7th Sin: The Sequel to the #1 Hard Boiled Mystery, 9th Circle (Book 2 of the Darc Murders Series)

by Carolyn McCray

  But even if Darc knew, it wasn’t a sure thing that it would put them any closer to finding the guy. At least not before some bad, bad stuff went down, that bad stuff more than likely including Trey. He pushed that image out of his mind. It wouldn’t do him any good at this point, right?

  Yeah, it was scary being kidnapped, but Trey figured at least he wasn’t dead yet. He was alive for a reason. And while he was alive, he was going to do everything he could to figure out how to get out of here. In the meantime, Trey was slightly pissed off that he had gotten a totally recycled kidnapping hideout thingy. The killer had gone to all that trouble for Mala, but apparently Trey only warranted the cast-off seconds.

  Trey thought for a second about that. It was Mala they were talking about. The guy must actually have some taste.

  Fantastic. Not only had he been captured by a homicidal maniac and put into a recycled trap, but Trey actually agreed with his abductor. It was time to get a new job or something. At least take a vacation. Getting clobbered by a corpse falling down on you was maybe a day-off kind of occurrence, but getting kidnapped had to qualify for at least a week or two paid leave.

  Again, Darc would know. When it came to rules and regulations, the guy knew the book. Literally. He had memorized the entire book full of rules and regulations. Didn’t mean he always followed them, but he knew them.

  Now, how the hell was Trey going to get out of here? He jerked the chains, but they were solidly connected to the very sturdy bed. Unless he could figure out how to pick the locks, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Don’t bother,” an electronically altered voice rang out from the ceiling. “I took everything out of your pockets that might possibly allow you to get yourself out of your bonds. You’re stuck, Trey.”

  “Who are you?” Trey called out, looking around for the camera that had to be there somewhere. “How do you know my name? Are you someone I know?”

  “Really, Detective Keane, are you that keen on the idea of dying?” The voice ended in a light chuckle.

  “Ha. That’s… wow. Ha. You should think about a career in stand-up. Seriously.” Trey jerked the chains, bruising his wrists in the process. He winced in pain.

  “Yeah, that’s probably not a good idea, Trey. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “Something tells me that’s going to happen sooner or later, dude,” Trey spat.

  “Dude? Are you so sure I’m a man?” The voice taunted him.

  Trey shot back. “The only woman it could have possibly been was the reporter, but you killed her.”

  “Maybe she was competition. Did you think of that?” The voice trailed off, but then got serious. “The more questions you ask, the closer you get to death. I’m not foolish enough to let you figure out who I am and then leave you alive to possibly get rescued. Oh no.” The next words were a near whisper. “But I do so enjoy this little cat-and-mouse thing we’ve got going on here. Don’t you?”

  “Darc will find me, you know. He’s super smart. Smarter than you.” Trey tried to sit up, got to the end of the chain, and fell back.

  “No. I mean yes, of course he’s smart. And possibly even smarter than I am. But he’s not capable of tracking you down. See, I’ve found his weakness.” The voice managed to sound smug, even through the voice modulator.

  “Well, if he can’t, Mala will—”

  “DO NOT!” the voice screamed, then paused. There was a breath before the killer continued. “Do not say her name. Ever. You are not worthy of holding her name in your mouth.”

  Whoa. Well, that explained a lot, actually.

  “You love her.”

  There was silence for a long time. Long enough that Trey started to think that his kidnapper had taken a snooze or gone for a coffee or something. Killers still did stuff like that. It could happen.

  But no such luck.

  “When you die, it will not be pleasant.” Then there was a click and the silence stretched on into what felt like eternity. Eventually the lights turned out, and Trey was plunged into complete darkness.

  No one would think to come here. Even with Mala and Trey working together, there was no way they would be able to deduce this. This was the craziest move Trey had ever heard of. Going back to a previous crime scene? It just didn’t make any sense.

