The 2nd Cycle of the Darc Murders Omnibus (the acclaimed series from #1 Police Procedural and Hard Boiled authors Carolyn McCray and Ben Hopkin)

by Carolyn McCray

  “Shoot, shoot, shoot!” Detective Trey Keane yelled as he jumped from one part of the catwalk to another. He and his partner, Detective Robi Darcmel, were running through the lighting grid of the old theatre, chasing one of two men that had already opened fire on them.

  “What is wrong?” came the monotone response. Darc, for once, was behind him, watching for pursuers coming up on their rear.

  “No, I mean shoot! Shoot! Right there!” Trey pointed to a flicker of movement that he could just make out at the edge of the beam from his flashlight.

  There had been a face. Trey knew he had seen a face.

  Darc opened fire without further comment, and whatever had been moving went still. After a moment of silence, Trey’s tall and bald partner moved toward whatever that had been, his movements precise to the point of being mechanical.

  That was always the criticism when it came to Darc. More machine than man, no emotions, a complete and utter prick. You name the insult and it had probably been leveled at Darc at one point or another back at the precinct.

  Not that Darc ever seemed to notice.

  But Trey had discovered that something seemed to be changing in his companion. Darc wasn’t quite so clueless any longer. Earlier that day, he’d asked a woman if something was wrong. Granted, the woman had been crying at the moment, but still. Trey was pretty sure that had never happened before.

  Now, wonderful as that seemed, this also left Trey feeling a little unmoored. If he wasn’t here to babysit Darc, what the heck was he good for? He sure as shootin’ wasn’t qualified to be the kind of detective that Darc managed to be even on the man’s off days.

  Darc took another step toward the now unmoving thing that he had fired upon. As his light shone upon it more clearly, it was obvious that it hadn’t been one of the shooters. Then Darc kicked at the thing and it flipped over with a thud.

  Without intending it, Trey screamed.

  It was a clown. Darc had just murdered a clown.

  Was there some sort of curse involved in killing one of those guys? Even the thought of their white painted faces gave Trey the heebie jeebies.

  But then he took a closer look. It was a mannequin. Some sick freak had decided it would be funny to put an inanimate clown up in the lighting grid of a theatre.

  The cross drafts up here in the rafters must have made the figure’s clothing rustle. That was the movement Trey had seen.

  Trey shuddered. This was great. This was just fantastic. Not only had they killed a life-sized clown doll up in the lighting grid of the theatre… which meant there might be more up here… but they had also just broadcast their location to the two men who were somewhere out there with guns that they weren’t shy about using. All of the sudden, his idea about getting to the high ground didn’t seem like such a good idea. Instead of giving them a way to see the whole layout, it just served to expose them.

  That was the last time Trey ever got strategic advice from Revenge of the Sith.

  From the look of blank intensity on Darc’s face, it seemed as if his partner had made the same realization. Ah, who was Trey kidding? Darc had made that realization before they even came up here. He’d also probably known it had just been a mannequin he was shooting, but had trusted Trey’s judgment enough to just go with the flow.

  Trusting Trey’s judgment. That was another strange side effect of Darc’s new social awareness. And not a great one, as far as Trey was concerned. Everyone knew that the partner of the amazing savant detective was just a jumped up cop from Vice who had been brought in to handle Darc’s eccentricities.

  Trey’s train of thought cut off without warning as another shot rang out in the confines of the old theatre. A spark from a ricochet lit up next to Trey’s head, and he felt his knees crumble beneath him.

  The muzzle flash had come right from the lip of the stage down below. Stage right, if Trey remembered his terminology correctly. Wait. Was it facing away from or towards the audience?

  Then, also from the lip of the stage but from the other side… right or left, Trey had no idea… the other shooter fired. This time Trey could swear he felt the wind of the bullet passing by his left ear.

  Why was it that they always shot at him? Darc was bigger, for crying out loud.

  “Darc! Do something!”

