Darc was scanning the clothes and exposed skin of the victim. Trey noticed in passing that the man’s head and beard had been shaved. There were a few tiny nicks that had bled, the trail of red leading down the head and face to the floor. Pre-mortem. Looked like their guy, all right.
“Darc.” Trey pointed to the shaving wounds. “This couldn’t have been Billy. Check out the blood on this guy’s cheek. It’s still wet. There’s no way he could’ve gotten home and been asleep by the time we got to his place.”
“He might have been faking his tiredness,” Darc responded, his tone flat.
“Sure, possibly, but I’m telling you, dude, if he was acting, the guy’s like Academy Award material.”
Darc seemed to ignore Trey’s assessments as he continued processing the body. Whatever. Trey moved around to view the rest of the space behind the counter. Looking into one of the corners of the shop, he stopped moving. He wasn’t even sure for a second that he was still breathing.
“Darc?”
“Yes.”
“I think I got a footprint.” Trey moved closer. There was a scattering of what looked like flour or cornstarch that had been spilled in the area. Right in the middle of it was a footprint. But there was something weird here…
The footprint was made by a woman’s shoe.
Darc was by his side in a heartbeat. Man, that guy could move fast when he wanted to. He peered down at the print.
“That is certainly an important clue, but it could have been made by another worker here.”
“No, it couldn’t have,” Trey responded. “While I was waiting for your bagel, I chatted with the owner for a while. He runs the place himself. No help.”
Darc was doing that thousand-mile-stare thing again, looking at the print, no expression on his face, saying nothing. It was a little creepy. Finally, he seemed to come out of it.
“The killer is male.”
“Yeah, okay, I get that,” Trey countered. “But this is a solid lead.”
“It is a footprint, nothing more. It can tell us little.”
“It can tell us more than a little.” Trey pointed out the print. “Check this out. In the print you can see where the logo left a mark. See the puckered lips? That’s Betsey Johnson’s logo.”
“How does that assist us?” Darc’s tone was flat, but he was still asking questions, so that had to be a good thing, right?
“These prints were made by a size 12. That’s huge for a woman. Special order huge.” Trey dug in his pocket for his cell phone. “You can’t even get those from Zappos. There’s only one shop in Seattle that would carry that size.” He dialed information and waited.
Darc was staring at him, an odd expression on his face. If Trey hadn’t known better, he would have said it was… respect.
That couldn’t be right, could it?
CHAPTER 6
The man from the C.S.I. team was livid. His veins were bulging out of his forehead, his voice was raised to extreme decibels, and his face was red.
Or he was feverish and had hearing loss. These emotional landscapes were so difficult for Darc to navigate.
“What the hell were you thinking, moving the body like that?” the man screamed.
“I have permission from the medical examiner,” Darc responded, looking around the man to attempt to catch a glimpse of Trey. Officer Keane was currently tracking down their best lead, and Darc needed to know what was happening as soon as possible.
“Dr. Murray would never give permission for someone to move a body,” the C.S.I. team member cried. “That’s impossible.”
“Perhaps implausible, but hardly impossible,” Darc said, moving around the man to join Trey on the sidewalk outside of the deli. “Especially considering the fact that Dr. Murray did, indeed, grant me that power.”
Behind him, Darc heard the man sputtering, several curse words making their way out of his mouth. It was possible the man had Tourette’s syndrome. Darc should report that possibility to his superior when he had a spare moment.
Trey turned around, shutting the cell phone. “Okay, I got a hit, but it’s a weird one.” He tapped his pencil against the pad, where he had jotted something down. “There were only two people in the last three months that bought size 12 Betsey Johnsons. One was a drag queen by the name of Devine Devilish. The other…” He held out the pad for Darc to read the name there.
“Tracy Hendricks,” Darc read.
“Yeah. The hot reporter from this morning.” Trey paused for a moment and got a distant look on his face. “Those’re pretty big feet. I can’t decide if that makes her hotter or not.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I managed to call the station she reports for. They said she’s not in today. When I asked where she might be, they gave me the address of an old abandoned studio she’s been renovating. Something about some web venture she’s working on.”
