Nocturnal

Big Pimpin’

FOUR DAYS LATER

Pookie Chang limped up the steps of 2007 Franklin Street. The porch had been cleaned of debris. Yellow hazard tape was strung between posts, marking the danger of the broken rail that Bryan had driven Erickson through just a few days ago.

Pookie glanced back to his Buick. Night was falling. The streetlights were slowly flickering on. John Smith leaned against the passenger door, sipping on a cup of coffee. He smiled and gave Pookie a thumbs-up.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Pookie tucked the manila folder under his arm. Someone had replaced the wooden front door. The new door was tasteful, artistically etched, and solid steel.

Pookie pressed the door buzzer.

He still ached. He was beat to hell. His body would recover, but would his mind? That shit had been too much for anyone to see, let alone a modest, God-fearing boy from Chicago.

The door opened. Bryan Clauser stood inside. He looked fine. Days earlier, he’d had burn blisters, broken fingers and a line of staples up his ravaged cheek. Now the only thing marking that face was a neatly trimmed dark-red beard.

At least his face looked okay. His eyes? They stared out in a way they never had before. Bryan had seen too much, too soon.

“Bri-Bri,” Pookie said. “How’re they hanging?”

Bryan shook his head. “Sorry, Bro, the name is Jebediah now, although I may just go by Jeb.”

“That does have more of a Dukes of Hazzard feel to it, but I’d rather not see you in short-shorts.”

“In that case, just call me Mister Erickson.”

Pookie laughed. “Yeah, sure, I’ll get right on that. You gonna invite me in or what?”

Bryan nodded quickly and stepped aside. Pookie walked in. Like before, the house’s old-time finery overwhelmed him. Only now the place didn’t belong to some crazy old man … it belonged to his crazy best friend.

Pookie followed Bryan into the living room, again taking in the teak, marble, polished brass and fancy-pants picture frames. Emma sat curled up in a beautiful, gold-gilded Victorian-era chair. The dog had a white bandage wrapped around her head. She saw Pookie and started wagging her tail, although she made no effort to get up.

Pookie pointed at Emma. “Bri-Bri, I know you have all the culture of a stale Milwaukee’s Best spilled in the bleachers of a tractor pull, but you might want to get the dog off a chair that costs more than my Buick did when it was new.”

“Emma can sit wherever she wants,” Bryan said quietly. “She lives here.”

Pookie heard the tone in Bryan’s voice. Emma was the man’s last connection to Robin. The dog would have the run of the house, to say the least.

Pookie walked to Emma and carefully twirled her ear. Her eyes narrowed in a quiet doggy smile. He patted her rump, then turned back to Bryan.

“So you own all this now?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“Well, Erickson still owns it,” Bryan said. “It’s just now I’m basically Erickson.”

“You’re looking pretty fly for a seventy-year-old.”

Bryan nodded. “Yeah, well, the mayor is going to take care of that. He knows some people.”

“What kind of people?”

“I’m not sure,” Bryan said. “Powerful people. All I know is now I’m the Savior. I’m willing to go along with it for now.”

“So you’re not going to make this insanity public? You suddenly buying into Zou’s line of BS about property values and how people don’t need to know?”

Bryan chewed his lip, then shook his head. “I don’t care about that right now. I think Sly got away. So did Firstborn, maybe. There were hundreds of those things, but we didn’t see hundreds of bodies. The tunnel we came out of is gone. I need to figure out where the rest of Marie’s Children went. And if Robin’s killer is out there, I have to find her. Hunting is going to occupy my nights, Pooks. I don’t give a shit who foots the bill.”

Pookie nodded. His moral imperative to bring a vigilante killer to justice wasn’t quite the same when said vigilante had saved his life. Twice. And after the things Pookie had seen, how close he’d come to death … maybe this way was better after all.

“Hey, you clean out that wacky basement yet? Could have one hell of a yard sale, I imagine.”

Bryan shook his head. “Hell no. A trophy room is for trophies.”

A trophy room?

“Uh, Bri-Bri, you’re not taking up taxidermy, are you?”

Bryan shrugged, said nothing.

Pookie could only pray that Bryan kept at least a shred of his sanity and didn’t go down the same path Erickson had.

