Down & Dirty: A McCray Crime Collection

by McCray, Carolyn

  Trey stepped off to the side, flipping switches that looked like they controlled the lighting within. The darkness continued unenlightened.

  “Well, guess that clears up the question of whether or not she’s expecting us,” Trey grumbled. He returned to Darc’s side, a flashlight in one hand, his gun in the other.

  The beam of his light swept from one side of the studio to the other, catching on random objects within. A tattered backdrop. A decrepit tripod leaning against a wall. A camera that looked large enough to take out a fair sized tank in a collision. Remnants of a better, more prosperous era, when the studio was still up and running.

  Darc heard a slight scuffing noise above them. He shoved Trey to the side at the same time that he leapt in the opposite direction. A large studio light crashed to the ground right where they had been standing.

  Trey got up and brushed himself off. “You missed!” he called up toward the ceiling.

  “Did I?” A lilting laugh floated down from the lighting grid above, the series of catwalks that crisscrossed the entire area. “Or was I just firing a warning shot over the bow?”

  “That was a warning shot? Hate to see you go in for the kill, babe,” Trey responded.

  “Aw. Officer Keane. So cute and charming.” Tracy’s voice purred, silky and smooth and rough and raspy all at once. “You know, you were one small step from getting me to go home with you this morning.”

  Trey cleared his throat. “Yeah. That’s what all the gender-switching hotties say to me.”

  The voice above fell silent. Sounds of movement filtered down, but the directionality of the sounds was hard to determine. Strands of light removed themselves from the noises, forming a matrix in Darc’s mind. He needed additional data to determine her location.

  “The shaving… a way to remove the sex of your victims?” Darc probed. The answer was unimportant. Ascertaining her position was not.

  “Sure. Let’s call it that.” A slight chuckle. Another light crashed down right next to Darc, the glass from the lens shattering. A piece of the glass sliced across Darc’s cheek, drawing blood. She made a tsking sound with her lips and tongue. “Detective Darcmel. You really should be more careful.”

  “Careful. Like you were careful. The precision with which you removed the hair, the detail of the Roman numerals—so refined. Exact.” Another shifting sound. More light strands descended to join the others in Darc’s mind.

  “Don’t flatter me, Detective. I know you don’t mean it. Although I will say I’m a sucker for a man who truly appreciates art.”

  A wrench flew down from above, catching Trey on the side of his head. He crumpled to the ground with a grunt.

  “One down. One to go,” the killer called down.

  From the floor, Trey’s voice drifted up. “I’m not down, baby.” He tried to get up, then let out a groan as he fell back. “Okay, I’m down, but I’m not out. Maybe. Not sure.”

  To draw attention away from the downed vice cop, Darc started his conversation back up. “The Roman numerals themselves. XIII. Thirteen. That must have some significance.”

  “Detective, please. With all the gender dichotomies, you can’t figure out my symbol? You strike me as smarter than that.”

  The lines of logic rearranged themselves, falling into a pattern and ejecting a gleaming symbol. “The positioning of the number. The choice of thirteen. It refers to the mythical thirteenth pair of ribs that Adam possessed before God removed it to create Eve.”

  “See?” Her voice caught for a moment. “Not so hard, was it? The proto-gender. Before male and female came along and ripped us all apart. Before all the pain.”

  “You seek a return to some sort of sexless existence?” Darc was zeroing in on the woman’s location, the lines coalescing, condensing, narrowing their focus.

  “No!” Her tone hardened, became razor-sharp. “Not sex-less. Sex-full. Complete. Fulfilled. Rather than in constant conflict.” The voice moved once more, but Darc’s threads of logic followed, tracking and pinpointing her location in real time. “You see all this? Look around you, Detective. It was finally happening. I was going to be the first transsexual celebrity. My own web show to gather in all the outcasts like me. They would have come. I know they would have. I would have sacrificed all that I had to know I wasn’t alone.

