7th Sin: The Sequel to the #1 Hard Boiled Mystery, 9th Circle (Book 2 of the Darc Murders Series)

by Carolyn McCray

  “Bill Harris? I’ve heard that name,” Bryce mused. “Isn’t that the investigator guy Trey’s been using on this case some?”

  “That is precisely my conundrum. I am unclear on how exactly to approach the situation with Trey. Is it inappropriate to bring Bill in for questioning without speaking to Trey about it? There is a possibility that the private investigator has nothing to do with the murders, and I find that I have a strong desire to avoid unnecessary discomfort for my partner.” Even as Darc spoke the words, he recognized the change in himself. This is not something that would have troubled him even a month ago. Something had shifted.

  “I’m glad you talked to me about this, Darc,” Bryce said, putting a hand on Darc’s arm. “You could pull Bill in and no one could fault you for it, but I think it would be better all around if you talked it through first. Has he gone home?”

  “No. He is at a crime scene and should be here shortly.”

  “Well, give it a few minutes more and then just call him. It might be uncomfortable, but in the end I think it’ll work out better. Trey’ll know you can be trusted to tell him even the tough stuff.” Van Owen pushed himself up from the chair. “Well, listen. It’s late, and now that all my dark suspicions have been proven correct, there’s nothing for me to do but go home and go to sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow.” He waved at Darc and strode out toward the front of the building.

  Deputy Attorney Bryce Van Owen had given Darc good advice. Talking the situation through with his partner would allow Trey to be able to respond to Darc’s suspicions using information gleaned from his friendship with the private detective.

  Trey and Darc would talk it through. It was surprising to him, but Darc found that he was looking forward to the conversation. That was unusual. Darc did not typically enjoy that type of social interaction.

  Now all he had to do was wait for Trey to arrive.

  CHAPTER 21

  The text had simply read, Trey taken. Come now. With an address. The same address where the last murder had taken place.

  At first, Mala hadn’t even understood what it meant. Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to understand. But when the panic had subsided a bit and Mala was in the car driving toward the crime scene with Janey curled up in the back with a blanket, Mala found herself perversely irritated by the brevity of Darc’s message. She wasn’t even sure exactly how she would have done it differently, but there had to be a better way to break the news that a friend and colleague had been kidnapped. Maybe a call? Was that too much to ask?

  Then again, it was Darc. The fact that he had reached out at all was something of a miracle. And complaining about it to him would require more explanation than Mala had in her at this point. A lengthy conversation between herself and the tall detective was an imminent necessity, but it couldn’t happen right at the moment.

  The windshield wipers of the Prius beat out the time, like a countdown to doomsday. What was normally a comforting sound to her was now a reminder of time passing and the importance of fixing this problem before it got worse. For good or ill, Darc was a part of the tapestry of her life now. Janey wasn’t about to forget about her ties with the taciturn detective.

  Thinking of those bonds that Janey shared with Darc led to thoughts of Mala’s own feelings for him. She still wasn’t sure what to do about Janey’s fixation on Mala’s relationship with Darc. The feelings Mala held for Darc had always been a complicated mix of fascination, attraction, and frustration. He kept her on her mental toes, but his ability to interact on social and emotional levels were suspect at best. The mental stimulation was a turn-on. The other issues could very well be deal-breakers.

  Which was one of the reasons that she had put Darc off when he had asked her out before. It had been during the Father John case, and it hadn’t seemed like such a great idea for the protective guardian of a child victim to date the man who kept putting the girl in dangerous situations.

  In retrospect, Darc had been right about all of it. Janey’s ability to handle difficult and even horrific circumstances had been proven time and time again. And instead of debilitating her, as it would have any normal child, it had seemed to do nothing but strengthen her confidence and power.

  But hindsight was always 20/20, and there was no way Mala could have known that at the time. And now that she was consulting for the Seattle P.D., specifically on one of Darc’s cases, it just seemed like a bad idea.

  Not that that very same reasoning had stopped her from getting coffee with Bryce. Was it just that the Deputy Attorney seemed more engaged? That he appeared to really listen to her? Or was it even worse? Was it the blonde hair, blue eyes, and chiseled jaw? And if it were any of those things, did that make Mala shallow?

  Well, as far as attractiveness went, Darc was no slouch. He might not have the conventional good looks of the Deputy Attorney, but there was an intensity there that more than made up for it. And the bald head was sexy.

  Mala realized that she was avoiding the more important topic. Trey’s abduction didn’t seem quite real at this point, and seeing as how she had no information about it, there really wasn’t anything she could do. But it still felt like avoidance.

  Who on Earth would have kidnapped Trey? It made no sense to Mala at all. If it were the killer, it would seem more logical to Mala for him to take Darc. The tall detective was by far the more threatening of the two when it came to getting caught.

  Or was that true? Darc had been off lately. Now that they had determined the root cause of some of the disconnect, it had gotten better, but there had been some markers of additional challenges that Darc was facing. If Darc were a religious man, Mala would call it a trail of faith. And maybe that’s exactly what it was. His religion was logic, and perhaps logic wasn’t giving him what he needed at the moment.

