9th Circle

by Carolyn McCray; Ben Hopkin

  Whatever was on the other side of that door could end up killing them all.

  *

  Eli was freaking out.

  He had been a cop all of three weeks. Fresh out of the academy, Eli was the guy that got all the “newbie” jokes played on him. The last one had involved a cat, a stapler, and his brand-new jacket.

  All that was sounding pretty sweet right about now. Instead of being razzed, he was here in the creepy, smelly possible lair of a crazed serial killer. He’d take practical jokes any day of the week.

  And this group didn’t even know what they were doing. All the information was with Detectives Keane and Darcmel, and no one knew exactly where they were. So here they were, tromping around an apparently abandoned slaughterhouse in the dark.

  Yeah, there was nothing scary about that.

  His group burst through another door and into a room that was…clean. That was the first thing you had to notice. There was a scent of cheap pine cleanser in the air. Polished metal surfaces glimmered in the reflected rays of the flashlights. Where everything else had looked and smelled less than stellar, here, everything was pristine. Why did Eli find that disturbing?

  Hannigan, one of the beat cops in the precinct, let out a huff of air.

  “This is just stupid.”

  Rossi, Hannigan’s right-hand man and partner in crime—at least, that was what Eli had heard—let out a bark of sarcastic laughter. “Another bona fide Darcmel wild fucking goose chase.”

  Doing his best Darcmel impersonation, Hannigan dropped every ounce of expression and inflection in his voice. “To be exact, undomesticated, intercoursing northwestern Canadian goose chase.”

  Okay, that was funny. Eli started to chuckle and then realized he couldn’t. Something was jerking him backward, tugging at his neck. He reached up to his throat, feeling a bar of metal that curved around the right side of his neck where his Adam’s apple should be. His fingers came away wet. Lifting his hand away from his throat, he held it up in front of his face. In the reflected gleam of his flashlight, his fingers were bright red with his own life’s blood.

  He tried to scream, but nothing came out but a gush of blood and some bubbles of air. The cops in front of him continued forward, oblivious to his plight, as Eli fell to his knees, pulling at his throat. He traced the bar at his neck, fumbling to try to get it out. It was a meat hook. Someone had speared his throat with a meat hook.

  Just as he felt a strong yank pull him across the floor, Eli passed into blissful oblivion.

  *

  The group rushed through the door after having to push hard to open it up. Trey tried not to make it too obvious that he didn’t have any intention of being first. And then they were inside the next room, and all thoughts of who was first went clean out of his head.

  The first thing he noticed was how cold it was. The temperature had dropped by at least forty degrees. His breath misted in the air in front of him, but, as he looked around, nothing seemed frozen. It was probably kept just above freezing. That was probably why it was so hard to get the door open. It had a seal to keep in the cold.

  Trey was guessing that this must be the gutting room. He had no idea if that was what they called it, but that was what it looked like. If he ever took leave of his senses and decided to get a job at a slaughterhouse, “gutting room” was how he would refer to it.

  Although “room” was maybe not quite so accurate. The space was enormous, like some gigantic cavern, except one made out of concrete and steel. And throughout the room, hanging by their back two hooves, was cow carcass after cow carcass. They stretched back as far as Trey could see.

  The animals had been split straight down the center along the belly, from the jawbone down to the tail. It looked like everything had been scooped out from the inside. Well, almost everything. Guts hung and trailed below many of the animal corpses.

  Glancing around to make sure the whole group was there, and accidentally blinding two of the cops with his flashlight, Trey shook his head.

  “That’s it,” he sighed. “I am officially off meat.”

  One of the uniforms, Officer James, nodded. “Yeah, you and me both.”

  Straining his eyes to try to see the back wall of the room, Trey was starting to realize just how enormous the space was. There was no way they could search it all as one group. Great. Just great.

  “Okay,” Trey conceded. “We can split up.” Then, before Darc could get too many ideas, Trey blurted, “A little. A little.”

  Turning to the group, Trey started calling out the teams. No way he was letting anyone else pick. He wasn’t about to get picked last on this playground. “All right. Benti, you go with Darc. I’ll be taking the other two.”

  And yet, even with that, Trey was pretty sure the teams still weren’t even.

  *

  The hanging animals swung on their hooks, tracing patterns on the floor that only Darc could see. These patterns meant nothing. The symbols created were not symbols. They were just random squiggles of bright light.

  That was only to be expected from the random swaying of animal carcasses from the circulating of frigid air. All that could be found here were the fractals that existed everywhere in nature.

  But nothing else made sense. The symbols on the doors seemed just as random as the paths traced by the swinging sides of beef.

  Snaking his way through the room, Darc sensed the officer trailing along behind him, matching his every move. Darc’s preference would have been to work on his own, but at least in this moment he recognized the need to have someone there in case Darc failed. For the very first time, Darc felt he understood his partner’s incessant need to call for backup.

  Today there was no glow illuminating the way. No gleaming trail to lead him forward. He felt cut off, blind, incapable of that which lay before him. The only light led back. Once more, he felt the need to return for the girl. She could help make sense of all this. Even knowing where the killing grounds were would help all the pieces fall together.

