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

  The man with him wasn’t much better. This one looked like he had balloons attached to all of his limbs. Balloons that someone had blown up way too much.

  And he kept staring at Carly over in the corner of the room.

  Carly hadn’t said much since they’d come to the hospital. Janey didn’t know how her sister was feeling for sure, but as a guess it would have to be pretty bad. Here was a woman who had taken her in so Carly could be with Janey, and now that woman had been shot and was lying on a bed looking like death warmed over.

  Popeye grumbled something about Mala looking just fine, thank-you-very-much, but his opinion wasn’t all that trustworthy when it came to her. Then he said something rude that Janey didn’t even want to repeat to herself.

  So, rather than try to figure out how what he said was even physically possible, Janey began inching toward the door. She didn’t want the other guy, the really muscular one, to see what she was doing, but since he was paying attention to Carly right now, Janey didn’t really need to worry.

  But what she heard as she got close to the door was enough to make her wish she had just stayed where she was. Laurent was talking to Darc, and their voices came through the door in bursts of sound.

  “… have been some facts surface about your partner…” the Commissioner was saying. “… can’t substantiate his whereabouts… some connection to current victims…”

  Was he talking about Trey? The web of colors in her mind locked down around that idea, refusing to even accept the information. Janey inched closer to the door, trying to hear what was going on more clearly.

  Popeye grumbled something about getting squished, and Janey realized she had pushed her bear up against the door. She apologized and started to move him to her other side, when he started complaining that now he couldn’t hear anything.

  Silly, silly bear.

  The voice on the other side of the door was still talking. “… have no proof of wrongdoing… as his partner… keep an eye…”

  Then, either because Janey’s ears had gotten used to listening through the door, or because the Commissioner had turned to face where she was standing, Janey could hear everything. She held her breath, trying to make sure she didn’t miss a word.

  “There has been another murder reported in the last hour. Your kind of case, Darc. Here, take these.”

  There was a rustling of papers, and Darc spoke. “Why give these to me?”

  Laurent sighed. “I know you want to stay here with your… um… well, Dr. Charan. But I need you on this case right now. This, plus the one earlier… they could both be related to the attack on your fiancée.”

  “Do you believe that I had not considered that possibility?” came Darc’s response.

  Another sigh. “Of course not. You’re far too intelligent for me to outthink you. But that doesn’t change the fact that I need you on this case. That Dr. Charan needs you on this case.”

  There was a long pause, then Darc finally spoke. “I will go. But only if I am allowed to hand-select the men to guard Mala.”

  “Agreed.”

  Darc made what sounded like a grunt of acceptance. Then there was the sound of what Janey imagined was the bald detective heading down the hall, when Commissioner Laurent called out.

  “Detective Darcmel? Use this opportunity to watch out for your partner.”

  Janey felt her stomach sink down low, almost like it was trying to hide in her shoes. The colors swirled around in her brain, all buzzing and chaos and movement.

  This could not be happening.

  Popeye growled something about never having really trusted that Trey. Janey shook the bear to make him be silent. All she could think about was the kind detective with the messy hair who always made her laugh.

  She wasn’t laughing now.

  CHAPTER 6

  Thoughts bounced around in Trey’s head like one of those rubber super balls he used to play with when he was a kid. His baby girl, Mala recovering from surgery and the attempt on her life… the information Merle had given him about Carly…

  Before Darc had dragged him off to check out this new crime scene, Trey had checked in with the officers guarding Mala. They needed to know that Carly might be a threat. The idea that Janey’s half-sister could have anything to do with any of this made no sense to him. She’d been at the wedding when Mala had been shot, for one thing.

  But better safe than sorry, right?

  Trey rushed behind Darc into the crime scene and immediately wished that he hadn’t. This wasn’t just a weird crime scene. This was one that was tripping on some serious acid.

  Everywhere he looked was either red or green. The red was from the blood that was spread everywhere in the great room of the home where the second set of murders had happened. The green…?

  That was the frogs.

  The small amphibians were hopping all over the place, and the noise they were making could have woken the dead. Trey glanced over at the bodies piled up in the middle of the large space and reconsidered. These guys weren’t stirring any time soon.

  Actually, no. That wasn’t true. The frogs seemed to be burrowing in, around and under the murder victims, making it appear that they were moving. Trey felt his stomach lurch in a violent turn. Good thing he hadn’t had time to eat much. He’d been saving room for all the wedding canapés. What a freaking waste.

  Something about the combination of the swarming frogs and the anticipated wedding food seemed to tip the scales. Trey had to reach out and grab for the nearest piece of furniture to steady himself. A sofa table. His hand came down and squelched on one of the frogs.

  “Seriously? Could we… just once… have a nice, normal, quiet little homicide?” Trey managed to croak out to Darc as his partner began making a careful circuit of the front room. “And did you know about this?”

  Darc just stared back at him. Trey had known his partner long enough to interpret the bald man’s silences. He’d totally known about the frogs.

  “Not cool, man,” Trey protested. “Not cool.”