  But Darc seemed busy tracking the first shooter. Trey wanted to scream at him that the other guy was a better shot, but another bullet pinging off the metal next to his head stopped his outcry before it could begin.

  Spinning around and shining his flashlight down toward the stage, Trey caught sight of something impossible. There was a miniature person down there. Was there a third shooter? A little person?

  If Trey didn’t know any better, he would have thought that it was… He shoved the almost-thought out of his head. It couldn’t be. No way. They’d left her back at the precinct with Detective Johansen.

  The next second, he stopped worrying about that, as the long and heavy pole that supported one of the rows of lights plummeted down toward the stage at breakneck speed. Before the two shooters were even aware of what was happening, they were both knocked flat on their backs, groaning and crying in pain.

  Scurrying down the stairs to the stage, Trey arrived next to one of the men, kicking the man’s gun away before he could try to make a grab for it. He needn’t have worried. This guy wasn’t going to be doing anything with his gun arm for a while. A white bone tinged with red stuck through the skin of his right forearm.

  Ouch.

  Darc, in the meantime, stood above the other with his gun trained at the man’s head. Then, in a move that was classic Darc, he started reading the guy his rights.

  Precise. Efficient.

  Then Trey realized something. “Hold up, Darc. There’s one more shooter. A little guy running around here somewhere.”

  Darc pinned him with a look that Trey knew well. To anyone else, it would have looked like just a blank stare. But to Trey it said, I can’t believe I’m partners with such a complete and utter moron.

  “That was not another shooter.”

  Well, excuse me. “How do you know that? He could be--”

  And then, the “man” stepped out onto the stage from where “he” must have been when “he” dropped the pole. Only one problem. “He” was Janey.

  Trey glanced over at Darc.

  “We are in so much trouble.”

  * * *

  Dr. Mala Charan worked to keep her temper in check. That exercise seemed to be getting more and more difficult the longer she spent getting to know Richard Templeton, Janey’s social worker.

  The man was unpleasant, there was no doubt about that. But with each passing week it became clear that he was on some kind of vendetta against Mala. It was the only explanation for his behavior.

  And now he’d brought in reinforcements. Ms. Regina Cross sat next to him on the opposite side of the desk.

  “The matter was never resolved to my satisfaction,” she was saying, while Templeton sat with a smug look on his face. Mala stifled the urge to wipe that look off with a brick.

  “Nor to mine,” he chimed in.

  Actually, a brick might be too gentle.

  “You attempted to place my child--” Mala began.

  “Caitlyn Walker is not officially your child,” Regina Cross corrected her with sharpness. “Nor will she be if this breach of supervisory care is not addressed.”

  Mala took a breath and let it out. Then she took another.

  Caitlyn Walker was Janey’s legal name, but she’d long ago made it clear that she preferred Janey. One more piece of information that it wouldn’t be tactful to bring up at this particular juncture.

  Templeton appeared to notice her struggle to keep her temper in check. “Do you need a moment, Ms. Charan?”

  There it was again. The constant slight. The Ms. instead of her official title of Dr.

  If she made an issue of the change in title, as she had in the past when it was just him she was dealing with, it wo
uld be a simple matter for Richard to point out her need for dominance. And yet, the regularity with which he made the “mistake” proved to her that his error was the real power play being made.

  It didn’t matter. Her ego couldn’t be the important thing here. What was important was gaining permanent custody of Janey. Everything else paled in comparison.

  “No, Mr. Templeton. I’m fine,” she answered after a slight pause. “And I will not make that mistake again, Ms. Cross.” She placed her hands in her lap, if only to keep them from wrapping themselves around Templeton’s scrawny neck. “I would like to point out, however, that while Janey was not in my care, she ended up in a far worse situation than any she might have experienced when I was with her.”

  Both Templeton and Cross sat back in their seats at that, their mouths seeming to pucker in unison. That creeped Mala out.