  That way lay mists of grey that were to Darc incomprehensible. Both his partner and Mala were adamant that the girl not be involved. There was nothing of logic there, but when two people he trusted with his life demanded his compliance, it made him second-guess his analysis. That was unpleasant.

  And then Darc remembered Trey’s rule twelve: “See it through the other guy’s eyes, dude.” This was a rule he had never fully comprehended. Perhaps it was time to attempt it.

  The first order of business was that the “other” was a girl, not a guy. His partner used “guy” indiscriminately, for men, women, and children, so that was not an issue so far as Darc could tell. Although perhaps Darc did need to factor in gender. Maggie had constantly told him that the world was different for men and women. That had made no sense at the time, but perhaps it was important here.

  What was the difference? Men were typically physically stronger. That could create a disparity when dealing with a male attacker, which the little girl obviously had experienced.

  Emotional vulnerability? Certainly, his experience with Maggie indicated this could be a weakness, especially in moments that demanded full physical commitment.

  Height? That could be another variable for which he should adjust his calculations. He recalibrated, imagining the space from three feet, two inches lower. In a space that had claimed the lives of those closest to you. Darc pictured Maggie and Trey dissected in front of him. He envisioned the little girl, hauled in for evisceration. His height diminished, his physical prowess gone. Nothing he could do.

  The resultant sensation took him by surprise. In a rush of grey, Darc felt his balance sway.

  He now understood what had so upset Trey and Mala. Not for the first time, he regretted taking his partner’s advice. This newfound sense born of seeing things from another perspective brought on a feeling of weight and responsibility for the girl. It was…inconvenient.

  And then another face flashed in front of him, her body readied for slaughter.<
br />
  Mala.

  That was strange.

  Once again, the grey betrayed him. He was no closer to the killer. Every step into the mist of emotion pulled him further away from his solution. Darc pushed the image and the unusual sensations away from him. Other than helping him see why going back for the girl was untenable, they did nothing for him.

  It was time to break a killer’s code.

  He went back to his searching, viewing the room from every imaginable angle, seeking patterns, lines of logic, elusive symbols that would light up the darkness.

  All he found was death, swaying gently from metal hooks above.

  *

  The rain was letting up. Mala placed her cheek close to the car’s windowpane, peeking up at the sky. The clouds were as thick as ever, coating the sky in shades of white and grey.

  In contrast with the surroundings here on the ground, however, the bleak, stormy sky was positively awash in color. Mala could not imagine having to come to this area to work every single day. What would it do to people’s psyche to see nothing but dingy brick, concrete, and corrugated metal everywhere they looked?

  It wasn’t enough to explain the kind of psychotic break the killer must have experienced, but it could have been a contributing factor. Mala knew from professional and personal experience that the accumulation of seemingly small details could be as overwhelming as one significant trauma.

  Janey shifted and squirmed in her seat in the back of the police cruiser, bringing Mala back to her immediate environs. Janey’s window was now one solid mass of detective’s badges, bleeding and blending into one another, creating some kind of abstract painting. It was actually kind of beautiful.

  The sounds of movement intensified. Mala turned around to fully face Janey over the seat. The girl’s face was twisted up, and she pressed her legs together.

  “What’s wrong?” Mala queried.

  Janey crossed her legs and frowned at her. Ah. The universal sign. She had to go to the bathroom. Mala grimaced at her oversight. She had worked alongside children long enough to know better.

  “Guess I should have told you to go before we left.”

  Glancing up and down the street for a gas station or restaurant, Mala was confronted with warehouse after warehouse. No easy solution for the situation here.

  She unlocked the doors of the car, stepping out to speak with the policeman stationed just outside the entrance to the abattoir. Janey stepped out of the backseat, falling into step with Mala.

  Mala waved to get his attention. “Do you know where we might—”

  But Janey’s need to go to the bathroom was apparently just a ruse. The little girl darted for a small vent on the side of the slaughterhouse.

  “Janey, no!” Mala yelled, racing over to the side of the slaughterhouse. The cop was faster, getting both of his hands on Janey’s shoulders. But the girl was small, wiry, and more than a little clever. She slumped, as if she were about to fall down or pass out. When the policeman instinctively shifted to take her weight to keep her from falling, Janey wriggled out of his grasp, opened the vent, and disappeared into the shaft.

  The vent was far too small to allow either adult—any adult—to follow, and by the time Mala got there, she was just in time to see Janey’s form vanish around a turn in the cramped tunnel.

  Janey had gone to find her detective, and there was nothing Mala could do about it.

  *

  Darc walked with a steady pace, his assigned officer two steps behind him. Trey and his officers reached, making it past all of the hanging animal corpses without uncovering a single clue. There was nothing here but chilled meat and oppressive darkness. Darc stood side to side with Trey, staring at two doors that stood next to each other on the back wall.

  There were no symbols on their surfaces.

  The frustration Darc had experienced since entering the slaughterhouse intensified exponentially. In a case where nothing fit together, Darc was now in a locale where meaning eluded him. The killer was toying with him, always one step ahead. It was a foreign sensation for Darc. One that he found he had no desire to repeat.

