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

  Darc pushed past the last of the crowd, a task that had grown progressively easy as he approached the area from which the screams had arisen. People were actively rushing away from the entire section.

  There, on the ground, were the forms of seven people, still writhing in pain, their mouths open in silent screams. Covering every inch of exposed skin were angry red boils.

  The next plague.

  Trey arrived at Darc’s side, out of breath and with an expression on his face that appeared to be either irritation or difficulty moving his bowels. The shadows supporting Darc whispered the answer inside his head. Irritation. More than likely with Darc.

  Irrelevant.

  “What…? Aw, man… what happened to these guys?” Trey panted when he caught sight of the figures on the ground. “And did you see what’s happening to all the animals?”

  Darc had seen more than that. There had been the flicker of recognition in Trey’s eyes when he spotted the victims. The writhing shadows inside of Darc’s mind hissed and whispered their suspicions. Trey knew them.

  He knew them all.

  “Chemical burns,” Darc answered after a beat. “And yes, I did see.”

  “Are we sure it’s not like anthrax or something?” Trey pressed, leaning away from the bodies. “I don’t want to catch anything.”

  The urge to correct Trey’s misunderstanding about how anthrax worked was interrupted by Janey stepping forward. She had moved out from behind Darc’s partner, and was pointing at something drawn in the dirt next to the person closest to them.

  A symbol.

  Darc turned his gaze to the other still writhing souls. There they were. One drawn next to each body.

  Death. Dearth. Darkness.

  The killer was still here.

  Symbols spun and converged, landing with precision around one another. Darc turned to sprint off in the direction they pointed, only to find Janey racing off ahead of him. She had seen the pattern as well.

  “Janey!” Trey called after her, but the girl continued rushing forward.

  A silver shaft of pride coursed through Darc. Janey could see the patterns as well as Darc. Better.

  While the darkness inside him chittered away, whispering of dark jealousies and frightened inadequacies, the silver shone clear for a moment. Janey was bound to him in a way that he had always felt but never been able to express.

  And that was never more evident than right now as he raced after her, Trey yelling nonsense at his elbow.

  Janey was a force with which to be reckoned.

  * * *

  At some point, Mala decided that she couldn’t afford to distrust everyone.

  After making her way to the nearest coffee shop, she found the youngest, hippest-looking guy with a laptop there and approached him. Maybe Mala’s reasoning was off, but it seemed like the Master’s recruitment would suffer the most with youth.

  He was taking a tentative sip of some frothy concoction, and for a moment Mala was tempted by the steaming beverage. There had been little sleep for her last night, and no sustenance whatsoever.

  Fear mongering wasn’t the exclusive purview of the old and wealthy, but it seemed to focus most of its efforts there. All of the Master’s henchmen… and henchwomen, for that matter… had been at least in their thirties so far.

  “Um, excuse me?” she ventured, as the bearded, beanie-sporting young man lifted his gaze to meet hers.

  The youth seemed to assess her for a moment, and the result must have been a positive one, as he gave her a smile. He pushed back his laptop, and Mala caught sight of the monitor. Was that a screenplay he was writing? How many stereotypes could this young man embody all at once?

  “Hey,” he answered with a slight nod.

  That came after he had wiped the smile off his face. With some amount of effort, it appeared. Mala held in the exasperated sigh that wanted to make its way out of her mouth. It wouldn’t do to let this guy know how ridiculous he appeared.

  If he wanted to flirt, this might be a good time to reciprocate, no matter how much her body rebelled at the thought. She had always been frustrated by the women she had encountered who seemed to think flirtation was the only way to get what they wanted. But right now, hurt and alone in Seattle… in desperate need of the Internet… perhaps Mala could relax her stance on the topic a bit.

  “Listen, I’ve had a rough night, and I kind of got stranded without any of my stuff…” Mala began.

  The beanie bobbed up and down in acknowledgment. “Been there.”

