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

  Popeye said something about girls being dumb crybabies, and Janey “accidentally” dropped him. On his head.

  It was going to be okay. Janey was going to go to her first late-over. Mala was going to go on a date. And Carly wasn’t going to burn down the apartment.

  Everything would be fine.

  CHAPTER 9

  Cat’s house sat square in the middle of West Woodland on 6th Avenue.

  West Woodland projected the image of secure middle-class solidity and stability. The area was inhabited by a majority of WASP-ish families, with nicer-than-average cars but with a high-school graduation rate that was less-than-average for Seattle as a whole.

  Mala knew this because it had been one of the areas she’d considered when she was looking for a house. The search that had come to a screeching halt when her real estate agent had threatened to kill and eat her.

  But looking around the neighborhood, she was now questioning if that really had needed to be such a deal breaker. Everywhere she looked there were families. Kids.

  Toys littered front yards. Mala saw not just one or two but five parents out for a bike ride with their children. It was a neighborhood, the likes of which it wasn’t easy to find in this day and age. The kind of place that reminded Mala of her own home growing up. Such a happy place for her, at least for a while. Until the tragedy with her brother.

  Those kinds of events managed to taint everything around them. Maybe that was part of the reason that Mala had resisted moving back into the suburbs.

  But was that fair? She glanced over the seat, her eyes finding Janey with her ever-present bear. That bear. Mala cringed. It was an important crutch for Janey, she knew, but she couldn’t help but feel that everyone who saw it would think her a bad mother for allowing her child to carry something so unsanitary.

  There was no way Janey was giving him up, but maybe Mala could convince her to give him a wash, at the very least. But even that felt like it might be too much. Whatever smells the girl had known from her family of origin were contained in that bear.

  And to be honest, being exposed to germs might be a good thing, right? Keep Janey’s immune system up and running at full intensity. At least that’s what Mala tried to tell herself.

  Turning onto 6th Avenue from 58th Street, Mala watched as Cat’s address came up on the left. It was a medium-sized craftsman styled home with a wrap-around porch. It was painted a hunter-green with tan trim. A typical Seattle family home.

  As Mala pulled into the driveway, a child-sized bullet fired itself from the front door, pulling open the backseat door where Janey waited. Almost before Mala could take a breath, a hurried greeting was given and Janey was dragged from the vehicle to go see something cool in the backyard.

  It had all happened so fast that Janey hadn’t even had a second to grab her backpack. Mala reached behind her and looped one of the straps around her arm.

  As she stepped out of the car, she saw Cat strolling down the front steps toward her, chuckling to herself. The woman moved with a feline grace that Mala envied. It was as if there was no self-consciousness in her at all. No second-guessing, no editing, just free-form expression of self.

  Mala had to admit she was a bit jealous.

  Cat wore a babydoll tee with the image of a blue British police box and the words “Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey” splashed across it. Lean, muscular and tanned arms extended out of the short sleeves, in spite of the fact that it must be somewhere in the high-30s or low 40s.

  Her low-cut jeans didn’t quite reach the bottom of the shirt, exposing an inch or two of her very flat stomach every time she moved. Her feet were bare, her hair artfully messy. She looked like she was out for a summertime stroll.

  In short, Cat was the epitome of nerdy chic. Way, way, way cooler than Mala could ever hope to be.

  “Hey there, shrinky dink!” Cat called out to her, then stopped and frowned. “Sorry. I do that.”

  “What?”

  “Make up nicknames for people I like.” She shrugged and grinned, her expression somehow managing to look nonchalant and chagrined all at once. “I heard that one coming out of my mouth and it made me cringe.” A bark of laughter escaped her lips. “You’ll find I do that a lot.”

  Mala liked this woman. She was everything that Mala wasn’t, which was supremely intimidating. But at the same time, there was no sense of Cat trying to make Mala feel inferior. In fact, with every word and gesture, Cat made her feel like she considered Mala to be every whit her equal.