  If Trey had been kidnapped because he represented a threat to the killer’s plan, then it would be important to keep that in mind as they moved forward. Mala took a moment to assess Trey’s strengths. They all lay in the areas of empathy, social graces, and an almost anti-intellectual sense of street smarts. Gut instincts.

  How that might fit in, Mala had no clue, but she’d try to look at all the evidence with Trey’s eyes as much as she possibly could.

  Glancing into the rearview mirror, Mala checked in on Janey. She had fallen back asleep and her head was tilted back and to the left, but her grip on her bear was just as firm as always. Mala wasn’t sure how she felt about that stuffed animal. Janey loved it, so of course it was going to stay, but Mala couldn’t help but feel that most of the little girl’s mischievous ideas seemed to originate from that misshapen creature.

  One last look at Janey’s face showed her smiling in her sleep. This whole motherhood thing was proving to be even more challenging than Mala would have thought, but seeing that expression on that precious face filled Mala with almost more emotion than her heart could take.

  She was taking this little creature right into the heart of the lion’s den. The harsh words of the social worker echoed in her head, condemning her for her recklessness in taking Janey with her, as well as for pretty much every choice Mala had made concerning the little girl right from the beginning of their relationship.

  Normally, the issue with having Janey around at a crime scene was more about the possible exposure to the results of violence. The likelihood of imminent danger was low. But with Trey having been taken, that might no longer be the case. It was unclear where and how it had happened, but any place that had a connection with this killer should now be considered unsafe.

  At least there would be one of the cops there to watch over Janey while she worked with Darc.

  Working with Darc.

  The awkwardness of this whole situation was getting stronger by the moment. The lack of Trey’s presence was now painfully obvious to Mala as she thought through this next encounter.

  As she pulled up to the curb outside the apartment complex, she was surprised to see that the lights and police tape were across the stree
t, surrounding a news van belonging to FOX News. She’d seen that van just hours earlier in her parking garage. Seeing it now as part of a crime scene gave her stomach a sharp twist.

  Stepping out of the car into the light drizzle, Mala gestured to one of the uniformed cops to take up station outside the car watching Janey. She had planned on a whole spiel explaining Janey’s presence here, but the urgency of the crime scene pulled her forward. It was a black hole of violence and pain awaiting a skilled craftsperson to extract its secrets.

  Darc was crouched next to the sliding door on the passenger side of the van, observing something in the gutter. Mala stepped forward, and somehow amidst all the frenetic energy of the scene, Darc sensed her presence and turned to look at her.

  “Mala. You are here.”

  “Of course,” she replied. “I came as soon as I got your text.”

  There was pain in Darc’s face. It perhaps wasn’t there for the entire world to observe, but Mala knew him well enough to look past the hard and somewhat blank exterior Darc presented to the world. He was hurting.

  “There is evidence here that I would like for you to examine, as well as information which I must share with you.” The detective wiped his hand over his bald scalp, flipping the moisture from the falling rain away. “I need your help.”

  Mala was flabbergasted. If Darc was asking for help in such a direct way, things were beyond bad.

  “I’m ready to work. What have we got?” Mala queried, looking for a way to be useful. Seeing Darc vulnerable like this was disconcerting. She hadn’t realized how much she had come to rely on his stoic strength and prodigious intellect.

  “The news camera had been aimed at the door and was recording when Trey came out to examine the van,” Darc launched in. “I am not certain what caused him to search the vehicle, but it is clear that this is the next set of murders in the series.”

  Darc pointed to the severed feet just inside the door of the van. There were two pairs, masculine and feminine, both still clad in the shoes they were wearing the last time Mala had seen them.

  There was something both chilling and fascinating about seeing the dead bodies of people Mala had encountered only hours previously. It was a jolt that sent her thoughts scattering around in random patterns, but that increased her heart rate to mid-workout levels. There was energy there, even if it felt uncontrolled. Mala could see why this life would appeal to some, and become an addiction to others.

  “And the Babylonian number?” Mala asked.

  “Present on both of the corpses.”

  Mala puzzled over that for a moment. “It’s almost like these two killings were intended to be one act. Like these two were one individual in the mind of our killer.” She glanced around the rest of the interior of the van, looking for anything else that might tie in to her idea. “Have you considered the idea that these victims may have a personal link to the killer?”

  “That is a standard line of investigative inquiry. There appears to be no link between these individuals, but there is an individual whom I am considering. He has not been looked at in regards to this.”

  “You have a suspect?” Mala shot back, surprised.

  “No, there is not enough direct evidence to consider him a suspect,” Darc responded, his tone flat. “I might regard him as a person of interest. There are enough unexplained coincidences that I calculate the probability of him having some involvement at seventeen percent.”

  “That’s high enough for me. Why haven’t you brought him in yet?”

  Darc paused and sighed. That was the closest thing to Darc expressing emotion that Mala had ever observed from him.

  “I was waiting until I could speak with Trey.” At Mala’s look of confusion, Darc continued. “He is Trey’s friend. Bill Harris.”

