Scott Sigler - Nocturnal - A Novel

“Zer —”

“Jack!” Amy screamed.

Jack’s eyes went wide with terror. Or was that anger? Betrayal? He started to scream but she couldn’t understand him through the gag.

Rex reached up and patted the dog-face’s shoulder. “Pierre, do what the chief says. Chief Zou, if you make a move, one of your daughters will join your husband, so you better stand real still.”

The snake-face reached down and picked up Mur with one arm, pinning her arms to her sides. She looked like a frail little doll. The monster pressed the .44’s barrel under her chin, pushing her head back a bit. Now the girl was scared; her wide eyes betrayed genuine fear.

Pierre’s right hand grabbed her husband by the top of his head, big brown fingers wrapping down across her Jack’s cheeks. Effortlessly, the monster lifted him right up off the ground. Jack started to kick, but his feet were bound as well as his hands. His body thrashed as he fought to break free. The boy stepped back to avoid Jack’s heels.

Pierre never moved the shotgun from the back of Tabz’s head. Tabz shook with sobs, but she made no move to run.

Pierre lifted Jack higher. The monster tilted his dog-head to the left, so the skewed jaws opened horizontally rather than vertically. The long white teeth glinted colored plasma reflections from the TV. Pierre slowly bit down on Jack’s neck. There was the briefest second as the teeth penetrated the skin, then came the blood. Thin, spraying jets splashed against Pierre’s face, splashing on Tabz, falling on the carpet.

Jack’s body lurched madly. His knees whipped up then drove down, his bound feet kicked back and forth, his shoulders twisted as arms fought against ropes that would not break.

Amy heard herself screaming, heard words torn by panic and denial and anguish.

Pierre let go of Jack’s head, but the man didn’t fall — his ravaged neck remained tightly pinched in the skewed jaws. Pierre shook his head like a dog with a chew toy. The gag blocked most of Jack’s gurgling screams.

Amy heard a cracking sound. Pierre paused and drew in a deep breath through his long nose. As he did, Jack looked at her, eyes pleading for help. Then monster gave one final, hard shake.

Jack’s head sailed across the room.

Trailing blood, it bounced once on the La-Z-Boy, then came to rest on its side, eyes facing Amy. The pupils dilated, as if Jack saw her, recognized her. His lids closed once, then slowly opened — dead, unmoving eyes stared out.

The girls’ screams brought Amy back. She found herself lying on the carpet. She’d passed out. For the briefest of moments, she allowed herself to imagine it had all been a dream. But then she saw Tabz, gagged and screaming, her father’s blood matting her hair and dripping down her face. Amy saw the monster holding an automatic shotgun to Tabz’s head, a monster soaked with that same blood. Amy saw Mur tucked under the snake-man’s huge arm. Mur kicked and fought, but snake-man just ignored it.

And in the middle of it all, Amy saw a smiling, teenage boy.

“There,” Rex said. “That’s all done. Now I’m going to ask you more questions. Unless you want me to make you choose again, you’ll answer them.”

Amy nodded, and kept on nodding, over and over and over again.

Handiwork

Rich Verde was just about maxed out. Too many years of this bullshit. Time to start thinking about retirement. Someplace warm. Someplace with rich divorcées and enough booze to drown out any memory of this fucking city. Boca Raton, maybe?

The wind whipped at a blue tarp tied up inside a cluster of Golden Gate Park’s gnarled Australian tea trees. The trees were spooky enough all by themselves, even without the corpses that had been found hidden among the twisted, contorted trunks.

Rich and several uniforms stood just outside the tarp. He didn’t want to be in there, not with those bodies. He’d had his fill of symbol killings; more than enough for one lifetime. Baldwin Metz was on the way. The Silver Eagle would get this body out of here lickety-split.

That was the process. That was how things were done. Rich just didn’t want to be part of that process anymore.

He wondered how he was going to tell Amy. How would she take it? Well, that wasn’t his problem. She could go cry on the shoulder of that needle-dick husband of hers. Rich had put in his time. Thirty years’ worth of time, fuck you very much. He didn’t owe Amy a goddamn thing.

This latest killing, though, it was a problem. The media had got to the bodies first. Pictures of two corpses with missing hands would be all over the front page of the Chronicle . Hell, it was probably already up on the paper’s website.

Whoever this killer was, he had struck twice in as many days. Yesterday morning, the first set of bodies had turned up at Ocean Beach. And now, less than twenty-four hours later, a second set. All four victims showed the same m.o. — broken necks, missing hands and gnawed feet. Gnawed feet , for fuck’s sake. And, of course, someone had given the bodies a golden shower.

Naw, not Boca Raton. Maybe Tahiti.

The symbol had been found at both sites. He’d been at this game long enough to know it was a new killer, not the same one who had whacked Paul Maloney and those BoyCo kids. He could just tell. The only break was that this time the symbol had been carved into the back of one of the tea trees, and the media had missed it.

All this, and Amy had yet to call him back. So unlike her. Robertson was on the way, though. Sean could run things. Hopefully he’d get here before the rest of the media did.

A uniform walked down the dirt path, then ducked under a line of yellow police tape and approached.

“Inspector Verde, more media is showing up,” he said “We’ve got CBS-4 setting up now, KRON-TV’s van just pulled up into the park, and the ABC-7 chopper is closing in.”

“Just keep them all back,” Rich said. “The last fucking thing we need is for them to start asking questions about a serial killer, you know?”

“Might be too late for that, sir. I think they already have a name for him. They asked me if I knew anything about the Handyman .”

The Handyman?

Yeah, Tahiti. That would do the trick.

Aggie Gets Out!

Aggie James wasn’t sure how long he’d been following Hillary.

She had led him out of the bassinet room and back into the dark arena maze. Many twists and turns later, she’d started up a narrow set of rough steps cut into the wall. Carrying the baby, Aggie had moved so carefully, keeping his left shoulder against the wall as he made sure his right foot didn’t slip off the uneven edges.

Those steps rose forty feet to the spectator ledge. She had led him into a narrow tunnel at the back of the ledge, just a few feet away from the last step. Aggie had turned for a last look down below before going in. The ship was off to his right, back end buried in the cavern wall, front end pointing across the oblong cavern. There had been activity on the ship’s deck — Hillary’s people preparing for some kind of an event, maybe?

They’d been following the tunnel for fifteen minutes, maybe thirty, he wasn’t sure. This time, at least, she had a battery-powered Coleman lantern to light the way. She seemed to know the location of every rock, every turn, every jagged outcropping of rusted metal or moldy wood. He knew this because those things caught him, poked him, snagged him while she avoided them all with a subtle turn, a simple twist.

He cradled the knit bag in his right arm. Inside, the baby boy slept. Aggie felt the child’s faint warmth through the fabric. The boy weighed almost nothing. Aggie could carry him forever if he had to.