Nocturnal

Pookie and His Partner

Pookie Chang had seen a lot of nasty things in his day. He was no stranger to dead bodies. Back in Chicago, his second homicide case involved a man who had killed his mother, then tried to dispose of the body by chopping it into chunks small enough to fit into the kicthen sink’s garbage disposal. You’re never the same after you see something like that — it changes you. He’d handled cases that showed just how evil people could be, cases that made him doubt his faith. After all, how could a loving God allow things like this to happen? Yes, he had doubted God, doubted his own ability to do the job, and on more than one occasion he’d doubted the justice system itself — but in their six years of partnership, he had never doubted Bryan Clauser.

Not until now.

Cops on the scene had cordoned off Meacham Place and just one of Post Street’s three lanes, allowing the one-way morning traffic to continue along. Two SFPD cruisers were parked at the curb. Two more were parked on the sidewalk, one on either side of the alley. A half-dozen uniforms milled about, keeping people away, calmly instructing pedestrians to use the other side of the street. Bubble-lights flashed blue and red. The morgue van sat silently, like a scavenger, waiting for the CSI personnel to finish their work before it could claim the corpse as its own.

Pookie stood on the sidewalk outside the now-open black gate. He stayed close to Bryan. Badges hung from both of their necks. Pookie stared into the alley, watching crime-scene investigators Sammy Berzon and Jimmy Hung do their thing. They wore dark-blue windbreaker jackets with SFPD in white across the back. What they found might nail Pookie’s best friend to the wall.

But the truth had to come out.

Bryan looked horrible, his green eyes and pale white skin a harsh contrast to his dark-red beard. The guy seemed to be in shock, but this could not wait, could not be put off until he felt better.

“Tell me again,” Pookie said. He spoke quietly, loud enough only for Bryan to hear. “Where were you last night?”

Bryan tilted his head closer, responded in kind. “My apartment. I went straight there after Sharrow sent me home.”

Pookie remembered Bryan falling asleep on his desk — Bryan, who’d never missed a day of work or even exhibited the slightest sniffle.

“You were sick yesterday,” Pookie said. “Feel the same today?”

“Worse. Whole body hurts. I think I have a fever or something.”

Pookie nodded. Could the fever be so bad that Bryan somehow went out last night, during the dark hours the guy loved so much, and butchered this kid? And on top of that, didn’t even remember doing it?

“So you went home,” Pookie said. “What happened then?”

“I went right to bed. I slept pretty hard, I guess. The nightmare woke me up about two-thirty, maybe three A.M. I woke up, drew some pictures, went back to sleep.”

“And no one to verify that? No girls, neighbors, landlords, nothing?”

Bryan chewed on his lower lip, shook his head. Of course the guy didn’t have an alibi. He lived alone. He hadn’t even been on a date since he’d moved out of Robin’s place.

Bryan had led them right to this corpse, even described the state of the body. For him to have that kind of detailed knowledge, he had to have spoken with someone who saw this go down, someone who actually did it, or …

… or the obvious answer: Bryan had done it himself.

Impossible.

But was it impossible? People called Bryan the Terminator for a reason. He was cold, detatched, and — most important — deadly. Had the Lanza scene pushed him over the edge?

Pookie couldn’t believe that. If it weren’t for Bryan Clauser, Pookie wouldn’t even be alive. Maybe Bryan was a bit robotic, sure, but he was also everything a cop should be — brave, dedicated and self-sacrificing. He wasn’t a murderer.

Not a murderer, maybe, but he sure is a killer, isn’t he?

Pookie couldn’t think of anything else to say, to ask. He looked back into the alley. The boy’s body still lay under the tree’s shade, lit up every few seconds by the flash of Jimmy Hung’s camera. The severed arm was nowhere to be found. In its absence was a ragged, gaping, negative-space wound that ran from the neck down to just under where the armpit would have been had the arm still been attached. Part of the collarbone jutted out, red-streaked white gleaming bright every time Jimmy snapped another picture.

On the brick wall, between the thin trees, two-foot-high reddish-brown letters spelled out a message in graffiti, graffiti made with the victim’s now-dry blood:

Pookie gently nudged Bryan, pointed to the letters.

“And that? Ring any bells?”

Bryan looked, and when he did, Pookie saw the telltale signs of recognition. The words had meaning to Bryan. Would he talk about it, or would he lie?

“Something like that in my dream,” Bryan said. “Can’t remember, exactly, but there were some words … or thoughts, maybe … they were banging through my head like someone was sending a message.”

“A message like a phone call?”

Bryan shook his head. “No, not like a phone. Like … inside my head. Crazy, right?”

Yeah, crazy. That was the word Pookie kept trying to avoid. It was more palatable than psychotic, but still not a term one wanted attributed to one’s best friend.

Pookie nodded toward the boy’s body. “Maybe before we found him, it would sound crazy. But right now I’m ready to consider anything. Tell me more.”

Bryan licked his lips. Pookie waited.

“Something about a king,” Bryan said finally. “No, not a king, with the king.”

“You sure? Was that what you heard in your dream?”

Bryan Clauser turned away from the gory scene. He stared at Pookie. Bryan didn’t look all blank and emotionless anymore — the guy was scared.

