Nocturnal: A Novel

The door to the small room opened. Pookie walked in, eyebrows raised in apologetic alarm. Walking in right behind him: Chief Amy Zou.

Robin’s heart sank. Oh, shit. There goes my chance at chief medical examiner.

“Inspector Clauser,” Chief Zou said. “Fancy meeting you here. Step out of the room, please. I’d like a word. You, too, Doctor Hudson.”

They were so busted. Robin followed Bryan and Pookie out of the room and into the long, main autopsy area. There she saw more people — Rich Verde, Mayor Jason Collins, Sean Robertson … and Baldwin Metz.

Robin ran to him, her hunger for the department’s top position forgotten at the sight of her friend and mentor. “Doctor Metz! Oh my God, it’s good to see you!”

She reached to hug him, but Robertson gently held up a warning hand. She stopped, then realized that Metz was leaning on Robertson’s other arm. Dr. Metz looked like he could barely stand at all. His normally perfect silver hair looked a bit mussed, a bit frazzled. His skin had a sickly pallor. Sunken eyes stared at her with both anger and exhaustion.

“Doc,” Robin said, “what are you doing here? You belong in a hospital bed.”

He forced a smile. “Duty calls, my dear.” He looked at Zou with an expression that seemed to say it’s your show.

Zou nodded. She turned to Rich Verde. “Can you step into the private room and tell me if that is Bobby Pigeon’s killer?”

Verde glared at Pookie and Bryan. The man’s pencil-mustached lip curled into a half-sneer. His expression combined utter rage and deep sadness — maybe Verde had yelled at his partner in public, but Birdman’s loss weighed on the man’s soul.

He walked into the private room. After only a few seconds, he stepped back out.

“That’s him,” he said. “No question.”

Mayor Collins cleared his throat. His tailored suit and perfect hair seemed out of place here, a place where people rolled up their sleeves and did the city’s dirty work. He walked over and put a hand on Verde’s shoulder. Verde’s head snapped around, but his angry expression faded when he saw the look of concern on the mayor’s face.

“A tragedy, my friend,” Collins said. “I’ll make sure the city pays proper respect to Inspector Pigeon.”

Verde looked to the ground. “Aw, fuck this,” he said, then strode out of the morgue.

Chief Zou walked to the door of the private room. She held it open, then looked at Bryan and Pookie. “Both of you, wait for me in here.”

Bryan and Pookie looked at each other, then to Robin. They didn’t know what to do. Neither did she.

“Now,” Zou said.

Pookie and Bryan did as they were told. Chief Zou shut the door, closing them in. She turned and looked at Collins.

Mayor Collins nodded, then he looked at Robin. “Doctor Hudson, Doctor Metz will take over from here. I’m disappointed in your performance tonight. I thought we could trust you. Apparently, I was wrong.”

Metz waved a hand in annoyance. “Oh, shove it, Jason. Now is not the time for that. We’re going to need her anyway.”

Need her? Need her for what? What the hell was going on?

The mayor looked back at the ill Metz, then nodded. “Sure, we’ll talk about that, but not right now. Take care of this, please.”

Metz let out a tired sigh. “Robin, go home. I’ll finish the autopsy.”

She shook her head. “No way, Doc. I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to be back in bed. You’re in no shape to—”

“Enough,” Mayor Collins said. “Doctor Hudson, your boss just asked you to leave. If you want any kind of job in this department, do what he says. Now.”

Was he threatening to fire her? She looked at Dr. Metz. He smiled apologetically, then gave her a single, long nod. Just go, I’ll explain later, the gesture said.

This whole thing was insane. Metz could barely stand — he was in no condition to finish the autopsy. But if that was the way he wanted it, then she had to respect that.

She walked out of the main autopsy room and to her desk in the administration area. She took her motorcycle jacket from a peg on the cubicle wall and shrugged it on. She removed her helmet from under the desk and started to leave … but her gaze lingered on her computer. All the genetic information she’d just run in the RapScan, that would be in the department database. She could just grab an external drive, copy that over, and—

“Doctor Hudson?”

Robin turned quickly. Chief Amy Zou was standing right there, a cold, blank expression on her face. “Did you need anything else, Doctor?”

Robin’s heart kicked in her chest. The woman had been right behind her.

“Uh, no,” Robin said. She held up her helmet. “Just needed my gear.”

“And you’ve got it,” Zou said. “So drive safe. It’s late.”

Robin nodded and quickly walked out of the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Pay the Piper

Bryan stood in the corner of the private autopsy room, as far away from the open body as he could get — which wasn’t far. What crap was Zou going to pull now?

Pookie stood next to the table, looking down at the bearded man with the missing chest. “Did Robin say this hunka burnin’ love was Birdman’s killer?”

“Yeah. Her tests confirmed this is the guy Bobby shot. But he’s not Oscar Woody’s killer, so that guy is still out there. If Zou is protecting Marie’s Children, or whoever the killer is, then—”

“She’s not,” Pookie said. “I mean, yeah, she’s protecting a killer, but not some cult. She caught me out in the main autopsy room. She was on me like a bum on a baloney sandwich. I’m looking at her, and for once I’m not thinking about how she’d be in bed, and then some pieces clicked. Remember how I told you that the bowman drew down on me, but missed on purpose?”

“Yeah. How does that connect with Zou?”

“Think about it — first time the arrow thing comes up is thirty years ago, when the Golden Gate Slasher turns up dead. Cops bury the case, they remove any and all mentions of an arrow. We now know Blackbeard is a murderer, and he was killed by an arrow. These archers think they’re vigilantes — that’s who Zou is protecting, not serial killers.”

“That doesn’t add up. Zou took us off the case to keep us from catching Oscar and Jay’s murderer.”

“Close, but no cee-gar,” Pookie said. “She got us out of the way so someone else could find the murderer.” He held a palm-up hand toward the body on the white porcelain table. “Someone who would do this, unburdened by laws, rights and procedures. Metz is in on it. He fudges the autopsy reports to eliminate any presence of the archer, just like he did for the Golden Gate Slasher case.”

Bryan looked at the body, thought of Pookie’s angle. If Zou wanted to protect a vigilante, that would explain the missing parts of the Slasher case files. Verde could pay lip service to finding the killers. Once a killer was taken out, Metz could handle the rest. If that was what was going on, Robertson was also in on it … but was the mayor?

“What about Collins? If you’re right, why would he be involved?”

“Maybe this is really big,” Pookie said. “Maybe the mayor, or someone else way up, makes sure the right people run the police department, so that no one goes after the vigilantes. Remember that a bunch of Marie’s Children were burned at the stake over a hundred years ago? What if that was the same vigilante organization we’re dealing with now? What if we’re talking about a group dedicated to taking out Marie’s Children whenever they show their little masked heads?”

Bryan remembered how Sharrow and Robertson had stared at the blood symbols from Oscar Woody’s murder