The Sleep Police Read online

  THE SLEEP POLICE

  By Jay Bonansinga

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2013 / Jay Bonansinga

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE says, “Jay Bonansinga has quickly and firmly established himself as one of the most imaginative writers of thrillers. His twisting narratives, with their in-your-face glimpses of violence, are set in an unstable, almost psychotic universe that makes the work of many of his contemporaries look rather tame.”

  His novels, which include THE WALKING DEAD: RISE OF THE GOVERNOR (2011), PINKERTON’S WAR (2011), PERFECT VICTIM (2008), SHATTERED (2007), TWISTED (2006), and FROZEN (2005), have been translated into 9 different languages. His 2004 non-fiction debut THE SINKING OF THE EASTLAND was a Chicago Reader “Critics Choice Book” as well as the recipient of a Superior Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society. His debut novel THE BLACK MARIAH was a finalist for a Bram Stoker award, and his numerous short tales and articles have been published in such magazines as THE WRITER, AMAZING STORIES, GRUE, FLESH & BLOOD, OUTRE and CEMETERY DANCE, as well as a number of anthologies.

  Jay also proudly wears the hat of indie filmmaker: his music videos have been in heavy rotation on The Nashville Network and Public Television, and his short film CITY OF MEN was awarded the prestigious silver plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival. In 2008, his feature-film debut, STASH (based on his short story of the same title collected in CANDY IN THE DUMPSTER), won the Gold Remi at the Houston International Film Festival and Best Comedy at the Iowa City and Queens International film festivals. STASH was shot in Evanston and stars Tim Kazurinsky (POLICE ACADEMY) and the late Marilyn Chambers (INSATIABLE), and was available in 50,000,000 homes via On-Demand in 2009. Jay has also worked as a screenwriter with horror legend George Romero, Will Smith’s production company Overbrook Entertainment, and Dennis Haysbert (THE UNIT).

  Jay also is a top corporate media writer.

  The holder of a master’s degree in film from Columbia College Chicago, Jay currently resides in Evanston, Illinois. He is also a visiting professor at Northwestern University in their Creative Writing for the Media program, as well as the Graduate Writing Program at DePaul University.

  Book List

  Blood Samples

  Bloodhound

  Frozen

  Head Case

  Oblivion

  Perfect Victim

  Pinkerton’s War: The Civil War’s Greatest Spy and the Birth of the Secret Service

  Shattered

  Sick

  The Black Mariah

  The Killer’s Game

  The Sinking of the Eastland: America’s Forgotten Tragedy

  The Sleep Police

  Twisted

  The Walking Dead Series

  The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor

  The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury

  http://www.jaybonansinga.com

  [email protected]

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  CONTENTS

  THE SLEEP POLICE

  A Preview of THE KILLER’S GAME

  A Preview of BLOOD SAMPLES

  A Preview of THE HEIST

  THE SLEEP POLICE

  “When I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness.”

  Job 30:26

  PART I

  THUMB SUCKERS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Things started going wrong the moment Frank Janus laid eyes on the victim.

  “Bambi—? You with us?”

  Deep in the recesses of Frank’s mind, a cog had jammed suddenly. The warehouse was mostly silent, except for the occasional crackle of a beat cop’s radio, the muffled drone of Pakistani music coming through a wall, and the incessant buzzing of greenback flies. They were summer flies. Summer-in-Chicago flies.

  And they were busy.

  “Earth to Bambi— come in.”

  The voice was right next to Frank, wowing and fluttering as though underwater, but it might as well have been a mile away. Frank couldn’t answer. He couldn’t move. His body had stalled, his gaze fixed on that white female victim lying stone dead on the cinders at his feet.

  In some adjacent building, the sound of a vinu and a dholak drum thumped incessantly.

  A vinu is an Indian stringed instrument that sounds like a sitar only lower, and a dholak drum has that hollow ring so common to Middle Eastern music. Together they can really grate on an uninitiated westerner’s ears, especially when coming through cheap walls at a crime scene.

  A big meaty hand touched Frank between the shoulder blades, and he twitched.

  “—Whoa there, cowboy, easy does it,” the big man was speaking softly in Frank’s ear.

  Detective Frank Janus tore his gaze away from the corpse, then looked up at his partner. “Sorry, D,” he murmured.

  “Where’d you go?”

  Frank wiped his mouth. “Calcutta, I think.”

  “You see something?”

  “No— whattya mean— the body?” Frank could feel a delicate trickle of sweat under his Bill Blass linen, tracking down the small of his back and into the elastic band of his boxer shorts. Frank Janus was a not a large man, but he was well put together. Compact and well groomed. Like a gentleman jock. Tastefully dressed for the Violent Crimes division, with a head full of thick, jet-black curls, which made him look even younger than his thirty-seven years, which was already pretty damn young by Detective Squad standards. Right now he was wearing paper surgical booties over his shoes so that he wouldn’t contaminate the black pools of blood. Frank also had a rubber clip on his nose—the kind swimmers and high-divers wear.