Logic trails shimmered in front of Darc’s eyes. Things were lining up, but there was one significant thread that refused to fall into place.
Their killer was a man.
This last murder could be a copycat, but, although the hair had been shaved off of the victim in a more hurried fashion than it had with the previous victims, the Roman numeral XIII had been carved into the man’s sternum. That was a detail that had not been released to the public.
Something here was not making sense.
The theme song to The Odd Couple interrupted Darc’s line of reasoning. Glancing over at Trey, he saw the vice cop shrug and grin.
“I changed it. Seemed appropriate, y’ know?”
He answered his phone. “Keane. Yeah, yeah… couldn’t get a hold of Darc. Got it.” Trey looked up at Darc and pursed his lips. “The DNA results? Yeah, okay. Whatcha got?” Suddenly, Trey’s face went completely white. He closed the cell phone.
The glowing lines in Darc’s mind quivered, waiting for the information. They could somehow sense the news was significant.
“What did they have to say?” Darc queried.
“Um. DNA’s male.”
“Yes. We already knew that.”
Trey licked his lips. “Yep. But there’s something else we didn’t know. They found high levels of estrogen and progesterone in the blood.”
As Keane spoke, the glimmering strands aligned in Darc’s mind. Their killer was Tracy Hendricks. Tracy Hendricks, the reporter. Tracy Hendricks, the Hairless Harry.
Tracy Hendricks, the transsexual.
* * *
Trey was freaking out.
That was really the only way to describe it. He wasn’t proud of that fact, but there it was.
You couldn’t be a vice cop and not run into all types of people. Strippers, prostitutes, gay men, gay women, transsexuals, you pretty much saw it all. There was, however, a distinct difference between seeing… and flirting with.
Not that Trey had an issue with transsexuals. Quite the contrary. In his encounters in the past, he’d had mostly good experiences. There had been that one guy—woman?—who had tried to kick him in his family jewels while getting cuffed. But on the whole? Nothing but positive feelings.
He’d just never met one quite so hot before.
Or one who was, you know, a serial killer. That should more than likely be the important qualifier here, but Trey couldn’t quite convince himself of that.
“Okay, okay,” he muttered to himself. “This isn’t weird. Well, it isn’t that weird. Right? Right. Is it weird?” Trey turned to Darc, who was opening up the back door to the car.
Darc didn’t give him a response, which left Trey unsure of what to think. Darc held out his hand toward Trey. Okay, now that was weird.
“What?” Trey asked. Then he noticed Billy in the back, still handcuffed to the door. “Oh, right.” He handed the keys over to Darc, who leaned in and released the hapless assistant.
Billy clambered out of the car, rubbing his wrists. “So, I’m free to go?”
“Yes,” Darc responded. “But make certain you stay within easy contact with the precinct.”
“Yeah, totally.” Billy looked to his right, then to his left. “Hey. You guys think you could drop me by my house?”
Darc just stared at him.
“No, yeah, right. I get it.” The young man looked around once more, seemed to pick what he thought was a likely direction, and waved at them. “Let me know if you need any help with the case. Seriously.” He gave Trey a significant look, then moved off, and from what Trey could tell, it was in the wrong direction.
“Okay,” Trey said, rubbing his hands together. “Off to the abandoned studio to catch a transsexual sociopath.”
“One who likely knows that we are coming,” Darc added.
“Wait. What?” This was news to Trey, and not welcome news at that.
“This killer has been nothing but efficient, precise and organized. There have been very few details she has missed.” Darc moved to the passenger side door, opened it, and got inside.
When Trey joined him, Darc let one more tidbit fall from his mouth. “That footprint was left on purpose.”
Well, that was just great, wasn’t it? Trey started the car, but didn’t shift it into gear. All of a sudden he had no desire to come face to face with Tracy Hendricks.