  Another uncomfortable look from his partner sent a spike of ice down Trey’s spine, and he decided that maybe it was time to stop asking questions. The whole ride over to the crime scene had been weird, come to think of it. Something was up with the tall detective, and Trey wasn’t positive that he wanted to know what it was.

  The house was a large craftsman style home, and the part of the CSI team that had been left behind was still milling around, from all appearances trying to gather evidence around the massive amounts of frogs.

  Speaking of…

  Had he just stepped on one of those green little buggers? He wiped at his shoe, trying to get the amphibian guts off his sole.

  On the walls, smeared in what could have been either human or amphibian blood, were the symbols that Trey had learned to dread more than turkey bacon. Fantastic.

  “Does this make any sense at all to you?” Trey asked his partner, but Darc was doing his tilty-head thing that he always did when he was about to bolt.

  Great. Bracing himself to leap out of the way, Trey tripped over a grouping of frogs… or would that be called a bundle? No, no… an army. Army of frogs. At the same time, Darc rushed forward, brushing past Trey and knocking him backward into the croaking mass of green hoppers.

  This wasn’t going so well.

  * * *

  Mala worked to stay awake. Something was going on that no one would tell her, and all the drugs she was on kept making her pass out.

  If ever there were a time that she wanted to stay conscious, this was it.

  Janey sat by her side, holding Mala’s hand in one fist, her bear in the other. Mala had to admit, there was part of her that was upset about the fact that Janey had taken that ratty thing back. The knowledge that her little girl had given up her prize possession to make Mala feel better had meant so much.

  And there was something about that stuffed animal…

  She shook her head, the strange wooly feeling of the drugs dulling
her sensations. It was silly of her to miss Janey’s bear, right?

  Staring around the room, Mala realized something was off. “Where’s Carly?”

  The expression on Janey’s face told Mala that the little girl had no idea. And that the fact they didn’t know where Carly was had been bothering her, too.

  Just at that moment, there was a knock on the door. The Chief of Detectives… Hardin… stuck his head in, his eyes scanning for Mala.

  “Can I help you, Chief Hardin?” she asked.

  “Uh, yes. Sorry,” he apologized. “There’s just… there’s someone here to see you, and I’m not supposed to let anyone in if you don’t…” The man’s sentence trailed off.

  Hardin opened the door wider to reveal Cat standing on his other side. Cat’s face was contorted into an expression of worry.

  “She’s fine,” Mala said, waving her hand at the man. “Let her in.”

  The Chief of D’s nodded and moved aside. Cat rushed in, Hardin shadowing her, standing on the side of the bed opposite Janey.

  “Mala, I heard about what happened,” she gushed.

  Hardin made an abrupt gesture with his hand, which he cut off the moment he saw Mala staring at him. Clearly there was something he didn’t want her to know.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  Cat seemed to get brought up short at that. “I… ah… Did they not tell you?”

  Mala glanced over at Janey, who did her best to look nonchalant. That was a look that Mala had gotten to know well since she’d taken the girl in. Janey was trying to hide something from her.

  “I haven’t been told anything,” Mala said. “Yet.”

  She stared into Cat’s face and cocked an eyebrow at her, asking the question. Cat held out for a moment, then sighed.

  “Me and my big mouth.” She stared at Mala for another moment, then pursed her lips. “There was another attempt on your life, right after you came out of surgery.”

  The words entered into Mala’s mind, but didn’t seem to make sense. There was a strange sound, high and ringing, that seemed to be bouncing around in her ears.

  “Come again?”

  Cat let out another sigh. “Yeah. That’s probably why they didn’t tell you. Didn’t want you freaking out after a major operation. Seriously, what’s wrong with me?”

  Mala waved her hand. “No. No. It just took me off guard, that’s all.”

  Someone had tried to kill her.

  On some level, she had known. Her mind had kept shifting away from the thought, but she remembered someone coming in to the church, lifting up their arm. And she was here in a hospital.

  Putting two and two together shouldn’t have been all that hard. Clearly, she didn’t want to let herself in on what was really happening.

  But wait a minute. Cat had said something strange. Another attempt…?

  “Someone tried to kill me here in the hospital?” Mala managed.

  To her surprise, the sound of her own voice seemed calm. Interesting. That was not how she was feeling.

  “You… You didn’t know about the church?” Cat sputtered. “Wow. I really know how to stick my foot in it, don’t I?”

  Chief of D’s Hardin made a face, apparently upset about the entire conversation, then scooped his hand down to adjust something up from off the bed. What was that? Looked like it was attached to Mala’s IV. He’d probably noticed the line was getting a kink in it or something.

  Mala, for her part, was starting to struggle. It seemed the more information Cat gave her, the more the drugs inside her decided to kick in. She was having a hard time focusing right now, Cat’s face blurring into a friendly blob.

  “Look, Mala, I’m so sorry,” her friend was saying. “You can barely stay awake. Why don’t I take Janey home with me? Give you a chance to just sleep. Forget all about everything I said, okay?”

  That did sound like a good idea. Mala felt so tired all of a sudden. There was a pressure on her hand, and she looked over to see what it could be. Janey’s face swam into brief focus, her expression troubled.

