Just one more reason that nothing Trey had learned in high school had any useful purpose in his everyday life. His teachers had been full of crap.
Maggie came out of the kitchen with a mug of what looked like black coffee in her hand. The mug stated for the world to see that Detectives Do It Undercover. She was talking as she rounded the corner.
“Do you want a cup—”
And then she saw Darc passed out on the couch. Darc slept like a little kid. Trey had two nephews and a niece, all under the age of five. His little sister was a die-hard Catholic and apparently a bunny rabbit.
When those kids went down for the night, they’d end up in all kinds of wacky positions—arms stretched out above their heads, spine twisted around like a pretzel, legs all skiwampus. Darc put them all to shame.
Darc’s left hand was shoved back behind his back, with the elbow pointing straight up. The right arm flopped backward above his head and off the couch. Darc’s face was somehow tucked into the cushion, making it look like he must be suffocating. As for his legs…Trey had no idea where to even start. He couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
Maggie stood there looking down at Darc, her face softening, her eyes unreadable. Then she shook herself and looked over at Trey, her eyebrows asking…something. Trey shrugged, trying to work his way around way too many feelings for him to sort out right at the moment. Her expression tightened back up like she had just sucked on a lemon.
“How many days?”
No real need to ask her what she was talking about. They both knew Darc way too well for that.
“Three, maybe four, totally without sleep. Who knows when the last full night he’s gotten was.”
Nodding her head, Maggie gazed back down at the detective on the couch. The guy she used to be married to. Her hand twitched out, almost like she was going to brush back the blanket or straighten one of the pillows or something. She heaved one of the biggest sighs Trey had heard in a while.
“Fine. He can stay.”
She moved to the hall closet and pulled out a tattered quilt that she opened up and shook out. She laid the blanket over Darc’s sleeping form with her normal directness that managed to still seem gentle. Straightening up, she let her gaze rest on Trey, her right eyebrow dancing up a bit.
Trey grinned his best, most charming smile at her, hanging his head in a way he hoped looked repentant. Maggie crossed her arms over her chest and turned to head off to the bedroom.
In case there was any room for misinterpretation, her voice drifted over her shoulder.
“You? You can take the chair, lover boy.”
Yeah. This night was definitely not going to end as he had hoped.
CHAPTER 8
Darc felt the first rays of the sun upon his back as he fried eggs. Darc loved to fry eggs. It was his favorite meal. He was also very good at it.
Something about the precision of getting the pan and the bacon drippings to the exact temperature where the eggs would not stick, and the dancing of the logic lines telling him whether the egg was over easy, over medium, or over hard, allowed him to relax his ever-present vigilance.
There was no grey in cooking eggs. It was all a matter of volume, density, and heat. Plus, the runny yolks were delicious. He had once fried and eaten twenty eggs in a row, until Maggie had forced him to stop. According to her, he had gone through a week’s worth of eggs in less than an hour. That was not accurate. Per US norms, he had gone through several weeks’ worth.
Maggie. He heard her light step behind him. Without looking, he knew that she was pushing her left hand through the tangle of her sleep-mussed hair.
“Just like old times…” Maggie’s tone was tinged with grey. Something. Sadness? Disappointment? Bitterness? Whatever it was, Darc knew he had caused it.
“I won’t do it again.”
Maggie sat down at the kitchen counter, nodding her head. Somehow, Darc knew that the nod that should mean yes actually meant no. Curious. Maggie poured herself a cup of coffee and nabbed a slice of bacon from the tray where it was draining. She nibbled at the bacon in her hand.
“You know, it used to be romantic.”
Darc tapped an egg on the counter and cracked it into the pan. The egg hissed and spat in the liquid fat, bubbling around the edges as he sprinkled kosher salt over its surface.
Maggie’s unfocused gaze seemed to be looking at the egg in the pan, but Darc could tell she was seeing something much further off.
“To think I was the only one in the whole wide world you wanted to be near when you were shut down like that…”
She bit off another mouthful of bacon and chewed, deep in thought. Darc scooted his spatula under the egg, loosening it in preparation for the flip, which he executed to perfection. The yolk remained intact as he counted ten seconds and slid the egg onto Maggie’s plate, perfectly over easy. She smiled up at him for a moment, but then her expression changed.
“Then I realized you just didn’t want to be alone.”
Looking into his face, Maggie seemed to be searching for something. Whatever it was, she didn’t find it. Once more, her expression changed, this time hardening. That was how Maggie’s face looked most of the time now. At least, when Darc was around.
“Those are two very, very different things,” she finished.
The grey threatened. Darc turned back to his eggs, seeking asylum. But the sight of the white surrounding the yellow-orange of the yolk, normally a balm to disperse the miasma of grey mist, did nothing. This must be one of the moments Trey was always talking about. Times where you were supposed to talk about your feelings.
Darc had never understood those talks. It made so little sense to discuss things that you could not change or control. However, on an empirical basis, Trey had been proved consistent in his emotional assessments. Therefore, it made equally little sense to keep ignoring his advice. Darc decided to make an attempt at expressing his feelings.
