5th Pentagram: The sequel to the #1 Hard Boiled Mystery, 9th Circle (Book 3 of the Darc Murders Trilogy) (Book 3 of the Darc Murder Series)

by Hopkin, Ben

  Darc hadn’t escaped without injury either. He was hunched down close to the circle that contained the corpse, doing his savant-thingy with the symbols that were painted around the curve of the pentagram. The part of his arm that had been in a cast until two days ago was still the sickly white of flesh that hadn’t seen the sun in a while.

  Darc’s bald head glistened in the light set up by the CSI unit. They were out in the middle of Harbor Island, where this grisly discovery had been an inadvertent part of a young couple’s nighttime almost-tryst. The guy worked out here in the shipyard, and Trey was guessing that an official reprimand was in the works for the horny teenager.

  Trey would feel bad for the two of them, except for the fact that their gruesome surprise had ruined his nighttime shenanigans with his own lady, Maggie. Well, his own lady now. Darc’s ex-lady. Ex-wife. Whatever.

  That was old news. Water under the bridge. Darc and he had worked all of that stuff out. Twice. In front of serial killers, no less.

  Anyhoo…

  Darc had ignored his partner’s comment, which Trey viewed as progress, actually. There had been a time when the brilliant detective had attempted to answer every one of Trey’s rhetorical questions. They’d gotten past that. Mostly.

  The Asperger’s sometimes got in the way on that account. When it came to anything deductive, Darc was the man. No, scratch that. Darc was the Superman. His IQ was off the charts. But when the topic was emotional quotient, the number dropped down to Trey’s shoe size. Darc had the emotional development of some rhesus monkeys Trey had met.

  That was an exaggeration. Trey should know better than that. Some rhesus monkeys were pretty empathetic, once you got to know them.

  And yet, for all that, Trey couldn’t imagine a better partner. Unless it was someone that brought him breakfast meats to work every morning. But let’s face it, that was never going to happen, so…

  “There seems to be a clear line to the other two cases.” Darc spoke with little inflection, and often with no clear sense of the thread of the conversation. The fact that his statement had something to do with what Trey had said a minute or so ago was somewhat shocking, to be honest.

  “Yeah, but we knew that, right?” This was the second body that had been found matching the same MO. The first been the head of the Colacurcios, a family with known mafia ties that operated out of Seattle.

  This one? This appeared to be the body of the missing Councilman Kenneth Hughes. His wife had called 911 in hysterics two days ago, and when the unis had gone out to the office to check it out, they’d found lots of blood but no body.

  And here, as far as Trey could see, was that missing body. As well as most of what he guessed was the remaining blood.

  Trey’d seen pictures of the man gracing lawn placards and billboards during the last election. An older man in his mid-fifties, with perfect greying hair and a chin that was starting to double up on itself. Standard Central Casting version of an aging politician. Although from what Trey could discern, the picture had been taken about five years and fifteen pounds ago.

  The man’s chest had a gaping, bloody hole where his heart had once been.

  Darc seemed to finish analyzing whatever the hell he was analyzing, stood up and almost ran into one of the CSI guys.

  “Move,” he said, his tone flat.

  The poor young investigator, who seemed to be an intern, blanched white and scurried out of the way without a word. Trey sighed. He’d have to find out who that had been and go apologize to him. And then maybe have a little heart-to-heart with Darc.

  His partner moved away from the body and came in close. Too close. Trey tried not to crane his neck up too far. Dude was tall. There had been too many nights that Trey had gone home with a crick in his neck because Darc didn’t understand the proper spacing for social interactions.

  “We understand that this case appears to be linked to the two others,” the tall detective specified. “I am referring to something else.”

  “Wait. Isn’t that what you just said?”

  “Not precisely. I said that there was a line, meaning a line of authority. The symbols here indicate superiority or dominance.”

