Scott Sigler - Nocturnal - A Novel

He pulled down his pajama bottoms as he turned and squatted over the hole. Cold shivers rolled over his skin. His body let go a blast of diarrhea. The wet, slapping sound echoed through the room. Cramps clutched his stomach. Sweat broke out on his forehead, bringing a wave of chills. He had to put one hand on the ground to steady himself, a three-point stance/squat, his naked ass hovering over the hole. A second ripper tore out of him, smaller than the first. The cramps eased off, just a bit.

“Usted es repugnante,” the Mexican man said.

Was that Mexican for repugnant ? The beaner’s son had been taken by monster-men, and he was worried about poop?

“Go fuck yourself,” Aggie said. “If I didn’t have these chains on, I’d beat your ass.”

Which was a total lie. The man looked like a construction worker — thin, but with wiry muscles. And all them beaners knew how to box. Hard to box when you’re chained up like an animal, though.

Maybe the guy had to say something to someone — he’d lost his boy.

You know that feeling, so cut him some slack .

A metallic noise echoed from within the walls. Were the monster-men coming back? Aggie grabbed a wad of toilet paper and quickly wiped himself, then pulled up his pajama pants and sprinted for the hole where his chain led into the wall. Another cramp hit hard like a fist in the gut. He turned and pressed his back to the white stone — when the chain yanked his collar tight, it only jerked him a little.

The man and woman had been pulled back as well, dragged to their spots along the wall. Rage twisted the man’s face. The woman’s expression combined terror with sleepy confusion.

The ringing of the chain retractors stopped.

The white cage door opened.

Aggie held his breath, expecting to see the white-robed demons come through, but instead it was an old lady pushing a slightly rusted Safeway shopping cart. She rolled the cart into the white room, one wheel squeaking out a slow, high-pitched rhythm.

She was chubby and a bit hunched over. She shuffled along with short steps. A plain gray skirt covered her wide ass and hung down to her calves. She also wore a brown knit sweater, simple black shoes and loose gray socks. A scarf — dirty yellow, printed with pink flowers — covered her head, leaving just her wrinkled face and a little of her gray hair exposed. She wore it like a babushka, tied under her chin so the two ends hung down past her breasts.

She looked perfectly normal, like some old lady he might see waiting at a bus stop. She smelled of candles and old lotion.

She stopped her squeaking Safeway cart a few feet away from him. Inside the cart, he saw Tupperware containers and sandwiches wrapped in clear plastic. She set a red-lidded container and one of the sandwiches on his mattress. She reached into the cart again — a juice box joined his lunch.

She looked at him. Something about her deeply wrinkled face, her deep-set, staring brown eyes, made Aggie want to run, fast , to go anywhere his feet would carry him.

She shuffled closer.

“Lemme go,” he said. “Lady, just lemme go, I won’t tell no one.”

The old lady leaned forward and sniffed him . Her nose wrinkled, her eyes narrowed. She seemed to hold the sniff for a moment, think about it, then she blew out a breath. She turned, waving a hand dismissively at him as if to say you are not worth my time .

She pushed the cart to the Mexicans. She left a container, a sandwich and a juice box on each of their mattresses. She walked to the man, but stayed an inch or two out of kicking distance. She sniffed deeply, then shook her head. She turned toward the woman.

The babushka lady sniffed again. She held it in.

Then she smiled, showing a mouthful of yellow, mostly missing teeth.

She nodded.

She turned and pushed her squeaky cart out of the cell. She slammed the white-painted door shut behind her.

The chains relaxed. Withdrawal made Aggie feel like shit, but he grabbed the sandwich and tore off the wrapper. He wasn’t worried about poison — if they were going to kill him, they would have done it already. He bit off a big chunk. The welcome tastes of ham, cheese and mayo danced across his tongue. He opened the Tupperware container — hot, steaming brown chili that smelled beefy and delicious.

His stomach pinched hard, and he set the food down.

He already had to shit again.

Golden Shower

Pookie Chang sat in a chair in front of Chief Amy Zou’s desk, patiently counting the minutes until he could text Polyester Rich Verde a detailed variation on YOU ARE MY BITCH. That would be a brief moment of joy in an otherwise messed-up situation.

Bryan sat on Pookie’s right, slumped in his chair, a withdrawn ghost of himself. They’d been in this same spot just over twenty-four hours ago. One day later and their world had changed.

Once again, Chief Zou sat behind her immaculate desk. And once again, in the center of that blank desk, sat a manila folder. Nothing else except for the three-panel picture frame showing her family.

Assistant Chief Sean Robertson stood on the chief’s immediate left, almost like he was waiting for her to get up and go to the bathroom so he could sit down and take over. He also held a manila folder.

To the right of Zou’s desk, Captain Jesse Sharrow sat in a chair against the wall. He, too, had a matching folder in his lap. Whatever the hell was going on, it was clear that Zou, Robertson and Sharrow were all using the same playbook. Sharrow sat ramrod straight. He definitely had something on his mind, something that didn’t make him happy. Even his usually immaculate blues looked a tad rumpled.

Chief Zou opened her folder. Pookie saw what was inside — his case report on the Oscar Woody killing from that morning. She flipped through it.

She looked up at Pookie. “It says here you two were just driving by?”

Pookie nodded. “Yes, Chief. We were just driving by. Bryan … ah … saw the blanket, so we stopped.”

She stared at him. Stared long enough for it to become uncomfortable.

“So you just stopped ,” she said. “For what looked like a homeless man in an alley? I didn’t know you were such a humanitarian, Chang.”

“I smelled it,” Bryan said quietly.

Goddamit, Bryan, shut the fuck up .

Zou turned her stare on Bryan. “You smelled what , Clauser?”

Bryan rubbed his eyes. “I … I smelled something, something that—”

“Urine, Chief,” Pookie said. He flashed Byran a glance. Bryan blinked, then leaned back in his chair — he got the message: let Pookie do the talking . Pookie didn’t want Bryan to say another word. If the guy slipped up and mentioned his dreams, he’d be screwed.

“We were at the Paul Maloney scene,” Pookie said. “We smelled urine there. When Bryan smelled urine at Meacham Place, and we saw what looked like a prone guy under a blanket, we just stopped. Call it cop instincts.”

Zou again looked at the case report.

She probably just wanted to get everyone on the same page. Oscar was a kid, his murder particularly brutal, and that meant the media was all over it. The Chronicle had already done a special edition — Oscar’s high-school photo stared out from newspaper racks all over the city. Oscar’s body had been pissed on, as had Maloney’s. If word of that connection ever got out, the case would turn into a media circus.

Of course, Pookie was banking on that connection. He and Bryan had been first on the scene for Oscar. Zou would connect the two cases and give them both to her best team — which meant Polyester Rich could go fuck himself with a cactus.

Chief Zou kept reading. She seemed to be staring at the crime-scene photos for far too long.