This wasn’t the same thing as being afraid of a girl beating him up, right?
Right?
* * *
As they pulled up to the entrance of the old studio space, Darc traced the lines of logic as they swirled about, all pointing toward this place. Blue for certainty. She was the one. She was here.
The ride over had been unusually silent. There had not been the typical jabbering from Trey to interrupt the pure flow of reason that guided Darc’s actions. That should have been helpful, yet somehow it had left him feeling… hollow. Darc found this shift in his attitude disturbing.
They exited the vehicle and moved toward the entrance. There was a metal chain holding the double doors closed, but the lock securing it had been left open. Blue strands of light flooded up from the chain.
Trey looked at Darc, his eyebrows up and asking the question. In answer, Darc slid the lock out of the chain and allowed the length of metal to slide to the ground in a rattle of links. The noise echoed off the walls of the surrounding buildings.
“I guess we go in?” Trey asked. He stifled a cough as his voice quavered and caught for a moment.
Darc swung the door open, the metal scraping against the concrete flooring inside. The grinding was a screech of desperation, of fear and loathing. The sound fell, dead and dampened, on the soundproofed walls of the darkened studio within.
Trey stepped off to the side, flipping switches that looked like they controlled the lighting within. The darkness continued unenlightened.
“Well, guess that clears up the question of whether or not she’s expecting us,” Trey grumbled. He returned to Darc’s side, a flashlight in one hand, his gun in the other.
The beam of his light swept from one side of the studio to the other, catching on random objects within. A tattered backdrop. A decrepit tripod leaning against a wall. A camera that looked large enough to take out a fair sized tank in a collision. Remnants of a better, more prosperous era, when the studio was still up and running.
Darc heard a slight scuffing noise above them. He shoved Trey to the side at the same time that he leapt in the opposite direction. A large studio light crashed to the ground right where they had been standing.
Trey got up and brushed himself off. “You missed!” he called up toward the ceiling.
“Did I?” A lilting laugh floated down from the lighting grid above, the series of catwalks that crisscrossed the entire area. “Or was I just firing a warning shot over the bow?”
“That was a warning shot? Hate to see you go in for the kill, babe,” Trey responded.
“Aw. Officer Keane. So cute and charming.” Tracy’s voice purred, silky and smooth and rough and raspy all at once. “You know, you were one small step from getting me to go home with you this morning.”
Trey cleared his throat. “Yeah. That’s what all the gender-switching hotties say to me.”
The voice above fell silent. Sounds of movement filtered down, but the directionality of the sounds was hard to determine. Strands of light removed themselves from the noises, forming a matrix in Darc’s mind. He needed additional data to determine her location.
“The shaving… a way to remove the sex of your victims?” Darc probed. The answer was unimportant. Ascertaining her position was not.
“Sure. Let’s call it that.” A slight chuckle. Another light crashed down right next to Darc, the glass from the lens shattering. A piece of the glass sliced across Darc’s cheek, drawing blood. She made a tsking sound with her lips and tongue. “Detective Darcmel. You really should be more careful.”
“Careful. Like you were careful. The precision with which you removed the hair, the detail of the Roman numerals—so refined. Exact.” Another shifting sound. More light strands descended to join the others in Darc’s mind.
“Don’t flatter me, Detective. I know you don’t mean it. Although I will say I’m a sucker for a man who truly appreciates art.”
A wrench flew down from above, catching Trey on the side of his head. He crumpled to the ground with a grunt.
“One down. One to go,” the killer called down.
From the floor, Trey’s voice drifted up. “I’m not down, baby.” He tried to get up, then let out a groan as he fell back. “Okay, I’m down, but I’m not out. Maybe. Not sure.”
To draw attention away from the downed vice cop, Darc started his conversation back up. “The Roman numerals themselves. XIII. Thirteen. That must have some significance.”
“Detective, please. With all the gender dichotomies, you can’t figure out my symbol? You strike me as smarter than that.”
