The 2nd Cycle of the Darc Murders Omnibus (the acclaimed series from #1 Police Procedural and Hard Boiled authors Carolyn McCray and Ben Hopkin)

by Carolyn McCray

  Directly in the center of the inner circle, the blood that covered most of the alleyway was concentrated into specific symbols. Ciphers that removed themselves from the pavement, spinning and turning about as they entered Darc’s awareness.

  The usual warnings of the coming apocalypse. The world must be cleansed. And one other section.

  Part of the pack. Written in a combination of symbols from Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. The ciphers flowed around each other, slotting themselves into the negative spaces that appeared in Darc’s mind. Producing the meaning as a final shape, rather than words to be read.

  “Anything?” Trey asked.

  “The messages appear to all be references to animalistic behavior,” Darc replied. “Herd beasts for the teenagers, stud animal for you, animals that run in a pack for them.” He indicated toward the mangled bodies on the ground.

  “So…” Trey said, drawing out the word. “Dumb followers for the first guys and a group mentality for these, but I don’t get mine…” He stopped, then glanced over at Darc and then away, a strange look coming over his face. “Oh…”

  “The ‘stud’ label seems to indicate your relationship with Maggie,” Darc explained. Trey often needed additional information in order to come to rather obvious conclusions. This was more than likely the case here.

  “Yeah, Darc. I got it.” Trey’s tone was pitched in a strange frequency, the timbre of his voice strained and higher than typical. “That thing? Again? You’d think they’d get tired of bringing it up.”

  Odd. Was Trey’s reaction an indicator of guilt or gastrointestinal discomfort? Perhaps he needed some sort of anti-flatulence medication.

  A surge of grey rose up within Darc. “It could have to do with Maggie’s current pregnancy in your unwedded state.”

  There was no logical reasoning behind the wash of emotion. Darc could see the devotion with which Trey treated Maggie. There was nothing more binding about their relationship together that would come from a legal declaration of that relationship. Yet Darc found that he took some sort of perverse pleasure in pointing out his partner’s perceived societal lack.

  “Wait. So you think I should ask her to marry me?” Trey asked. “I mean, I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I even bought a ring. But…”

  What had been a surge within Darc now rose into a tsunami. This was not at all the reaction he had desired, and yet his partner’s thinking was sounder than Darc would have expected. There was a danger to Trey and to Maggie that could possibly be averted through a legal procedure. No real reason existed for them to not pursue that avenue.

  Yet Darc could not seem to articulate that thought. Instead he stood, the abruptness of his motion rocking Trey back on his heels.

  “We need to study the backgrounds of each of these victims, see if there is a causal link that could lead us back to the killer.”

  Trey stared up at Darc, his face scrunched up in another unidentifiable expression. “You’re not going to run off somewhere? Kick down a door, harass some random citizen, force some guy to give up his car?”

  “Why would I take any of those actions?” Darc asked. Sometimes, his partner made statements that seemed to have no basis in reality whatsoever.

  Trey shrugged. “Oh, I dunno. Something about you and those symbols seem to bring out the random behavior in you.”

  The lines of logic shook in their indignation, rattling their displeasure at Trey’s remark. There was nothing random about Darc’s previous behavior. Each time, the symbols had led him to the exact place where the next victim awaited, or where the next grouping of evidence would be found.

  This time, however, the symbols were static, unmoving. Almost as if they were a billboard indicating the very location they were advertising, rather than a sign pointing to a distant locale.

  Darc moved back to the beginning of the case, searching through the evidence that was filed away within the colored groupings of pathways. A network of information that led him… here. And yet nowhere. The ciphers turned him back to the beginning, and once more he found himself returning to the present moment with no further insight. Each grouping of ciphers pointing back to themselves in an endless loop.

  Keeping Darc here.

  They were a logical loop, he realized. A grouping of clues and evidence that would do nothing but send Darc back over the past information available, never moving forward in his pursuit. Where before, the design of the strange language groupings had been designed as a challenge or to obfuscate information, these symbols were intended to keep Darc held in stasis.