“You didn’t leave a note,” he stated accurately.
Maggie almost choked on the bite of toast she was eating. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth hung open, exposing part of her uneaten food. This could indicate surprise or shock. It could also indicate sexual interest. Darc determined the former was more likely.
“You didn’t come home or call me back for three days, Darc,” she said. “Three days.”
Darc looked up from his eggs, after making sure he had a moment before they needed to be turned. From the living room, Darc could hear his partner’s phone vibrating.
This was not going how Trey had said these conversations should go. Emotions were messy. Perhaps it was time to insert more facts and details.
“I did that only one time.”
At that, Maggie got up out of her chair, her complexion turning a bright red. Anger or embarrassment? Once more, Darc chose the former. Maggie’s elevated tone confirmed the validity of his choice.
“You took the car when we were camping and left me stranded on Hurricane Ridge.”
“I thought I’d be back by nightfall.”
Maggie growled at him. “You took the compass.”
Trey’s phone vibrated again.
What was the most perplexing about confrontations with Maggie was that nothing followed any logical order. Darc’s having taken the compass did not negate or contradict in any way his assertion that he had thought to be back by that evening.
“I apologized for that.”
But it was clear that Maggie was no longer listening. Or rational, for that matter. She barked at him once more.
“And our third-anniversary cruise? I go to the bathroom and come back to find—” Darc opened his mouth to explain the necessity of his actions in that moment, but Maggie spoke right over him. “I ended up on a two-and-a-half-hour candlelit dinner cruise around Puget Sound all by myself.”
Maggie paused in her tirade, slowing her breathing down for a moment, before looking Darc right in the eye and giving the coup de grâce.
“So, yeah
, I thought a note would be overkill.”
She grabbed another piece of toast off the plate next to the toaster and marched back to her room, slamming the door behind her. The oddest thing was the look Darc had caught right before she spun around. He could have sworn that her eyes’ dilating indicated that she was pleased. That could not possibly be right.
Once more, Trey’s phone vibrated from the other room.
Darc called out to him. “You might as well answer it.”
The sounds of Trey’s yawning and stirring came from his direction. Darc decided to halt the charade before it continued any further.
“You’ve been awake since I started the bacon.”
His partner must have seen the futility of any additional deception, as he immediately answered his phone.
“Keane.” There was a momentary pause as the voice on the other end mumbled something unintelligible. “Yeah, we’ll be right there.”
Time to go back to the dancing of the colored lights. The silver brightness here had turned to a grey muddle. It no longer helped him.
It only hurt.
*
Mala woke to the sound of children screaming.
She had been deeply asleep, lying in a cot in the doctors’ station, dreaming of jack-in-the-boxes. There were hundreds of them, filling up every empty space in the pediatric ward. They were under beds, on top of television sets, surrounding EKG machines. All of them had handles that were cranking on their own, taking each toy through “Pop Goes the Weasel” at a different time and tempo, creating a chaos of sound.
Then they would pop open. Out would spring a severed hand, or toe or ear. Sometimes it was just a spray of blood or a spill of guts. The room was filled with horrors.
Now there was screaming. And it wasn’t a dream.
Mala sprinted from the doctors’ station into the peds ward in a panic. Glancing at the clock, she saw that she had been asleep for only a few hours. Could the killer have gotten inside the ward? There had been a guard posted, hadn’t there? Mala couldn’t see anyone now.
Bursting through the door, the first thing she saw were crying children, some huddled in their beds, some running toward the door, all of them terrified. The next thing she saw was red.
Blood-red symbols were scrawled all over the walls, cutting across and through the cute little cartoon animals in their now-far-from-peaceful habitat. In addition to the symbols, there were horrific pictures of people with arms or legs or even their heads cut off, their severed limbs a blur of red crayon and marker. Pools of blood were a part of almost every drawing. Dark figures threatened in each of them.
“Oh, Janey.”
This was everything Mala had feared Janey could remember. It was everything she had hoped against hope Janey hadn’t seen.
And there, at the end of the room, was the little girl. Her mouth was a determined slash across her face. Her arms were crossed. And she was right in the middle of a huge detective’s badge she had drawn on the floor. She glared at Mala and slowly sat down in the middle of her safe zone, crossing her legs under her.
Mala sighed and motioned to one of the nurses to come over. Even as she said the words, she was pretty sure this wasn’t going to turn out well.
“You’d better find the homicide department’s number.”
Time to bring the detective back.
*
Driving with Darc was less than entertaining. Not a lot of idle chitchat? Fine. Trey could deal. No heart-to-hearts? No prob. Trey wasn’t all that sure he wanted to know what was going on in his partner’s noggin most of the time.
But Darc had a strict no-music policy when they were working a case. Trey loved music. He wasn’t all that particular about what he listened to—’80s new wave, ‘90s grunge, the aughts’ indie rock. He even liked dubstep.
What he didn’t like was sitting in a silent car for the hour it took them to get out to the O’Brien rock quarry. Maybe he should invest in earplugs for his partner. Not that there was any way to get him to wear them. Ah, well. At least the drive was pretty.