  “But my investor didn’t understand. He offered to back me thinking of me only as the attractive reporter from News 2. When he discovered who I really was…”

  Darc thought back to the first victim. An older man of means, known for investing in new technologies and innovative ideas. “He became your first victim.”

  “He deserved it!” she screamed down. The woman took a deep breath, then restated in a much more reflective tone. “He deserved it.”

  Darc had her. He lifted his gun, sighted along the lines of glowing color and fired. The sound of the shot rang in his ears, followed by an exclamation of pain from above, and a clattering.

  The bullet had struck her, possibly even incapacitated her, but it hadn’t killed her.

  The studio had fallen silent once more. There was no rustle of movement, no ragged breath to lead him forward. Darc strained his ears, listening for the smallest indicator of where the reporter might be.

  And then he heard her. Her voice rang out… from the ground floor. She had somehow made her way down to his same level. He flashed his light toward the sound, catching her full on in its beam. She was holding Trey up, a gun held to his head.

  “That was a good shot, Detective. Took me off guard.” She shoved the muzzle of the gun into Trey’s temple, causing him to wince. “But the question is, what shall we do now?” She smiled, showing all of her very white teeth. “I have an idea. You place your gun on the floor, and I leave unharmed.”

  “Why would I relinquish my weapon?” Darc responded.

  “So that I don’t kill your partner,” the reporter barked, her tone uncertain.

  “Darc! Don’t do it,” Trey begged him.

  “He’s not my partner. At least not permanently. He was assigned to babysit me.” Darc watched the lines carefully, sighting along them.

  “Hey!” Trey protested.

  “I don’t care!” the woman snarled. “He’s a person, and no matter what your issues, you don’t want to see someone killed right in front of you.”

  Darc held up a hand and lifted the muzzle of his weapon up so that it pointed at the ceiling. “Stop. You are correct. I do not wish to have him killed.” He began to stoop over, moving the gun down.

  Midway through the motion, Darc repositioned the gun, pointing it at the nexus of the glowing lines. He fired twice in rapid succession, hitting the woman in the middle of the forehead both times.

  The reporter staggered back and crashed into one of the cameras, knocking it over as she fell atop it, dead. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling, blank and lifeless.

  “Dude! Nice shot,” Trey gushed. He moved up to Darc and clapped him on the shoulder. “Now please promise me you’ll never do that again.” His knees suddenly dropped out on him and he grabbed onto Darc’s jacket for support. “Okay. Medical attention might be a good idea.”

  Darc helped him back to standing and walked him out toward the rare Seattle sunset that was glowing on the other side of the studio door.

  EPILOGUE

  Trey’s head throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Thud, thud. Thud, thud. It was annoying, but at least it told him he was going to be okay. At least that’s what he thought it meant.

  “Hey, medic guy,” Trey called out to the paramedic who had bandaged his head wound. “You sure I’m gonna be all right?”

  “You’ll be fine. No concussion that we could find. It was more of a graze. Just a slight bruise—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Trey cut him off. No need to have that information get out there. Not with Captain Merle wandering around. Trey might be a wuss, but he had no desire to look like one.

  “I can get you some more pain meds if you’re hurting, Officer.” The
paramedic rustled about in the ambulance for a moment, coming out with a promising-looking syringe.

  “That’s what I’m talking about. Gimme the drugs!”

  “Hm. That seems a tad inappropriate, coming from one of our finest in vice,” a voice rumbled behind Trey. Spinning around, Trey grabbed at his head, which had blossomed into a blaze of pain the moment he moved.

  “Ow.”

  Captain Merle, the owner of the rumbling voice, laughed. Trey wasn’t positive, but it seemed like that might be a first for the guy.

  “Take it easy, son. You’ve got quite the lump there.” He peered at the bandage wrapped around Trey’s head, then refocused on the vice cop’s eyes. “You did good today.”

  “Yeah… I dunno. Darc was the one who figured all the stuff out.” Trey was many things, but he was not someone that would take credit for another man’s collar.