  Probably felt guilty about leaving. That was silly. No need for her to feel bad.

  “Go ahead, sweetie,” Mala slurred. “It’s okay. Promise.”

  Janey nodded and let go of Mala’s hand. The skin of her hand cooled where Janey had held it, sending a sliver of something up Mala’s arm and down her spine.

  “Oh, one thing I ought to tell you,” Cat murmured as she leaned in close to Mala. “I’m dating this guy… he’s on leave from the Army… and he’s going to be around the house. Is that okay?”

  “That’s fine,” Mala slurred, her speech getting away from her. “Just be careful, okay?” she called out to the two as they started to leave the room, Hardin accompanying them both.

  Cat chuckled. “We should be saying the same to you.”

  Right. No one had made an attempt on either of their lives, had they? It was Mala that should be on her guard.

  As the door shut behind her friend, her little girl and the massively built Chief, Mala’s hand brushed against the thing Hardin had been messing with. It was a button… the kind that was given to patients to allow them to get a dose of morphine.

  Hardin had seen that Mala was getting upset, and had decided to help calm her down. There was a part of Mala that bristled at the presumption. But a larger part was grateful for the kindness.

  Mala was surrounded by people who were doing their best to care for her.

  Sinking down into a pain-free haze, Mala allowed that warm feeling of being cared for to permeate her entire being. Her friends would keep her safe.

  They always had.

  * * *

  “Left.”

  Darc traced the pathway of the lines of logic in his mind as they led him onward. Trey seemed to fume silently to Darc’s left in the driver’s seat as he listened for the directions Darc would occasionally give him. The negative emotion bled off Darc’s partner in shimmering waves of black heat.

  Trey’s entire body seemed to ooze out his frustration.

  “So… what?” he asked, his statement abrupt. “Did the killer leave you a freaking roadmap?”

  “Yes,” Darc answered.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Trey appeared to take that in. It did not, however, seem to calm his partner down. If anything, the tension in Trey’s body seemed to ramp up.

  “And that doesn’t give you a moment’s hesitation?” Trey swerved to avoid a slow moving car, never taking his eyes off Darc. “You know… ‘Hey, the killer’s telling me where to go, so maybe I should be worried about a trap’ kind of thing?”

  Darc chose not to mention the fact that he had already pursued this train of thought to its logical conclusion. Just because they might be moving into a trap, it was no reason to avoid the next step. It simply urged more caution.

  Perhaps Darc should have shared that warning with his partner. But the truth was that there existed internal conflict when it came to Trey right now.

  The words Commissioner Laurent had spoken to Darc continued to process through the network of logic, swirling in virulent shades of orange, red and a sickly green color that made Darc nauseated when he spent too long observing it.

  Darc’s initial inner response to Laurent’s veiled accusation had been a complete rejection. There had been a brief flash of white light that had illuminated the entire tapestry of logic. Nothing there had suggested that Trey was in any way capable of the nefarious deeds to which the commissioner had referred, however obliquely.

  Darc knew Trey. That knowledge had been refined in the burning heat of life and death struggle, and was stronger in many ways than Darc’s own knowledge of himself. The Commissioner had to be mistaken.

  And yet…

  “Right,” Darc ordered his partner.

  Since that moment, tendrils of black doubt had begun to seep into the empty spaces between the bright bands of data that formed Darc’s inner network. Those probing, testing ap
pendages formed links, where before there had been none.

  The file Laurent had passed along to Darc contained evidences of Trey’s previous contacts. Relationships Trey had founded during his days in Vice.

  And so far, each of the victims of this current spate of murders could be traced back to Trey. A fact on which Darc’s partner had so far been strangely silent.

  “Left,” Darc said, his tone bleak even to his own ears.

  “Dude…” Trey began, turning his head toward his partner.

  But whatever Trey saw there seemed to dry up his speech. Instead of continuing, he shook his head and turned his attention back to the road.

  “Here.”

  Trey applied the brakes, and the car screeched to a halt. Before the forward momentum was completely spent, Darc was out of the car and headed toward the storefront. This murder had occurred in a small pet store, locally run.

  As soon as Darc crossed the threshold of the shop, he stopped and spoke over his shoulder to Trey.

  “You cannot enter.”

  But Trey pushed up behind him. “Don’t tell me what I…” Then Darc’s partner seemed to discover what lay inside. “Oh, Mary mother of…”

  Everywhere Darc looked, there were nothing but tiny, translucent insects. They covered the entire floor, and were crawling up the pants legs of the Hazmat suits the CSI team members were all wearing.

  Lice.

  Trey let out a long exhalation of breath. “Yeah… I’m just going to let you handle this one.”

  Sensible plan, seeing as how the parasites would have difficulty infesting Darc, but no such issues with Trey. Darc’s bald head left the tiny creatures nowhere to hide and breed. But a head of hair as thick as Trey’s unruly mop would be a veritable playground.

  A chain of data swirled into focus as this latest piece of information added itself to the puzzle. What had been simple conjecture up to this point, escalated in probability to the point that Darc could make his next move with a high degree of certainty.