  When Trey finally started drifting off into sleep, the situation hadn’t gotten any better. If it had been Darc, he probably would have come up with something brilliant by now. But Trey wasn’t Darc. He was just a guy who was stupid enough to let a killer sneak up behind him.

  He was way out of his depth here.

  CHAPTER 22

  This experiment that Mala was conducting seemed to be a waste of time to Darc. The lines of logic hissed and spat at him in their impatience. He needed to be tracking down Bill Harris, interrogating him to find out his involvement. Not looking over a crime scene that he had already memorized, after the body had already been moved to the morgue.

  “Okay, Darc. We need to look at this from an emotional standpoint. Or, perhaps, a social one.”

  The words made technical sense, but the meaning eluded Darc. They also eluded the pathways of light, which wrapped themselves around the doctor as if they wanted to do bodily harm to her. She was in the way of the investigation.

  And yet…

  Darc had seen for himself that his abilities were hamstrung by his lack of 360-degree vision when it came to his own emotional being. There was, when he stopped to analyze it, compelling reasoning in what Mala was saying.

  But was that truly the case, or was Darc allowing his attraction for the doctor to affect him in an adverse way? Were her words more convincing because of the symmetry of her face, the pleasing lines of her body, the dusky color of her skin? Her scent rose from her body, creating a haze of gray that threatened to choke Darc.

  “Stop.”

  Mala turned to face Darc, a look on her face that spoke of bemusement or possible irritation. “What did you say, Darc?”

  The patterns within swirled, a haze of colors and light dancing behind a curtain of shimmering gray. There was no pattern to decipher here. Nothing to fit into place. Only feelings that shifted and moved according to the dictates of some strange algorithm that Darc could not decode.

  But that could not be put into words. Rather than attempt to communicate what could not be communicated, Darc lied.

  “We should stop and look at the room from the first vantage point where Trey stood. Duplicating his movements could be part of it.”

  Mala seemed unconvinced, but she moved back to the doorway of the bedroom, looing in at the scene. Something shifted in her face as she gazed in at the gore surrounding the room.

  “Trey is fluent in body language. What did this body say while it was still here?”

  This made no sense. Darc looked at where the body had been, trying to understand what Mala was suggesting. It was not helping.

  “I do not know.”

  Mala took her eyes off the outline of blood where the body had been. “Darc. You have an eidetic memory. You know exactly how the body was posed.”

  “But that is not what you asked of me,” Darc answered.

  A long sigh escaped Mala’s lips. “It is what I asked of you. That and so much more.” She seemed to think for a moment, then opened her mouth again. “I want you to tell me if there’s anything in the body positioning that might tell us something.”

  “The victim was splayed, each limb attached to a different corner of the bed.”

  Mala nodded. “As if on display.”

  That was a possibility. As the parameters of what Mala was looking for became clearer, they formed into a gray symbol created of emotion and speculation. The positioning of the body was logged into Darc’s processing system.

  “Stand here, Darc.” She pointed to a spot right next to her. Darc moved toward her, doing what he could to keep her scent out of his nostrils. “Now, what do you see?”

  What Darc saw was a black hole where no light existed. There wer
e no trails of light here because there were no traces of evidence to glean.

  Mala’s voice was almost a whisper in Darc’s ear. “Look and listen with more than just your eyes and ears. Pay attention to the spacing of the room, the way the body was presented. What does this tell us?”

  Again, the symbols formed within and then made their way through the gray and presented their findings. A form began to take shape.

  “The killer wished for this scene to be memorable,” Darc posited, attempting to put into words what the lightless symbols represented.

  “Not just memorable,” Mala breathed. “Newsworthy. That’s what Trey saw. That’s why he went down to the van. He saw this. All of it.”

  The symbols broke apart into the segmented parts of the emotional landscape they were. Darc was less than pleased with the results.

  “This has told us nothing more than what we already knew. Trey was taken. We had that information already.”

