Nocturnal (9 page)

Rex’s drawings were getting pretty good — no mistaking that Alex was the boy in the drawing, the boy getting his arm cut off with a chain saw held by a muscled version of Rex Deprovdechuk.

Alex smiled. “So you think you can kill me, faggot?”

Rex shook his head, the back of his head grinding against dirt, twigs and dried leaves.

Jay peeked over Alex’s shoulder. Sixteen years old and Jay already had a goatee, although it was as thin and red as the hair on his head. “Seriously, Alex, that’s a good drawing! Looks just like you!”

“Jay,” Alex said, “shut the fuck up.”

Jay’s shoulders drooped. He seemed to suddenly shrink from a five-foot-ten stud to a five-foot-six weakling. “Sorry, Alex. I didn’t mean nothing.”

Alex’s eyes never left Rex. Alex crumpled the paper, then tossed it aside.

“Boys,” he said, “hold his arm.”

Rex tried to scramble up, but Oscar was too heavy.

“Stay still, pussy,” Oscar said.

Someone grabbed Rex’s right wrist and yanked it hard, painfully stretching his arm. Rex looked at this attacker — blue-eyed Issac Moses, his strong hands locked on Rex’s little forearm.

“Jay,” Alex said, “go grab those two chunks of wood, I want to try something.”

Rex finally managed a few words. “I … won’t draw … anymore.”

“It’s too late for that,” Alex said. He looked to his right. “Yeah, those are the ones. Put a chunk under his elbow, and the other one under his wrist.”

Rex felt something hard shoved under his elbow, raising it a few inches off the leaf-scattered dirt. He watched Jay slide a piece of wood under his wrist, then looked up at the surprised face of Issac Moses, who had yet to release his hold on Rex’s arm. Issac’s mouth was always turned down, and his nose seemed too small for his face.

“Oh man, don’t do this,” Issac said. “That’s going to hurt him bad.”

Alex’s smile faded. He looked hard at Issac.

“Shut up and keep holding him,” Alex said. “If you don’t, you’re next.”

Issac’s mouth opened, perhaps to say something, then he closed it and looked down.

Alex took a step forward. His feet straddled Rex’s elevated arm. Alex looked like a towering god, blond hair hanging down, a few locks gleaming from the beams of late-afternoon sun filtering through the tree’s shade.

“I have to teach you a lesson, Rex. I have to teach you about pain.”

The tears flowed. Rex couldn’t help it. “You guys hurt me all the time!”

Alex’s smile widened. “Oh, them was just love taps, faggot. You probably even liked it. Now? Now you get to learn about
real
pain.”

Alex weighed over two hundred pounds. He was bigger than most of the teachers. He raised his leg knee-high, letting his military boot hover above the center of Rex’s forearm. Alex smiled, then stamped down hard. Rex heard a muffled
crunch
sound, then had the odd sensation of feeling
his forearm grind into the dirt while his wrist and elbow were still elevated a good two inches off the ground.

Then came the pain.

He looked before he cried out. His arm made a shallow V, an extra joint between his wrist and elbow. Oscar got off of Rex’s chest. He stood there, black curls puffed out from under his hat. Oscar was part of the circle that surrounded Rex, the circle that blocked out what little sun filtered through the overhanging tree, the circle that cast the wounded boy in complete shadow.

Tears streamed down Rex’s cheeks, down his chin, washing through the blood that smeared his face. It
hurt
so bad. His arm … it
bent
where it wasn’t supposed to bend.

Alex put his foot on Rex’s stomach.

“Tell anyone about this and you’re dead,” Alex said. “I know a hundred places to hide a body in this city. You got me, you little faggot?”

Overwhelmed with pain, humiliation and helplessness, Rex just cried. No one was coming to help him. No one ever would.

He wanted to hurt them.

He wanted to
kill
them.

A size fourteen boot kicked him hard in the ribs.

“I said, do you get me, Rex?”

Thoughts of hatred and revenge vanished, replaced by the more-powerful and ever-present fear.

“Yeah!” Rex screamed, a mist of blood and tears flying off his lips. “Yeah, I hear you!”

Alex lifted his big boot. Rex had time to close his eyes before the heel hit him in the face.