  “Can I borrow your laptop for a moment?” she asked. “And maybe your cell?”

  “Sure thing,” he answered, fishing his mobile out of the pocket of his skinny jeans with some amount of effort. He pushed the laptop toward her after surreptitiously closing his screenplay draft.

  Okay, so maybe he was somewhat aware of some of the stereotypes he was embodying, and not completely proud of all of them. He gave her another smile, this one much warmer.

  “Whoa,” he said, pointing at her blouse. “Is that blood?”

  Mala had forgotten that she’d bled through the fabric. Dammit. That wasn’t good.

  “No, no… I just spilled some paint on myself earlier,” Mala said, grasping at the first idea that came to her.

  The guy looked at her askance for a moment, then shook his head. “Sure. Yeah.” He smiled again. “Hey, how about if I buy you a cup of coffee? Maybe a scone?”

  Mala wanted to refuse, not wanting to get too embroiled here. But the fact was, she was famished. And the thought of some caffeine made her slightly giddy.

  “Ah… you don’t have to…” she began. “But that is a very kind offer. Thank you.”

  As the young man bounded to his feet and headed over to the register, Mala opened up a browser and pulled up the information for the precinct. This is where it got tricky. She didn’t want to identify herself to any of the Master’s goons, but if she didn’t let them know who she was, they wouldn’t patch her through to Darc.

  She allowed her gaze to wander as she thought the situation through, catching the eye of an older woman, who immediately averted her gaze. Was that politeness? Her not wanting to get caught staring at a stranger? Or something more sinister?

  There was no way Mala could have been followed here. And the Master’s network couldn’t be so vast that she would accidentally stumble on one of his minions as she stepped into a random coffee shop. Could she?

  The woman seemed rather nondescript. But after Mala’s experience with Richard Templeton’s supervisor, she knew better than to use that as a marker of innocence. The way that woman had managed to develop an army of sexless sex slaves… with coded messages to send out her orders… It made Mala shudder.

  Code.

  That was it.

  She just needed to leave Darc a message within a message. Something that would cause no suspicion, but would allow him to know where she was.

  Now all she had to do was figure out what the hell that code should be.

  * * *

  Trey followed on Darc’s heels as the bald detective sprinted into a funhouse attraction on the midway, Janey by his side. Really? This case wasn’t creepy enough without adding a hall of mirrors to the whole thing?

  It was a maze, with corridors branching out from one another, looping back upon themselves. It appeared to be mostly empty, as far as Trey could tell.

  And while he was already turned around in here, Darc and Janey seemed to know exactly where they were going. They all turned a corner, and skidded to a halt.

  There was a strange sound that greeted them. A dry, rustling sound combined with some kind of… chittering. It was the sound of nightmares.

  “Do you hear that?” Trey whispered.

  Janey nodded, but Darc seemed to not even hear the question. What was that? Trey felt like he had heard it somewhere before. In a movie, maybe?

  Had to have been a horror flick.

  They started moving forward again, although that seemed like a re
ally bad idea to Trey. Was he the only one who thought they should know what that sound was before they went any further?

  But it didn’t take much longer to find out. Taking the next corner, the dim light revealed a floor that seemed to be undulating. Trey had to push down an urge to vomit.

  There, before them, was a mass of huge, seething grasshoppers.

  Locusts.

  “Hold on!” Trey exclaimed. “That isn’t the next plague, is it?”

  Darc shook his head. “Hail and fire.”

  “Right? Mixing up the numbers is so not okay.”

  Before Trey could keep her from doing it, Janey started to move forward through the rustling horror of insects. The locusts scattered as she moved, exposing bodies underneath them.

  “Oh… oh…” Trey groaned. “That is not right.”

  But then he looked closer at one of the faces there. He recognized that guy.

  For a while now, Trey had felt like he was seeing things. Back from the very beginning, he had recognized the settings as ones that he had frequented in his days in Vice. But now he was seeing individuals he had worked with. Criminal informants, contacts in the shady underworld.