  Darc had taken Trey’s feelings into consideration. If she weren’t at a crime scene looking at two dead bodies, she would have squealed a little bit. At least done a small jig. This was huge. It represented a quantum leap forward for Darc. But making too big of a deal of it could be detrimental to the progress, as well as being somewhat inappropriate in their current environment, so Mala did what she could to containing her excitement.

  “But now that Trey has been kidnapped…” Mala prompted.

  “It seems foolish to refrain from speaking to him,” Darc concluded, nodding. “Yes. I wanted to confirm this with you, as you are much more emotionally connected than I. Your response has confirmed that my thinking is accurate.”

  “Uh, yes,” Mala stuttered, surprised again at Darc’s emotional maturity. “Yes. I definitely think you should call him in.” She looked back into the van. “You said that the camera was on when Trey came out?”

  “It was. It recorded Trey’s capture, but did not include the captor.”

  “The killer seems to know what he’s doing,” Mala mused. “But there’s more than that. He’s taunting us. Giving us just enough information to make us feel that we should be able to figure it out, but not enough to truly be helpful.”

  “That was my assessment, as well. I had hoped the arrogance of the killer would lead to additional information, but I have not found it as of yet. The next step is to pull phone call records, but my fear is that if any were made, they were made from another burner cell phone.”

  Mala nodded, her mind elsewhere “Were there any surveillance cameras that might have caught the surrounding area? Maybe they saw the killer’s vehicle leave?”

  “The only camera is from the apartment complex. We pulled the footage, but our own activity from the previous crime scene blocked the view of the street.”

  It felt as though the killer had accounted for every possible avenue of investigation. But there had to be something else here. Mala recognized that she was duplicating the investigative efforts of one of the most brilliant detectives in the country, but what else could she do? How else could she be of service here?

  And then it clicked into place. She could do her job.

  Mala was there to lend support in the way a profiler might. To observe the crime scenes from the psychological angle. There didn’t seem to be enough information here for her to do much more than sketch a brief outline of the killer, but there was something else that she wasn’t considering.

  She could profile the detectives working the case. The killer had pointed to possible evidence without even realizing he had done so. If only Mala could decipher it.

  Before, she had realized that the killer targeting Trey might have some relevance. But it was also the fact that Darc had been completely ignored. Almost as if his skill set were irrelevant. That couldn’t possibly be the case, could it?

  “This setup in the van seems to have been specifically designed for Trey.”

  Darc cocked his head. “Explain.”

  Okay, that was starting to sound more like Darc.

  “Well, we don’t know for sure why Trey came out here, but he did. Something brought him out here. Something that you missed.”

  “The likelihood that I missed any evidence is less than three percent,” Darc responded, his tone as close to offended as Mala had ever heard it.

  She sighed, looking for a way to communicate this to the bald detective without getting his hackles up. Mala had no desire to go back to the moody teenaged version of the savant at this particular moment.

  “Darc, I get that when it comes to investigating, you’re second to none. But what I’m talking about is something that you are not equipped to see.”

  That stopped him. He seemed to mull over what she had said, his eyes darting from side to side as well as up and down. It was as if he were watching a movie no one else could see.

  “I understand. You are saying that this lies in the realm of emotional context?”

  “Emotional, social… something that Trey would spot in a heartbeat, but that would leave you and I scratching our heads.” Mala felt like she was walking in a minefield. Darc might not have an ego in the same way that many detectives did, but he was just a
s prickly in his own fashion.

  “I am not certain I will be able to ascertain what that might be. So we are in the same position we were in moments ago, before we began discussing this topic.” He turned away from the conversation, clearly done with whatever crazy idea it was that Mala was trying to get him to contemplate. The vast intelligence that was Darc had peered into the problem and seen that there was nothing further to be done. When Darc pointed his intellect at a problem, it was like a laser. But this laser seemed to have an area it couldn’t penetrate, something beyond the range of its beam.

  Or was it just an obscured area? A space that was easily accessible, if only Darc knew where to point the beam? A thought blossomed.

  “Darc, I think we can work around this. Let’s go back upstairs.” She motioned for the detective to follow her as she moved back toward the first crime scene.

  Whatever Trey had seen had to have at least started in the apartment. The chances of Trey seeking out the reporter at random seemed pretty low. Mala had mentioned her problems with the woman to Trey, but that wasn’t enough to make him go down to talk it out with her, was it?

  Well, that was always a possibility, but until Mala could find no other explanation, she wasn’t going to give up so easily. Trey going down on her account was noble, but it didn’t help them out as far getting him back went. So, Mala chose to believe that he had come down because of something he’d seen.

  At this point, it wasn’t much of a choice, really.

  *

  Trey woke up to the weirdest thing he’d ever experienced

  He was in Mala’s apartment, chained to a bed.

  At least, that’s how it had seemed at first. The apartment thing, not the chained to a bed thing. That was pretty clear. But when he stopped and thought about the apartment, everything started making sense. Mala had talked about her kidnapper taking her to an exact replica of her own place.

  The kidnapper was the killer.

  Awesome.

  Too bad that information did Trey no good. It might help Darc out, but Trey had stupidly sent his partner back to the station. Smooth move, ex-lax.