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

  “Why would you leave them like that?” Mala couldn’t help but ask.

  Cat let out a heavy sigh. It seemed as if she was working herself up to tell Mala something that was hard for her.

  “Jessalyn’s dad. He got arrested on a drug possession charge. I had to go to post bail for him.”

  “But--” Mala began.

  Cat cut her off. “I know. I should’ve called you. But you were out with Darc, and I didn’t want to screw it up. I also didn’t want Jessalyn to know what had happened with her dad. I wouldn’t have even bailed him out, but he promised to give me full custody of Jessalyn if I did, so…”

  “So you did what you had to do,” Mala finished for her.

  “Yeah,” she said, with a huge exhalation of breath. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Mala replied. “I get it. And thanks for telling me.” She started to leave, then turned back. “But next time, call me, okay?”

  “You got it,” Cat answered, and then gave her a hesitant smile. “Forgive me? Still friends?”

  Mala smiled back. “Still friends.”

  * * *

  Trey sat by Maggie’s side in the hospital, where the OBGYN was still checking her out to make sure everything was okay with the baby. The obstetrician moved the sonogram wand back and forth across Maggie’s belly, the gel she’d used making a wet, slurping sound. Trey suppressed a shudder.

  “While I’m doing this, would you like to know the sex of the baby?” the doctor asked.

  “No!” Trey yelled.

  At the same moment, Maggie said, “Yes, absolutely.”

  The woman looked back and forth between the two. “Okay. Which is it going to be?”

  Trey shrugged. “If she wants to know, then I guess go ahead and tell us.”

  “Well, can you see this here?” she said, giving Trey a smile. “That is baby’s legs. And what do you not see between them?”

  Trey took a moment to process that. “Hold on. You’re telling me…”

  “That you’re going to have a beautiful baby girl. Yes.” The doctor finished for him.

  Trey’s legs gave out from underneath him for a moment, and he had to steady himself against the table where Maggie was lying. Once he felt more stable, he looked back at the doctor.

  “A girl? Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be without actually holding her in my arms,” she said.

  Trey fell silent, and he could feel both of the women in the room watching him intently. Finally, Maggie cleared her throat.

  “Trey, are you upset? Were you hoping for a boy?”

  Starting from his near-stupor, Trey turned to gaze at this woman he loved so much. And now, another was coming that would look just like her. Maybe with a few miniscule improvements from Trey’s side of the gene pool.

  “Are you kidding?” Trey answered, tears springing to his eyes. “A girl is perfect. Perfect.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Trey leaned in to kiss this amazing person who had become the center of his universe. “How could she not be? She’s got you for a mom.”

  Maggie let out a half-laugh, half-sob, and clung to him as he held her. They had been that way for several moments, when Maggie spoke again.

  “Hey, did I hear right?”

  “What?”

  “Well, it sounded like when you were talking to the wacko murderer guy that you said wife.”

  “Oh,” Trey answered back, his voice sounding tinny and far-away in his own ears. “I guess I did, didn’t I?”

  And then his legs collapsed completely, and Trey sank into blissful blackness.

  * * *

  The cemetery was beautiful, somehow managing to stay green well into the winter they were entering into. The evergreens added to the lush display, framing the grey headstones that they walked between.

  Mala had fended off Carly’s questions about five times since they’d stepped out of the car. Not so strange that she might have questions, considering the fact that Mala had told her at the beginning of the trip that she had something to tell Carly.

  What kind of disclosures had to take place at a cemetery?

  But here they were. Another few steps, and Mala stopped in front of an elaborate stone that stuck out of the earth.

  On its face, it said, JESSICA MYERS. And underneath, TOO SOON.

  Beside the gravestone was a beautiful arrangement of flowers.

  “Okay, you want to finally explain this to me?” Carly asked.

  Mala pointed at the gravestone. Carly lifted her eyebrows.

  “What? That’s not my mom’s name, if that’s what you wanted me to see. I’ve already found her tombstone. It’s not at this cemetery.”

  “I know,” Mala replied. “It’s not hers.” She let the emphasis sink in.

  Carly was nothing if not astute. “Okay. If it’s not hers, whose is it?”

  Mala looked into Carly’s eyes. “Yours.”

  The young woman backed away from the tombstone, a look of mixed wonder and horror crossing her face. Mala followed along behind her.

  “Your mother never abandoned you. She was told that you had died in childbirth.”

  “But… how…?” Carly choked out.

  “I understand that you were angry with your mother,” Mala said. “But she never deserved it. Your grandmother? Yes. Absolutely. But not your mom. She loved you.”

  Carly’s face twisted up as tears glimmered in her eyes. “You can’t know that. I mean, great, okay, she thought I was dead. But you don’t know that she loved me.”

  “Yes, I do,” Mala corrected her softly. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a card, handing it over to Carly.

  “What is it?” she asked, her expression almost frightened.

  “A note from your mother. Read it.”

  Carly slipped the tiny card out of its sheath, and read the note out loud.

  “My dearest Jessica, I will love you forever, from the moon to the stars and back again. I will never forget your sweet little fingers on mine. You are mine forever. Love, Mom.”

  And then Carly burst into tears.