  “Really?” The captain’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s not what he says.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that he credits you for figuring out the clue that led you to that reporter. Said something about the probability being less than one percent. Sometimes I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

  Trey grinned at him. “I know what you mean. I don’t understand half of what comes out of his mouth.”

  The captain chuckled, then sobered. “Seriously, Keane, he’s never said a positive word about any of his other partners.” He held up a finger to forestall Trey’s next statement. “Any of them. You want the spot, it’s yours.”

  “You’re giving me a choice?” Trey asked, his tone wry.

  “I don’t want to. But yeah, it’s your call. I want you on board because you want to be.”

  “I’m not so sure Darc feels the same way. I mean, he seemed totally willing to sacrifice me for the killer.”

  Captain Merle sighed. “That’s just Darc. Would’ve done the same thing if it’d been his mother.” He broke off for a moment, looking over at the bald detective, who was in a heated conversation with the medical examiner. “You need to know, he’ll never be like other partners. Ever.”

  “Yeah. I got that,” Trey replied. “Let me sleep on it?”

  “Sure thing. Just make sure and wake up,” the captain said, pointing at Trey’s head injury. He moved away, his gait heavy and slow.

  Trey watched him go until a body in front of him blocked his view.

  It was Darc.

  “Hey, dude.”

  Darc nodded at him.

  “So.” Trey had to know. “Seriously, no qualms about risking my life back there?”

  Darc stared at Trey’s left eyebrow. “I knew I wouldn’t miss.”

  “Yep. Sounds about right.” Trey groaned and lay back on the stretcher. Darc stayed motionless for a moment, then turned to go. Trey reached out a hand to stop him. “Hey, hold on a sec.”

  Darc turned back around, his face expressionless. Trey looked into that face, wondering if he’d ever get used to seeing so little emotion from the man that he’d be trusting with his life, day in and day out.

  “I made you something.” Trey held up a paper towel he’d begged off the paramedics. “I wrote down some stuff for you. Let’s call them Trey’s Rules. First one we’ve already gone over… pretend to be interested. But I wanted to read the second one to you, make sure you actually got it.”

  Darc folded his arms and held Trey’s gaze, his face impassive. Good enough for Trey. He cleared his throat and continued.

  “Okay, second rule: Never, ever, ever shoot a perp when he or she is holding a gun to your partner’s head.”

  At that, something crazy happened. Darc’s lips quirked upward. It wasn’t much more than a twitch, but Trey would have sworn on his life that he hadn’t imagined it.

  “Anyway, I wrote down twenty of them.” Darc took the scrap of paper from Trey’s hands, his face more thoughtful than Trey had ever seen it before. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Darc was experiencing some kind of emotion. “I don’t want you to think that’s the end of them. I have a feeling there will be more where those came from. Lots more.”

  Darc nodded, then turned on his heel to head back to the crime scene. Trey watched him go, studying the back of his head, the motion of his torso as his arms swung freely at his side.

  He was getting to know his new partner.

  Club Death

  PROLOGUE

  The voice was back with a vengeance tonight. Not like it had really gone that far. It had become a constant presence in his life. And, once more, it was telling him to kill.

  The voice was so insistent. He had done his best, holding out for so long. The last six months he had heard that irritating voice jabbering away in his skull. It wouldn’t let him eat. It wouldn’t let him sleep. He couldn’t even play with himself without the voice commenting on his technique and then yelling at him to get on with it already. Just do it. Killkillkill.

  It was a bit of a buzz kill.

  Even simple conversations with the “realies” out there were tough when the voice was around and acting up. How were you supposed to look somebody in the eye and really listen to them when you had words ringing in your ears? Killkillkill.

  Truth be told, he was tired of fighting it. Like his therapist always said, “It’s better to be happy than to be right.” And the only way to be happy, as far as he could tell, was to do what the voice said.

