Nocturnal: A Novel

leather. He lurched forward, choking himself. His eyes bulged from rage, from a lack of oxygen.

The woman’s bloodied hand shot up through the pile of white robes, clawing at air, reaching for her man.

“Hector!”

The Mexican man — Hector — could not help her.

Hellboy pocketed the remote control. He picked up the wooden pole, then stuck the end of it into the pile of wiggling bodies and hooked the woman’s collar. Like a trained work crew, the masked men quickly grabbed the pole and dragged her across the floor.

Hector shouted a stuttering something that wasn’t a word in any language. He lurched again and again, trying to pull at a collar that would not give. Threads of blood flew from his screaming mouth. Every vein on his face stood out in bas-relief. His wet lips pulled back in a sneer of helpless anguish.

The white-robed men walked out of the jail-cell door, dragging the woman out of sight.

The cage door shut. The chains went slack.

Chest heaving, a nonsensical roar rolling from his mouth, Hector ran forward at full speed. He made it ten steps, just past the shit hole, before the chain snapped taut with an accompanying ring of metal. His feet shot out from under him and he landed hard on his left side.

Hector didn’t try to get up. He started to cry.

The woman’s screams echoed, steadily growing fainter, fainter, until they faded away for good.

Aggie slowly shook his head from side to side. This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t be. But it was, and he was stone-cold sober.

This was real.

He was fucked. Totally fucked.

Coal for the Engine

Pookie and Bryan usually worked the wee hours of the morning, when most restaurants had closed for the night. Pinecrest Diner was open twenty-four hours a day. The place had become their go-to spot when they needed to sit and talk through a case. Pinecrest was a little touristy during the day, but at two or three in the morning you could avoid the dozen people wearing I ¦ SAN FRANCISCO or ALCATRAZ PSYCHO WARD OUTPATIENT shirts.

Pookie hoped Black Mr. Burns had good info. They needed a break in this case something awful. Ball-Puller Boyd hadn’t been able to track down Alex Panos or Issac Moses — both were still missing. Those boys were either already dead, their bodies waiting to be found, or they were in hiding. Pookie guessed the latter.

And Bryan … a couple of hours of downtime with his old man would do wonders. Mike Clauser had a way of making you forget about everything but Mike Clauser. Bottom line: Bryan hadn’t killed those boys. Now that Pookie believed in his partner’s innocence, he needed Bryan to stop moping and get back on his A-game.

Pookie walked into the diner and saw Black Mr. Burns sitting at a booth, a tablet computer in front of him. John’s shoulders were up, his head was down — even coming to a public place like this was hard for him. Once upon a time John Smith had been a standout cop. Now he was afraid of his own shadow, and that was a genuine tragedy. The man had unwittingly provided his own comic relief, though: he wore a dark-purple motorcycle jacket.

A few other patrons were in the place. Three working-class guys sat in a booth, getting a carb-loaded head start on the day. A trio of hipsters sat on the diner’s round stools, leaning on the black stone counter. The latest trendy after-hours spot — that you probably haven’t heard about, because it’s so obscure — must have finally shut down, and these fellas wanted to finish off the night with a stack of pancakes.

Pookie slid into the seat across from his old partner. “What’s up, Purple Rain?”

“Huh?”

“The jacket,” Pookie said. “You rode your hog here and you’re wearing purple? Hello?”

John sighed. “So a black man in a purple jacket has to look like Prince?”

Pookie nodded. “Exactly. How’s Apollonia and those crazy kids in the New Power Generation?”

“Your minority-on-minority hate is a sad thing,” John said. “You’re letting the white man pull your strings. Listen, I have some serious business to talk about. I found some odd stuff.”

“Odd stuff? You know, you can swear around me. I’m not going to tell the teacher.”

“I’m family friendly.”

“Some things never change. So what couldn’t you tell me over the phone? I have to admit, in fifteen years of police work, this is the first time someone has called me for a sneaky-spy meeting. Except for your mom, of course.”

“Yeah, she told me about that,” John said. “She said you had a small penis.”

Pookie shook his head. John tried to partake in witty repartee, but the guy was just such a flaming nerd. “Try it with a little more slang next time, BMB. You can’t put humor on a spreadsheet.”

John shrugged. “Yeah, well, whatever. I got the info on that New York City case. Not much there. The killer targeted women in their twenties. He got four that they know of. Maybe more, because he targeted working girls, usually ones that operated solo. That triangle-circle symbol was at each crime scene. Seems he liked to eat their fingers.”

“Delightful,” Pookie said. “What was his name?”

“They never found out who he was,” John said. “Media called him the Ladyfinger Killer.”

“Cute.”

“Very. Anyway, when they found the fourth body, they also found the killer. He was just as dead as his victim.”

“How did he die?”

“Asphyxiated. His fingers had been cut off, and he choked on them.”

Poetic justice. “So we have the symbols clearly associated with a serial killer in New York. Anywhere else?”

“That’s it,” John said. “No other cases before or since. Now, here’s the sneaky-spy part.” He leaned closer. “Remember how I told you it looked like the files that included those symbols had been accidentally erased from the SFPD system?”

Pookie nodded.

“They weren’t. Accidentally, I mean.”

“Someone deleted info on purpose? You’re sure?”

“Yeah. It was really methodical.”

That was a game-changer. The symbols had been intentionally removed from the system. It seemed Bryan’s strange dreams were a part of something much bigger.

“Impressive, BMB,” Pookie said. “But I’m guessing you don’t know who did the deleting, or you would have told me already.”

John nodded. “Unfortunately, you’re right. I can’t tell who did it. What little info I have came from old indexes, and those didn’t log user names.”

“What’s an index?”

“It’s like a computer map that points to different locations on storage drives. Sometimes if you delete the files, the pointers to those files remain, and those pointers have certain information.”

“Okay, so why didn’t they also delete the pointers?”

John smiled and raised his eyebrows. “Because they didn’t know the pointers were there. Whoever deleted the files has high-level access, but they don’t know shit about computers. The fact that the index files remain means they didn’t even talk to the IT guys about it, and they sure as hell didn’t hire some hacker. A hacker would have wiped out everything.”

“So it’s not a programmer,” Pookie said. “A cop did this?”

“At least someone working in the department, yeah.”

Pookie thought back to the meeting in Zou’s office, to the way Zou, Robertson and Sharrow had stared at the symbol pictures.