  The killer knew he had the girl. The killer also must know there was no way the girl would be allowed inside the building. This entire raid had been designed to do nothing more than mock Darc in his ineffectual state.

  At Darc’s side, Trey ran a fist through his hair. “Dude, I’m cool with going back.”

  Rather than respond, Darc gave his partner a look. It was the one Trey called “the look of death.” Darc had found it to be effective in dealing with his partner’s trepidation in the past.

  But as his partner held up a hand to take back his statement from before, a movement just beyond Trey’s head caught Darc’s eye. One entire row of carcasses was swaying in perfect sync. Only the one row moved. This was not random movement from the ventilation system.

  Trey must have noticed the change in Darc’s eyeline, for he spun around to see what held Darc’s attention. He raised his gun, pointing at every corner of the room.

  “What?” Trey demanded. “What the freak are you looking at?”

  But for Darc, all that existed was the swaying of the animals. A set of symbols formed, coalescing in Darc’s mind and immediately falling into place. There was no doubt now.

  “He thinks himself so clever,” Darc said.

  Trey continued swinging his weapon around. “He who? Clever how?”

  Darc walked to the door on the left and pushed it open. The sight on the other side of the door caused his partner to groan.

  “God’s testing me, he really is,” Trey stated, as he peered into the room. “I will not swear. I will not swear.”

  *

  The space was small, and strange echoes came back every time she moved. The metal walls of the scary tunnel boomed like a drum when she pushed against them with her hips or her hands. The noise was scary, but she couldn’t move ahead without making it.

  She could hear her own breathing. It was loud and fast. She tried to do what her daddy always told her when it was bedtime and the monsters in her room scared her. She counted to ten real slow, breathing in on one number and breathing out on the next. After a little while, she could feel the pounding in her chest slow down some.

  Thinking of her daddy was hard. He had tried to be so brave when he was here. He was smiling at her, telling her it was going to be okay. But it wasn’t okay. It would never be okay.

  Not unless she could find the man. The man with the bald head and the dark eyes. He didn’t smile at her. He never smiled at her. But he made her feel safe when he was there. She had to find him.

  She grabbed her bear, Popeye, and hugged him tight. His name hadn’t always been Popeye. When she had gotten him, his name had been Paddy. But when his one eye had fallen off and Mommy had stitched it back on, her mommy had said that maybe Popeye was a good name for him now.

  It was a good name. It had made her laugh. And he smelled good. He smelled like her old home, before all the bad stuff happened.

  As she smelled him again, a different smell—a bad smell—came up from a hole in the side of the tunnel. It made her scrunch up her nose, it was so bad. She tried not to breathe too much until she got past it.

  And then there was a noise behind her. It was really scary, even though it sounded like it was a long way away. She started moving faster.

  She knew the man was somewhere up ahead. He would make it okay.

  He had to.

  CHAPTER 12

  Trey was devastated. And more than a little sick to his stomach.

  There, laid out in front of him—in front of all of them and God—was the sausage-making room. This was so not okay. Trey was pretty sure his life would never be the same again.

  The room was not as large as some of the suckers they’d gone through so far. But what it lacked in size, it totally made up for in making Trey’s past breakfast crimes stand out in stark relief.

  On one end of the room was container after container f
illed to overflowing with what Trey figured must be meat. But it was not any kind of meat he had ever seen at the grocery store. There were bumps and lumps that shouldn’t be there, and the colors and textures were just…gross.

  Trey had never been much of a guy’s guy when it came to the whole hunter-gatherer thing, much to the disappointment of his dad. Trey liked his meats prepackaged and covered in plastic. So his experience with this kinda stuff was admittedly limited, but seriously…what the crap were they putting into those sausages? Trey couldn’t tell, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to find out.

  Off to the side of the stacked containers with the “meat” in them were huge, industrial-size grinders. Bits of ground meat clung to the metal, the stuff around the plate turning a dark black color.

  There were some huge mixers and the stuffing area crammed into the other corner of the room. Boxes of intestinal linings processed to become casings for the sausages were stacked up next to the machine that was used to fill the tubes.

  The smell was a bizarre mix of pleasant spices and decaying meat.

  Officer Benti cleared his throat before speaking. “So this is how they make it.”

  “Oh, I did not want to see this,” Trey groaned. “I like my breakfast meats. I need my breakfast meats.”

  Working on keeping his mind off of what he had really been eating all these years, Trey looked around the room. As far as he could tell, there was exactly nothing here that could be of any use to them. Of course, he wasn’t the savant here.

  Looking over at Darc, Trey could tell his partner was just as frustrated as he was. His fist was clenched at his side, and the muscle in his jaw stood out in stark relief from the rest of his face.

  Darc had seemed so positive when he opened up that door. Sure that this was the way they needed to head next. Seeing him stymied now, practically paralyzed by his apparent lack of information, was profoundly disturbing.

  If Darc couldn’t figure his way out of this puzzle, who on earth possibly could?