  The reaction also demonstrated where their case was weak. The contention was that Mala could not manage to be a competent guardian to Janey. But any comparison to others who had made the attempt ended up painting Mala as a veritable saint.

  “Well, it’s clear that Caitlyn’s misbehavior is chronic,” Ms. Cross backpedaled. “But that should never be an excuse to render less than adequate care.”

  Flip that pointed finger around and point it at yourself, sister, Mala thought. And chronic misbehavior? Janey didn’t misbehave. Well, a better way of putting it was that when she misbehaved, it always had a purpose.

  But every time the little girl found herself in a group home, or with other temporary caregivers, she figured out a way to make sure she was delivered back to Mala safe and sound. That had been the case even with Carly, her newly discovered half-sister.

  The conversation with Carly before Mala had left that afternoon had been tearstained and heartfelt. Carly felt miserable about the way in which she had tried to sabotage Mala’s adoption proceedings during the last case.

  It had been gratifying to hear Carly’s apology, but the damage had already been done. And much as Mala didn’t want to blame Carly, it was hard not to want to wring the poor girl’s neck right now.

  No, that wasn’t true. Or not completely, at least. Carly had proven herself trustworthy ever since that disconnect. She remained a troubled girl, and it showed in some of the other issues they’d dealt with in the last couple of weeks. But in terms of being, she had been 100% in Mala’s corner.

  Maybe if she could just bring Carly in with her, get her to speak in her behalf. Of course, having her come in didn’t guarantee any measure of success. The fact that it was Carly’s statements that had started this particular ball rolling would mean little to Templeton and Cross.

  And if there was no real benefit to having her come in, Mala wanted to spare her the frustration of doing so. She’d long since stopped bringing Janey to these meetings, and not just because every time she had it seemed like someone wanted to take Janey away from her.

  Ms. Cross sat with her fingers steepled in front of her, her expression expectant. Oh, right. The woman had said something, hadn’t she? Forcing herself to think back, Mala picked back up the thread of conversation. Let these two think

  “I don’t believe I am making any excuses. I simply point out that things might not be as simple as you seem inclined to think.”

  Templeton’s eyes narrowed. From the laser-sharp focus he aimed at her, it appeared that he worried about her scoring points.

  “I think we can all agree that taking a small child to a crime scene is not in her best interests,” he hissed. Then he sat back in seeming satisfaction.

  Mala shuddered. The way in which he pronounced his s’s set her teeth on edge. There was something so reptilian about the man. Something so inhuman about the way he seemed to view this entire scenario.

  This was not a game she was playing. She cared not a whit for scoring points. Richard Templeton could go and hang himself for all Mala cared about him and his opinions of her.

  Her love for Janey kept her grounded in a softer place. If it had just been a confrontation between her and this snake, she would have chopped him into bite sized psychological pieces by now.

  For the time being, Mala decided that directness was her only option. “Will the DSHS be taking any action at this time?”

  “That has not been decided yet,” answered Ms. Cross, her answer sending a shard of ice down Mala’s spine.

  She refused to concede anything to this malicious woman. “Then unless you plan on removing Janey from my custody this moment, I think our conversation is over.”

  Standing up and gathering her things, Mala refused to make eye contact with either one of her two tormentors. She had to do something about this, but she was running out of power plays. There were only so many times you could call on the Seattle PD to vouch for you before that endorsement lost its impact.

  At least she’d handled herself well here today. Even managed to land the last word with Templeton.

  But right before she moved out of earshot, she heard his voice in her ear, pitched just loud enough to reach her.

  “The conversation’s over… for now.”

  * * *

  Darc scooped Janey up and placed her in the backseat of Trey’s Land Rover. As his hands moved against her armpits, she giggled, clutching her stuffed bear to her. Ticklish. The patterns of light in his mind coalesced about the girl’s shoulders, arms and face, examining and calculating.