“I’ve got some good news,” Pookie said. “Word at Eight Fifty is that Chief Robertson is clearing you of the murder charges for Jeremy Ellis and Matt Hickman.”

Bryan nodded. “The mayor made sure that would happen. Robertson brought him to the hospital yesterday to talk to Amy.”

Chief Amy Zou was now just Amy?

“Is it true she’s staying here?”

“Once she gets out of the burn ward, yeah,” Bryan said. “Amy’s a wreck, Pooks — physically and mentally. She won’t talk at all. She’s not all there, man. I don’t know if she’ll ever recover from what she did. I’m getting her help, the best money can buy. The girls are staying here until she gets out.”

Bryan Clauser, former bachelor-cop, now the caretaker of two little girls. “You know anything about raising kids?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Until a couple of days ago, I didn’t know anything about killing monsters. You figure out which one is more complicated. What about Aggie James? Anyone pick him up yet?”

“Yeah, that’s the not-so-good news, Bri-Bri. It seems there was a lot of confusion at the hospital after the shootout. At about six A.M. that morning, an Officer Johnson walked into the maternity ward.”

Bryan shook his head, then laughed admiringly. “No way.”

“Way. Funny thing about a badge and a gun is most people don’t stop to validate your ID. Once he got in the maternity ward, he just took the baby and ran. We’re looking for him, but as of yet he and the baby are nowhere to be seen.”

“Jesus,” Bryan said. “That baby, he’s like Rex. We have to find him.”

Pookie nodded, but wondered what Bryan would do if he found the child. Killing a monster was one thing — murdering a baby was quite another indeed.

“So, Bryan, if His Highness the Mayor cleared your name, why don’t you go back to being my good buddy Bryan Clauser?”

Bryan paused. He looked at Emma. “Because Bryan Clauser never really existed at all. And after all that went down … well, he’s just gone, Pooks. Leave it be.”

Pookie would, but only for now. Chief Zou wasn’t the only person wrecked by all of this — so was Mike Clauser. No matter what it took, Pookie would patch things up between the father and son.

Bryan looked down to the folder in Pookie’s hands. “That for me?”

Pookie handed it over. “The Handyman struck again last night.”

Bryan opened the folder and glanced over the crime-scene photos. “Victims five and six,” he said. “And again with cutting off the hands.”

“We’ve got nothing, Bri-Bri. He leaves the symbols, but that’s it. You and I both know the police will never find this guy. It’s you, or he keeps going.”

Bryan nodded. He closed the folder. “That seems to be the way things are. Pooks, it’s getting dark. You want to come out hunting with me?”

Pookie had known that question was coming, yet all his well-rehearsed and oh-so-clever answers had vanished. Bryan was made to do this — Pookie Chang was not.

Pookie shook his head as he walked to the front door. “I can’t. Me and my new partner have to look into a murder in Japantown.”

Bryan seemed confused at first, then he opened the front door and looked out to the street, to Pookie’s Buick. John Smith waved.

“Black Mister Burns is your … your partner?”

“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”

Bryan stared, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s good. John came through big-time, Pooks. You could do a lot worse.”

Pookie wanted to say I could do a lot better, if only I was man enough to go hunting with you, but he didn’t.

Bryan forced a smile. “If you don’t mind, I gotta get ready to go to work.”

“Say no more, Brother.”

Bryan held out his hand. “Thank you, man.”

Pookie shook it. “Thank me? You saved my life for the second time.”

Bryan looked down. “Yeah, well … I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t stood by me. Now that Robin is gone, you … well, you’re all I’ve got.”

Pookie pulled him in and hugged him. “Gimme some sugar, you big lug. I’m glad you pinched off that emotional nugget before you go back to being all reserved and resigned and whatnot.”

Pookie thumped Bryan on the back, then let go. “Good hunting, my friend,” he said, then walked away from Bryan’s mansion.

Pookie felt like a loser for not backing Bryan’s play, but it was just too much. All that death — Robin, Baldwin Metz, Jesse Sharrow, Rich Verde, all killed by something that Pookie still couldn’t truly accept as real. And what he’d seen in that cavern, how close he’d come to dying himself.

For now, at least, Bryan Clauser was on his own.