  There was no more need for words. Darc had stated his intent. It was time to go back and sort through the histories of each of the victims to find a link.

  It was time to do some normal detective work.

  And yet, as Darc stalked away from the crime scene, hearing Trey curse behind him and try to catch up, the grey within threatened. It whispered to Darc of his failure.

  There was a killer out there, and Darc had no idea how to find him.

  * * *

  The car echoed with quiet.

  Usually, that meant that Janey had done something she wasn’t supposed to have done, but there wasn’t anything she could think of right now. She hadn’t tried to run back to the crime scene, even though she’d wanted to. A lot.

  Popeye said that maybe it was just that she was a stinky poop-head, but that was just him being mean. Sometimes after they went to a crime scene, Mala would take them for frozen yogurt, and this time she hadn’t. Popeye loved going for frozen yogurt, even though he always got mad because he didn’t get any.

  Sometimes Janey thought her bear wasn’t too smart. He stuck his tongue out at her and tried to ignore her, but he wouldn’t be able to do that for long.

  Mala and Carly were up in the front seat, but they weren’t talking to each other. Carly’s face was all squeezed together, and the bright traces of information in Janey’s mind swirled around her expression, viewing it from all different angles. It was like one of those movies, where a moment would freeze and the camera would swoop around the person in a circle, so you could see every angle. That’s what it felt like.

  Carly was upset. It had been that way since they’d come away from the crime scene. Something she had seen there had made her mad.

  And from the way that Janey’s older sister was facing away from Mala, but would turn to give her an occasional glare, it seemed that Carly was mad at Mala.

  But why would that be? Mala hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Maybe she was really angry with Popeye, but she didn’t want to make Janey feel bad. That would make sense. Sometimes Janey got mad with Popeye, too. He was easy to get upset with.

  Popeye gave a huff at that, but he knew she was right. Even a fibber like him couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t annoying.

  But the lines in Janey’s head kept saying no. It wasn’t Popeye. It was Mala.

  Mala was the one that Carly was upset with.

  Janey traced the pathways down where they were pointing. The connections they made didn’t always make sense to her, but she had learned to trust them. And right now they were saying that her older sister was bothered by what they had seen at the crime scene. The death. The blood.

  It wasn’t easy to understand at first, but the picture got more and more clear as the colored lights traced out more details. Carly was worried about Janey. She thought that being at the site had been bad for Janey. Had made her think about Mommy and Daddy again.

  Carly was right. Going with Trey and Darc did make Janey think about her Mommy and Daddy, but not in the way Carly thought.

  Sometimes, it felt like Janey couldn’t even remember what their faces looked like. She missed them so much, but helping Trey and Darc made her feel close to them.

  When the bad man had taken her to that terrible place underground, Janey hadn’t been able to do anything about it. But now she could. She could help people, even if it was only a little bit.

  It made her feel like
she was saving her parents, every time. Keeping them close to her, right by her side.

  After every crime scene, Janey could see her parent’s faces. Not the way they’d looked when they died. She remembered that, but that wasn’t what the crime scenes made her think of.

  They made her think of the night before. When both of them had come in and tucked her into bed. Usually it was only one of them. Mommy would come in and sing to her, or Daddy would read her a story. When Daddy read stories, he would always make funny voices for all of the people. It had made Janey giggle.

  Then he would sigh and give her a big hug. Oh, Catie-bug… that’s what he would always call her… I love your laugh so much. And then he would kiss her cheek and nuzzle her neck with his stubble to make her giggle again. Then he would tuck the covers around her.

  But that night, it had been both of them. Mommy had sung, and Daddy had tried to help, but he wasn’t very good at it. And then Mommy had squished in on the other side and they’d made a Catie-bug sandwich while Daddy read a story.

  That’s what she remembered when she helped Trey and Darc.

