Nocturnal: A Novel

Rich Verde was just about maxed out. Too many years of this bullshit. Time to start thinking about retirement. Someplace warm. Someplace with rich divorcees and enough booze to drown out any memory of this fucking city. Boca Raton, maybe?

The wind whipped at a blue tarp tied up inside a cluster of Golden Gate Park’s gnarled Australian tea trees. The trees were spooky enough all by themselves, even without the corpses that had been found hidden among the twisted, contorted trunks.

Rich and several uniforms stood just outside the tarp. He didn’t want to be in there, not with those bodies. He’d had his fill of symbol killings; more than enough for one lifetime. Baldwin Metz was on the way. The Silver Eagle would get this body out of here lickety-split.

That was the process. That was how things were done. Rich just didn’t want to be part of that process anymore.

He wondered how he was going to tell Amy. How would she take it? Well, that wasn’t his problem. She could go cry on the shoulder of that needle-dick husband of hers. Rich had put in his time. Thirty years’ worth of time, fuck you very much. He didn’t owe Amy a goddamn thing.

This latest killing, though, it was a problem. The media had got to the bodies first. Pictures of two corpses with missing hands would be all over the front page of the Chronicle. Hell, it was probably already up on the paper’s website.

Whoever this killer was, he had struck twice in as many days. Yesterday morning, the first set of bodies had turned up at Ocean Beach. And now, less than twenty-four hours later, a second set. All four victims showed the same m.o. — broken necks, missing hands and gnawed feet. Gnawed feet, for fuck’s sake. And, of course, someone had given the bodies a golden shower.

Naw, not Boca Raton. Maybe Tahiti.

The symbol had been found at both sites. He’d been at this game long enough to know it was a new killer, not the same one who had whacked Paul Maloney and those BoyCo kids. He could just tell. The only break was that this time the symbol had been carved into the back of one of the tea trees, and the media had missed it.

All this, and Amy had yet to call him back. So unlike her. Robertson was on the way, though. Sean could run things. Hopefully he’d get here before the rest of the media did.

A uniform walked down the dirt path, then ducked under a line of yellow police tape and approached.

“Inspector Verde, more media is showing up,” he said “We’ve got CBS-4 setting up now, KRON-TV’s van just pulled up into the park, and the ABC-7 chopper is closing in.”

“Just keep them all back,” Rich said. “The last fucking thing we need is for them to start asking questions about a serial killer, you know?”

“Might be too late for that, sir. I think they already have a name for him. They asked me if I knew anything about the Handyman.”

The Handyman?

Yeah, Tahiti. That would do the trick.

Aggie Gets Out!

Aggie James wasn’t sure how long he’d been following Hillary.

She had led him out of the bassinet room and back into the dark arena maze. Many twists and turns later, she’d started up a narrow set of rough steps cut into the wall. Carrying the baby, Aggie had moved so carefully, keeping his left shoulder against the wall as he made sure his right foot didn’t slip off the uneven edges.

Those steps rose forty feet to the spectator ledge. She had led him into a narrow tunnel at the back of the ledge, just a few feet away from the last step. Aggie had turned for a last look down below before going in. The ship was off to his right, back end buried in the cavern wall, front end pointing across the oblong cavern. There had been activity on the ship’s deck — Hillary’s people preparing for some kind of an event, maybe?

They’d been following the tunnel for fifteen minutes, maybe thirty, he wasn’t sure. This time, at least, she had a battery-powered Coleman lantern to light the way. She seemed to know the location of every rock, every turn, every jagged outcropping of rusted metal or moldy wood. He knew this because those things caught him, poked him, snagged him while she avoided them all with a subtle turn, a simple twist.

He cradled the knit bag in his right arm. Inside, the baby boy slept. Aggie felt the child’s faint warmth through the fabric. The boy weighed almost nothing. Aggie could carry him forever if he had to.

Finally, Hillary stopped and turned.

“Move carefully here,” she said. “Step only where I step.”

She set the lantern down and stepped aside so Aggie could see a small stone forest; fifteen or so piles of stacked rocks rose from floor to ceiling. No, not piles, columns. The columns supported big slabs of concrete, chunks of old brick wall and blackened squares of timber. This strange ceiling ran the final fifteen feet of tunnel, right up to where it dead-ended at a giant, dirty sheet of plywood. It didn’t take a genius to see the plan — make any column fall and the whole kit-and-caboodle would collapse, filling the tunnel with tons of dirt and rock.

Hillary gestured to the ceiling. “You understand?”

Aggie nodded.

She slid around the first column. Aggie watched her. She looked like an old lady, but didn’t move like one. Her agility and balance complemented the ridiculous strength Aggie already knew she possessed.

With each step, she wiggled her shoe in the dirt, leaving a clear footprint to show the safe path.

She slid around the second column, then waved him on.

Holding the baby-filled bag to his chest, Aggie followed in Hillary’s footsteps. He took his time. She didn’t seem to mind.

As he passed the third column, he felt something … some kind of trembling beneath his feet. An earthquake? The rumbling increased. With it came an echoing, grinding roar. How could there be an earthquake now, when he’d almost made it out? Aggie held the baby close, looked up, and waited for death.

The rumbling subsided. The roar faded away.

Hillary was laughing silently, again waving him on.

Two minutes later, they’d passed all the columns save for one. The final column was less than two feet from the piece of plywood. Hillary grabbed the plywood by a pair of metal handles screwed into it, then slowly slid it aside, revealing a hole perhaps three feet wide. The hole led into a deep blackness.

Aggie felt the tender kiss of something he hadn’t known for days … a breeze. Fresh air. Well, not fresh, it smelled of metal and grease, but it was far fresher than the still air he’d breathed since he woke up in the white dungeon. He again felt the rumbling — something big, something mechanical, something getting closer.

Hillary held up a hand, palm out. The gesture said stay there, don’t move. Aggie waited. She turned off the Coleman, leaving a blackness that made the walls close in.

The sound grew louder. The tunnel rumbled. Suddenly there was a flash of light, the roar of metal wheels on metal tracks.

A Muni train.

He was in the San Francisco subway.

Aggie tried to calm his breathing. He couldn’t allow himself to believe this was it, that he was really getting out.

The Muni train passed, its roar a fading echo.

Hillary turned the lantern back on. The columns hadn’t collapsed. “Now you go,” she said. “Do you remember what I told you?”

Aggie nodded. She was giving him life. He would honor his promise to her. No way he was going to wind up as a groom. No way.

He turned to hand her the baby so he could duck out of the hole, then paused. A sudden, all-powerful twang of anxiety ripped through him: What if Hillary took the baby and ran?

She waited.

“I’m going to set the baby down,” he said. “Can you step back?”