Scott Sigler - Nocturnal - A Novel

Rich focused on the task at hand. It was the little things that got a cop killed, like routine traffic stops or just talking to the wrong person at the wrong time. In this line of work, survival meant assuming that everyone who saw you wanted you dead.

He approached the Deprovdechuk place. A few people — mostly Chinese, mostly old — moved along the sidewalks. Verde angled around an old lady that had to be ninety. Her steps were so tiny she looked like a bobble-headed stop-action character.

This was the Chinatown for the locals, not the Chinatown for the tourists. Many windows were open, filled with shirts and pants drying on hangers or dangling from improvised clotheslines. Some store signs were mostly in Mandarin with a little bit of English beneath, while others had no English at all. Massage parlors, beauty shops, art galleries that never seemed to be open, all in storefronts squashed down by the three- and four-story apartment buildings above them. He’d made calls to some of those apartments. The Chinese could pack ten, eleven, even fifteen people into a standard one-bedroom.

Rich stopped when he saw 929 Pacific. “This is it,” he said.

“Huh,” Birdman said. “I bet they’re the only round-eyes in this building, if not the whole neighborhood.”

The Deprovdechuks lived in a tenancy-in-common, or “T.I.C.” The three-story house had two parallel columns of typical bay windows. Automobile soot smeared and darkened once-white walls. Seven concrete steps led to three side-by-side wooden doors. One door would lead up to the third floor, one to the second, and the last entered into the Deprovdechuks’ ground-floor flat.

“Let me do the talking,” Rich said as he pressed the door buzzer.

“Don’t I always?”

Verde heard footsteps coming from inside the house. Little footsteps.

The door opened a couple of inches before a snapping chain-lock stopped it. Halfway down, a tiny face looked out.

Verde’s nose caught a faint, ripe smell, just a trace of it. He knew that smell …

The boy’s face wrinkled with distrust. “Who are you?”

“Inspector Verde, San Francisco Police,” Rich said. “Are you Rex?”

The boy’s jaw dropped, his eyes widened. He slammed the door shut so hard the wood rattled and the glass cracked. The slam made the air swirl, and another whiff of that odor tickled Rich’s nose.

He recognized it: unforgettable, unmistakable.

The smell of a corpse.

Rich drew his Sig Sauer. Before he could say anything, Bobby drew his own. At least the kid was fast when it mattered.

Rich slid to the right side of the door, shoulder on the frame, gun in both hands and pointed up. “Do it!”

Bobby lifted a big Doc Marten and push-kicked. The door slammed open, ripping the metal chain free and sending it spinning down the hallway’s hardwood floor. Bobby went in first. Rich followed, saw Rex sprinting down the long hall. The boy ran through the last door on the left and slammed it shut behind him. Bobby ran after him. Just inside the front door, Rich glanced into the living room on his left — a woman’s body, faceup on the floor, a belt wrapped around her neck. Eyes open and staring. Splotchy facial bruising. Purple discoloration around the skin just above and below the belt. A gray pallor covered the corpse’s other exposed areas.

Rich saw all this in a half-second glance. He looked back down the hall, saw Birdman kick through the bedroom door and point his gun inside.

“Lie down on the floor!” Bobby screamed into the room.

That’s when Rich felt the footsteps behind him.

He turned, but too late. Something smashed into his back, driving his head into the unforgiving wall. As he fell, he had a glimpse of a man racing past — long black beard, white wife-beater, green baseball cap.

The man carried a hatchet.

By the time Rich hit the floor, the bearded man had closed in on Bobby. Bobby saw the man coming and turned to fire. The hatchet slid through the air.

Two shots, so close together they sounded like one.

The hatchet hit Bobby on the right side of his neck and drove down into his sternum. Rich would never forget that sound, that whiff-crunch sound of the blade digging home.

Rich scrambled to his knees. He raised his gun and fired, pop-pop , but watery eyes and wobbly hands threw off his aim. The bearded man gripped Bobby’s shoulders and turned fast , putting Bobby’s back toward Rich.

The tip of the hatchet stuck out between his partner’s shoulder blades.

That cut his heart in half .

The man yanked the hatchet free and stepped backward into the room, grabbing Bobby’s gun as he did.

Rich couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.

Bobby’s right arm hung down low, swinging sickly from the gaping wound as if it had no bones at all. He took a single, short, staggering step, then his legs gave out. He fell face-first. Rich saw blood pour out of him, spreading across the wood floor.

That cut Bobby’s heart in half. You can’t help him. Get out. Get out. Get back up .

Rich found his feet under him, found himself backpedaling, right hand pointing his gun, left hand grabbing his radio.

“Eleven ninety-nine! Eleven ninety-nine! Officer down! Officer down at nine-twenty-nine Pacific, get me some fucking help, now !”

He backed out of the door and into the evening air.

Marco

Rex’s heart beat so fast. He looked at the bloody man standing in his bedroom. The man held a gun in one hand, a blood-dripping hatchet in the other. Two red spots dotted the chest of his white tank top, at least where Rex could see it beneath the tangled beard that hung down to the man’s belly. The man’s green baseball hat said JOHN DEERE in yellow letters.

Rex recognized him — the man from the street, the man who had tried to stop Rex from getting the bum’s change.

The bloody man should have seemed like a walking nightmare. He’d just killed a cop in Rex’s hallway. He had weapons. Rex had nowhere to run. But instead of feeling afraid, Rex felt a warmth blossom inside his chest, a vibration that went ba-da-bum-bummmm .

The vibration told Rex that everything would be okay. He just knew it.

“Hello,” the man said.

“Hi,” Rex said.

The man stared down. He looked nervous. “My name is Marco.”

“I’m Rex.”

The bearded man quick-peeked back into the hall. He nodded, as if satisfied with what he saw or didn’t see out there. He faced out the door, his hands in front of him. Was he …

Was he undoing his pants?

He was. Rex heard a quick trickle of pee hitting the body in the hall, then the man zipped up and turned back into the room.

“You peed on him?”

The bearded man nodded. “Yeah. Had to mark it, you know? Uh … I think you should maybe come with me.”

“Why?” And why wasn’t Rex afraid?

“Sly told me to watch over you,” Marco said. “I saved you from those cops. But cops are like bugs, there’s always more on the way.”

Sly . Rex knew that name. He had sketched it on one of his drawings.

“You’re very important,” the man said. “Please, come with me. I’ll take you home, to your family.”

Rex stared at the stranger. Family? That was crazy. His dad had died when Rex was little. Roberta was also dead — Rex had seen to that. That was his “family” … so why did Rex know this bearded stranger was telling the truth?

The man quick-peeked again. Seeing nothing in the hall, he continued. “We’ve waited a long time for you. A real long time. We can protect you.” The man pointed to Rex’s desk, to the drawing of Alex and Issac lying there. “We can protect you from them.”