Nocturnal: A Novel

“Inspector Chang,” she said, then walked inside. “Shut the door. We need to talk.”

She looked as neat and pressed as she did in her office at the Hall. Pookie looked at the clock on his wall — 9:07 P.M. Did this woman ever put on a friggin’ pair of jeans?

He shut the door. He suddenly thought of Mr. Biz-Nass’s thrice-broken nose. His eyes flicked to the polished gun holster hanging from Zou’s polished belt.

His gun was in the bedroom. And he was wearing nothing but a towel. Awesome.

Zou brushed off Pookie’s couch, then sat.

Her eyes bore into him. “I told you to leave it alone.”

Pookie thought of lying, but why bother? She wasn’t here for a slap and tickle.

“Chief, we know about Marie’s Children. We know you deleted the symbols out of the database. We know you ripped up case files, we know you took all the Golden Gate Slasher info out of the newspaper morgue.”

She crossed her legs. “The law doesn’t care about knowledge, Chang. It cares about proof. You have none.”

She was right, and it pissed him off to no end. How could she be so callous about it, so casual?

“We know about the Zed chromosome.”

She smiled. “Do you even know what that means?”

“Not really.”

“Neither do I,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter, because that information went the way of the computer records and the newspaper articles.”

Pookie shook his head. This woman disgusted him. “How do you justify letting a vigilante run free, above the law, murdering whoever he thinks did something wrong? How can you look your daughters in the eye when you kiss them good night?”

The mention of her daughters hit a chord. Her eyes narrowed in anger. She stood.

“How can I justify it? Because I saw the bodies!” Her hands balled up into fists. A lifetime’s worth of repressed rage seemed to explode. “Have you ever seen a half-eaten six-year-old? No? Well, I have, Chang. Dozens of them. Have you ever seen an entire family of five gutted, their intestines used to make art? Have you ever seen a row of severed heads in different stages of decomposition, the fucking trophies of a psycho killer the cops couldn’t find?”

The outburst left him speechless. So much for the stone-eyed Chief Zou — she vibrated with anger.

“Well, Chang? Have you?”

He shook his head.

“Until you have, don’t judge me, you got that? And I don’t have to justify anything to you. I am the goddamn San Francisco chief of the goddamn police! I’m sworn to protect this city and that’s exactly what I do! This saves lives, and you are trying your best to fuck that up!”

She stopped suddenly, her lips curled back, her chest heaving.

Pookie had never heard her raise her voice, let alone blow up like this. She made Bryan look positively sane by comparison.

Zou opened her hands, let them fall to her sides. The cold expression returned. “Sometimes, Chang, the right thing isn’t written in the law books.”

“We don’t get to make that decision,” he said. “Cops enforce the laws, we don’t pick and choose which ones count.”

She shook her head and laughed. “Jesus, you sound just like I did.” Her hands smoothed her coat at her stomach, a motion to help her regain control rather than to adjust her uniform. “I’ll give you one thing,” she said. “I’ll give you this one thing, then you never speak of it again. You know about Erickson, don’t you.”

Pookie nodded. “Yeah. He was committed for murder.”

Zou paused, seemed to think her words through. “Then look something up for me. Oh, pardon me, have John Smith look it up for you. Tell him to analyze San Francisco’s murder rate when Erickson was in the asylum. And by the way, you’re fired.”

“What?”

She held out her hand. “Gun and badge.”

“Fuck you.”

“I warned you. You’re done. So is Clauser. Now, give me your gun, and your badge.”

Pookie remembered the look of rage on Bryan’s face when Zou had confronted them over Blackbeard’s body. Remembered it, because Pookie knew he now probably wore that very same expression.

He walked to a tray he kept next to his TV. He picked up his badge in its leather bifold and tossed it to her. She caught it, put it in her pocket.

“And the gun,” she said. “No, actually, just tell me where the gun is.”

“Nightstand next to my bed.”

She walked into the bedroom. He’d imagined getting the chief into his bedroom more times than he could count, but not this way. Fired? Bryan was going to shit an egg roll.

Zou walked back into the living room, then stopped and stared at him. “Step away from the door, Chang.”

He realized he was blocking her path. He stepped aside, giving her plenty of room.

She opened the door, made it halfway out before she turned. “You and Clauser are finished in San Francisco. Bay Area as well. Let’s just go ahead and say all of Northern California. But with one phone call, I can get you both homicide jobs in any city in the country. Think about where you’d like to go. That’s what you get from me if you stop all this bullshit and stay away from Erickson.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then maybe you should look into employment as a prison guard,” she said. “Because that’s the only way you’re going to see Bryan Clauser again.”

She stepped out, then shut the door quietly behind her.

Well, this had turned into one gigantic Mongolian cluster-fuck. Fired. What was next, a bullet in the back of his head? He didn’t have a shred of proof to go against her. No matter what he and Bryan said, it was their word against hers. Who would she have on her side? Only a chief medical examiner who the world thought walked on water, the assistant chief of police, and the goddamn mayor. What could Pookie counter with? An overly lethal homicide inspector, a medical examiner who would be portrayed as coveting the CME’s job and willing to discredit him to get it, and a computer nerd who was afraid of his own shadow and should have left the force years ago.

Zou held all the cards. She also held his gun.

Pookie reached behind the TV, felt for his backup and found it. He pulled the Glock 22 holster off its Velcro strips. At least he was armed again.

It was over. Amy Zou had won. She had gotten away with it and would continue to do so. Pookie had to break the news to Bryan and hope Bryan didn’t go ape-shit crazy in the process. Maybe some extra info could take the edge off, something to put a positive spin on this turd-in-a-punchbowl of a situation. What had Zou told him to look up? Oh, right: the murder rate when Erickson was in the loony bin. Whatever that was, maybe it could help make things more palatable.

Pookie dialed Black Mr. Burns.

And where the fuck was that kung pao shrimp?

Come and Play

Bryan waited.

Bryan watched.

He sat on an old five-gallon paint bucket he’d found on the roof, his head just high enough to see over the roof’s low wall. He’d positioned himself so a smokestack rose behind him — no silhouette, no outline. Six stories