  Mala shook her head. “No. We knew he had been taken, but we didn’t understand how or why. Now we do.”

  Darc suspected that this feeling was akin to what Trey constantly complained of during every case he worked with Darc. He had no comprehension of what Mala was explaining. Mala must have seen the confusion on his face, because she continued.

  “Don’t you see? Trey was taken specifically. He understands things on an emotional level that we are not good at. That seems to be exactly what the killer fears.” Mala reached out and grabbed Darc’s arm. “We are that much closer to catching him. If we work together like this, we can figure out whatever it was the killer didn’t want Trey discovering.”

  It was ludicrous. Nothing about what Mala had just said seemed to make logical sense. And yet, the lines within did not complain. There was no uprising against this use of the gray fog of emotion. The way the non-logical information was being processed was something familiar to the bright streets of pure knowledge within him.

  It was similar to what he did every day, just with emotion, rather than logic.

  And if Mala believed that it would work, perhaps it was worth the attempt.

  *

  It was nearing the end. Not the end of the servant of the Lord’s work, just the end of this era. They were hours away from the time when the only ones standing in the way of the work rolling forth would be crushed underfoot.

  Trey Keane would die, and his death would accomplish multiple goals. First, it would incapacitate Robi Darcmel. The bald detective seemed to be without emotion, but to the servant of the Lord, nothing was hidden. The damage to his psyche would be severe and long lasting.

  Additionally, there would be a loss of prestige and trust within the police department. What the detective could do now as a matter of course would soon be curtailed. Part of what allowed the man to discern patterns was a willful disregard to the rules and how they applied to him.

  Finally, it would prove to Mala that her destiny was not with Detective Darcmel. It was with the servant of the Lord. The Lord had given her to him. He would not be denied his eternal reward because Mala chose the lesser vessel. The weak one, who served the spawn of Mammon amongst them.

  All. All would suffer as these had suffered.

  The socialite. The tobacco salesman. The lawyer. The writer. The reporter and her cameraman.

  They were types of what was to come. It would not end with the seven abominations. That was only the beginning. A warning cry by the watchman on the tower. This would go so much further. Seattle would burn.

  A reckoning.

  A cleansing.

  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

  *

  What had started out as a fantastic idea, if Mala did say so herself, quickly turned into an exercise in pounding her head against a wall. Darc and she had managed to track Trey’s progress using his unique blend of gut-level feel, pop culture knowledge, and empathetic insight. It worked.

  But applying it to the rest of the case was proving to be like finding a needle in a haystack. So, as it neared two o’clock in the morning, they backed up and decided to pull in some favors. They needed to find Bill Harris, and barring that, they were going to have to search his apartment. After rousting a few people who were not used to dead-of-night wake-up calls, they had what they needed. Amazing what the kidnapping of a detective could accomplish.

  After spending time in some of the more posh areas of Seattle, it was a bit of an eye-opener to return to the areas south of the city. The apartment building wasn’t the worst of the lot, but it certainly wasn’t the best, either. The paint had probably once been a rather friendly color, but was now mostly a grayed-out yellow. It spoke of tarnished dreams and dying hopes.

  More rousting, and the manager of the apartment complex grumbled all the way up to the top story of the building, the grouping of law enforcement right behind. He did not seem too happy about the whole scenario, but there also clearly some awe there, as well. That could have been caused by the initial sight of Darc standing with his arms crossed over his chest, his typical lack of expression making him look downright scary.

  If she didn’t know him, Mala would have had a similar response. Sometimes it was hard to separate out your first impressions of someone from what you felt about them now. And what did Mala feel about Darc now? She was the last person who could’ve given an answer to that, at this juncture.

  The hallway stank of a mixture of cheap new paint and decaying drywall. Several of the overhead lights were out, creating a dramatic light-and-shadow mosaic across the walls and floor as they moved toward Bill Harris’s apartment.

  “Here it is,” the super groused. “Knock yourselves out.”