“Pooks, you’re talking to me like I’m a suspect.”

There was no sugar-coating this. It was all Pookie could do to not call for the other cops on the scene, have them help slap cuffs on Bryan and take him in for questioning.

“You are a suspect, and you know it,” Pookie said quietly. “You led us right to the body. You even told me what we’d find.”

Bryan shook his head. “Just a dream. Just a fucking dream, man. Shit like this doesn’t happen, it can’t happen.”

Pookie glanced around at the uniforms, seeing if any of them were trying to listen in. They weren’t. “Just keep it together, Bryan. Don’t say another word about it. We’ll figure this out.”

Pookie started to walk away, but a strong hand grabbed his upper arm and pulled him back. Pookie turned to face Bryan, to see the look of anguish in his partner’s eyes.

“Do you really think I could do something like this?”

The logical part of Pookie’s brain said yes, but that, too, was crazy. Why the hell would Bryan have killed this kid? Where was the motive?

“If I didn’t consider you a suspect, I wouldn’t be worth a squirt as a cop and you know it,” Pookie said. “You shouldn’t even be standing here, and you know that, too. You should be in an interrogation room. But you’re my friend and I’ve been doing this job for a long time. We’ll figure this out, but for now just shut up and don’t touch anything.”

Pookie looked back into the alley and watched the CSI team. Sammy walked slowly, with very small steps. He had his head down, a camera around his neck and in his hands. When he reached the far side, he would turn ninety degrees to the right, still looking down, take one step, turn another ninety degrees, then start slowly recrossing the alley. Every three or four steps he would stop, point his camera down and take a picture, then bend to pick something up with tweezers. He’d drop the object into a brown paper envelope, seal it up and label it. Finally, he’d write on a small folded piece of white cardboard and put that in the object’s place.

Jimmy hovered around the body, shooting the grizzly corpse from multiple angles: far back, tight shot, practically sticking the camera into the missing shoulder, on and on. The blue windbreaker was too big for Jimmy’s tiny frame, making him look even smaller than he was.

Sammy stopped walking. He straightened. Still looking down, Sammy used the back of his gloved hand to wipe a few strands of blond hair out of his eyes. Moving only his head, he looked left and right, taking in a wider area. He looked up at Pookie and Bryan, then carefully walked out of the alley.

“Sammy,” Pookie said. “How’s Roger?”

Pookie didn’t feel like making small talk, but it was an automatic impulse. Sammy’s brother had been in a car accident a few days ago. Pookie didn’t remember where he’d heard that. He had no idea why such information always stuck in his head.

“He’s all good,” Sammy said. “Out of the hospital tomorrow, I’m told. As for your one-armed bandit back there, I got an ID for you.”

Sammy reached into a pocket and pulled out a plastic bag with an open wallet inside. A driver’s license showed a kid with thick, curly-black hair. It seemed impossible that this young, healthy face had once belonged to the one-eyed, mutilated corpse in the alley.

“Oscar Woody,” Sammy said. “Pretty sure that’s him, based on the stats. We’ll get confirmation as soon as we can. He’s had that license all of two weeks. Happy sixteenth, eh?”

Pookie watched as Sammy turned the wallet for Bryan to see. Bryan’s eyes widened, just a little. Had he recognized the picture?

Sammy put the wallet back in his pocket. “That body is a real piece of work, eh?”

Pookie nodded. “You can say that again. What do you think ripped that kid’s arm off?”

“In the absence of any industrial machinery, I’d say a big animal. We found some brown hairs, about an inch long. Looks like dog fur to me.”

Pookie looked to the body. The kid had to be five-ten, maybe one hundred seventy-five pounds. “That’s not a toddler, Sammy. Tearing an arm off ain’t no easy thing. How big would a dog have to be to do that?”

Sammy shrugged. “Pit bull, maybe? Probably more like a rottweiler. Get a rottie that weighs one-thirty or so, could happen. Mastiffs can top two hundred pounds. Tear that arm off easy.”

Possible, but still … the patrol officers had already canvassed the area looking for witnesses and come up empty. Hard to imagine no one hearing a scream if a two-hundred-pound dog had bitten the kid’s arm off.

“I’m guessing the dog had help, though,” Sammy said. “There’s a security camera mounted up the building. The nice building, not the old laundromat. It was pointed into the alley, but it’s broke to shit. Looks like it was recently smashed. If the camera had been working, it would have caught everything that went down in the alley.”

Maybe the camera had been broken just before the murder. Maybe this wasn’t some random act of passion — maybe the killing had been planned. Pookie would track down whatever footage it had recorded, of course, but he already knew he’d probably find nothing of use. “Was Woody alive when the arm came off?”

“Oh, for sure,” Sammy said. “Blood splashed around like a fuckin’ fire hose, man. That’s what I want to show you. Come here and take a look.”

Pookie started following Sammy, then stopped when he realized Bryan had remained on the sidewalk. Bryan seemed to be waiting for permission. Pookie tilted his head sharply toward the alley: get over here, now.

Pookie Chang had seen many things that can and did change a person, but so had Bryan Clauser. Maybe Bryan had seen one thing too many.

Bryan walked into the alley. Pookie let him pass, then followed — he wanted to keep Bryan in sight at all times.