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

  Another pulse of white, and the answer emerged. Suspicion.

  None of these men trusted one another.

  Darc rejected the result, sending it back to the grey territory from whence it came. This was not a part of himself that he could trust. Answers would need to come from other sources.

  “Where’s the visiting room?” Trey asked.

  “Right through here,” the guard answered.

  Escorting Darc and Trey into the grey and listless room, the man nodded to one of the other guards who was watching the area. Orange garbed men sat in conference with their lawyers or family, glancing up for a moment at the new intruder. Darc and Trey’s escort looked them over one final time.

  “You sure you want to see this guy?”

  Darc looked at him, and the man blanched and moved off. Once he was out of earshot, Trey leaned in.

  “You okay?”

  Turning his gaze toward Trey, Darc faced off with his partner. But Trey didn’t back away from returning Darc’s look.

  “Yeah, that might work with people you don’t know, but I’ve been your partner for a long time, dude.” After a long moment, Trey sighed and turned away. “Something’s going on with you. Something I don’t understand. But I would like to. So sue me.”

  This did not seem like a moment for any sort of legal action. This must be another one of Trey’s idioms.

  A voice inside him whispered that of course it was. That Darc knew not only that it was idiomatic, but the meaning of the phrase as well. That he hid the information from himself due to fear.

  But Darc was not afraid. What was there to fear? The threads of color swirled about, both inside his head and out in the world, gathering and processing information. With that web of logic surrounding him, Darc was safe.

  Again the murmur rustled within, the questions echoing. From what did he feel safe? From what did he need protection?

  Darc’s heart pounded, his stomach bundled itself into knots. Some sort of reaction was happening within himself that he did not understand.

  A prisoner approaching in an orange jumpsuit interrupted the process, and Darc turned his attention outward. There was a sensation of… what? What did he feel?

  Relief, the voice within him purred with white light. You feel relieved.

  He shoved the voice aside, the internal motion savage.

  “Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” Chris Talon said as he sat down, a large smile covering his face. Smiles indicated pleasure, did they not?

  No, grumbled something within Darc. This is not a smile of pleasure. There is something wrong with this man.

  For a brief moment before he pushed the thought down, Darc could see what that internal voice pointed out. The smile was more of a grimace, baring too many teeth. The motion did not seem to reach the eyes, which were dark with calculation. Flat with a lack of empathy or compassion.

  No logic governed any of that reaction.

  Trey shifted in his seat, leaning away from the prisoner.

  The man seemed to notice the motion and chuckled. “I get that a lot. Not sure why. There’s nothing frightening about me, is there?”

  Again the smile. Again the internal warning flashed.

  “Oh, you don’t get it, do you?” Trey responded. “I’m not scared. I’m just not a fan of pimps.”

  “Ah, yes. You used to work in vice, didn’t you?” Seeming to notice a reaction in Darc’s partner, Chris Talon smirked. “It’s a matter of public record, Detective. And it doesn’t take much to get the underpaid guards to tip you off when the filth comes calling on you.”

  “Filth?”

  Again, there was a chuckle from the prisoner. “It’s what the Brits call the cops. Well, the lower class ones, anyway. So much better than pigs, don’t you think? Such descriptive language.”

  Darc leaned in. “What are your ties to the Darker Side of Yin?”

  For the first time, Talon’s expression seemed to change. He leaned back in his seat and inhaled, a quick and abrupt sound. Then, a moment later, he appeared to force himself to relax.

  “Never heard of them,” he said with another grin. “Sounds like some kind of New Age B.S. to me. But if I had, I’m not sure why I should share the information with you.”

  There was something different about the prisoner’s smile this time. Something that Darc could not identify.

  Yes, you can, the internal voice murmured.

  “You help us, we can help you,” Trey muttered, still clearly leaning as far away from the man as he could. “You know the drill. We want to know who was running your organization.”

  An orange clad man at a nearby table stood, his conference appearing to be over. A guard stepped up to escort him out.

  “Well, according to the people who put me in here, you’re looking at him,” Talon replied, his grin stretching wider. “Haven’t you heard?”

  “This is a murder investigation,” Trey said, his tone sharpening. “We don’t have time to play informational ping pong with you.”

  The prisoner’s response to Trey’s statement appeared strange to Darc. His face drained of blood, and his gaze darted from side to side. Significant reactions that Darc could not place.

  That is a lie.

  “This conversation’s over,” Talon said, standing up.

  “Hey,” Trey said, rising to his feet as well. “We just want a name. Give us the man in control and we’ll see if we can knock some time off your sentence.”

  This time, the man’s expression did not resemble a smile at all. Even Darc, with his inability to comprehend facial indicators, could tell as much.

  “You have no idea, do you?” he hissed. “You’re completely out of your depth.”

  At that moment, a blur of orange leapt toward Chris Talon. The prisoner from the other table, the one being lead out of the room, broke away from his guard and lunged at the man in front of Darc and Trey.