  Next to him, the big man shrugged. “Yeah, the body, the scene, whatever. You see something?”

  Frank said he wasn’t sure.

  The big man sighed, scanning the crime scene.

  They were standing inside an empty, defunct jewel warehouse in a neighborhood known as Little Pakistan. Loose bricks drifted against the walls, and broken fluorescent tubes dangled from the ceiling, some of them still flickering and humming. Most of shelves had been removed, leaving ugly whiskers of wires and plumbing sticking out of the floor. But the worst part was the smell.

  Cops have all sorts of techniques to mask the smell of a decaying human body. The wagon guys smoke cigars. The lab guys soak cotton balls in Old Spice and stick them in their nostrils. Others smear Vicks VapoRub under their nose. Frank was partial to the diver’s clip. But the problem was, the odor would get into his clothes. And into his hair. And it was a bitch to get out. No matter how many times he washed. But today, in this deserted jewel warehouse, the smell was beyond bad. It was incredible. Mostly because it was mid-August, and the temperature outside was edging toward ninety. The warehouse had been stewing in the odors of rotting food and decaying human remains for at least three days. The stench was so pronounced, the detectives seemed to be swimming through it. A pair of uniformed officers were huddled in the northeast doorway, bandannas around their faces, trying to siphon a little of the outdoors into their lungs.

/>   “Looks like we got a luncher on our hands,” the big detective said under his breath. He had menthol cigarette filters stuck in each nostril to keep the stench at bay. In cop lingo, a ‘luncher’ was a complicated murder case that the cops would probably have to ‘eat.’

  The big man was Detective Sully Deets, Frank’s partner in the Twenty-fourth for nearly seven years. Somewhere in his mid fifties, Deets was a giant pear-shaped Scottsman who favored JC Penneys sport coats and Banlon shirts. Everything about him screamed cop— from the top of his balding brush-cut down to his scuffed Florsheim wingtips. Deets was the one who had first coined the nickname ‘Bambi’ for Frank. It was ‘Bambi’ because Frank was so polite, so mild mannered, so deferential to absolutely everyone, from his fellow investigators down to the lowliest street skell.

  “Definitely a luncher,” Frank agreed softly, staring back down at the decedent.

  What was going on? The mere sight of the body was rattling Frank like it was his rookie year, like he was some squirt fresh out of the academy looking at his first cadaver. She was just a stiff, for Christ’s sake. A little ripe, maybe. But just a body. To a detective in the Violent Crimes division, she wasn’t even a person anymore. She was evidence. But Frank couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. In the blast furnace heat, Frank’s skin was starting to feel clammy-cold. His gorge was levitating. He felt light-headed. The shakes were coming.

  He quickly reached into his breast pocket and found a plastic drinking straw. He always kept one with him. It was one of those annoying habits he had picked up a few years back when he had tried to quit smoking. Chewing on a plastic straw, for some reason, calmed Frank, comforted him.

  He put the straw in his mouth and started gnawing on it, and that’s when he heard Deets’s voice again.

  “Yo Bambi—?”

  Frank looked up. “Huh?”

  Deets was looking at him. “You okay?”

  Frank nodded. “Yeah, D, absolutely, you bet.”

  Deets regarded Frank for a moment, then tossed him a container of baby powder.

  Frank nearly dropped it. Straw sticking out of his mouth, he fumbled with it for a moment, awkwardly powdering his hands. Then he pulled out his rubber surgical gloves and put them on— a ritual at the outset of every investigation, whether he planned on touching anything or not. Then he pulled out his spiral notebook. He could feel the faint tremors in his hands. He gripped the spiral bound tightly to hide the trembling from his partner and the other cops. He chewed furiously on his straw. What the hell was happening to him?

  He glanced across the warehouse. There was a thin curtain of pale blue smoke rising near the door, coming from the beat cops’ cigarettes: another technique to mask the stench. Rays of harsh daylight slanted through the haze. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, the Pakistani music was droning and warbling, the recording hitting a warped section. Frank’s chest tightened. He glanced back down at the body, his eyes burning, registering the horror, his stomach muscles clenching.

  Deets glanced across the warehouse and motioned at one of the uniforms.

  The taller of the two uniforms nodded and made his way across the cinders to the body, stopping about fifteen feet shy of the tape so he didn’t step in any of the sticky black pools (and maybe so he didn’t have to look at the girl). Dressed in starched navy blue and smelling of rancid Right Guard spray, the cop’s name was Steagal and he was first-on-the-scene.

  Deets looked at him. “When did you say the call came in?”

  “About two-thirty, came in from dispatch, check suspicious smell,” Officer Steagal said, keeping the bandanna close to his mouth, cringing at the odor.

  Deets wrote in his notebook.

  Frank was circling the body now, trying to calm down, chewing on the straw. He hoped that the other cops hadn’t noticed his trembling.

  “Anonymous call?” Deets was asking Officer Steagal.

  “Yeah, but we’re thinking it was somebody at the Hindu market or the pawn shop across the alley.”

  “Nobody’s talking, huh?”

