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

  But the rear-view mirror was perfect, foresight was always a foggy lens. She couldn’t flagellate herself for not anticipating every little thing, even when it fell within her purview. There had been a lot of distractions that had kept her from fully acknowledging all of the signs that Carly had been giving off.

  Or at least interpreting them correctly.

  Mala stepped out of her car, crossed the busy street and entered into the King County Administrative Building. Her shoes made a clacking noise on the tile as she crossed the main foyer at a brisk walk. There was a lot of work for her to do, and not a lot of time in which to do it.

  She moved to the elevator and hit the button for the 4th floor.

  Hopefully, the Recorder’s Office would have what she needed.

  * * *

  Trey was about to push open the door to Darc’s apartment when an arm struck him in the chest, holding him back. Seriously, was his partner made of steel? That arm was like a metal band across Trey’s torso.

  “Wait,” Darc intoned.

  Perfect. Now his partner was going all monosyllabic. That was never a good sign.

  Never.

  Darc moved his hands over the door, locating near the bottom some kind of metal wire that protruded just barely past the doorframe. Wait. Was he looking for booby-traps?

  “Um, Darc…” Trey began, panic beginning to rise inside of him. Maggie was in there. If there was a trap…

  But Darc held up a hand, asking for his silence. That was going to be hard to grant him, as right now Trey wanted nothing more than to scream out to his girl inside, begging her to answer him, to let him know that he was okay.

  All right, so Trey had been a little unsure about this whole parenthood thing. Excited, sure, but a little uneasy about his prospects of becoming a good dad.

  But the thought of anything happening to Maggie… to the baby she carried inside of her…

  It was all Trey could do to keep from shoving Darc aside and barging through the door, traps be damned. In fact, give him another three seconds and he wasn’t going to have much of a choice.

  At that moment, Darc stood back up, fitting his key to the lock, turning it, and pushing open the door. The hinges creaked as the entrance appeared. Did those hinges usually creak?

  Inside was a nightmare landscape.

  Blood covered the walls, dripped from the ceiling. Gobbets of flesh and bone decorated the surface of everything within the apartment.

  “No…” Trey heard someone breathe out.

  It was his own mouth that had formed the word.

  Darc kept the apartment utilitarian, taking his cue from ancient Sparta, but all that served to do in this moment was to accentuate the horrors inside. This could not be happening. It was not happening.

  This was not Darc’s apartment. Maggie had not ever been inside of this place. No one had ever taken a knife and carved out their anger at the world on a living creature here. It was impossible. Unthinkable.

  “It is not Maggie,” Darc said. “These bones are not human.”

  The words barely registered. On some level Trey was thankful that Maggie could still be alive. But if this slaughter had taken place here, where Maggie had been, then it meant only one thing.

  The killer had taken the mother of his unborn child.

  CHAPTER 13

  Janey didn’t like what she was about to do.

  Even worse, she was going to do it to her sister.

  The woman with the funny glasses and that jerk Richard Templeton had dropped her off in a place that was a lot like the group home she had been in when they’d taken her away from Darc the first time. But this time, there were a lot less people, and she was with Carly in a room.

  “I know you’re mad right now, but it’s going to be better this way, you’ll see,” her sister was saying. Janey knew that she meant it, that she was just trying to help, but everything Carly was doing right now was dead wrong.

  Popeye said it must be something that runs in the family, but he was just cranky because none of the adults had paid any attention to him. No one ever paid attention to him, not ever. At least according to him.

  But then Janey brought up Darc and Trey and even Mala, and Popeye stopped grumbling. He especially liked Trey, even though he would never admit it out loud.

  Janey looked down at the picture she had drawn for Carly. It was one of the best she’d ever drawn, but she wasn’t positive Carly would understand it all.

  “I just love you so much,” Janey’s sister continued. “I looked for you so long, and now that I’ve found you, I can’t lose you.”

  The words tugged at Janey, almost making her want to stay. She knew her sister had been through a lot, and hurting her more made Janey feel bad.

  But Janey had been through a lot, too. And she knew what she needed.

  She needed Mala. She needed Darc. She even needed Trey and Maggie.

  She also needed to help with the murders. So that no one else had to feel like her.

  Popeye mumbled that he must just be chopped liver, so she gave him a hug. Of course she needed him too. And he knew it, the silly bear.

  But Carly didn’t understand any of this. She thought she was doing what she was supposed to do, but it was going to hurt Janey. In so many ways.

  And Janey knew that Carly would never want to do that. So Janey had to fix it. And fixing it meant that she had to hurt Carly right now.

  It was only a little bit, and it wouldn’t be for very long, but it still made Janey’s heart hurt. This was her sister.

  In the end, it was simple. After Janey placed the drawing on the bed behind her, where Carly couldn’t see it for the moment, she made a face and crossed her legs, showing her sister that she needed to go to the bathroom.

  Carly took her down the hall to the door, bent down and gave her a little hug. “You going to be okay on your own in there?” she asked with a sad smile.

  Janey just hugged her back.

  It was a long hug and a strong one. When Carly stepped back, she had a funny look on her face. But then she shook her head and smiled at Janey.

