by Hopkin, Ben
But Mala didn’t seem to know. And Darc wasn’t very good about explaining things. Like why he should be with Mala. And with Janey, of course.
That would make everyone so much happier. Darc would be with Mala. Mala would be with Darc. Both of them would be with Janey.
The only one upset would be Popeye, but that was only because he had a crush on Mala. He said he didn’t, but Janey knew better. Popeye stuck out his tongue at her. Naughty bear.
But maybe Janey could make things better. Maybe she could behave really well so that the date would go better next time. If she hadn’t snuck down to the car, it might have gone well.
Mala carried her up the stairs to the front of the apartment building where they lived. It sounded like she was tired, and Janey felt bad, but if she woke up now, Mala might know that she had been awake the whole time.
So she stayed quiet and still.
When they got up to the apartment, Mala tucked her into bed without even putting her in pajamas. She just pulled Janey’s shoes and socks off and pulled the covers up over her. Janey stirred, and almost decided to open her eyes so she could give Mala a big hug. It seemed like she needed one.
But Janey had something she needed to do.
Darc saw the bands of light and color just like she sometimes did. But he never saw them about people. That’s why he didn’t know that the lawyer guy that tried to date Mala had been such a bad person. But Janey did. She saw those things.
And she knew something that he didn’t about the man from the ferryboat.
She pulled out some paper and a crayon and started drawing.
* * *
Darc squinted against the sunshine as he walked into work. It had been four o’clock in the morning when he finally arrived home from his conversation with Mala, drenched to the bone, with his body aching. It had distracted him somewhat from other deeper and darker emotions that were swirling under the surface of the ocean of his consciousness, like psychological sharks ready to attack.
But now he had no car with which to drive himself to the precinct. He could have called Trey, but the thought of speaking with his partner caused additional turbulence in the inner emotional currents. Trey was partially to blame for the events of last night.
The logic strands burst and disintegrated around that idea. It was not accurate. Trey had done nothing but try to assist him in navigating an uncomfortable social scenario with which Darc was largely unfamiliar.
The intoxication, however, was another matter. That deserved a lengthy conversation.
The sun beat down against Darc’s forehead, the light striking his eyes in a way that made them water. Sunshine of this nature was uncommon in Seattle. It was a statistical anomaly during late October. It added to the sense of discombobulation that Darc was experiencing.
He entered the building and immediately ran into Trey, who was hovering around the entrance, apparently waiting for him.
“Okay, dude. I’ve got good news and gross news. Which one do you want first?” He paused for a millisecond, then continued. “Never mind. I’ll tell you the good news first. Mala wants to go out with you again.”
Darc felt something surge within him, a bubble of warmth that was inexplicable. And yet, in spite of the fact that it felt good, he found he did not trust it. Nor the messenger, for that matter.
“She does not. Last night she told me she did not think our relationship was a good idea.”
“No, no. This was after that. I talked her into having a double date. You, me, Mala and Maggie. Isn’t that awesome? You can thank me later.”
Darc had no idea how to respond to this information. The majority of that news did indeed seem positive, but there was a reaction around the nature of the double date that seemed to be creating the effect of heavy ballast, pulling back on the sensation of that bubble of warmth within.
Trey continued, unfazed by Darc’s lack of response. “So, here’s the gross news. What’s-his-bucket… you know, the intern from the ME’s office…”
“Cody Lyons,” Darc prompted.
“Right, Cody. Anyway, he was looking at the body of that councilwoman from the third crime scene, and he found something. He wants us down there ASAP.”
Trey grabbed Darc’s arm and propelled him back out toward the parking lot. Darc’s car was there, right next to Trey’s Land Rover. Trey saw Darc staring, and responded to the unspoken question.
“Maggie helped me bring your car back this morning. She took a cab back. Figured you’d probably had a rough night.”
He moved around Darc’s car to his own, pulling open the passenger side door and cramming Darc into the seat. He then ran around to the driver’s side.
“Sorry about the manhandling,” he apologized. “It’s just that Cody said it was time sensitive, and you’re moving a lot slower than you usually do.”
Darc took in the statement, the bands of light wrapping themselves around the information and spitting back out an answer. Trey was correct. Darc was moving much more slowly than was typical for him.
That was unusual.
The ME’s office was only about a mile away from the department building, so a few minutes later, Darc and Trey were making their way down to the morgue. The building was a part of a much larger complex that spread over several city blocks.
When they entered the morgue, Cody ran forward to greet them. “You will not believe what I found when I was cutting this woman open.”
He escorted them to the side of the body, and pulled back a flap of skin that was covering the woman’s internal organs. There, burned into the surface of the woman’s heart, was a pentagram.
“Well, that totally qualifies as gross, Cody,” Trey affirmed. “But how the hell did the killer get that in there?”
“That’s the thing. I found a small incision right here where the bellybutton is. They went through with some kind of soldering or wood burning tool and cauterized the tissue.” He shook his head. “It’s fascinating, right? I mean, totally creepy and all, but fascinating.”