  And now this guy.

  Duke. Trey’s “dealer” when he was working on a narcotics bust.

  “Darc,” he murmured, not trusting himself to speak fully. “I know this one.”

  Darc turned sharply, staring Trey in the face. The look in Darc’s eyes was penetrating and frightening, and Trey had to fight not to flinch.

  “He might not be the first one, either,” he admitted. “I’ve been thinking for a while that there was a common denominator here.” Trey tried to swallow in a mouth that had suddenly gone dry. “I think it might be me.”

  The bald detective stared at him for a long moment, then finally nodded. “I know.”

  “You know?”

  Of course he did. Darc knew everything. Why Trey even bothered trying, he had no idea. Habit, maybe. Idiotic pigheadedness.

  There was another long, awkward pause, and finally Darc spoke.

  “I was warned that you might be involved.”

  “Invol…?” Trey began, then stopped as the full meaning of what Darc was suggesting hit him. “Like, involved involved?”

  Darc merely continued staring at him, no nod or answer forthcoming. That in and of itself was response enough for Trey.

  “Who was it?” he demanded. Then he noticed the set of Darc’s jaw, and another realization dawned. “And you believed it.”

  At that, Darc finally moved, shaking his head from side to side. “I did not want to believe it. But I could rule nothing out.”

  “You couldn’t rule…? But, Darc. It’s me.”

  For the first time that Trey could remember, Darc broke eye contact first, staring down at the ground. “Mala’s life was at risk.”

  Trey found himself nodding. Any threat to Maggie might make him go crazy as well. But that Darc could think him capable of doing harm to Mala… it was unthinkable.

  He started to open his mouth to say so, when Janey waved her hand, pointing at the form of Trey’s former associate, Duke. Specifically at his forehead.

  A ragged symbol appeared to have been etched there that had still been obscured by grasshoppers when Trey had been looking at him. He moved in to get a closer look.

  The cipher seemed to have been gnawed into the skin.

  As if eaten by a swarm of hungry locusts.

  CHAPTER 12

  Darc knew they needed to move on. The killer was somewhere here, on the premises. The longer they delayed, the more likely it was that he would escape.

  But to have Trey reveal his connection to the victims had ripped a hole in the fabric of the dark matter inside of him. The anger and suspicion had fueled him, pushed him forward through a situation that could have crippled him.

  Now the worst of the fears that blackness had whispered to him had proven itself to be patently false. Trey would not knowingly admit to recognizing the victims if he had anything to do with their deaths.

  As the body count had risen, and Trey had remained silent, the doubts had grown. But now it felt like someone had ripped away the curtains from a light-filled window. And Darc’s soul felt exposed and raw under that bright, scrutinizing light.

  “I am sorry.”

  The words felt torn from him, but as he spoke them, two things happened at once. First, Trey’s expression, which had been closed off and near to what Darc would have guessed was anger, softened.

  The second was an internal shift.

  The darkness did not leave. But through the hole that had been created, silver tendrils reached out from someplace deep inside Darc’s psyche.

  The dark and the light did not blend together to create the former grey landscape with which Darc was so familiar. Instead, the two poles seemed to move into what looked like coexistence. The black supports appeared to delineate the light, putting it into starker contrast. Something was happening inside of him, but Darc had no idea what it was.

  His reverie was interrupted by an insistent tugging. Janey was in front of him, pointing deeper into the tunnel. They had to keep moving.

  She was right. The killer awaited them.

  Taking Janey by the hand, Darc felt something shift even more in his perception of her. The pride remained, but a sadness took hold.

  Darc was robbing her of her childhood.

  The thought pushed itself into his consciousness, in spite of the terrible timing. But the truth of it was undeniable.

  The part of Darc’s mind that never stopped paying attention demanded additional mental processing power. They were moving their way through the swarm of locusts, the insects grasping at their clothes, flying up into their faces. Trey started dancing as one squirmed its way into his pants.