  It would be funny, he supposed, if it wasn’t so maddening. The voice could be pretty nice in those few moments when it wasn’t demanding things out of him. The voice called him “hero” and “savior” and, sometimes, “my right hand”.

  And honestly, he was kind of excited about the killing, now that he’d made the decision to go ahead with it. Come on. In all honesty, who wouldn’t want to kill if they knew for sure they were going to get away with it?

  That was the thing, wasn’t it? He was totally going to get away with it. The voice had gone to such great efforts to make sure he didn’t get caught. It was so much smarter than he was. Together, they had set up an elaborate ritual for the event. Hair net on the head, scrub the arms up to the elbows to get rid of possible skin flakes that might fall, latex gloves to keep from leaving fingerprints.

  And the way he was supposed to do it? Creative. Witty. Charming, even.

  He scrubbed his hands through his hair, feeling the slight pain from the tugging of the hair follicles across his scalp. The pain helped him to focus.

  There really wasn’t much of a choice here, was there?

  Might as well get to it. His hands started to tremble. But, for now, he had to bide his time. His opening would come soon enough. Right now the house was way too hopping. Too much happening. Too many witnesses wandering around.

  He would wait.

  And try not to let the voice drive him too crazy in the meantime.

  CHAPTER 1

  Josh couldn’t stop tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. He would notice he was doing it, stop, then find himself tap, tap, tapping away again within about thirty seconds.

  Glancing over at the passenger side wasn’t helping him much. It’s not like Allie was dressed all that sexy, but then again, she really didn’t have to, as far as Josh was concerned. But there was something…different…about her tonight. She had on a turtleneck sweater and a long skirt that pretty much left everything to the imagination, but there was something different. Was that a slit in the skirt? He couldn’t tell without staring, and well, that was hard to do while still trying to keep the car on the road.

  To be honest, he found that he liked this change and was scared by it in equal portions. His finger started vibrating once more, setting his key chain to rattling.

  “Dude, would you just chill?” Seven called up from the backseat. “If you were talking to the po-po right now, they’d arrest you for just looking guilty.”

  Allie tossed her straight black hair over her shoulder, revealing her dark eyes—part of the Latino heritage from her mom—that sparked
with irritation as she glared at Seven. “Like you’ve ever had to talk to the cops in your life, Stephen Sobolevski. Getting tons of tattoos and brushing your nasty hair over one eye doesn’t make you a badass by default.”

  “Hey, how many times have I told you? It’s Seven.” He directed his attention back to Josh. “Ya know? I’m thinking bringing you guys out here was a tactical error. Can’t have you ruining my rep.”

  Allie snorted, but didn’t say anything more. Josh glanced over, soaking up her perfume, then got way too distracted for safe driving. Instead, he picked Seven out in the rear view mirror, noting the sour look on his friend’s face. His friend muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “Bros before hos, dude.” If that’s what he had said, it wouldn’t be the first time.

  Of all nights, though, he needed Seven to behave. I’ve been working up to this for eight months. Do not screw this up for me. Hopefully at least some of that was showing on his face.

  “Come on, Seven,” Josh appealed to his friend. “Lighten up. It’s our first time to a rave and we’re kinda ramped up.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Rave. Whatevs. If she wasn’t hot, I’d totally chuck her out of the car at the next stop sign.”

  That comment got the beginnings of a grin out of Allie, even as she huffed and flipped her hair back over her shoulder in his general direction. It was the usual dance the three had engaged in ever since Allie had started hanging out with their little dynamic duo.

  But tonight, it was all about the party. And as much as Allie and Seven were bickering like a married couple, Josh was pretty sure they were both just as nervous as he was.

  He pulled out his cell phone to make sure he was still going in the right direction. They had been driving for about an hour and a half from the time they had left Studio City, where Allie lived in an apartment with her mom. The mom that Seven commonly referred to as the MILF. Seven kinda had a point on that one. From what Josh could tell, Allie had gotten her looks from her mom.