaculate blues looked a tad rumpled.

Chief Zou opened her folder. Pookie saw what was inside — his case report on the Oscar Woody killing from that morning. She flipped through it.

She looked up at Pookie. “It says here you two were just driving by?”

Pookie nodded. “Yes, Chief. We were just driving by. Bryan … ah … saw the blanket, so we stopped.”

She stared at him. Stared long enough for it to become uncomfortable.

“So you just
stopped
,” she said. “For what looked like a homeless man in an alley? I didn’t know you were such a humanitarian, Chang.”

“I smelled it,” Bryan said quietly.

Goddamit, Bryan, shut the fuck up
.

Zou turned her stare on Bryan. “You smelled
what
, Clauser?”

Bryan rubbed his eyes. “I … I smelled something, something that—”

“Urine, Chief,” Pookie said. He flashed Byran a glance. Bryan blinked, then leaned back in his chair — he got the message:
let Pookie do the talking
. Pookie didn’t want Bryan to say another word. If the guy slipped up and mentioned his dreams, he’d be screwed.

“We were at the Paul Maloney scene,” Pookie said. “We smelled urine there. When Bryan smelled urine at Meacham Place, and we saw what looked like a prone guy under a blanket, we just stopped. Call it cop instincts.”

Zou again looked at the case report.

She probably just wanted to get everyone on the same page. Oscar was a kid, his murder particularly brutal, and that meant the media was all over it. The
Chronicle
had already done a special edition — Oscar’s high-school photo stared out from newspaper racks all over the city. Oscar’s body had been pissed on, as had Maloney’s. If word of that connection ever got out, the case would turn into a media circus.

Of course, Pookie was banking on that connection. He and Bryan had been first on the scene for Oscar. Zou would connect the two cases and give them both to her best team — which meant Polyester Rich could go fuck himself with a cactus.

Chief Zou kept reading. She seemed to be staring at the crime-scene photos for far too long.

Pookie glanced at Robertson. Robertson had the report open to the same page. He was staring intently at it, his gray glasses halfway down his nose.

And Sharrow as well, the report open on his lap, his bushy-white-eyebrowed eyes focused on the blood symbol.

The way they all stared, so intently … it was spooky.

Chief Zou looked up. “Who have you talked to so far?”

“We canvassed the area,” Pookie said. “We couldn’t find anyone who saw or heard anything that night. We talked to Kyle Souller, principal at Galileo High, where Oscar attended. We tried to speak with Oscar’s parents, but they’re too upset to talk about it yet.”

Zou’s eyes flicked to the framed picture of her twin girls. “I can only imagine how they must feel right now.”

Pookie nodded. “They were pretty shook up. We also talked to Alex Panos, who runs BoyCo, the gang Oscar was in, and to Alex’s mother, Susan. We still need to talk to Issac Moses and Jay Parlar, the other gang members.”

Zou pulled three photos from the folder and set them side by side in a neat row above the report. Pookie had included the photos from Black Mr. Burns’s gang database. Once again he looked at the details, memorizing the faces: Jay Parlar with his scraggly red goatee; Issac Moses with his crooked nose and blue eyes; the blond hair and arrogant sneer of Alex Panos.

Zou nodded, looked at the report. “And these symbols, Inspector Chang? What have you found about those?”

Sharrow and Robertson both looked up from their reports. They stared at him. Pookie felt like a lab rat with three scientists waiting to see how he would react to new stimuli.

“Uh, we searched the RISS database,” he said. “It came up with nothing.”

“Nothing?” Zou said. “Nothing at all?”

“Nothing local, I mean.”

She nodded. Three heads again bent to look at the report, at the symbols.

He’d been joking about
cop instincts
earlier, but they were real; they suddenly lit up like his own version of Spidey-Sense. There had been information about those symbols in the system, but that information had been deleted — Zou, Robertson and Sharrow probably had the access privileges to do just that.

At this point, it was best not to let on that Black Mr. Burns was still digging deeper. But John’s name was already in the report — if Pookie didn’t at least mention John’s work, Zou might call him to the office next.

“There was one hit,” Pookie said. “A serial killer from New York, but that case has been closed for twenty years. We showed the symbol around the neighborhood where Oscar was killed — no one has seen it before. John Smith in the Gang Task Force said it wasn’t associated with any local gangs. In short, we couldn’t find shit.”