W
hen Bryan and Pookie entered the chief’s office, four people were already there. Chief Zou sat behind her desk, her blue uniform free of the slightest hint of a wrinkle. Assistant Chief Sean Robertson stood a little behind her and a little to her left. To the right of the desk, in chairs against the wall, sat Jesse Sharrow, the Homicide division captain, and Assistant DA Jennifer Wills. Sharrow’s perfectly pressed blues were a dark contrast to his bushy white eyebrows and slicked-back white hair. Wills had her legs crossed, making her skirt look even shorter than it was. A black pump dangled provocatively from an extended toe.

Zou wasn’t much for decoration. A big, dark-wood desk dominated the room. Commendations hung on the walls, as did several framed pictures of Chief Zou shaking hands with various police officers and elected officials. Two of those pictures showed her with governors of California, both the current and the former. The room’s largest photo showed Zou shaking hands with a smiling Jason Collins, San Francisco’s heartthrob of a mayor. Behind Zou’s chair, on angled wooden poles, hung the U.S. flag and the dark-blue Governor’s Flag of California.

Her desktop looked larger than it was because there was almost nothing on it other than a three-panel picture frame — a panel for each of her twin daughters and one for her husband — and a closed manila folder.

It wasn’t the first time Bryan had been in here, staring at a folder just like that one. Zou’s office felt more ominous than he remembered, the air thick with an oppressive potential of career destruction. Maybe he was justified in the shooting of Carlos Smith — now they knew the would-be shotgun assassin’s name — but justified or not, fourteen years as a cop hung in the balance.

Chief Zou gestured to two chairs in front of her desk.

“Inspector Clauser, Inspector Chang, have a seat, please.”

Bryan walked to the chair on the right, his eyes never straying from the manila folder. Its edges perfectly paralleled the edges of the desk. It couldn’t have been more dead-center if Zou had used a tape measure.

Bryan sat. So did Pookie.

Waves of nausea bubbled in Bryan’s stomach. He would have to stay focused. His whole body throbbed, but he could deal with that — what
he couldn’t deal with was losing his breakfast in the office of the chief of police.

Robertson nodded at Pookie, then gave Bryan a small smile. Was that a good thing?

Amy Zou had held the chief position for twelve years, an infinite tenure by San Francisco standards. While many,
many
in-house seminars had taught Bryan the evils of reacting to a woman’s looks, he couldn’t deny that Zou was quite attractive. By the numbers, anyway — despite being in her late fifties, Pookie said that Zou would have been officially “MILF-a-licious” if she ever learned how to smile.

She picked up the folder, opened it for a second, then put it down again and straightened it, making sure it was perfectly centered. She already knew the results, obviously; checking them again seemed more of a nervous tic than anything else.

She stared at Bryan. He tried to sit still.

Chief Zou left the folder on her desk as she opened it again. This time she leaned forward and read aloud from it.

“Regarding the incident of January first,” she said, “the use of lethal force against Carlos Smith, a resident of South San Francisco. Preliminary findings indicate that Inspector Bryan Clauser acted in a manner appropriate with the situation. Inspector Clauser’s actions saved lives.”

She closed the folder, straightened it, then stared at him. “We still have to go through the formal review board, but I can’t imagine there will be an issue. Based on the eyewitness accounts I read, I will communicate to the review board my opinion on the situation.”

The breath slid out of Bryan’s lungs. He was off the hook. “That’s great, Chief.”

Robertson came around the desk, clapped Bryan on the back. “Come on, Clauser,” he said. “You knew this was a righteous shoot.”

Bryan shrugged, tried to play the part. “I keep winding up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Robertson shook his head. “You did what had to be done, and this isn’t the first time. You saved lives. You had no choice.”

Zou turned to Jennifer. “Miss Wills? Any further comments from the DA’s office?”

“No, Chief Zou,” Jennifer said. “Considering Smith’s record of violence, even the usual San Francisco protester crowd will probably ignore this one. We’ll be ready for the inevitable lawsuit from Smith’s family, but between the witnesses and the security camera footage, we’re in the clear.”

Zou nodded, then turned back to Bryan. “I have some more good news. Steve Boyd investigated the apartment of Joseph Lombardi, also known as Joe-Joe Lombardi. Boyd found evidence to make Lombardi our lead suspect in the Ablamowicz case. We have that name because of you and Pookie.”