  It made Mala feel like maybe she wasn’t the weird, quiet kid in the back of the classroom. What was it about childhood experiences that made them so powerful, even well after the point at which her adult personality should have weaned them out?

  “I didn’t mind,” Mala answered, and was surprised to find that it was the truth. Normally she didn’t care much for the psychologist jokes. There was only one other person that could get away with something like that, and it was Trey.

  “Well, it hasn’t stuck yet. I’ll see if I can come up with something that isn’t quite so… derivative.”

  Fantastic. Not only was Cat cool and hot, she was intelligent. The whole package.

  “Aren’t you freezing?” Mala asked her, chilled just looking at the woman.

  “What?” The woman glanced down at herself. “Oh. Right. I forget about that. I run super hot. Like I have some kind of interior heater going.” She linked arms with Mala, dragging her toward the house. “My daughter’s constantly turning up the heat in the house, because I keep it like an ice box.”

  As they entered the home, Mala looked around at the décor. Everything was done in good taste, while still managing to feel very quirky and individualistic.

  The front hallway leading to the sitting room was painted a deep violet color. Normally Mala wouldn’t have been a fan of that color, but something about the way it set off the antique-looking hardwood floors was perfect. On the walls were several framed prints. A Degas, a Renoir and a Van Gogh, all of them fitting in with the color scheme.

  “Let me pour you some wine,” Cat said as she led the way into the kitchen.

  Mala started to demur, but Cat shushed her. She waved her hand in a negating gesture and made a sound in her throat.

  “Nah-ah-ah. None of that. You are having at least one glass of wine with me before you dart off. I am hosting a sleepover, so I am damned well getting something out of this arrangement.” She grinned, her smile taking any possible sting out of her words.

  “Fine. One glass,” Mala acceded.

  One glass wouldn’t leave her unable to drive, especially if she drank it slow. There was some time before she had to go and get ready for her date with Darc. And with the case he was working right now, there was a possibility that he could be late anyway.

  Besides, Mala was surprised to realize that she was enjoying herself. A lot.

  * * *

  “I can’t find the link,” Trey groaned, pushing himself back from his desk.

  Darc looked over at him, his eyes brooding, his jaw tight. That didn’t speak well for whatever leads he was following up on. When Trey’s partner was showing tension in his face, it was time to get the Hell out of his way.

  At least he hadn’t started clenching his fists and cocking his head. That was the moment you wanted to leave the country, if you knew what was good for you.

  Trey studied the bald detective. His head, which was almost always shaved to a slick sheen, was covered in stubble. There were dark circles under his eyes, which were lined in red and a bit bloodshot.

  The man was not looking his best.

  After finishing up at their second crime scene of the day, Darc and Trey had come back to the precinct, where they had started in on trying to do some background work on the victims.

  There was nothing. At least, nothing that Trey could find. Even Darc, the pattern master, seemed to be at a dead end. There didn’t seem to be any kind of logic to the selection of the victims.

  But if Trey knew
nothing else from his time in working Major Cases with Darc, it was that there was always a connection. Always.

  He yawned, his eyes watering. The lack of sleep Trey had been experiencing lately was catching up to him. Darn that Maggie and her hyperactive sex drive. She was making his nightlife interesting, that much was true, although there was still some queasiness for him about the baby that was growing somewhere in there. But man, was she messing with his workday.

  Time to get his mind off his own relationship. “Hey, Darc. Didn’t I hear something about you going out with Mala tonight?”

  Darc grunted. It was his version of a yes. At least, that’s what Trey had always assumed. If it wasn’t the case, there had been a lot of miscommunication in their years together. Always a possibility, when Darc was involved.

  “You guys have been dating now for what? Two months or so?”

  “Three months, one week and two days,” came the answer. Trey was proud. A few years ago, that tally would have included hours, minutes and seconds.

