Nocturnal: A Novel

Murder Was the Case

Sleeping until noon had a way of making anything more palatable. So Bryan Clauser was a fleshy-headed mutant. So what? He was still Pookie’s best friend. He had saved Pookie’s life. Getting all worked up about this wasn’t going to fix anything. Pookie would find a way to get his boy through this. Hell, it wasn’t like Bryan was a Yankees fan or anything really unforgivable.

Emma danced around his feet. Pookie was supposed to just give one treat at a time, but he grabed a big handful and dropped them on the kitchen floor. Life is short; treats are good.

He poured a cup of coffee from Robin’s coffeemaker. Nice machine. Everything the girl had was nice. Medical examiners, it seemed, earned a bit more income than homicide inspectors.

He heard footsteps behind him, then a woman’s voice. “Did you make coffee?”

He turned with mug in hand. A sleepy-faced, yawning Robin shuffled into the dining room. She wore only a black T-shirt that was too big for her — one of Bryan’s, most likely. She sat at the table. Pookie poured a mug for her, then sat as well.

She took a sip. “I made a bunch of calls after you turned in, then I ran out of steam. My friend Dana just called from the hospital, woke me up. Erickson is stabilized.”

“He’s better?”

“Not even close,” she said. “He’s still in intensive care. He hasn’t woken up yet.”

A knife in the belly was worse than a bullet in the shoulder, but Bryan’s wound had healed up within hours. “Erickson has the Zed. Why hasn’t he healed?”

“Beats me,” Robin said. “All I have is a hypothesis. I don’t know anything about these people. You heard from Bryan?”

Pookie hadn’t. But he had received a voice mail from Bryan’s dad. Poor Mike was a mess. Maybe that was the price you paid for lying to your child your whole life, but Pookie wasn’t about to judge.

“No word from Bri-Bri yet,” Pookie said. “I think he’s okay, so don’t worry.”

She crossed her arms and slowly rubbed her own shoulders. “He’s not okay. Pookie, please, just tell me what’s really going on.”

She was hurting bad for Bryan. She wanted to share Bryan’s pain, help him through anything, but it wasn’t Pookie’s place to tell her the truth. If Bryan didn’t want her to know, that was his choice and Pookie had to back up.

“Bo-Bobbin, you know what? As you’ve pointed out repeatedly, you’re not his girlfriend anymore. It’s not your business.”

She laughed at him. “Right. Now you’re going to pretend he doesn’t belong with me? You’ve spent six months trying to get us back together.”

She leaned forward and put her hand on his wrist. “Pookie, I made a mistake pushing Bryan away. I love him. I also know him. Maybe not as well as you do, but I know him, and I think he’s real close to doing something bad. If you don’t let me help and something happens to him, you won’t be able to live with yourself.”

He didn’t have a one-liner this time. She was right, but that didn’t change anything — telling Robin, or anyone else, was Bryan’s decision alone.

“I can’t,” Pookie said.

Her eyes narrowed. He had a sudden feeling that she was looking right into his brain with that magic chick- power that women have. She turned and looked at the RapScan machine sitting on the table. Her eyes widened. She covered her mouth. “Oh my God. That second sample, it was from Bryan.”

What had he said? Was it that obvious, or had he done something to tip her off? He had to cover, and cover fast. “Uh … come on now, why would you say that?”

She turned angry eyes on him. “That’s why he went to see Mike. The second sample was X-Y-Zed, so Mike can’t be his real father.”

“Robin, the second sample wasn’t Bryan’s, it was—”

She slapped the table. “Stop it! We both know I’m right, so stop insulting my intelligence.” She pointed her finger in his face. “Don’t you lie to me one more minute, you understand me?”

Pookie leaned back. He nodded. “Okay. You’re right.”

Her anger broke. Tears welled up in her eyes.

Oh Jesus, now he had to deal with a crying woman? “Take it easy. We’ll figure something out. Bryan is my boy — that’s not going to change.”

“This isn’t about being boys,” she said. “I can’t imagine what he’s going through. Oh my God … he went to confront Mike and you let him go by himself?”

Huh — when she said it like that, it did sound kind of stupid.

She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I have to find him. He’s all alone.”

“If he’s alone, it’s because that’s what he wants.”

She stood. “This isn’t about what he wants, it’s about what he needs. You should have known that.”

As soon as she said it, he knew she was right. That Detroit-sized nuke had dropped in Bryan’s life, and Pookie had thought the man could handle it solo.

“He’s still the Bryan we know,” Pookie said. “He won’t do anything stupid.”

She wiped her eyes again as she let out another derisive laugh. “You mean he won’t do anything stupid like go into the house of a killer without a warrant or backup?”

Pookie’s eyebrows rose. Touche, Bo-Bobbin, touche.

His cell chimed the theme from The Simpsons.

Robin walked to her bedroom. Emma padded along behind her. Pookie knew she was going to get dressed, then try to find Bryan. There was no point trying to stop her.

So instead, Pookie answered his phone.

“Black Mister Burns. My day is already about as tasty as a St. Bernard turd rolled in rancid salmon poon. Whatever you have to tell me now is going to make my emotional boo-boos all better, right?”

“Only if you like your salmon-poon turd served with a side of tainted clams,” John said. “I finished that murder-rate analysis.”

Pookie sighed. “Screw it. Go ahead.”

“First some perspective. San Francisco’s population peaked in the 1950s at 775,000. Right now it’s about 767,000. Not much variation in the past fifty years, so the population is a constant against which we can evaluate murders on a basic one-to-one, year-to-year basis.”

“Do you always talk like a band nerd that played the French horn?”

“What?”

“For example, when you fuck, do you say shit like I’m going to insert my penis now, then move it back and forth in a rapid motion until one or both of us achieve an orgasm.”

“Yes, but only when I’m banging your mom.”

For the second time that afternoon, Pookie’s eyebrows rose in respect. “Point taken, Mister Burns. Continue.”

“The highest murder rate in recent memory was 1993, with 133 murders. Things have been down lately. We haven’t had over 100 since 1995. Twenty-seven years ago, however, there were 241 murders. That’s the highest the city has ever officially recorded. What that doesn’t take into account is the fact that in that same year, from January to June, there were 187 murders for an average of 31 a month. In July, it dropped to nineteen. After that, the murders dropped off to 7 a month, which is about the normal murder rate. Now, guess when Jebediah Erickson was released from detention in the California Medical Facility?”

The coffee felt funny in Pookie’s stomach. He felt like he was going to throw up. “I don’t want to guess.”

“I’ll tell you anyway. He got out that same July. Erickson gets locked in the loony bin, and a few months later the murder rate skyrockets. He gets out, things almost immediately come back down to normal.”

Yes, he was definitely going to puke. Vigilantism was one thing, but to have that kind of impact on a murder rate?