Nocturnal: A Novel

force trauma: fists, elbows, feet and knees, most likely.

Severe lacerations covered his abdomen. Severed pieces of intestine dangled out like bloody gray-brown sausages speckled with yellow globs of fat. She realized that the intestines had been pulled out, torn up, then crammed back in. That was the work of a person — animals didn’t stuff your guts back in for you.

“Any evidence that could lead to the perps?”

“Tons,” Jimmy said. “Sick bastards used the vic’s blood to write long live the king on a brick wall, and make some weird occult drawings. It’s all in the photos for you.”

“Good,” Robin said. “So, where’s the arm?”

Sammy shrugged. “We couldn’t find it.”

Jimmy checked his watch. “Well, that does it for me today. I’m heading home. Robin, if you have any questions, call me, but I’m sure Bryan and Pookie can answer anything.”

The sound of his name stopped her cold. “This is Bryan’s case?”

“He and Pookie were first on the scene,” Jimmy said. “I’m out. Later.”

Robin threw the departing Jimmy a half-wave. She pushed away any thoughts of Bryan Clauser and focused on her job. She did a slow walk around the white table. Oscar had been a big kid. Five-ten, would have been about a hundred and eighty pounds if the arm had been attached. Hopefully the arm was discarded somewhere and would soon turn up. If the perp still had it, that probably meant he was keeping it as a trophy. A trophy-taker could mean a serial killer. Or, perhaps even more messed up, the arm had been an atta-boy treat for the attacking animal.

“Soft-tissue damage looks like it extends to the back,” Robin said. “Let me look at the scapula. Sammy, can you flip him over?”

He did. The scapula remained intact, scraps of tacky human meat still plastered to the bone. She saw two long, parallel gouges about three inches apart — matching lines that curved and zigzagged. She lifted her camera, leaned in and snapped a picture. Sammy would have a complete set of shots for this and everything else, but Robin liked to record key areas with her own eye and angles.

She let the camera drop to her chest, then reached out and gently probed the torn shoulder.

“You guys are probably right about an animal,” she said. “These parallel gouges would be consistent with marks made by canines, like something bit him and shook him.”

Sammy smiled at her. “Like I said, rottie, eh?”

She gave a noncommittal shrug. “Maybe.” She looked at the wide space between the parallel teeth gouges, tried to imagine the size of a dog that owned those teeth. “Jimmy might win the bet after all. I won’t rule out a big cat, as weird as that would be in the middle of San Francisco.”

“Fascinating,” Sammy said. “You know, this sounds like great conversation material. Why don’t we talk about it over dinner. Say, tomorrow night? I’ll pick you up at eight.”

Robin looked up from the body and smiled. “Sammy Berzon, did you guys really have a bet on what kind of animal killed this boy, or did you connive your way in here to ask me out on a date?”

He smiled and held up his right hand. “Guilty as charged. I know this cafe on Fillmore with outside seating, so we can take your dog.”

She laughed, felt her eyebrows rise in surprise admiration. “Wow, you’re good. Invite the dog, too?”

He gave a half-bow. “You have to know the battlefield, my dear, but you make it pretty easy. Your desk is covered with pictures of the pup. He’s cute as hell.”

“She.”

“Sorry, she. So, how about dinner?”

Sammy was a handsome man. He had rugged features, although maybe he spent a little too much time on his blond locks. Robin’s mother had always said don’t ever date a man who spends more time on his hair than you do. As a criminalist, Sammy knew the horrors she dealt with on a daily basis. They had that in common. And he’d catered to her near-obsessive love of Emma. Obviously, he was a perceptive guy. She looked back down to the corpse. Sammy would undoubtedly be a great date, but she just wasn’t up for it.

“Thanks, but … uh … I don’t think I’m good dating company.”

“Come on. You and Bryan split up six months ago. Live a little, eh?”

She felt her anger rising, but fought it down — he was asking her out, after all. “You know how long it’s been since we broke up?”

Sammy smiled. “Of course. Six-month rule. I couldn’t ask you out for six months out of respect for the Terminator.”

Her smiled faded. “Don’t call him that.”

His smile faded as well. He knew he’d made a mistake. “Sorry,” he said. “I mean, it’s not really an insult, you know?”

She nodded. She hated the nickname. It insinuated that Bryan was cold-blooded, a machine that could just kill without remorse. She knew that wasn’t true. Still, in the bizarre world of male logic, the nickname was a compliment and Sammy hadn’t meant anything by it.

She tried to change the subject.

“And what do you mean by the six-month rule?”

“You can’t ask a brotha’s girl out for six months,” Sammy said. “It’s man law. The six-month rule is kind of like an expiration date in reverse.”

Men. Impossible to understand. “So … I was sour milk, and now I’m fit to serve?”

“You got it. How about instead of telling me no, you just take a rain check on dinner?”

“Fine. I’ll take a rain check.”

Sammy’s wide smile returned. “Works for me. Later, gator.”

He walked out of the morgue.

Robin wondered how many people knew Bryan had moved out six months earlier. Everybody in the medical examiner’s department, probably, and obviously even more than that. Big city, big police force, but still a relatively small group of people that dealt with the steady influx of dead bodies.

She turned her attention back to the one-armed boy. The shoulder wounds were definitely from a big animal, but she’d test the collected saliva just to confirm it.

She’d start with a short tandem repeat analysis test. The STR would come back within hours and provide a genetic fingerprint of the victim and the attacker or attackers — if those attackers were human, that was. That test would find thirteen key loci in human DNA that she could run against CODIS, the FBI’s genetic database of known criminals. Sometimes it was just that easy — process the evidence, isolate the DNA, submit it to CODIS and get a hit.

Robin hoped they’d get lucky and identify the killer right away. Such savagery was beyond even the normal gunshot, knife and blunt-force trauma deaths she dealt with all the time.

This was part of the reason she’d chosen an ME career instead of continuing on in medicine. In a world heading down the drain, she was part of the solution. Her job was intel, really. Intel in the war against crime. She provided the data that helped the guys on the front line — guys like Bryan and Pookie.

Bryan. Not the time to think of him. He’d moved out, and she’d moved on.

Robin closed her eyes, cleared her thoughts. She had a job to do. And if someone actually had taken the arm as a trophy, a very important job.

Rex Gets Good News

School had started an hour ago, but Rex wasn’t there for it. No way he was going there. No way.

The cast on his arm was a badge of shame, a brand of weakness. Some would snicker; others would outright laugh at him. Everyone in school would know who broke his arm. That didn’t matter to Roberta — all she cared about was getting him out of the house. He’d pleaded with her to let him stay home, even cried a little, and all he