  Then the impact of what Darc had said hit him. “Hold on. Three months?”

  “And one week and two days.” Okay, so maybe the progress had been baby steps, but still… Trey shrugged off the correction and continued with the important part.

  “Right, right. But, Darc, that’s three months. That’s a big deal.”

  Darc stared at him again. At least this time his jaw wasn’t clenched.

  “I do not see the significance of the time frame.”

  Well, that wasn’t good. “Dude. That’s the time in the relationship where…” He trailed off. “Didn’t I include this in my rules for dating?”

  Darc pulled out the list. Not the one for everyday interactions. This was the one Darc kept in his back pocket, and was only for use with Mala.

  “No. But I have found this list to be incomplete at best. There are many circumstances that are not included.”

  “What are you talking about? That list is totally comprehensive.”

  Trey had spent hours poring over that thing, making sure he was giving his partner the best shot at love he possibly could. Seemed like the right thing to do, considering their history.

  “For example, there is nothing detailing an interaction that takes place over a severed limb,” Darc said, staring down at the laminated list in his hand.

  “File that under the crime scene stuff. It’s in there.” The fact that Darc and Mala often worked together had forced Trey to write a whole section on workplace interaction. It had been one of the first addendums to the rules.

  “I find the crime scene designation to be far too general.” Darc pointed to the grouping. “I do not believe that warm and direct is an appropriate directive when conversing over a disembodied head.”

  “Okay, okay. Fine.” Trey sighed. “The system might need some tweaking. It was never intended to be that specific. More of a best practices kind of deal.”

  “You mentioned something about three months?” Darc said, bringing them back to the original topic.

  Damn. Trey had sort of been hoping he’d forget about that.

  It wasn’t that Trey didn’t want to be helpful. Quite the contrary. But there were just things about his partner’s life that he didn’t want to know about.

  Maggie had never discussed her intimate life with Darc. Trey hadn’t wanted her to. And talking about what should be happening at this point in his partner’s relationship with Mala was treading dangerously close to that line.

  Then again, not saying anything might be setting Darc up for a huge fall. It was a conundrum wrapped up in a whole heaping load of Too Much Information.

  Oh, well.

  “Three months is kind of a rule of thumb for how long you should date before you get… um… freaky.”

  “Freaky?”

  Right. Idioms. Darc wasn’t very good at them. Trey sighed, squared his shoulders and began again.

  “I’m assuming you haven’t been… intimate… with Mala yet, right?” Who knew? Maybe it had already happened, and Trey was making a mountain out of a molehill.

  “You are speaking of sexual relations?”

  “Right. Intimate. Freaky.” Trey cleared his throat.

  “Those two words do not seem to be synonyms.”

  Wow. Darc was one of the smartest guys Trey had ever known, but sometimes he could be so obtuse. Then Trey stopped. Maybe that was exactly what was going on here.

  Darc was scared.

  Idioms and euphemisms weren’t the big guy’s strong suit, that much was true. But he’d been getting better and better about it over the years. Kind of hard to work with Trey and not have some small steps taken in that regard.

  However, right now, Trey’s partner might as well be the robot everyone thought him to be. Darc was avoiding the topic because it was messing with his head.

  Trey took a deep breath. “Listen, man, I get that this is some tricky stuff, but it’s something you’re going to have to deal with if you want a long-term relationship to work with Mala.”

  For a long moment Darc didn’t speak. He just did that stare off into the distance thing. At least he wasn’t swaying back and forth, but then again he was sitting down.

  Then, just when Trey was about to give up and go back to his fruitless search, Darc spoke up again.

  “I am not prepared for this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Darc looked at Trey. That was something that happened all the time. But this was different somehow. For one of the first times that Trey could remember, he felt like he was actually seeing his partner. Like, all the way inside him.

  No disconnect. No affect. Just Darc.

  “I am taking Mala out tonight, and I will not have time to study this topic.”