  “Soooo…” Trey stretched out the word, hoping inspiration or at least comprehension would strike somewhere in the middle. No such luck. “I got nothing. Oh, wait! The guy has a big ego?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Well, suck. Trey felt that most of his time was spent catching up to Darc, both physically and mentally. If it weren’t for the fact that Darc sometimes forgot to tie his shoes, Trey wouldn’t have anything to do.

  Okay, sometimes he managed to smooth things over when Darc did stuff that ruffled feathers. Like the time the bald savant had punched a hole in the wall of a business to make sure there wasn’t a body dry-walled in there. Turned out there had been, but Darc hadn’t deigned to get a search warrant first. The paperwork on that case had been brutal. Good times.

  Darc stalked around the pentagram, pointing out several of the symbols around the circle. “There—Father John’s symbols. Here—Bryce’s. Both in subservient positioning to the new ones.”

  “New symbols?” Trey asked. “What are they?”

  “I do not know.”

  Wow. Symbols that Darc couldn’t identify? That didn’t even seem possible.

  “You don’t know?”

  Darc raised his eyes to meet Trey’s. If Trey didn’t know better, he’d say Darc was irritated.

  “There is not enough information for a positive conclusion.”

  “So, you don’t know.” Trey looked closer. There appeared to be two vertical lines next to one another. “Looks like an eleven. Or maybe a two. Hey! This is the second murder. Maybe--”

  “I have already thought of that possibility. The corresponding mark in the first pentagram was a single line.”

  The deflated feeling of Darc having beaten him to the punch again was mitigated by the fact that Trey seemed to be on the right track. For once.

  “It could just be a counter. Like a one, two, three kind of deal.”

  Darc said nothing, but glanced from the body spread within the pentagram and then back up to Trey. In effect saying that something as simple as a count didn’t jibe with something as precise and sinister as what was laid out in front of them.

  “Hey, guys! I found something!” It was the CSI intern that Darc had scared off a moment before. He was about twenty yards off from where the body had been found. He seemed anxious and kept twisting what looked like a ring that was on under his gloves. If he wasn’t careful he would end up ripping the latex.

  Darc and Trey moved over to the intern’s side to see what he was looking at. It was the missing heart, and it looked like it had seen better times.

  “Occult,” Darc spoke after a long moment. Trey hated it when his partner did that. Just dropped a word and expected Trey to know what the hell he was talking about.

  But it turned out that this time, he totally did. “You’re talking about Satanism and stuff like that, right?”

  “Not exclusively,” Darc responded. “Occult means hidden. It includes many disciplines.”

  “Oh, well…” Trey began, then realized he knew nothing more than he had a moment ago. “Sometimes you’re not all that helpful, you know that?”

  Darc turned back toward the body, but not before Trey saw what he swore was an almost-smile twitching his partner’s lips up on either corner. That bastard was doing it on purpose. Trey was almost proud. But not so proud that he wouldn’t play back.

  “So, Darc, tomorrow’s the big night, huh?”

  The tall detective spun around on his heel. Trey must have touched a nerve, because Darc never moved that fast unless he was following the crazy voices in his head, or whatever savant-like thingy-bob he did in that super-smart noggin of his.

  “I do not understand,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation.

  Hesitation? Score! Trey had found a rich vein and he was going to mine that sucker for a
ll it was worth.

  “Come on. You know what I’m talking about,” Trey purred. “Your first date with Mala.” Darc and Dr. Mala Charan had been dancing around the mating ritual like two skittish hyenas surrounding a side of beef.

  “It is not our first date,” he responded. “We have interacted on multiple occasions.”

  “Yeah, for business stuff,” Trey said. “And most of those interactions were you two fighting about Janey coming along.” Janey was the nickname of the girl Darc had rescued from Father John. She’d become an unofficial part of the team, over Mala’s strong and detailed objections.

  Darc grunted and turned back to the body, but Trey knew he had scored a couple of hits. Served him right for being so obtuse all of the time.

  And then, almost immediately, the guilt set in. Taking pot shots at Darc for his emotional disconnect was like teasing the kids on the short bus. Not cool, Trey. Not cool.