  But now they had come upon a branching of the tunnel. A decision was needed. Left or right? The threads of color probed, reaching out to test each possibility.

  Right at that moment, Darc’s cell phone vibrated, the sound loud in the enclosed space. Pulling the phone out, the bright screen shone through the dim lighting of the funhouse tunnel.

  Dispatch.

  “Detective Darcmel?” came the nasal sound of the voice over the phone line. “An anonymous tip came in regarding a murder that sounds like it might be related to yours.”

  The logic pathways in Darc’s mind tangled. That there was another crime scene that had not been detailed in the symbols they had found was possible. But it jarred with the patterns Darc had already seen established.

  “What is the message?” he asked.

  “The person refused to give any addresses. She said something about a body with lots of symbols that she had found in a teddy bear shop close to the underground cathedral. But that doesn’t make any sense.”

  The meaning immediately clarified. This was not a report of a crime. It was a message meant for Darc, from the one person he wanted to hear from more than anyone else at this moment.

  Mala.

  There had to be more to the message. “What else?” he prompted the voice.

  “Well, the rest makes even less sense than the other part. Something about a social, I think? Isn’t that like a church potluck or--?”

  Darc disconnected the line. The information he needed was now his.

  Mala would be waiting at the DSHS. The Department of Social and Health Services. The last place anyone would think to look for her.

  Even as he turned to tell the others, the tunnel was plunged into darkness. Mala would have to wait, unless he could find someone to send in his stead. Right now, his attention had to be directed to what was taking place right now.

  The next plague.

  * * *

  Mala didn’t claim to be some sort of code-cracking genius. Her message was in no way impenetrable, but it would take someone intimately familiar with the details of all that had gone before to piece it together.

  Hopefully it was enough to point Darc to her, but not enough
to alert anyone else. Mala knew from Trey’s ramblings that prank calls were made to the station all the time. The addition of the symbols should be enough to get it through to Darc, but the desire was that it wouldn’t go beyond that.

  She pushed open the double doors on the front of the building. It had been a while since she’d had to enter this doorway. The last time had been to meet with a broken shell of a man who had once been her nemesis. Richard Templeton.

  His capture and torture at the hands of his boss had rendered him incapable of continuing in his position at the DSHS. But one of his final actions had been to recommend that Mala’s adoption of Janey proceed without impediment.

  The plan had been to marry Darc, then finalize the adoption proceeding. That all seemed like it was in the distant past.

  The attack. Her surgery. The multiple attempts on her life at the hospital. The mystery assailant in her room.

  She shuddered and then tried to redirect her attention to something less morbid. Finding a chair to sit in while she waited for Darc to show up might be a good thing.

  Searching around, Mala didn’t notice the presence behind her until a strong hand gripped her arm. She spun around, relieved to see a welcome face.

  “Cat!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  Mala’s friend gave her a broad grin. “Darc sent me. Said I would find you here.”

  “Is Janey with you?” Mala asked, a sudden desire to see her overwhelming her.

  Cat rocked back on her heels. “You don’t know? Oh, yeah. I guess you wouldn’t. She’s with Darc. They’re out at a crime scene.”

  Of course they were. Strange that Darc wouldn’t come personally. But then again, those scenes could get intense. Mala hoped that he and Trey were taking care of Janey properly. Training them in the care of young children had been a wasted effort to date.

  “Well, thanks for coming to get me,” Mala finally managed, feeling the inadequacy of the words even as she spoke them. “It’s been a terrifying couple of days, so it’s good to see a friendly face.”

  Cat waved off the gratitude with a hand. “Enough chatting. Time to get you back to you… Wait. What is Darc to you now? Nearly-husband? Failed fiancée?”

  Mala laughed, pleased to feel comfortable enough to do so, even as the movement tugged at her stitches. The expression on her face must have given her away, as Cat’s face creased in concern.