  “Okay, kiddo. I’ll see you in a sec.”

  Janey didn’t smile back. She couldn’t quite make herself do it.

  * * *

  Darc’s eyes flickered around the apartment from his position outside the door, its familiar contours already mapped out in his mind so many times that the swirls of color ignored the setting. Instead, they focused on what had been added to the scene.

  And the results were not good.

  Symbols, pictures, creations of a diseased mind screamed at Darc from inside his inner network of logic. There was no escaping the malevolence of the individual who had done this.

  Trey had collapsed onto the floor in the hallway, overcome by whatever emotional reaction had gripped him upon seeing the devastation. The silver bindings that wedged themselves in between the colored pathways of logic murmured of fear and loss and love, but Darc did his best to ignore them. But now Darc’s partner began to rise once more, his gaze unfocused and erratic.

  “We have to… I need to…” Trey mumbled as he began to walk through the door.

  A symbol formed from the images that Darc had been collecting. He grabbed for his companion’s shoulder, trying to keep him from crossing the threshold, but it was too late. There was an audible beep as Trey’s pant leg broke the plane of the entryway.

  Trey’s gaze sharpened, and he looked down at his leg. “That wasn’t good.”

  No, it was not. Darc managed to get his hands on Trey’s jacket and pull him back and around the corner of the doorway just as an explosion from the room ripped into the hallway with deafening sound. The two men looked at one another, Trey with an expression on his face that almost seemed a non-expression, it was so blank. Was that how others viewed Darc? Trey was always telling him that he had a blank face.

  But the symbols continued to form in Darc’s mind. “Move,” he said to his companion, shoving him down the hallway back
toward the elevator.

  Even as they stumbled forward, another explosion shook the floor, causing Trey to stumble to his knees. Darc continued to run, reaching down and hauling his partner up by sheer force of will.

  Another explosion hit, this one closer to them, as they neared the elevator. Trey moved to push the button, but Darc stopped him. The numbers and ciphers were flowing into his mind now, guiding his every action.

  “There is no time.”

  Darc shoved Trey toward the stairwell on the opposite side of the elevator, but before he could push the door open, a swirling red shape appeared in his vision. This was the expected way that Darc and Trey would escape.

  Therefore, they could not take it.

  Darc glanced back down the hallway, which was now a conflagration of burning and smoke. The elevator and the stairwell were not options.

  So Darc did the only thing he could.

  Grabbing his partner in a death grip, Darc lifted him up on his shoulders and began running toward the end of the hallway, away from his apartment. He felt Trey lift his head to look in the direction they were running. There at the end of the narrow pathway was a single window that opened out into the Seattle sky.

  “Um, Darc…” Trey moaned as Darc picked up speed. “What are you doing? We’re on the ninth floor…”

  But there was no time to course correct. Leaping up while throwing out an arm covered in his coat to protect he and his partner from as much of the glass as possible, Darc leapt through the opening.

  There was a crash from the breaking of the window, and then they were both falling down toward the pavement below.

  * * *

  Mala had been at the yogurt shop for less than fifteen minutes when Janey showed up with her bear in tow. She stepped down off a local bus at the nearby station, which was one of the reasons Mala had picked the spot, other than the fact that Janey loved frozen yogurt.

  There was always emergency bus fare in a plastic bag that Mala made sure Janey had every day before she headed out to school. And this was one of those moments in which Mala was so relieved that she had not forgotten.

  Janey waved and ran across the street after looking both ways for traffic. Technically she was jaywalking, but right now Mala was so happy to see her that she couldn’t do anything but just admire her strength and intelligence.

  Not many girls her age would be able to find their way here, and yet Janey didn’t seem to have struggled at all. Just one more testament to how amazing this little girl was.

  “Are you okay?” Mala asked, after wrapping Janey up in a huge hug.

  The little girl pulled away from her for a moment, just long enough to nod her head. Then she buried herself back in Mala’s chest. As much as Janey was old and wise beyond her years, she was also still incredibly young.

  “Did anyone give you any trouble getting on the bus?”

  A head shake. Mala’s guess, if she knew Janey, was that she’d pretended to be attached to one of the adults at the stop. That was the way her little brain operated.

  If she wasn’t such a good person, Janey could use those powers for evil. Mala doubted there was a person alive that would be able to beat her at that game, if she ever decided to play it.

  “Okay. Time to go find Darc and Trey and figure out what we’re going to do here.”

  Reality was now setting in. Janey had run away. Mala was now helping her. This wasn’t really making the situation any better.

  But then again, as long as no one knew they were together, all they’d know was that they’d lost Janey on their watch. They’d be frantic.

  The gears in Mala’s head began to turn. Maybe if she turned Janey in…

  Under normal circumstances, that would be her first instinct. The problem was, Templeton was out to get her. And taking Janey back to DSHS might very well mean that Mala would never see Janey again.

  That was not an option.

  She was pulling out her cell phone to call Darc when a call came in from a number she didn’t recognize.

  “Dr. Charan?” a young man’s voice addressed her from the other end of the line.

  “Yes. With whom am I speaking?” The fear in Mala’s heart right now was that it was DSHS, and they somehow had gotten wind of the fact that Janey was with her.