  Sonofa…

  “Hey, Darc. Listen,” Trey began. “Maybe I can help you out tomorrow night.”

  * * *

  The ribbon of glowing logic that wound about the body and the pentacle shredded and dissipated into the air as Trey’s words entered Darc’s consciousness. The relative importance of Darc’s social encounter with Mala this evening should be minimal when compared to a new serial killer threat in Seattle.

  And yet.

  “In what way could you offer assistance?” Darc found himself asking. There was a new thread, a thin fiber of light that was thinner than the other threads, yet far brighter. It cast its light on the unfathomable emotional landscape that Darc had such difficulty navigating.

  “Well,” Trey said, his face clenching up in a way that Darc could not decipher. “I could write you up another list…” He glanced up at Darc’s face, and whatever it was he found there seemed to make him change his mind. “No, too complicated. Can’t control all the variables. Lemme think…”

  Darc did not have much confidence in his partner’s ability to cognitively arrive at any actionable plans. However, according to Trey’s Rule #23 for Interacting with Colleagues, You gotta give the other guy a chance to work it out, even when you know he can’t. Especially then. So Darc remained silent.

  “I’ve got it!” Trey yelped. “You can wear your Bluetooth and I’ll just stay on the line the whole time. That way I can tell you what to do. It’s perfect! Like Roxanne!”

  “I believe you are referring to Cyrano de Bergerac.”

  “Whatever, man. You know what I’m talking about.”

  The inner landscape of Darc’s mind heaved in response to this suggestion. What that meant, Darc had no idea. However, receiving emotional advice from Trey in real time seemed to be a rational response to an irrational social exercise.

  Dating was a ridiculous endeavor. Darc found Mala attractive. She seemed to react in a similar fashion to him. Was that not enough for them to take the next logical step and discover if they were sexually compatible? And yet when Darc had mentioned that to Trey, his partner had shaken his head and repeated the word no seventeen times.

  Apparently that approach was not acceptable.

  Mala was symmetrical in a way that was physically appealing to him, and he found her intelligence above average. The rationality with which she approached the universe, however, was a question mark.

  Darc returned to his perusal of the crime scene. Here was something that made logical sense. Clues were left behind for him to decipher. His mind decoded the messages left. The killer was caught.

  Simplicity itself.

  * * *

  The rain fell with a random sameness that coated the night sky in a velvet cocoon of sound. In this cushion, it was possible to whisper, to speak, even to scream and have no one the wiser for it a mere block away.

  It was an emotional blanket for a morally tired city.

  There was no real ambiguity here. Nor was there theologizing or philosophizing. There was only the acknowledgement of a populace that was stagnant. Corrupt. There was an acknowledgement of the battle. The one of which little was spoken in the daylight hours of proper business dealings.

  Looking out into the darkness, the Intermediary drew in the smells of the precipitation. Wet asphalt. Ozone. Something danker. More pungent.

  The scent of things dead and dying.

  Ah, Seattle.

  The night was the time to get things done. Nothing significant could ever happen in the light of day. Not any longer. Politicians and businessmen were increasingly brazen about their illicit financial copulations. Law enforcement and the criminal element moved about one another in a dysfunctional dance that mimicked the death throes of a headless rooster. During the day, wrong was right and right was increasingly wrong.

  But in the darkness, light blossomed, beating back the dark at the same time it intensified the shadows. The light of intuition that spoke of things going bump in the night versus the blackness that created those very bumps. Under that covering, it was impossible for upright citizens to doubt that evil existed.

  Not the evil of hell. No demons, no devils, no succubi or incubi. Nothing so ghastly or bourgeois as all that.

  No, this was the evil that was created by the very individuals who invented those dark denizens, as well as their smoky, fiery habitat below. This was the purview of something far more sinister than an avenging spirit.

  This was the domain of humans, and they were making a right mess of things.