  The action occurred in such rapid succession that Darc could almost not follow it. Gripping what appeared to be a sharpened toothbrush in his fist, the interloper stabbed Talon in the throat five times, the motion sharp and precise. The attacker’s eyes were glazed, flat. The eyes of a shark.

  Blood spouted from Talon’s neck, even as he lifted up a hand to try to staunch the flow. The red liquid spurted around his fingers, spraying Darc and Trey in a hot, salty wash. Guards swarmed the table, ripping the shiv away from the prisoner and holding his arms out to the side.

  Others came and whisked away Chris Talon, the spurts of blood growing less by the moment. The tendrils of color swarmed about the man, making their assessment. Talon was bleeding out and would be dead in seconds.

  No more information would be forthcoming from this man. The thread that had connected them to this underground cabal of sexual perversion and death was now severed. This had been no random act of violence. Someone had been covering tracks.

  Darc stood, moving toward the attacker.

  “Darc, what are you doing?” Trey said, moving to intercept him.

  But Darc had always had an advantage over his partner when it came to speed. He approached the man who had taken Chris Talon’s life.

  “Stay back, Detective,” their guard warned, his teeth clenched as he held the man down. “He’s crazy strong, and--”

  Darc ignored the warning, kneeling in front of the man and grasping the waist of the pants of the man’s prison scrubs. In one swift motion, those pants lay in a head around the prisoner’s ankles.

  “Dude, what the freak?” This from his partner.

  At the same moment, the guards pulled the attacker away, muttering about the strange detective who was stripping down their prisoners. But Darc had seen what he needed to see. And after a moment, Trey seemed to observe the same thing.

  “Sweet Mary and Joseph,” he whispered.

  Where the man’s genitalia should have been, there was nothing but a gnarled mass of scar tissue.

  * * *

  The Headminister smiled.

&nbs
p; All had been set in motion. The players placed on the board. The trap laid and baited. The clock started.

  All that remained was to sit back and watch the gameplay unfold.

  The Headminister knew that the opponent in question was a Grand Master of the game. The challenge was undeniable.

  But the setup was exquisite. So much time, effort and energy had been placed into making sure all would fall into place. There was no room for error.

  How simple it had been, ultimately, to place one of their warriors inside. To make sure that, instead of sacrificing himself, that warrior remained. Pointing the finger right where it needed to go.

  There was no fear in this self-exposure. The Headminister welcomed it.

  It would bring the proper players right to where they needed to be. Especially the one. The dangerous one.

  There was the dark detective. The Grand Master. He was problematic.

  But his mate… she remained the real issue. She had almost the intellect of the bald one, but twice the intuition. And she was scratching and digging in uncomfortable places. Always scratching and digging.

  Time to take care of her. The Headminister felt a rush of desire course from head to toe at the thought. She was delectable, that one.

  And she had been promised as a reward.

  Unlike those that had come before, the Headminister would prove worthy of the task assigned. The others had come to this point and failed, but that was only due to a moral blindness, a failure of will, a lack of the ability to take whatever actions were needed in the moment.

  A priest? Please. How could a man of the cloth, no matter how warped and twisted, ever step fully into the role of an avenging angel?

  A lawyer, a mayor, a medical examiner… all weaker vessels. These men had been unable or unwilling to go where they had needed to go.

  So sad. Weaklings, at the end of the day. Soft. And not in the sensual way that the Headminister so cherished.

  Speaking of which…

  There was a new plaything that soon would be waiting within, prepared for the pleasure of all. A man, but as soft a creature as the Headminister had ever encountered.

  Delicious.

  Again, all part of the plan. But this was a part that would be enjoyable. So very, very enjoyable.

  The Headminister thought for a moment of bringing in the girl and the man together. Forcing them to please one another for the amusement of the group.

  That would be quite the spectacle.

  But even the Headminister answered to a higher power. And that higher power had demanded a pristine sacrifice. A virginal offering to tempt the dark Detective. The Detective Darc.

  Such beautiful symmetry.

  She would come along, of course, his lovely and sensual mate. How could she resist being at his side? And then she would become the offering. The one placed on the altar, given up to sate the needs of a dark god.

  In the meantime, some other, lesser volunteer would have to do. The body had its needs too, after all.

  Time to fulfill them.

  * * *

  It almost made Janey laugh.

  Here she was, walking around the building where all of the people that wanted to catch her worked, and no one was paying any attention to her at all. In fact, no one was paying attention to either one of them.

  Lula walked at her side, muttering to herself. That had started the second they’d walked through the doors.

  And from that point on, everyone that had even glanced their way hadn’t come anywhere close to them. Lula was amazing.

  Popeye muttered something about her smelling like an old lady. But she was an old lady, so that didn’t seem all that fair. And Janey thought she smelled nice. A blend of lavender and peppermint gum, with maybe something else mixed in there. Hairspray?

  Popeye was just being silly again.

  Janey could see the colors surrounding the old woman. She was doing all of this on purpose. Talking to herself made Lula seem crazy, and no one wanted to talk to the crazy lady.

  Awesome.