  Trey was still so moved by the fact that he felt like he was connecting with his partner, that it took him a moment to realize he had no idea what Darc was saying. Study? Was he talking about the case all of the sudden?

  “Uh, what do you mean, buddy?”

  “I will not have time to study the physical act of lovemaking.”

  Trey was brought up short. “Hold on. Why would you have to study it? You and Maggie had to have…” He stopped himself. Definitely getting into icky territory here. “What I mean is, this won’t be the first time. It’s like riding a bike, man.”

  Darc continued to look at Trey with that wide-open expression. It was great, but it was starting to mess with him a little. It gave Trey more insight into his companion. If Darc could stare death in the face without twitching, then what must be going on inside the man to get him to this state?

  “It was never good,” Darc said, his tone still the flat inflection of someone with Asperger’s, but with something behind it that Trey had never heard.

  And wished he still hadn’t heard. This was just the kind of information he’d been trying to steer clear of.

  “Hey…” Trey said, reaching out and patting his partner on the shoulder. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”

  “She said it was worse than the time she’d broken her collarbone skiing.”

  Wow. There was Too Much Information, and then there was Way Too Much Information. W.T.M.I. Trey was going to see if he could get it trending on Twitter.

  “Okay. Okay. How much time do you have before you need to go pick her up?”

  “An hour and a half.”

  Trey cracked his knuckles and hunkered down. School was now in session.

  And Lovemaking 101 was the topic of the day.

  * * *

  Cat peered at Mala as they walked into the kitchen together, her eyebrow furrowing as she studied whatever it was she saw in Mala’s face. “I’m guessing you for a Rosé kind of girl.”

  “Um… yes, actually. How did you know?”

  She shrugged. “It’s a gift. I must have been a sommelier in another life.” Cat reached down to a wine cooler that sat beneath the antique-tiled island and scooped out a bottle of Miraval. That was good stuff. Like upwards-of-$75-dollars-a
-bottle good.

  The kitchen was decorated in a kind of old-world style, with rough, dark woods combined with warm colors… a creamy tan accented with dark red brick. Copper cookware hung from above, with down-lighting artfully interspersed with the grid from which they dangled.

  The overall effect was one of welcoming warmth. Mala felt right at home. Even the temperature, which Cat had warned her about, was only on the slightly cool side of things. Maybe Jessalyn had turned up the heat in anticipation of Janey arriving.

  “I can’t even begin to tell you how excited Jessalyn was for Janey to come,” Cat said as she grabbed down two mismatched mugs and poured the wine into them.

  Somehow even that act was perfect. Rather than feeling intimidated by fragile stemware, Mala felt like drinking from mugs made it feel like two old friends getting together, neither one trying to impress the other.

  “Well, it means a lot to me that Jessalyn befriended Janey,” Mala confessed.

  “Kind of hard not to, I’d say.” Handing Mala one of the mugs, Cat curled up on one of the leather stools that drew up to the island bar, pointing for Mala to take the one beside her. “There’s something about that girl of yours. She’s a charmer.”

  “Oh yes,” Mala agreed.

  Cat looked out through a window that faced into the backyard, and Mala followed her gaze. The girls had their heads together, staring at something in the grass. Steam billowed up from their mouths and noses, a testament to how chilly it was out there.

  “They’re going to freeze out there,” Cat murmured. “Crazy kids. I should make them some tea.”

  “You drink tea?” Mala asked. It wasn’t exactly a shock, but with the love Mala had for the hot beverage, she always enjoyed finding another enthusiast.

  “Love the stuff,” she answered. “But I’m weird about it. Make my own blend.”

  “Me too!” Mala said, then winced internally. Too much.

  But Cat didn’t seem to notice. If anything, her reaction was bigger than Mala’s.

  “You’re kidding! That’s awesome! I knew I liked you!” She gave Mala a playful punch in the shoulder.

  Ow. That hurt. Cat was strong.