  The uniform shrugged. “I can’t even understand if they’re giving me their first names or their last.”

  “No idea who she is?”

  Officer Steagal shrugged again.

  A few feet away, Frank was crouching down near the edge of a puddle the color of dark rubies. He clicked his ballpoint open and looked at the body. A cold trickle of ice water ran down his spine. A sitar droned behind the walls, the song of Shiva, the cosmic destroyer. Frank couldn’t think of anything to write in his notebook.

  Usually, at this early stage, Frank would assess the way the body is displayed. Is it covered? Did the killer show remorse? Is it discarded with little concern or discretion? But Frank’s mind was a blank all of a sudden. His head was spinning, and it felt like his eyeballs were going to pop out of his skull.

  Look at the girl—come on, think—what is it about her?—think, think, think, think, think— what’s the matter with you?— you’re acting like a goddamned recruit—concentrate!—what is it about the MO…

  Behind Frank, Deets was writing something else in his notebook, then asking Steagal if he could stick around until the crime lab got there.

  The uniformed officer nodded, glancing nervously back at the doorway.

  “Why don’t you wait outside while we do the initial,” Deets suggested. “Keep the rubberneckers back.”

  Officer Steagal nodded again, turned and trotted off toward daylight.

  At that same moment, crouching down near the body, Frank Janus raised a rubber-gloved hand and waved the veil of greenbacks off the corpse. The flies billowed up like a blanket peeling away in the wind, revealing the porcelain flesh of the dead woman’s face. A fuse popped in Frank’s brain.

  All at once, Frank realized what was wrong.

  The victim was clearly posed—probably post-mortem—her nude form placed on its side, curled into the fetal position, legs wrenched up against her tummy. If it wasn’t for the bouquet of gore spreading across the floor beneath her, she would have almost looked serene. Her skin was the color of rare Italian marble, her eyes closed in tranquil sleep.

  The killer had positioned her thumb in her mouth.

  The straw dropped from Frank’s mouth and landed on the ground. “Oh, Christ,” he murmured.

  “Whatsamatter, Bambi?—whattyagot?” Deets’s voice was very far away.

  “Here we go,” Frank said, picking up the straw, putting it back in his pocket, his gaze riveted to the corpse. He stood up, wiping his mouth with rubberized fingers, backing away from the pale human remains.

  “What is it, Frank?” Deets was standing there with his big hands on his hips.

  Frank looked at his partner. “I think we got a serial situation here.”

  Deets frowned. “What?—this stiff?—this guy?”

  “This guy—this MO—we’ve seen it before,” Frank said.

  “Whattya mean? Here in the Twenty-fourth?”

  “It’s a cold case, D—same signature, same thing, same damn thing.” Frank was pointing and gaping at the body as though it were a doorway into hell. “I remember it from way back, D, maybe ten years ago.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure as hell, I mean, Christ, the damn thing sent me into the worse funk of my life—”

  “Okay, that’s gonna go at the top of the GPR—”

  “Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah—”

  “Okay, Frank, now I want you to do me a favor,” Deets said evenly, gently taking Frank’s arm.

  “What?—” Frank was confused, a wave of gooseflesh washing over him. He looked at the body, then back at his partner.

  “Frank, listen to me,” Deets said. “I want you to come over here for a second.”

  The big man ushered Frank away from the body.

  Footsteps crunching in cinders, they strode across the warehouse to the opposite wall. Tabla drums and moaning kanjeera vocals penetrated the leprous brick. Fetid heat pressed down on them.
Deets made sure their backs were turned so that they were out of earshot of the uniformed officers. Frank could feel his pulse racing in his ears, his gut smoldering with nausea. Deets sighed. “Frankie, I think we got a problem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re strung as tight as a banjo.”

  Frank looked at his partner. “D, I’m sorry—I promise you I got it under control this time—”

  “I don’t think you do.”

  “I’m just trying to—”

  “You’re all jammed up again, Frankie.” Deets was speaking in a low, urgent voice all of a sudden.

  “I’m just—”

  “Frankie, listen to me—”

  “D, I’m just trying—”

  “We’ve been through this before! This stiff—if this is a serial thing, if this is the same guy, then fine—we’re gonna deal with that. But I’m talking about you.”

  “D, I’m fine.”

  “I believe you, kid. What I’m saying is, there’s a history with this thing, and there’s no shame in stepping back for a second. Maybe stopping by Area Six, maybe seeing Pope.”

  Eyes burning, Frank looked at his partner for a long, awkward moment.

  “Alright, look,” Frank said finally, a little sheepishly. “Maybe I’m a little jacked up, I don’t know.”

  “Nothing to be ashamed of,” Deets said.

  “I guess maybe I could go back to the house, check the VICAP database, maybe see if Pope’s got any time.”

  Deets gave Frank an encouraging nod. “I’ll hold down the fort, do the initials.”

  Frank nodded, then started across the warehouse, then stopped and turned back to Deets. “And D... I’m not cracking up again. I’m fine this time.”

  “I know, kid.”

  Frank turned and made his way across the cinders and out the corner doorway.