  “Remain here.” Darc didn’t look at the man as he moved toward the door. “We may need you to use your keys.”

  “Sure, whatever,” the man muttered.

  There was no answer after repeated knocks, so Darc nodded to the manager to open it up. He shuffled forward. The man was in his fifties or sixties, and had the type of body that was thin everywhere except his stomach, which protruded out in an exaggerated swell, almost like he was pregnant. After unlocking the door, he shuffled back, his near-rotten slippers swishing against the grit on the floor.

  As the door swung wide and Darc and Mala entered, Mala was confronted with an overload of information. On every wall there were surveillance photos, notes, receipts, and odd scraps of evidence attached to whatever case Bill was working on at the moment. It was as if he had used his entire studio apartment as one big bulletin board.

  “Oh, man,” the manager spat. “He’s not supposed to be putting tacks in the walls. This is a direct violation of his lease. I’ll never be able to fill all those little holes.”

  That’s what you find troubling about this? Mala thought to herself. She was overwhelmed by the implied invasion of these people’s privacy. Bill Harris was not a cop—and yet he was gathering information on these poor souls as if he were. And Mala was pretty sure it was all legal. She felt a sliver of cold make its way down her spine, causing her to shiver and get goose bumps. It was downright creepy.

  Sorting through all of this information would take more than a little time, and Mala suddenly hit a wall. She was tired, dead tired. The adrenaline of losing Trey and the subsequent rush of starting to figure out his process had kept her from feeling the lack of sleep. Now, it was starting to catch up to her.

  She wasn’t Darc, who seemed to be able to push through for days at a time. Of course, she had also seen the other side of that pushing, where he would collapse or turn into a veritable zombie. Mala wasn’t sure the trade-off was worth it.

  It was time to get back home. She had a little girl who needed her bed. Hell, Mala needed her bed. But it wasn’t okay to continue dragging Janey all around town with her. She needed to figure out a way to balance this better. And she would start right now. With Bill not here, the urgency had diminished slightly. She had to get Janey home.

  Opening her mouth to speak to Darc, Mala’s eye
s caught on something in the corner of the room by Bill’s bed. Crime scene photos. Of the current case. Victims with the Babylonian numerals carved into their foreheads. How had he gotten those?

  Next to each photo were what looked like scriptural references. Proverbs 6:16, Proverbs 6:17, others from Ezekiel and Habakkuk and Isaiah. For every picture, at least one quotation.

  And then Mala saw something that made her blood run chill. Her own face. Tucked away in the darkest corner of the room, there was Mala herself, from every imaginable angle. Surveillance photos. Of her.

  Darc moved up next to her, a stack of what looked like receipts in his gloved fingers. He gazed at the photos, then mutely held out the receipts to Mala.

  They were from the Home Depot. Building materials, bathroom sink and counter, drywall, wood, paint, hardwood flooring… all paid in cash. And another receipt for the rental of the space where Mala had been held.

  “What is the possibility that Bill is not the killer?” Mala asked, her voice trembling.

  But Darc just stood there, saying nothing. He never refused to discuss the probabilities of a case. It must be bad.

  And, thinking about it, things could not be much worse. If there were any one individual who understood the most about the case, outside of Mala and the two detectives, it was Bill. He knew their methods, their plans of attack, the ins and outs of this case. No wonder they hadn’t been able to keep ahead of him.

  He had been there, misdirecting them from the first.

  Mala felt her blood turn from ice to boiling lava in the space of ten seconds. Trey had liked Bill, had treated him as a friend and colleague. Trey had trusted that man.

  It was now up to Mala and Darc to make sure Bill paid for that violation.

  But looking back at the photos, so many with her own countenance staring back at her, Mala felt a different kind of violation. This man had seen her vulnerable. He had taken pictures of her without her consent. Had observed her in moments when she thought herself alone.

  How in the world could she ever tip those scales back in her favor?