  But the man’s next words put that fear to rest. “My name’s Jeff Fischer. I’m with the Seattle crime team.”

  “What can I do for you, Jeff?”

  “Well, Dr. Hutchinson wanted me to give you a call. There’s a body he wants you to take a look at. Something about a profile.”

  “Okay.”

  This was unusual, but it wasn’t out of the realm of what was possible. Most of the time, Darc and Trey were the ones who called her in, but every once in a blue moon, she got a call that wasn’t related to one of their cases. More and more as her reputation in the department grew.

  But since Darc and Trey were on this case, it was weird that they weren’t the ones giving her a call. She thought about Dr. Hutchinson. The man had always seemed to have a soft spot for her, and it was clear that he didn’t think much of Trey.

  As for Darc? Darc probably threatened his expanded sense of himself too much.

  “Where am I needed?”

  “Over at the morgue. Are you anywhere close?”

  “Yes,” Mala answered.

  “Great. Then I’ll tell him to expect you soon.”

  Mala hung up the phone, musing a bit at the strangeness of all of this. Glancing over at Janey, Mala noticed that she had a slight frown on her face.

  “Everything okay, kiddo?”

  Janey seemed to think for a second, and then nod. But the frown remained. Probably a product of having to slip away from her sister. That couldn’t have been easy.

  Mala gave her a side squeeze and dialed Darc’s cell. The call rang and rang, and then went to voicemail. She repeated the process with Trey with the same results.

  It was fine. More than likely they were already on their way over to the morgue right now. And with Trey driving, it wasn’t shocking that neither of them could hear their cell phones. That Land Rover of his drove like a tank, all vibration and massive suspension. It was more like a rollercoaster ride than a car.

  No problem. She’d head over, and if they didn’t show up for a bit, she’d give the guys another call. And with Janey there, Mala was confident that Dr. Hutchinson wouldn’t make any inappropriate moves on her. Well, mostly confident.

  What would that look like, if she had to write the older man up for harassment? It wasn’t like Mala’s position in the department was all that solid.

  She sighed. That was a bridge she’d cross when she had to. For now, she had more than enough on her plate.

  Grabbing Janey’s hand, she moved off in the direction of where she’d parked the car. She had a body to go see.

  * * *

  A gut-wrenching second after they fell through the now-open window, Trey felt the breath shoved out of him as he landed on the fire escape, Darc’s form pressing into him from above. Man, his partner was heavy.

  Fire-escape. He should’ve known that Darc wouldn’t just jump out of a 9th story window to their death. His partner always had a plan.

  But right now, even with his narrowly-averted death only seconds in the path, Trey was needing a different plan. One that involved him seeing his girlfriend without delays of any kind.

  “Where is she, Darc? Where’s Maggie?” he asked, as Darc began picking off the shards of glass that surrounded them. The fact that neither of them had opened an artery passing through that window was a mere distracting buzz in Trey’s inner ear.

  But instead of answering, Darc merely helped Trey up and began moving along the fire escape, taking the stairs down to the next level of the apartment building. Trey groaned and followed, as they went down past the 8th floor to the 7th.

  At that point, Darc pushed the window open after checking around the frame, probably searching for additional traps. Trey wanted to scream at
him, to demand that he hurry, that their lives weren’t important here.

  But he knew that if the two of them exploded in a blaze of glory up here, there would be no one left to get to Maggie. No one but…

  “Mala,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. Glancing at the screen, he saw that there was a missed call from her. “Darc, we can get Mala to help out…”

  Darc turned for a moment and made eye contact with Trey. There was more in his partner’s expression right now than Trey had seen in a long time, and it was enough to make him realize just what he was really saying.

  Trey needed to find Maggie. But was he really willing to put Darc’s love in harm’s way in order to do it? He wavered for a moment, then shoved his phone back in his pocket.

  “Fine. Okay. I get it,” he acceded, “but tell me that you at least know where we need to go.”

  Darc continued to stare at him, and for a moment, Trey’s heart sank within him. But then his partner spoke.

  “There was a message in the apartment. One that I saw before the explosions. It spoke of the place of death.”

  “The place of death?” he echoed. “What, like a cemetery? A mortuary?” Darc gave the barest shrug to indicate that he had no idea.

  Fantastic.

  It was a puzzle. Trey hated puzzles. Like, even the crossword puzzles in the newspaper. But he also realized that this was going to have to be his puzzle to solve. Darc didn’t do idioms or twists in language. And that’s exactly what this was.

  He mulled it over, as both of them ran down the hallway toward the stairs. Well, stumbled was probably a more accurate term. That fall out of the window was still messing with Trey more than he’d like to admit. To be honest, if it weren’t for the adrenaline that had flooded his system when he realized Maggie had been taken, Trey would have collapsed several minutes ago.

  How was it that Darc managed to continue? He was like some kind of crazy robot, sent back from some distant future to preserve the human race. Or maybe an alien.

  That made Trey think of all of the freaky stuff in this case that had caused him to think that this was all the work of extra-terrestrials. Trey had always been fascinated by aliens. Like that one time that they had aired that alien autopsy…