Darc looked at the pentagram. There appeared to be three points that had been burned deeper and wider than the rest of the figure. All three appeared at some point in the five-sided star, with one at one of the points along the left hand side, the other two found at the angle formed by two of the arms. The spacing appeared familiar to him.
The symbol lifted itself off of the organ in Darc’s mind, spinning around and forming associations to other numbers and logic pathways previously formed. The pentagram superimposed itself on a map of Seattle, the darker points glowing in recognition and harmony.
Darc stood up and ran toward the exit, not bothering to alert his partner. Trey would follow soon enough, and Darc had to follow the trail laid out by the gleaming threads converging all around him.
There was no time. No time at all.
* * *
Trey watched as Darc bolted out of the morgue. Now there was the savant detective he knew and loved. He shrugged an apology to Cody and prepared to race off after him.
“Does he do that a lot?” Cody asked.
“You have no idea.” Trey ran to the exit, searching for and finding Darc’s retreating back. Well, that was a familiar sight.
“But there was something else…” Cody called out after him.
“Later!” Trey shouted back. He couldn’t afford to lose Darc when his partner was on a tear like this. True, Trey had the car, but he wouldn’t put it past Darc to hotwire the sucker and leave Trey stranded. Keeping up was a matter of survival.
Plus, he had to admit, it was pretty exciting.
“Where are we going?” he asked Darc, once he caught up to him. He was proud of the fact that he hadn’t completely lost his breath yet. Maybe he was starting to get into better shape.
And then Darc put on a burst of speed, and Trey realized that his partner had just been waiting for him. Sort of.
By the time they got out to the car, Trey could barely walk, much less talk. “Where…? How…? You…”
Darc moved over to the passenger side door and just stared at Trey. “Yeah… never mind. I guess… you’ll tell me.” He unlocked the doors and climbed in. At least Darc wasn’t trying to drive. He’d have to give Trey some information if he wanted to get wherever he was going in such a hurry.
By this point, Trey was starting to catch his breath. Pretty much. “So what was that all about?”
“We need to get to the corner of 7th Avenue and South Elm grove Street in South Park.”
“Okay, yeah. But how do you know that?”
Darc spoke without taking his eyes off the road. It was almost like he was following a map in his head and was making sure he didn’t miss any of the turns. For all Trey knew, that was exactly what was going on.
But he did finally answer. “The pentagram was a map of part of the city.”
“Whoa. What?” Trey did his best to process that information. Nope. Too much. “What?”
“Each of the darker points on the star referred to the three locations of the murders to date.”
“So, this guy is killing people along the points of a pentagram?”
Darc said nothing, continuing to look out the window. And now that Trey knew what was in his partner’s head, he could see that Darc was indeed following a map. A freaky savant map that Darc could apparently superimpose over three random dots that he found carved on a victim’s heart.
Sometimes, his partner’s gifts totally freaked Trey out.
* * *
The stage was set.
The players were on their way.
It was time for the show to begin.
There were moments when playing the game seemed unfair. There was no way the players could have any idea what was coming. But that was part of the way the world had to work. If they were truly worthy, no amount of unfairness could stop them. Plus, if the Intermediary allowed the playing field to become level, there was always the possibility of ultimately losing.
And the winning was all.
It wasn’t that the Intermediary was so attached to personal power and gain. Not at all. It was the greater good that was the goal. Not the sissified greater good of that lunatic priest or the sanctimonious lawyer. They had been useful tools. Fit only to use as pawns to distract attention away from the true ends.
And their idea of “greater good” was so narrow. So based in tired religion. So filled with piety. So moralistic.
No.
The greater good was that which worked toward natural selection. Get rid of the old, weak and infirm. Cull the herd. Within reason, of course. Avarice could be tolerated, but not when it led to getting rid of the best and the brightest in order to protect its own place.
Therein lay the problem. Money and influence, which were synonymous in this day and age, were not the greatest good. They were not the ideal to which the human race should aspire.
Of course not. Any idiot could see that.
The builders of the Tower of Babel had it right. Come together. Bring the strongest, the most intelligent, the most courageous. And then construct a building that would take them to God.
They just hadn’t understood that God was a construct. A metaphor. A teaching tool left for the ages by those who had seen the strength to which humans could aspire when the best among them strove together.
Build a tower, yes, but not to reach to some nonexistent deity. Build the tower to attract more of the best. Gather them all in together. Create the perfect city-state that would be invulnerable, not because of location or positioning, but because those within were bigger, better and brighter than those without.
And then let the haters hate. Let the wailer wail. Let the destroyers attempt to destroy.
The best of the best would beat them back. Every single time.
Always there was resistance. From those who were weak and wanted protection. From the middle of the pack that believed they belonged up at the front. From those who were strong but incapable of embracing their own strength. False modesty was one of the biggest killers of real power.
And so, the herd would be culled. The Intermediary expected that the savant would survive. Indeed, that was an outcome to be desired. Robi Darcmel, unlike his partner, was certainly one of the brightest.
