Nocturnal

Van Ness and Fern

Bryan looked around the alley. So damn familiar. Maybe he’d been here before. Had to have been here before. He couldn’t know this place from a dream.

Pookie lifted the lid of a beat-up blue dumpster and peeked inside. Seeing nothing of interest, he shut the lid, brushed off his hands and adjusted his sunglasses. He kept looking around the alley. “So you saw a bum. And some kid wearing crimson and gold?”

“Not sure,” Bryan said. “The kid could have been crimson and gold. It was a dream, Pooks.”

“Yeah, but this is cool. Episode is practically writing itself. It’s rare for a dreamer to think of a specific spot and not have there be some kind of a connection.”

“And you know this because of your doctorate in dream-ology?”

“Discovery Channel, asshole,” Pookie said. “There’s more to life than reality TV.”

Pookie pulled out his cell phone and checked the time. “All right, we better get rolling. Can’t be late for your chitchat with Zou. Maybe the Brothers Steve already tracked down Joe-Joe. The Steves find Ablamowicz’s killer, and we go back on nights and can grab the Maloney case away from Polyester Rich.”

Lanza had made good on Bryan’s demand for a name. That name? Joseph “Joe-Joe” Lombardi, another of the guys who had come out from New Jersey. Bryan and Pookie had immediately turned that info over to the Brothers Steve. Was that Ablamowicz’s actual killer? Bryan couldn’t say, but it was a lot more information than they’d had twenty-four hours ago.

“Let’s get out of here,” Bryan said. “My stomach is a mess. If I have to smell that dumpster anymore, I’m going to blow chunks.”

They walked out of the alley back to the Buick.

“Pooks, you need to get with reality — Zou won’t give us the Maloney case.”

“The hell she won’t.”

“Polyester Rich and Zou go way back. I heard they both made inspector about the same time.”

Pookie got in and started the car. “Mark my words, young Bryan Clauser. You and I will get this case. And when we do, we will nail Paul Maloney’s murderer. I simply won’t stand for pee-freak vigilantes in my town.”

Bryan slid into the passenger seat. He looked back to the dumpster and saw something he’d missed.

Underneath the dumpster, was that a blanket?

A red blanket.

With pictures of brown bunnies and yellow duckies.

… a little bird …

As Pookie drove away, the nightmare’s cold echo blossomed anew in Bryan’s memory. Bryan took a breath, tried to forget about the blanket. He hadn’t really dreamed about a red blanket with duckies and bunnies, he was just reverse-imprinting or something. For now, he had more important things to worry about — things like Chief Zou’s take on the shooting review board.

But maybe, when that was done, Bryan could find a quiet place to draw that weird picture again and make the cold feeling go away.