  The Intermediary sighed, blowing air out past lips wet with the falling moisture. The others had failed. Miserably. Both so preoccupied with their version of righteousness that they had been blinded to the exigencies of their assigned tasks.

  That would not happen this time. This time there would be a true purging. No religious sycophants to muck up the waters that were rising up to do the deep cleaning required in this septic tank of a city.

  A woman passed close by, her high heels wobbling with every step, the click of her soles managing to pierce the cotton-like batting of the rain, at least for a moment. The Intermediary watched without judgment. The woman was clearly drunk, just as clearly dressed to provoke masculine attention. Low-cut blouse. High-cut skirt. Heavy makeup.

  She was not the issue here. There was nothing about her display that elicited a harsh response from the Intermediary. It was human nature in its most animal form. Nothing sinister. Perhaps a bit sad, but nothing more.

  But this piece of animal flesh was called to serve, and that’s what made her of import tonight. She was called… to the wrong place at the wrong time, sadly… to satiate the insatiable. To gratify the lusts of one whose lusts were as vast as the ocean.

  Perhaps she would not have to be a victim of friendly fire tonight. That remained to be seen. The Intermediary knew better than to lock down the details too tightly. Wriggle room was required when dealing with those that would wriggle to escape. Snakes, lizards and salamanders… the political, financial and criminal elite of Seattle.

  The Intermediary moved out behind the woman, movements in synch with her and the night. Nothing out of place to sound the unconscious alarm that would ring in the mind of even the most intoxicated of women when out alone at night.

  For that is what the Intermediary was for.

  Moving through the light and through the dark with equal ease. At home with either one. A slave to neither.

  The rain whispered secrets to the woman ahead, but she heard nothing.

  The Intermediary, on the other hand, heard, and comprehended, all.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was a crisp late October day in Seattle. Which meant that it was cold, wet and mostly cloudy. Under most circumstances, Mala loved the gloomy weather. But right now it just seemed to mock her current frustration.

  Mala loved being a mother.

  She did not, however, love all the things that went along with it.

  Janey clung to her with one hand, the other clutching her ratty stuffed bear. Well, stuffed might be a bit of an exaggeration. The poor thing had
lost most of its padding somewhere along the way. But Janey and the bear were inseparable.

  Mala’s foster child had been through the unimaginable, losing both of her parents before being encased in a barrel full of their blood to drown. What would have broken many had left Janey strong and determined. Silent— she wouldn’t speak— but unbeaten.

  They had spent the last several months together with Mala doing everything she could to provide normal experiences for this little girl. But time after time they would get wrapped up in Darc and Trey’s latest case. The bizarre part of it all was that Janey had provided vital help more than once.

  And she seemed to thrive on it. Mala had fought against Janey being a part of grisly crime scenes tooth and nail, supposing that it would re-traumatize her. But the reverse had been true. Janey was happy and healthy when on a case. Doing typical childhood activities seemed to bore her to tears. And make her grumpy as all get out.

  The last of the summer’s adventures two months ago had been a trip out to Wild Waves Theme Park, down about a half-hour’s drive out of Seattle. It was a park that had water slides and rollercoasters. Perfect activity for an active child, right?

  Wrong.

  Oh, Janey had loved the rides. She seemed to get a thrill out of the most adult of them, riding the Ring of Fire three times in a row. None of the rides had been off limits for anything other than her height, and she’d managed to get onto several by pulling her heels out of her shoes and standing on the backside of them.

  But after every ride, she would get out a piece of paper, grab a gold crayon and draw a detective’s badge. She missed Darc. She wanted to be with Darc. Darc needed her. The further the day progressed, the more aggressive the pictures became. One had shown Mala in handcuffs being escorted to prison by a tall, bald detective with a beard.

  Subtle.

  It didn’t help that Darc fed into Janey’s perception that he needed her at every moment. Especially on the cases that seemed to bear any relationship to her own. He pushed and prodded for any detail, any insight, that the little girl could give.