It remained to be seen whether or not he was one of the best.
* * *
Mala had talked to a lot of parents over the course of her career as a child psychologist. And she’d had to defend herself from many accusations, especially any time she had to challenge someone to take a close look at their own behavior.
The statement she’d heard more than any other? If you were a parent, you’d understand. There was not another thing a parent could say that Mala had dreaded more.
And yet…
Mala was horrified to learn that it was kind of true.
Here she was, a licensed child psychologist, trained to the gills, and she wasn’t positive on how she wanted to proceed. Yes, Janey was an unusual case. But that was what Mala had given more than half of her life to study. How to help troubled children, the more challenging the better.
But somehow, when you were in the trenches day in and day out, things changed. They took on a textural difference that helped to explain why parents were so adamant about the fact that no one could understand unless they’d had children themselves.
Something for Mala to remember next time she got in the room with a set of parents who were digging in their heels on the treatment. But there was something else she needed to remind herself.
She was a good psychologist. A damn good one.
Even in those times that the parents had thrown a fit, when they’d done what she’d asked, things invariably got better. Their relationship with their child improved, many times marriages were saved. In short, Mala knew what she was doing.
And one of her best pieces of advice? Don’t overreact to misbehavior, but don’t ignore it either.
She’d done pretty well about not overreacting to Janey’s recent misbehavior, but Mala was now swiftly approaching the time where she needed to do something or she’d miss the second half of it.
Janey and she had been through some tough spots. Times where Mala hadn’t been sure that either one of them would come out alive. But to have her foster daughter go missing had been one of the worst imaginable. Not knowing where she was, Mala’s mind had leapt to dozens of worst-case scenarios, each more horrific than the last.
And Janey needed to know that.
She had to understand how her behavior was affecting those around her.
“Janey!” Mala called out to her.
Before the entire name was even out of her mouth, Janey was rushing into the room, dragging her bear in one hand, waving a sheet of paper in the air with the other. The page was another of her drawings.
When Janey thrust the picture in front of her, Mala could barely take in all of the elements. What she could see is that there were two men, one of them bald. And that there was lots and lots of blood.
The conversation could wait. She needed to get a hold of Darc.
* * *
The lines converged, pointing with glowing precision to their destination as Darc followed the glittering trail left behind. The socioeconomic level dropped with each passing street as they headed to the corner of 7th Avenue and South Elm grove Street in South Park.
Their destination was a facility that processed iron and bronze, part of a series of warehouses in the district that made the area a maze of corrugated tin warehouses surrounded by concrete. A man-made jungle of sharp metal and hard stone.
“Really?” Trey asked, as he viewed the target building. “Once, just once, I would like to be headed into… oh, I dunno… a toy warehouse. Or no, even better, a huge bakery that makes nothing but pastries. How about that? Effing metal smelting POS…” he grumbled as he got out of the car.
They walked up to the sliding metal door, only to see that the lock that was supposed to hold the door in place was hanging open. There did not appear to be anyon
e around the area, as it was a Saturday and most of the businesses around were closed.
“Looks like they take their security seriously,” Trey muttered, flipping the lock out and putting his shoulder against the sliding door. It didn’t budge. “C’mon, Darc. A little help, maybe?”
With Darc assisting, the door relented and screeched open in its tracks, revealing a scene from some gothic version of hell. The heat punched them in the face as the glow from molten metal illuminated the interior of the warehouse structure in a strange light. Shadows cast against the wall and ceiling girders merged with the orange gloaming, creating a vista of sharp angles and sinister radiation.
“Okay… ‘splain me this,” Trey said, looking out over the display. “If no one’s here, why is all the metal melted?”
Darc chose not to answer, focusing instead on the pathways of logic that were picking out a path amongst the groupings of machinery and half-finished metal products. Iron grates, railings and decorative ornamentation fought for space with larger, less obvious metal structures.
As they moved into the building, the door behind them screamed in agony as it was slammed shut, the boom of the closing entryway echoing through the large space. What light from outside had been present was now cut off completely.
“Tell me there was an automatic door closer thingy there that I just missed,” Trey begged. When Darc did not answer, he squeaked, “Come on! When I say tell me, I mean tell me. I’m not looking for a reality check, man. I just want to know I’m going to get out of here in one freaking piece.”
He went back to the door and pulled on it. “It won’t budge. We’re stuck in here.” He snapped his fingers. “No, wait. I can’t move this on my own. C’mere.” He waved Darc over to his side, where they both put their energy and weight into trying to reopen the sliding metal entrance.
Nothing.
“Right. I am not freaking out. I am so not freaking out.”
A loud metal clang sounded from deep inside the warehouse.
“I am totally freaking out!” Trey yelled, then clapped a hand over his mouth. As far as Darc could tell, his partner did so to keep from making any further noise. A sound decision, although it was always puzzling to Darc that Trey seemed to have so little control over his motor functions.