  The process felt obscure to Darc. It was an extension of the silver chains that had begun to appear in his mental landscape. Some sort of crossover link between his emotional side and the intellectual realm that had ruled supreme inside him his entire life.

  Uncovering the occult, the hidden, the obscure… that was Darc’s strength. For this he’d earned his detective’s badge. Or at least that’s what Captain Merle had said.

  Climbing into the passenger’s seat, Darc could still feel the energy from Janey reaching out to him. How was this possible? The neural pathways of logic extended throughout space for him, but that was simply an extension of his own imagination. This was something else entirely.

  He could feel Janey staring at the back of his head. As an experiment, Darc whipped his head around to see if that sensation had been accurate.

  And there was Janey, looking directly at him.

  For Darc, eye contact had always been a conscious choice. The act of focusing on someone’s eyes came only with extreme effort on his part. And yet right in this moment, he could feel a thread of… something… connecting him to this little girl.

  There was no logical explanation for it. But for all that, he could not explain what was happening.

  “Stop it,” he intoned to the young girl. She just grinned back at him.

  His lip twitched upward. What was happening right now?

  “Darc?” Trey queried, staring at his partner. “Are you… smiling?”

  “No, I am not,” Darc responded, turning in his seat so that he faced the window.

  Had he just lied to his partner? And if so, why?

  What possible reason could he have for not acknowledging a contraction of the muscles in his face? There seemed to be as little logical explanation for this as there had been for the emotional thread linking him to Janey.

  Perhaps this was a topic he could discuss with Mala. After coitus, of course. That would allow them to both be in an optimal state of relaxation combined with mental acuity. Darc found that his best conclusions were now drawn after time spent with Mala.

  A small silver link threw up some data that suggested that he not share that information with his significant other. Somehow that silver band had adopted Trey’s inflection and intonation. Not a good idea, dude.

  Trey peered at him while driving the vehicle. That was not good operating procedure for a motorized vehicle, but where Darc would have brought this to Trey’s attention in the past, he was distracted by a realization.

  He understood what Trey’s facial expression meant.

  “You are concerned,�
�� he said to his partner.

  “Eff yeah I’m concerned. You just smil…” Trey’s voice trailed off. “Hold the phone. Did you just tell me…? Were you just…?”

  “You do not seem to be finishing your statements,” Darc mentioned to his partner. This could be an indicator for a stroke. “Do you need medical attention?”

  “Possibly. Did you just read my expression, dude?”

  Darc did not answer for a long moment. Threads and streams of color joined with linking bands of silver, pointing to an emotionally based logical conclusion. Did that even make sense? Was it possible?

  Clearly so, as Darc had observed this capacity in his partner and others for many years. And now, it appeared, Darc might have discovered this same skill.

  “I am uncertain,” he answered at length. “Are you currently surprised?”

  Trey’s eyes widened. “Holy Mary Mother of… You… Wow.”

  Darc turned around to face Janey once more, as he could feel that the energy she sent him had shifted. As he caught sight of her face, he noticed her expression. The girl smiled, the expression seeming to light up her entire body with silver light.

  Janey was happy.

  * * *

  The darkened space writhed with naked bodies. The acolytes of pleasure wormed their way forward to the nearest captive, ready to play her body like a stringed instrument. Pulling out the sweetest notes of ecstasy from the young woman’s form.

  She would see the face God before she succumbed tonight.

  The Headminister squirmed, feeling the itch and swell of growing passion. The sensation built and blossomed within, the sensations exquisite… mirroring pain.

  Pain and pleasure. Pleasure and pain.

  The dividing line between them was so fine, so delicate. The challenge always became the seeking of that edge, the riding of it. Right before tipping down so far that there was no return.

  The agonies of death mirrored the explosion of orgasm so nicely. Of course they had to be related. Of course that relation had to be explored.

  It was simple symmetry.

  This one wouldn’t last long. The Headminister had seen her type before. All too often. Picking a worthy subject for these bacchanals was much harder work than anyone might suspect.