The quarry was about forty-five miles to the northeast of Seattle, up above Mount Pilchuck State Park. It was a sprawling granite quarry that stretched over a square mile.
It was also an oven.
As Trey clambered out of the Rover, he squinted against the harsh glare of the sun.
“What the heck are we doing all the way out here? And on the one sunny day in Seattle?”
It was pretty much the only day in the last two months when the clouds hadn’t covered the sky. Humidity plus hot sun plus exposed granite equaled death, as far as Trey was concerned.
Somehow, Darc seemed immune. He stalked over to the edge of the quarry, a site manager fluttering around, looking as nervous as a chicken in a fox den.
One of the uniformed cops approached from a nearby trailer. He called out to Trey.
“Hey!”
Trey waved the uni over, shading his eyes with his hand. It didn’t help.
“What’s up?”
The uniform grunted and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Workers called it in. It was weird, so we thought…”
Trey nodded. He had heard it before. “Yeah, who better than the freak squad?”
The cop shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. Trey decided to let him off the hook. This time. Trey turned to trot over to the side of the quarry, thought better of it, and walked. Slowly. Man, it was hot. And so early in the morning? Oy.
As he got close to the cliff, he saw that the site manager’s vibrating had ramped up a couple of notches. And he could see why. Darc was standing with his toes a couple of inches over the edge of the quarry and was leaning over. Trey decided to take pity on the poor suit.
“Darc. Back up a bit. You’re giving the guy a heart attack here.”
But not only did Darc not back up, he started looking like he wanted to climb down the sheer face of the quarry. Okay. The only thing to get the manager’s face to turn from purple back to dark red was to figure out what had Darc so focused. Trey moved close to the edge, fighting the vertigo.
And then he saw it.
Down on the floor of the quarry, two enormous boulders sat. They looked like they had been smashed together by some mythical giant. Between the two stones, three bodies had been crushed so badly that their hands were on one side of the seam separating the boulders, while their feet were yards away on the other. From where Trey and Darc stood, the scene seemed bloodless, the effect like some kind of freaky Salvador Dalí painting. Trey let out a whoosh of air.
“Oh, man. That’s like Wiley Coyote on acid.”
Darc’s eyes were darting around, probably seeing all kinds of clues or patterns or whatever the freak he saw. As for Trey, he was in the dark, even in the glaring sunlight. Par for the course.
“I don’t get it.”
The cop at his side perked up at that, his tone sarcastic. “Which part?”
“The killer goes from drowning to slashing to drowning and now crushing?”
His face a study in I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, the uni just shrugged his shoulders again. But Trey couldn’t let it sit at that.
“Is he just trying to check off all the murder verbs, or what?”
Darc stiffened up suddenly, stumbling sideways along the edge of the quarry. The site manager let out a bark of pure terror. Trey rushed over to his partner’s side, grabbing for his shirt.
“Whoa there. Crumbling cliff.” He pulled Darc back a step or two from the edge. “Stable ground. There ya go.”
Trey glanced over at the manager, who had his head between his legs and was breathing heavily through his nose. He patted the guy’s shoulder.
“Yeah. I feel ya.”
As Trey followed Darc out to the Rover, his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He reached in and flipped his phone open. It was dispatch.
“You guys need to head back over to the hospital as soon as possible.”
Trey
looked ahead at his partner’s back, seeing the tight set of his shoulders. Darc was wound pretty tight. Whatever he was looking for here, Trey was betting he hadn’t found it. Which meant there was really only one way to go.
“Yeah. I think that’s where we’re heading anyway.”
Time to go terrorize a little girl again.
Sometimes Trey really hated his job.
CHAPTER 9
Mala watched from across the ward as the detectives entered. She moved to the middle of the room to meet them halfway. They were like a walking sitcom, those two. The tall, dark, and brooding straight man and the rumpled sidekick who was always spitting out punch lines.
Trey looked up at the red scribbles on the wall. “Wow. This just keeps getting…”
The detective trailed off, spinning around in a complete circle to take in all of the blood-red artwork. Problem here was that this wasn’t a stand-up routine, and there was no possible way to make a joke out of a little girl’s nightmare.
Darc passed right by Mala without even a sideways glance. His intensity brushed her back a step. She turned to watch the detective stalk up to Janey. The little girl scooted over and patted the ground next to her. Darc sank down inside the big badge that Janey had drawn.
Trey snorted. “Oh, yeah. They’re going to be BFFs.”
As the two silently communed, Mala sat down on one of the now-empty beds. The rest of the children had been moved to a far less “stressful” unit. If only she could say the same of Janey.
“She refused to move,” Mala explained to Trey. “We tried everything we could think of, short of brute force. And even there, I’m not sure but what she could take us. That kid’s fast. And wiry.”
“Tell me about it.” Trey chuckled, but his smile faded fast as he checked his cell phone, apparently awaiting some news. Mala had no idea what she’d called them away from, but her guess was that it couldn’t have been good. She glanced over at Janey, who appeared more at ease than she’d been since the last time Darc was here. Still…
“If she doesn’t eat or drink soon, we’re going to have to put her back on IVs.”
9th Circle Page 10
