Nocturnal: A Novel

“Did you try that hairstyle out today just for the tea party?”

Mur laughed and pointed at Tabz. “Ha-ha-ha, you’ve been wearing those stupid things for three days!”

Tabz sank into her chair, little chin tight to her chest. She looked crestfallen.

“Mur,” Jack said, “that’s not nice.”

Mur didn’t catch the hint. “Mommy didn’t even notice,” she said to Tabz. “I told you it was stupid to try and be different.”

Amy slapped the table, rattling the cups in their saucers. “Mur! You stop that!”

Mur’s eyes widened. She shrank into her chair.

Amy’s tone echoed in her own ears. She’d talked to Mur not like a mother to a daughter, but like the chief of police to a subordinate. Amy hated herself at that moment — couldn’t she put the cop away and just be a mom, even for a few minutes?

Tabz stood suddenly and threw her teacup across the room. It landed noiselessly on her bed. “You didn’t notice, Mom, because you’re never home!”

Tabz ran from the room, her little dress swishing with each little step. Jack stood. He took off his flower hat and tossed it on the table as he followed Tabz out. Jack would talk to the girl, leaving Amy to deal with Mur.

“Mary, honey, I shouldn’t have yelled like that.”

The little girl’s eyes narrowed hatefully, as only a little girl’s can do. “Don’t call me that. I like Mur. And why did she have to go and ruin the party? We never get to see you.”

“Honey, I know, but you have to understand that Mommy’s job is—”

Amy’s phone let out a tone. A special tone, three dots, three dashes, three dots. S.O.S. That tone represented only one person.

She picked up the phone. He had texted her a picture. High angle, looking down onto a marble porch she recognized on sight and would never forget. The picture showed two men waiting in front of a closed door.

Pookie Chang and Bryan Clauser.

The text beneath the picture read:

THEY ALSO STOPPED BY ALDER’S PLACE. TAKE CARE OF THIS.

Amy felt her temper rising. She had told them to keep away. She had given them a chance.

Even before the BoyCo murders, Robertson had wanted to bring Bryan and Pookie into the loop, wanted to tell them everything. Amy had said no, trusting her instincts that the men weren’t the kind of people who could properly manage the gray areas. The picture Erickson had texted showed — quite clearly — that her instincts had been dead-on. Bryan and Pookie were by far the best inspectors on the force, but they just wouldn’t listen.

Just like another cop almost thirty years ago, right, Amy? Remember how you wouldn’t listen when Parkmeyer told you to back off? Remember what happened because you didn’t?

She became aware she was alone in the room. Mur had left. Amy looked at the tea set, at the empty chairs. She was missing her daughters’ childhoods. They had been born only yesterday, it seemed. When had they grown so big?

She wanted to be with them, but she had a job more important than anyone could ever know. Not even Jack knew all of it. Amy stood, gave the table one last, longing look, then headed downstairs.

Time to put an end to this.

Closing In

Rex sat in a plastic garbage can. Rex waited. Rex watched. Where had this sensation been all his life? How many hours had he wasted drawing pictures, when the real thing made him feel alive, made him feel complete?

His tummy tingled inside.

His boner had been hard for hours.

The garbage can was across the street from April Sanchez’s house. It was one of those big brown kind, wedged into a space between two houses along with the blue recyling kind and the green one people were supposed to use for compost. The garbage can smelled, but Rex didn’t care. There had only been one bag inside, which he’d moved to another can. Squatting inside, he could peek out just under the lid and watch for April.

April the meth-head. April the slut.

She had rich parents. They didn’t own part of a house, not just a single floor — they owned the whole thing, all three stories and a garage.

The kids in school talked about April behind her back, talked about how ugly she was. They called her Shrek. She wasn’t fat like Shrek, most druggie girls weren’t, but her face bore a passing resemblance. April had been the one who told Alex about Rex’s drawing. It was her fault Alex broke his arm.

The cops had to be looking for Alex, and here he was with a perfect place to hide. Last night, Rex had followed Alex here. Since then he hadn’t seen anyone but April enter or leave. She fetched pizza, bags of groceries, probably whatever Alex wanted.

Darkness was falling, but even then Rex would wait. Marco had said not to move before midnight. Rex hadn’t listened to Marco, and now Marco was dead because of it. Rex had learned a valuable lesson from that — some things needed to be done in the dark.

Marco had also told Rex that there was a real family out there somewhere, a real home. But without Marco, how was Rex going to find it?

He didn’t want to be alone.

His dreams had reached out and connected with people, made them do the things he wanted done. Rex wondered — could he do the same thing when he was awake? It was worth a try. And anyway, it was a long time until midnight and he had nothing else to do.

How could this work? Did he … what … throw his thoughts? Maybe if he just focused, really concentrated on his need to find these people.

Rex closed his eyes.

He took a long, deep breath.

Find me, he thought. Find me.

The Stakeout

Bryan walked around the block for the sixth time. West on Jackson, south on Gough, east on Washington, north on Franklin. Then reverse, go back the other way. A slow walk, looking all around at everything, looking for places to hide.

There were eight- and ten-story apartment buildings on the other side of Franklin Street. He could go up on those roofs and watch the front of Erickson’s house. But big apartment buildings meant a lot of windows, and that meant any number of people could be looking out those windows at any hour of the night. If the archer wanted to enter or exit the big gray Victorian, he wouldn’t go out the front where so many people could potentially see. He’d have an exit behind the house, or maybe out on the roof and down the side … something hidden.

Bryan used his phone to call up a satellite map of the house and the block. The top-down view might give him ideas. Erickson’s house had a backyard, a pretty big one by San Francisco standards. Tall buildings surrounded that backyard, hiding it from view. Could he get up on one of those buildings? He flicked his fingers on the screen, zooming in on the map. There, on Jackson Street, a tree that looked taller than the building it was next to. He traced the route with his fingertip — if he could scale that tree, he’d be on the roof of a building that abutted Erickson’s backyard. Bryan would be four stories up, giving him a perfect view of the rear of Erickson’s mansion.

He nodded. Yes, that was the spot.

He couldn’t shake a persistent adrenaline buzz. This guy, this Savior, he was a real