  Mala came in close, wanting to make sure that Carly heard every word. “She had paid for flowers to be sent to your grave for every year for the next two decades. That’s not the action of a mother who didn’t love her daughter.”

  Carly gasped, her body wracked with sobs. “But… why…? It’s… not… fair. I never… knew.”

  Moving in with caution, as she would with a skittish animal, Mala slid her hand around Carly’s shoulders. There was a brief moment of resistance, then Carly melted into her, holding on as if she would never let go.

  “You’re right. It’s not fair. You should’ve been with your family,” Mala murmured into her hair as Carly snuggled in even tighter. “But I have an idea, if you want to hear it?”

  Carly looked up at Mala, her face streaked with tears, and nodded.

  “I know it’s not the same, and I won’t ever try to make it be,” Mala began, searching for the words to use. “But what if you could be with your family now?”

  “What do you mean?” Carly’s words were tainted with heartbreak, to the point that Mala could barely get out the words.

  “I mean, be with us. With Janey and with me. We’re your family.” Mala took a breath. “At least, we are if you’ll let us be.”

  For a long moment, Carly didn’t speak, and Mala began to worry that she’d gone too far. But the girl’s body was still pressed up against hers, and there was no sign that she wanted to break their embrace.

  Finally, Carly spoke.

  “I… I think I would really like that.”

  And then she reached her arms around Mala to give her an even stronger embrace.

  And Mala could feel their two hearts beating in time.

  Together.

  DETACHED – The bridge short story to 2nd Death

  CHAPTER 1

  The carnival had to be the coolest place Janey had ever been. Everything around her
was perfect. There was great food, lots of games and rides, and tons of people.

  Watching the people was Janey’s favorite thing. Since she’d started being able to trace their reactions with the bands of color that swirled around in her head, figuring things out about the people around her was so much fun.

  And there were so many different colors here. Purple, pink, red, orange, blue, yellow, even a really neat color that was somewhere in between pink and purple. That had belonged to a nice woman who had complimented her on Popeye.

  Popeye had liked her, too.

  What Popeye did not like was the carnival. He said that it was because it was too loud, noisy and smelly, but Janey knew better. The real reason was hanging off the hooks at the games in the Midway.

  Tons and tons and tons of stuffed animals.

  Popeye was jealous.

  He wouldn’t admit it, of course, but Janey knew it was true. Every time they passed by one of the stands, he would growl.

  Popeye almost never growled. He grumbled a lot, but growling was reserved for when he was really upset about something.

  But Janey was having a hard time caring. She was having the time of her life.

  She looked up at Carly and Mala, who were both right beside her, one on either side. They still didn’t get along all that well, but things were a lot better now than they had been when Carly’d first shown up.

  That had not been fun.

  Popeye said it had been fun for him, but he was just being silly. It hadn’t been fun for anyone. Even Janey, who was thrilled to have a sister, had wondered about her once or twice. But just for a second or two.

  And now they were all together. Darc, Mala, Carly, Janey, Trey and Maggie. Oh, and Maggie’s baby. Maggie’s tummy was getting so big.

  Popeye said that Janey’s was going to be that big if she kept eating the corn dogs here, but she just ignored him. This was going to be an amazing night.

  * * *

  The Midway pulsed with light and sound, each distinct beat hitting Darc with the intensity of a sledgehammer. Barkers called out to their group, their voices sailing through the crisp early Spring air, tempting them to try this game of chance, eat this fried food, go on the other wild ride.

  Not the sort of environment Darc typically chose for himself. But this outing was not for him.

  He stared down at the little girl who walked by his side, her hand wrapped up in his. Janey stared up at the sights of the fair, her face glowing in the reflected lights that flashed and shone in the amusement area of the carnival.

  “So, are we still gonna go to the circus part of this thing?” Trey asked, his tone vibrating with a resonance Darc could not identify. “Because this stuff over here is totally working for me.”

  Trey spoke from behind Darc, Mala, Janey and Carly, Janey’s older half-sister, where he was walking with Maggie. She was now six months pregnant, and her movements were beginning to be impaired by her expanding abdomen.

  In one fist, Maggie gripped an enormous corn dog. In the other, she held a plate with a confection that was referred to as a “funnel cake”, although Darc could see nothing about it that resembled a cake. Or a funnel, for that matter.

  “I don’t know, Trey,” Mala answered. “I’m pretty sure Janey’s attached to the idea of seeing the elephants.”

  Trey groaned, a sound that was cut off when Maggie jabbed an elbow in his side, almost dropping her plate of fried dough drippings. It seemed that pregnancy had made Darc’s ex-wife more violent.

  The carnival was only in town for another week, and Janey had been drawing pictures since she had heard it was coming one day at school. And had then made sure that those sketches had shown up on Darc’s desk.

  Under normal circumstances, Darc would not have picked up on those cues. But these had been blatant, with depictions of Darc at a ticket booth, buying passes to the carnival, all of which was encompassed by a large gold detective’s badge.

  Plus, Trey had mentioned it to him. That had also helped.

  “Are you sure you want to see the elephants, Janey?” Trey said again, moving away from Maggie to avoid another poke in his ribs. “I’ve seen ‘em before, and they smell really bad.”