The lines of logic rearranged themselves, falling into a pattern and ejecting a gleaming symbol. “The positioning of the number. The choice of thirteen. It refers to the mythical thirteenth pair of ribs that Adam possessed before God removed it to create Eve.”
“See?” Her voice caught for a moment. “Not so hard, was it? The proto-gender. Before male and female came along and ripped us all apart. Before all the pain.”
“You seek a return to some sort of sexless existence?” Darc was zeroing in on the woman’s location, the lines coalescing, condensing, narrowing their focus.
“No!” Her tone hardened, became razor-sharp. “Not sex-less. Sex-full. Complete. Fulfilled. Rather than in constant conflict.” The voice moved once more, but Darc’s threads of logic followed, tracking and pinpointing her location in real time. “You see all this? Look around you, Detective. It was finally happening. I was going to be the first transsexual celebrity. My own web show to gather in all the outcasts like me. They would have come. I know they would have. I would have sacrificed all that I had to know I wasn’t alone.
“But my investor didn’t understand. He offered to back me thinking of me only as the attractive reporter from News 2. When he discovered who I really was…”
Darc thought back to the first victim. An older man of means, known for investing in new technologies and innovative ideas. “He became your first victim.”
“He deserved it!” she screamed down. The woman took a deep breath, then restated in a much more reflective tone. “He deserved it.”
Darc had her. He lifted his gun, sighted along the lines of glowing color and fired. The sound of the shot rang in his ears, followed by an exclamation of pain from above, and a clattering.
The bullet had struck her, possibly even incapacitated her, but it hadn’t killed her.
The studio had fallen silent once more. There was no rustle of movement, no ragged breath to lead him forward. Darc strained his ears, listening for the smallest indicator of where the reporter might be.
And then he heard her. Her voice rang out… from the ground floor. She had somehow made her way down to his same level. He flashed his light toward the sound, catching her full on in
its beam. She was holding Trey up, a gun held to his head.
“That was a good shot, Detective. Took me off guard.” She shoved the muzzle of the gun into Trey’s temple, causing him to wince. “But the question is, what shall we do now?” She smiled, showing all of her very white teeth. “I have an idea. You place your gun on the floor, and I leave unharmed.”
“Why would I relinquish my weapon?” Darc responded.
“So that I don’t kill your partner,” the reporter barked, her tone uncertain.
“Darc! Don’t do it,” Trey begged him.
“He’s not my partner. At least not permanently. He was assigned to babysit me.” Darc watched the lines carefully, sighting along them.
“Hey!” Trey protested.
“I don’t care!” the woman snarled. “He’s a person, and no matter what your issues, you don’t want to see someone killed right in front of you.”
Darc held up a hand and lifted the muzzle of his weapon up so that it pointed at the ceiling. “Stop. You are correct. I do not wish to have him killed.” He began to stoop over, moving the gun down.
Midway through the motion, Darc repositioned the gun, pointing it at the nexus of the glowing lines. He fired twice in rapid succession, hitting the woman in the middle of the forehead both times.
The reporter staggered back and crashed into one of the cameras, knocking it over as she fell atop it, dead. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling, blank and lifeless.
“Dude! Nice shot,” Trey gushed. He moved up to Darc and clapped him on the shoulder. “Now please promise me you’ll never do that again.” His knees suddenly dropped out on him and he grabbed onto Darc’s jacket for support. “Okay. Medical attention might be a good idea.”
Darc helped him back to standing and walked him out toward the rare Seattle sunset that was glowing on the other side of the studio door.
EPILOGUE
Trey’s head throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Thud, thud. Thud, thud. It was annoying, but at least it told him he was going to be okay. At least that’s what he thought it meant.
“Hey, medic guy,” Trey called out to the paramedic who had bandaged his head wound. “You sure I’m gonna be all right?”
2nd Cycle of the Harbinger Series: The continuation of the #1 Hard-boiled/Police Procedural smash Plain Jane Page 41