  Lula looked down at her and winked, and then whispered, “Nice little trick, isn’t it? Now, where are we going?”

  Janey pointed down the hall toward Richard Templeton’s office. Even though she wasn’t positive what it was that she needed to learn, she knew that it would be here in this building that she would get it. And that seemed like the best place to start.

  “Foster care, hmm?” Lula muttered. To anyone else it must have seemed like she was talking to herself again, but Janey could tell that it was directed to her. “My recollection is that the social workers in that department were some of the best and the worst of what humankind had to offer.”

  Janey had to agree, but how had Lula known that they were headed to foster care? It had to have been ages since she was young enough to have any business being here. The building wasn’t even built then.

  But then a man stepped to the side, and Janey could see the sign that proclaimed FOSTER CARE to anyone with eyes to see it. Still, the streams of color in Janey’s head trembled in a reaction to something that they couldn’t… or wouldn’t… explain.

  Popeye stuck his tongue out at her and called her paranoid. But Janey had been through enough stuff in her life to know that paranoid was just another word for careful.

  Still, Lula kept grinning away, chattering to herself like some kind of crazy parrot. And no one stopped them.

  Anyone who even started to look their way was always looking straight at Lula, never at Janey. It was like she was invisible.

  When she was by herself, it was like she was some kind of eye magnet, dragging everyone’s gaze to her in a five-block radius. The fact that she had managed to even make it as far as Lula’s shop before having some adult snatch her up and take her to the precinct had been a minor miracle.

  They entered the foster care workspace, and Janey felt her heart beat faster. Up to this point, they hadn’t run into anyone that knew Janey from more than a brief glance or two from the times she had come here with Mala. But here in foster care, most of the workers knew her by sight. And if they didn’t know her, they knew Popeye.

  She shoved her bear under her shirt, ignoring his angry protests. Telling him to shush his mouth before they got caught, Janey tried to make it look like she wasn’t doing anything weird.

  Then her pounding heart jumped into her throat.

  There, right in front of them, was Regina Cross.

  And she was headed right toward them, a determined look on her face.

  * * *

  Mala knew her way to the DSHS building well enough. But now that she was here, she had no idea where to go next.

  More than anything else, she wanted to avoid the whole foster care section of the place. Running into Richard Templeton, or even Regina Cross for that matter, didn’t seem like a good use of her time.

  What she needed, more than anything else, were records.

  Were there any names that were consistent with the foster children that had surfaced so far? Any causal link that might explain why these forgotten kids had ended up in some kind of insane sex cult.

  The thought made Mala shudder. This was her worst nightmare that she was living out right now.

  Having treated so many children with histories of abuse, she had seen firsthand the kind of trauma inflicted on those whose abuse had a sexual nature to it. The pain went deep, and it lingered far beyond that of physical or even emotional violence.

  Something about the nature of molestation went against the very fiber of human kindness. Even those hardened criminals in jail acknowledged it. The punishment they would inflict upon a fellow inmate with a history of pedophilia was evidence of that thread of disgust that ran through most people.

  And now Carly was caught up in it.

  Every second that ticked past was another moment in which that girl could be receiving unthinkable psychological damage. Mala had to fight against the paralysis that gripped her every time she allowed her mind to drift back to J
aney’s sister.

  Janey.

  There was another topic that Mala had been trying to avoid. She felt the lack of that little girl at her side like the amputation of a limb.

  This was not the time to allow these thoughts to run rampant in her mind. She had a task to perform. One that would brook no mental interference.

  Pulling out her police department identification, Mala approached the desk of a receptionist that she didn’t recognize. The girl looked up at her expectantly as she neared the desk.

  “I’m Dr. Mala Charan, consulting with the Seattle Police Department,” she said, doing what she could to give weight and authority to the statement. The next few moments would determine the success or failure of her endeavor here. “I need to look through some records related to a murder case I’m working.”

  The girl’s face went blank. Fantastic.

  Mala had hoped that the fact that the girl was unfamiliar to her would mean that she was new at her job. It seemed that was the case.

  Someone seasoned would probably ask for all kinds of paperwork. That was the nature of bureaucracy. Cover your ass until no one could see it for all the red tape.

  But someone new might be swayed by the badge. Or, you know, the identification card she’d been issued by the precinct. Whatever.

  “Um… what is it that you need?” the young woman asked.

  “I’m looking for the records of these two individuals,” Mala answered, handing the receptionist a piece of paper with the names of the two victims.

  “Those records are confidential, I think,” came the timid answer. “I think I’m going to have to check with someone on this.”

  “My investigation is time sensitive,” Mala was quick to answer. “I need those files ASAP. Confidentiality doesn’t apply here, as they are both deceased.”

  The girl’s mouth made a large O as she glanced back down at the names there that now stared back up at her from her desk. Shifting her gaze from side to side, the receptionist appeared to be looking for someone who might help her.

  But Mala had made sure to approach at a time when there was no one else around. Confronted with authority and unsure of the rules, a new employee could often be intimidated into helping, without any actual threat being applied.