  “What is your problem?” Maggie hissed at him, and Trey just shrugged, his face crumpling up in the expression that Darc had learned to identify as his defeated look.

  “You don’t have to join us for the circus part, you know,” Mala mentioned from Darc’s other side. “You and Maggie can hang out here and we’ll meet up afterward.”

  For a moment, Trey’s face cleared up, until Maggie spoke from his side.

  “But I want to see the clowns.”

  “You like clowns?” Trey interrogated her, his tone rising in pitch until the last word was almost a squeak.

  That was odd. That vocal response from Darc’s partner had always been an indicator of fear. But there did not seem to be anything about this situation that would create that response.

  Darc was about to comment on the disparity when a loud scream pierced through the sounds of the Midway. The cry arced over the crowd and then cut off. It had come from the direction of the circus tent.

  This was not a squeal of delight, or even of mock terror inspired by a frightening ride. This was a timbre of voice that Darc knew very well.

  Someone here at the carnival had just been murdered.

  * * *

  Trey stood over the body, looking down at the woman dressed in a yellow skin-tight leotard covered in sparkling sequins. Her eyes stared back at him, lifeless and dull in contrast to the rest of her.

  “Man,” he breathed, glancing back up at the rest of their party. “This is not what you want to have happen at the carnival.”

  They had pushed through the gathering crowd, flashing their badges to get people to move aside. They were around the side of the large tent that had been set up for the main attraction that evening, the cursed circus performers. Seriously, how did people watch that stuff? Trey just didn’t get it.

  The woman lying on the ground appeared almost normal, except for the fact that her throat had been slit from one side of her neck to the other. The cut was strange, angling down instead of up, almost as if the attacker were much smaller than the petite woman here.

  There were appeared to be defensive knife wounds on the palms of her hands. The performer must have heard her attacker come from behind and fought him off just long enough to let out that scream.

  “Do not move,” Darc said, standing behind him.

  Trey froze. “What? What is it? Is it a clown? Please tell me it’s not a clown.”

  “There are footprints there in the dirt beside you,” Trey’s partner intoned, his voice flat with the neutral affect of Asperger’s. “I do not want you to disturb the evidence.”

  “Right,” Trey answered, still holding still while looking where Darc was indicating.

  There did seem to be footprints there, but it seemed as if there were something strange about them. The proportion was off, almost as if Trey was seeing them in close up, or in one of those warped fun house mirrors that had made Janey giggle earlier.

  And then it struck him what the problem was. The forward part of the shoe print was exaggerated, where the heel was normal. Trey felt his blood run cold.

  He knew what had made those footprints.

  “Darc,” he said, his voice trembling. “I think we might have a killer clown.”

  * * *

  Mala took a deep breath, trying to gauge Carly’s reaction to all of this without being obvious about the fact that she was doing it. How successful the endeavor was, she really couldn’t tell.

  After being Janey’s foster mother for more than a year at this point, Mala was now starting to get used to the strange occurrences that seemed to follow the young girl around. It was one of the reasons that Mala had finally given up on trying to keep Janey away from crime scenes.

  One, Janey found ways of making her own way there, and generally without adult supervision,
when Mala refused to take her. Two, real life had a tendency to get violent enough, even when Mala was doing something as simple as trying to take Janey to the zoo to look at the animals.

  But explaining that to Carly had been a bit of a challenge. They were still dealing with the repercussions of Carly outing Mala to Janey’s social worker. While Carly had seemed to come around, the backlash of that incident had not just disappeared once Janey’s older sister had retracted her bid to adopt Janey.

  And there was no guarantee that the teenager’s decision would hold firm. It had become clear in the two months since Carly had shown up that she was volatile, mercurial, even more than teenagers usually were.

  Right now, a frown covered her face. Not a good sign.

  “We need to shut this sucker down, Darc,” Trey was saying. “I mean like now!”

  “Please don’t shut us down,” came a voice from behind Mala. “Oh, wow. Is she really… dead?”

  A large, florid man in a suit that didn’t quite seem to fit him was moving toward them through the crowd, along with two brightly costumed clowns with garish clown makeup staining their faces. Mala didn’t feel the need to respond, as the man sucked his breath in through his teeth as soon as he caught site of the body.

  Trey sprang up from where he had been studying the footprints, his face pale. Backing away from the man and his clown posse, Trey shook his head as if to rid himself of the mental image.

  “There they are, Darc. I can’t take it.”

  “Take what?” Darc asked.

  “The… the… clowns.” The last word was a whispered hiss.

  The clown to the suited man’s right frowned. “That’s offensive.” He took a step around the boss, and Trey let out a squeak and took another step back.

  “Give him a break, Larry,” the other clown muttered. “You know it’s a big deal for some people.”

  “Big deal, whatever,” the clown who was apparently named Larry muttered, looking at Trey. His face was painted with a huge smile, belying his tone. “Guy’s an idiot.”

  “Come on!” Trey gasped out. “Coulrophobia. It’s a real thing.”

  The other clown stepped out toward the group. “I’m Jim. Are you guys the police?”