Nocturnal: A Novel

Even in the rain and the wind, Rex smelled something that made his brain buzz, made his chest all vibratey.

He smelled blood.

Alex’s blood.

Marco was probably dead. Rex felt sad about that. Marco had been a nice guy. He had obeyed. Rex had watched the brief fight between Marco and the man in black, then that arrow hit Marco in the chest. And just after that, Rex saw Alex running away.

Maybe Rex could have helped Marco, but he could not, would not let Alex Panos escape.

Rex had followed Alex, using the night, the rain, the wind and the blankets to stay as hidden as possible. He couldn’t believe how well the blankets worked — when he did pass people on the sidewalk, they steered clear. No one wanted to talk to a stinky bum. Rex was a shadow, like those black panthers in the jungle that moved so quiet no one saw them.

He had nowhere to go. The cops would know he’d killed Roberta, so he couldn’t go home. He couldn’t go back to Marco’s basement — what if Marco had ID on him with that address? The cops would look there, too. Rex didn’t even have a place to sleep.

And he didn’t care, because sleep didn’t matter.

What mattered was the hunt.

Rex felt alive, Rex felt strong, Rex felt like he could walk all night and into the next day. Sooner or later, Alex Panos would stop.

And then, Rex would make him pay.

The Arrowhead

Robin prepped for autopsy.

She’d had the overnight ME staff help her shoot the x-rays, then brought the body into Dr. Metz’s private autopsy room. Once the body was prepared, she sent the overnight staff out to pick up the bodies of Susan Panos and Issac Moses, leaving her alone in the morgue.

The RapScan machine was almost finished with the tests on Rex Deprovdechuk’s sperm and the blood from Bobby’s assailant. She carried the machine into the private autopsy room so she’d get the results as soon as they came up.

The private room was just a smaller version of the larger main room. It even had the same old-school wood paneling. There was enough space for a single autopsy table, an area to walk around it, and counters and cabinets along the walls.

Robin was already regretting her decision to do what Bryan and Pookie had asked. Rushing a murder scene, leaving the scene — that was not the behavior of a senior medical examiner. And only now did she realize they hadn’t given a shred of proof to back up their claims.

Had she really been foolish enough to think she didn’t love Bryan anymore? She would do anything for him; it had always been that way, probably always would. He didn’t return that love, and that hurt, but it didn’t change the fact that she would never be able to let him go.

In the parlance of Pookie Chang, unrequited love sucked donkey balls.

Time to get down to business.

Despite Rich Verde’s dead-on description, she knew this wasn’t Bobby Pigeon’s killer. The body on the table was that of an out-of-shape slob, beer gut and all. There was no way he had the sheer strength needed to drive a hatchet through Bobby’s clavicle, part of his scapula, three of his ribs and an inch into his sternum. She also doubted the bearded man would have had the upper-body strength needed to tear off Oscar Woody’s arm. And, most of all, his teeth were perfectly normal — he didn’t have the wide incisors necessary to make those parallel grooves on Oscar’s bones.

So this man hadn’t killed Bobby or Oscar.

Robin flipped down her face shield. She stepped on a button that started her audio recorder, then picked up a scalpel from the tray next to the table.

“Beginning autopsy on John Doe. Caucasian male, approximately thirty years old. One hundred eighty-six centimeters tall, one hundred four kilograms. Subject appears to have been killed by an arrow that penetrated the heart.”

She saw two small, pink, puckerish scars on his chest. Her gloved hands traced them. She hadn’t noticed those in the dark and the rain. Could they … no, they were almost healed, they couldn’t be wounds from Bobby Pigeon’s final two bullets.

“Subject appears to have two small puncture wounds on his left pectoral, incurred possibly a week ago. The first is at two o’clock and ten centimeters from the left nipple, the second is seven o’clock and seven centimeters from the right nipple.”

She looked at her notes, checking positions of the two bullet wounds on the man’s back from where Bryan had shot him. Other than those wounds and the two marks on his chest, the man didn’t have a scar or a scratch on him.

But those healed marks on the corpse’s chest … had she seen something on the x-rays?

She reached over to the portable computer stand next to the porcelain table and called up the x-ray images. A bright white spot glowed directly under the healed wound near his right nipple. Could that be a bullet?

Bobby’s bullet?

She shook her head. Bryan had shot this man twice in the back; one of those bullets had probably bounced off a rib and come to rest here.

She looked at the x-rays again. That was strange … there were three white spots.

But Bryan had only shot him twice.

Something else on the black, white and gray image caught her attention.

“Subject’s ribs appear to be thicker than expected. In fact, all bones appear to be abnormally thick. Possible high bone density due to a mutation in LDL-receptor-related protein five. Will examine more closely after initial autopsy is complete.”

None of this mattered if she didn’t get that arrow out of there in time for Pookie and Bryan to use it. That urgency now felt silly. What was going to happen? Would Chief Zou kick in the door to the private autopsy room and chase Robin out?

She picked up a scalpel with her right hand, a small hose with her left. She sliced from the right shoulder to the sternum, spraying the wound with water as she went. Diluted blood ran down the body to the white porcelain surface, then flowed into the grooves that carried it to the foot of the table, where it finally passed through a hole and into a drainage sink. She made an identical incision on the left side, creating a V anchored by the arrow shaft sticking straight out of the man’s chest. From the bottom of that V, she sliced down to the pubic bone.

Robin then peeled and cut, peeled and cut, her scalpel scraping against the sternum, the ribs and the clavicle, separating skin, muscle and soft tissue from the bones. As she grabbed, pulled and tugged, she realized the corpse’s flesh felt different than she was used to … it felt strangely heavy.

“Subject’s muscle mass feels denser than normal. Subject may have LRP5 mutation. Again, will examine in detail after initial examination is completed.”

That mutation wasn’t uncommon; she’d read about it in several journals. Denser muscle could mean more cells per square inch, and more muscle cells meant more strength. Maybe she’d been wrong — could this guy have had the power necessary to inflict those horrible wounds on Bobby Pigeon and Oscar Woody? If he was Oscar’s killer, could the Zed chromosome be responsible for these mutations? And possibly for other mutations she hadn’t seen yet?

Hell, if she didn’t get the CME position, she could probably make a living on the Zed chromosome alone. Nobel Prize winner Dr. Robin Hudson? That had a nice ring to it.

She lifted the V-flap up over the perp’s face, exposing the neck muscles, then spread the side flaps open to expose the rib cage.

Time for the bone saw.