  And Carly had never known her mommy.

  Janey took off her seatbelt, which she knew she wasn’t supposed to do. Popeye just looked at her with his one eye bugging out. He didn’t even have to say what he was thinking for Janey to know that he was positive she was going to get in trouble.

  But she leaned over the seat anyway, wrapping her arms around Carly’s neck. At first, her sister was surprised. Then she got a look on her face that the tracings of color said meant that she was happy.

  What was even stranger was that Mala didn’t say anything at all to Janey about the fact that she was out of her seatbelt. She just looked at Janey and Carly and blinked. A lot. It seemed like there might be something in her eye.

  Carly still was looking at Mala like there was something wrong, but it was better. Lots better. Even Popeye couldn’t think of something naughty to say.

  And that never happened.

  * * *

  The hum of the wheels against the road soothed Trey’s frazzled nerves. That scene back there had gotten to him more than he wanted to admit.

  And it wasn’t just the freaky-ass dog-men or men-dogs or whatever he was supposed to call them. Who did that?

  It shouldn’t be surprising at this point, right? When you’d been clobbered by a falling corpse, bitten by venomous snakes, dangled off the Space Needle, things were supposed to lose their impact, right?

  And yet, this one had gotten to him. Was getting to him still.

  Okay, the chulos they had just left behind weren’t the greatest of guys. That gang was a nasty one, and Trey had never been okay with dogfighting. But what about the dogs? Those poor creatures had been treated as savagely as the men.

  But the high school students? They had seemed like your average, run-of-the-mill dorks. The parents had probably all thought that their kids had just been out spending the night with one of the other friends. Classic high-school switcheroo to keep the parents from knowing they were out partying.

  And the cows? They were just out there trying to make milk for Trey to have with his breakfast. No need to go slicing up the cows. Well, not until it was their time, anyway. Trey veered away from that thought, not wanting to have to give up hamburgers, or steak, or… well, meat in general, he supposed.

  What about Trey himself? He was a pretty decent guy.

  Okay, yes, he’d slept with his partner’s ex-wife. Was now having a baby with her. Unmarried. And his partner seemed to be less okay with it than Trey had previously thought. But still…

  Where had he been going with this?

  Oh, right. These weren’t your ordinary sleazebags. So, Father John had taken some lives that Trey would consider to be innocents, but both Van Owen and the Mayor had taken down some pretty nasty pieces of work.

  Not that the men hadn’t deserved to get taken apart at the seams, mind you. They were class-A psychopaths. Or sociopaths, in the case of Van Owen. Man, that guy had been a prick.

  “I just don’t get it,” Trey said, his frustration spilling out into words. “This doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

  Darc stared at his left eyebrow. Not a good sign that there was going to be any sort of meaningful conversation happening this morning, but whatever. Wasn’t like a nonresponse from Darc was all that unusual. Trey continued anyway.

  “I mean, most of the guys these serial killers have taken down have been the lowest of the low. That fits in with the Locos. That could almost be just gang stuff, if it wasn’t for the symbols. And, okay, the whole dog thing was nastier and more creative than anything I’ve seen gangs do. But still…” Trey allowed his voice to trail off, as it was clear that Darc wasn’t giving him any kind of response.

  In fact, Darc hadn’t even twitched. It wasn’t his normal spaced-out trance state, either. There was some heat behind Darc’s eyes this time. That wasn’t something Trey was used to dealing with. Not from his partner, anyway.

  The amount of expression that went into Darc’s facial muscles would have a hard time registering on any kind of measuring device under normal circumstances. But right now, Trey could actually see what looked to be a frown covering his partner’s face.

  Not a great sign.

  The precinct building came up on Trey’s right, and he turned the wheel to ease his way into the parking lot. The glass and metal of the structure caught a sudden ray of sunlight that pierced through the clouds, blinding Trey for a moment. It was enough that he almost didn’t see the figure that walked out in front of the Land Rover.