Bryan nodded. Lanza had given up Joe-Joe, true, but it remained to be seen if anyone would ever see Lombardi alive again. Lanza needed someone to go down for the crime, to show the Norteños that blood had been settled with blood. Odds were that Lombardi would turn up dead.

The white-haired Sharrow stood. “Chief Zou, does Clauser need to be on desk duty while this case is with the shooting review board?”

“No,” Zou said. “This was a clean shoot. Inspector Clauser, you and Inspector Chang will continue to work on the Ablamowicz task force. We need you guys too much right now to put you behind a desk. That’s it, people. Get back to it.”

He felt so relieved it almost made him forget about his sour, churning stomach. Bryan didn’t care about Carlos Smith, but he did care about his job. Anything could happen in a shooting review. Ignoring his body’s numerous complaints, Bryan stood, thanked everyone for their support, then walked out of Chief Zou’s office, happy to still be a cop.

W
arm
.

Toasty warm. Blankets. Soft blankets,
dry
blankets. Clean clothes that slid against his skin, skin that was scrubbed free of dirt and grime and sweat for the first time in months.

Aggie rolled over … and heard a metallic rattle.

He blinked a few times as he woke. Was he wearing … 
pajamas
? He flashed back to his childhood bed in Detroit, to his mother gently waking him with loving words and hugs, the smell of pancakes filling the small house. But this place didn’t smell like pancakes.

It smelled like paint. It smelled like bleach.

He was on his side, the blankets bunched up around him, lying on a mattress so thin he could feel the hard floor beneath. The world seemed to move, to
wave
, but he knew from long experience that was just the horse talking. He opened his eyes and blinked — yeah, he was still more than a little high.

Was this really happening?

Just inches from his face was a wall made of broken bricks and rounded stones, all coated with a glaze of bright white enamel so thick the surface must have been painted over and over and over again.

Something heavy hung around his neck.

Aggie’s hands shot up to find a flat, metal collar. There was barely enough room to slide a finger between the collar and his neck, but inside he felt a soft leather strip to cushion the metal against his skin.

More metallic rattling.

His hands reached behind the collar, found a chain.

He sat up, hands pulling the chain around where he could see it — stainless steel, its chromelike sheen reflecting fluorescent lights from above, each quarter-inch-thick link showing a tiny, curved reflection of his black skin and shocked face. He looked down the chain’s path. It led into a stainless-steel ring mounted flat into the white wall.

Oh, shit. Please, let this just be a bad trip
.

“Ayúdenos,” a man said.

Aggie turned away from the white wall, toward the voice, and saw a family: small boy clinging to his mother, mother clinging to him, father with arms protectively wrapped around them both.

The woman and the boy looked terrified, while the man stared with eyes that promised death to anyone that came near. Black hair, tan skin — they looked like Mexicans.

All three of them wore pajamas: pale blue cotton for the man, fuchsia silk for the woman, pink flannel with blue cartoon puppies for the boy. The clothes looked clean but well used, the same way clothes looked in the Salvation Army store on Sutter Street.

Like Aggie, they all wore stainless-steel metal collars with chains leading into holes in the wall. Aggie stood and started walking around slowly, his chain rattling across the stones beneath and behind him.

“Por favor, ayúdenos,” the man said. “Ayude a mi familia.”

“I don’t speak beaner,” Aggie said. “You speak English?”

The man shook his head. “No speak.”

Figured. Fucking people coming to this country without speaking the language.

“What is this place?” Aggie said. “What the hell are we doing here?”

The man shook his head. “No entiendo, señor.”

Aggie looked around the room. The walls shimmered, shifted — the smack made it hard to focus. He wasn’t sure if he was seeing reality or not, but the circular room looked like it had a curved ceiling, sort of like a dome, about thirty feet across with a high point maybe fifteen feet off the floor. The floor looked the same as the walls: rocks and bricks laid down in a rough, flat pattern, repeatedly slathered with enamel paint. Aggie felt like he was inside a big stone igloo.

On the far side of the room stood a door of bright white bars: a prison door.

Ten mattresses lay on the floor, one for each of the circular rings Aggie counted in the walls. Chains led out of four of the rings, connecting to Aggie and the three other people. Several loose blankets lay on each mattress. The blankets, like the clothes, had that secondhand look. But everything — from the clothes to the blankets to the mattresses to the walls — looked
clean
.