“Don’t mention it. But seriously, folks, you do look awful. And trim that beard, man. You’re starting to look like a gay hipster. I’ve no room for such nonsense in my life.”
Bryan’s chest pain had faded from sharpness to a dull, nagging ache, like a jammed finger, or a knot in his spine that refused to crack. He dug his right fist into his sternum and rubbed it around.
Pookie looked over. “Heartburn?”
“Something like that.”
“Not sleeping, pale as a ghost, and chest pains to boot,” Pookie said. “If we weren’t meeting Chief Zou, I’d drive you back to your apartment and tell you to take a sick day.”
Chief Zou would already have the preliminary overview from the shooting review board. A full investigation was under way — standard procedure — but the early overview would determine if Bryan stayed on normal duty or was relegated to a desk until the final report came in.
There was also the option that Zou could just suspend him altogether. For most cops, that wouldn’t be a worry. Most cops, however, hadn’t just killed their fifth human being.
“I’ll be okay,” Bryan said, which was a lie. His fever had grown during the night. He felt hot all over. He was still a little dizzy, congested, and on top of that the body aches were even worse. His knees and elbows, his wrists and ankles, all his joints felt like they were filled with gravel. His muscles throbbed with an entirely different feeling, as if someone had spent hours pummeling him with a meat tenderizer.
“Don’t breathe on me,” Pookie said. “You get me sick, I’m kicking you in the nuts. Tell me about these messed-up dreams. Anything involving either a naughty cheerleader, detention with the MILF-a-licious assistant principal, or a shy-yet-stacked nun questioning her life choices?”
Bryan laughed, a short, choppy thing that drew a raspy cough. “I wish. Weren’t those kind of dreams.”
“Nightmares?”
Bryan nodded. “Dreamed I was with a couple other guys. I don’t know who they were. We were hunting this kid as he walked down Van Ness, and at the same time something was hunting us. Something real bad, but I never saw it. Then we were going to do something to this old bum. I was still scared out of my gourd when I woke up. I had to draw something from the dream.”
Bryan pulled the sheet of paper out of his pocket, opened it and passed it to Pookie. Pookie looked at the image: an unfinished triangle with a circle slicing through the lines and under the points, a smaller circle in the center.
“Wow,” Pookie said. “Your father and I are so proud, honey, we’ll put it right on the fridge next to your report card. What is it?”
“No idea.”
“And … what happened after you drew it?”
Bryan shrugged. “The fear went away. So did most of the dream. But I think I remember
“You recognized the spot?”
“Uh-huh. Pretty sure it was Van Ness and Fern.”
“Crazy. You want to check it out?”
Bryan shook his head. “We have to get to the chief’s office.”
“We’ve got fifteen minutes to spare,” Pookie said. “Come on, this could be good material for our cop show. I can see the log-line now —
“I didn’t dream about a hit man.”
“Dramatic license,” Pookie said. “Come on, Bri-Bri, this could be like a whole episode for me. Or even a three-episode mini-arc. You in?”
Bryan remembered the crawling sense of creeping death, the fear that had gripped his stomach even as he descended on the bum. But he didn’t feel that fear anymore. And besides, it was just a dream.
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s check it out.”
Pookie changed lanes again. He left angry honks in his wake, and — as usual — he really didn’t seem to care.
Van Ness and Fern
Bryan looked around the alley. So damn familiar. Maybe he’d been here before.
Pookie lifted the lid of a beat-up blue dumpster and peeked inside. Seeing nothing of interest, he shut the lid, brushed off his hands and adjusted his sunglasses. He kept looking around the alley. “So you saw a bum. And some kid wearing crimson and gold?”
“Not sure,” Bryan said. “The kid could have
“Yeah, but this is cool. Episode is practically writing itself. It’s rare for a dreamer to think of a specific spot and not have there be some kind of a connection.”
“And you know this because of your doctorate in dream-ology?”
“Discovery Channel, asshole,” Pookie said. “There’s more to life than reality TV.”
Pookie pulled out his cell phone and checked the time. “All right, we better get rolling. Can’t be late for your chitchat with Zou. Maybe the Brothers Steve already tracked down Joe-Joe. The Steves find Ablamowicz’s killer, and we go back on nights and can grab the Maloney case away from Polyester Rich.”
Lanza had made good on Bryan’s demand for a name. That name? Joseph “Joe-Joe” Lombardi, another of the guys who had come out from New Jersey. Bryan and Pookie had immediately turned that info over to the Brothers Steve. Was that Ablamowicz’s actual killer? Bryan couldn’t say, but it was a lot more information than they’d had twenty-four hours ago.
“Let’s get out of here,” Bryan said. “My stomach is a mess. If I have to smell that dumpster anymore, I’m going to blow chunks.”
They walked out of the alley back to the Buick.
“Pooks, you need to get with reality — Zou won’t give us the Maloney case.”
“The hell she won’t.”
“Polyester Rich and Zou go way back. I heard they both made inspector about the same time.”
Pookie got in and started the car. “Mark my words, young Bryan Clauser. You and I will get this case. And when we do, we
Bryan slid into the passenger seat. He looked back to the dumpster and saw something he’d missed.
Underneath the dumpster, was that a blanket?
A red blanket.
With pictures of brown bunnies and yellow duckies.
As Pookie drove away, the nightmare’s cold echo blossomed anew in Bryan’s memory. Bryan took a breath, tried to forget about the blanket. He hadn’t
But maybe, when that was done, Bryan could find a quiet place to draw that weird picture again and make the cold feeling go away.
BoyCo
Rex ran.
They were faster than him, but he ran anyway, hoping against hope that he could find a way out or a place to hide.
Sometimes they got him, sometimes they didn’t. Every now and then he got lucky, made it to a street with