  Trey slammed on the brakes, screeching to a sudden halt. The light that had robbed Trey of his eyesight for a moment was now gone back behind the ever-present Seattle gloom, and left in its place Captain Merle.

  What the hell?

  Captain Merle almost never left his desk. And Trey felt like he could count on one hand the amount of times he’d seen the captain outside of the building.

  Except on these cases. Serial killers started ravaging Seattle and Merle got tetchy. Guess that wasn’t too surprising.

  Even with that, seeing Captain Merle outside and standing in front of Trey’s car was a bit of a shocker. Trey rolled down his window.

  “What’s up, Oh-Captain-My-Captain?”

  Captain Merle glared at him, and Trey realized that he maybe shouldn’t have used a Dead Poets Society reference with the big man. Captain Merle hated poetry. Well, limericks, anyway. Trey had found out about that the hard way, and he still had the emotional scars to prove it.

  “We’re already getting heat on this thing,” he groused, lumbering up to the side of the vehicle, his massive brow still pinched and furrowed. Had he always looked like that, or was it just Trey’s influence that had done it to the oversized captain. “They’re calling him the Beastmaster. Man, I hate the press.”

  “We haven’t released any details,” Trey answered, hoping that wasn’t where the captain was going on this.

  “Someone has,” he shot back, his tone even more gravel-filled than usual. “They have pictures, detailed descriptions of the killings, even the crop circles. Some of the weirder papers are saying there’s an alien connection.”

  “Well, I don’t know that I’d call that weird--” Trey began, but the captain began speaking before he could finish his thought.

  “If there’s a leak, we need it plugged. Fast.”

  Trey thought for a second. “There wasn’t anyone at the scene other than the C.S.U., right?” he asked Darc. His partner sat up in his seat.

  “No one other than the original witnesses who found the site, but they were elderly, unlikely to have spoken to the press.”

  “So it’s got to be a leak, or the killer himself is calling it in,” Trey mused. “That’s always a possibility, especially when his M.O. is so over-the-top.”

  The captain waved the comment aside. “I don’t care. Just figure it out and get it stopped. And the sooner, the better.”

&nb
sp; “Sir?”

  “There’s another crime scene that’s just been called in. This one’s an abandoned warehouse, so it might have been there a while. Couple of teenagers found it.”

  “We were going to go check backgrounds on some of the vics…” Trey started, but then saw the look on Merle’s face. “But we’ll head out there right now.”

  Merle nodded and rubbed his hand around the back of his neck, disturbing his jowls in the process. Jowls that had gotten more pronounced over the past year, Trey noted. See, he was capable of astute observations, too. He glanced over at Darc, as if somehow his partner could pick up on his mental complaints.

  Instead, Darc said something that jolted Trey out of his previous train of thought. “When will you and Maggie come to live at my apartment?”

  Trey whipped his head around to see if the captain had heard. Not that it was something Merle shouldn’t know, but having his captain hear about all of his dirty laundry gave Trey the heebie-jeebies.

  But the big man was making his way back to the stairs leading into the building. Seriously, the captain must be getting some massive pressure on this case already if he was willing to climb stairs to come down and meet with Trey and Darc.

  Turning back to Darc, Trey hemmed and hawed for a moment. “Um… yeah. I haven’t really had a chance to talk to Maggie about it.”

  “You went back to the hotel after we cleared the scene.”

  “Right. That’s right.” There was really no way to explain to Darc why Trey had been so distracted last night, nor did he want to try. “Maggie was already asleep. You know. Her being great with child and all.” He had no idea if deep sleep was even a thing when you were expecting, but maybe just talking about Maggie’s condition would get Darc to back off.

  It seemed to work, as Darc’s face went stiff for a moment and he turned away. But a second later, he began speaking once more.

  “You should leave the hotel immediately. If you have not left by checkout, you will be charged for an additional day. That is ineffective use of resources.” Darc’s tone, always lacking in inflection, was particularly flat right now.