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

  Trey felt tears spring to his eyes, and he pushed back against the emotion that was doing its best to forcing its way out. Somehow, this gesture of Janey’s did more to convince him of the reality of what was happening than anything else could have.

  This was the first time he’d seen Janey without that toy. She never let go of it. Her giving the bear up right now was a huge deal.

  Trey was forced to admit it. This situation was far more dire than he could handle.

  Mala might die on the same day Trey’s baby came into the world.

  * * *

  Janey wasn’t sure what bothered her more. The fact that Mala had Popeye, or that Popeye seemed to like it so much.

  Right about now, he would usually be saying something mean or silly. It would make Janey laugh, and instead of being scared, she would forget, just for a second. Forget that her mommy and daddy had been killed in front of her by a crazy priest. Forget that she had seen things that would make most grownups cry. Actually, Janey was pretty sure she had caught Trey crying more than once at a crime scene.

  He certainly had tonight. That might have something to do with the fact that he was about to have a baby.

  But most of all, Janey wanted to forget right now that the woman who had loved Janey, protected her, taken her into a beautiful new home, was now on a table getting her chest opened up.

  Janey knew that’s what they were doing. Well, she didn’t know know, but she’d seen the bullet hole on the one side of Mala’s chest and no bullet hole on her back. The bullet was somewhere inside of her right now.

  They had to get that bullet out before they could do anything else. And according to the lines of color in her mind, that was one of the only ways it could be done.

  Janey tried to imagine what Popeye would say to that. Probably something about Mala being a crack open instead of a crack up.

  That was terrible. Popeye would never say that.

  Tears sprang to Janey’s eyes, and she felt her body start to tremble. She moved over to Darc and pressed her face into his jacket.

  He smelled good. Safe. Like something clean and kind of musky with a hint of peppermint. She reached into his pocket.

  Sure enough, there was one of those peppermint stars there. Janey sometimes saw him sucking on them. The wrapper crinkled softly as she pulled it the rest of the way out.

  Darc’s hand closed over hers. She looked into his eyes and saw that they were red and swollen, like he’d been crying.

  But that couldn’t be true. Darc never cried.

  Trey came over and placed his hand on top of Janey’s head. Leaning over, he came in close to her ear.

  “Janey,” he said, his tone soft. “Mala’s going to make it.”

  Then he left the room, heading off to where Maggie was busy giving birth.

  How could he say that? There was no way for Trey to know that. Not for sure.

  Turning to Darc, Janey looked for confirmation. Darc never said things that weren’t true. And when he said things that were maybe not going to happen, he gave numbers. Like there is a 37 percent chance or something.

  She showed the question on her face, begging him to answer. Darc’s eyes darted away from her for a moment, calculating like they did sometimes when he was figuring things out in his brain.

  “Mala loves me,” the tall detective said. “I know this to be true, even though it appeared impossible to me that it would ever happen.”

  Janey nodded, confused. Of course Mala loved Darc. Any dodo brain could see that. Even Popeye knew it, which was why he didn’t like the bald detective.

  Darc continued. “If I were to tell you how likely it is that any normal person would survive a gunshot wound like hers, I would say 23 percent.”

  Her heart plummeting into her chest, Janey had to admit that the colored paths in her mind agreed with what Darc was saying. She felt like a balloon that had been popped and was letting out all of its air.

  But Darc wasn’t finished yet.

  “But as much as Mala loves me, she loves you more. And she will fight to stay alive for you.”

  Janey wanted to believe. Really she did.

  Darc was still staring at her. His eyes were alive in a way that she’d never seen before, and it was both scary and exciting all at the same time.

  “I have never seen anyone fight like Mala. I put her percentage of living at 97.3.”

  Somehow, the colors that swirled about agreed with what Darc had just said, too. She looked up into his eyes. Her own image was reflected there, like she was staring into a mirror.

  Darc was telling the truth.

  And for the first time since the gun had fired in the church, Janey felt safe.

  * * *

  Darkness.

  There were those who saw it as an absence only. The absence of light.

  Foolishness.

  The dark possessed its own personality, its own essence. That indefinable quality that allowed it to exist on its own, not as the opposite to the light.

  The Servant felt that darkness all around, basking in the anonymity it provided. Safety. The dark was not dangerous. It was protection for those who embraced it.

  All moved as had been laid out. The Master would be pleased.

  A thrill rushed through the Servant at the thought. There was pain there as well. How could there not be? The betrayal of the guiltless that was a necessary part of the design served as a sharp contrast to the pleasure of doing the will of the Master.

  Mala stood at the nexus. An agitator, a catalyst and a thorn in the side, Dr. Charan had acted at cross purposes to the Master from the beginning.

  At first seen only as a minor player, she had become central to the group which stood as an obstacle to that which must come. A lynchpin. A keystone.

  Without Mala, all fell apart. Keane would become even more scattered than he already was. Janey would be driven to despair.

  And Darc…

  The bald detective who had thwarted so many plans, who had changed the gameplay at the last moment too many times to count. Without Mala, he would implode.

  The manipulation had been seamless, essentially invisible even to the main participants. But that relationship had been allowed… encouraged… to continue.

  As Darc’s powers of observation grew with his newfound emotional attachments, his weakness blossomed in tandem. Each relationship which caused Darc’s sphere of influence to grow in size created more points of leverage which could be used to the savant detective’s undoing.

  The strategy hovered in the Servant’s imagination, a shimmering jewel without equal. If evidence of the Master’s superiority were needed, here all proof could be demonstrated. The path mapped out for the Servant to follow served as an icon of exquisite simplicity.

  Mala’s death would have been preferable. That was true. Here, the Servant’s heart quailed for a moment, anticipating the Master’s inevitable displeasure.

  But the Servant could see an unexpected and positive result from this supposed mistake. Darc, Trey, Janey… all were preoccupied with Mala’s surgery and recovery, as well as the birth of Maggie’s child. That pressure could fray the cord that kept the team bound together.

  And once they were separated, those strands could be easily broken.

  One by one.

  The Servant looked up at the façade of the hospital… and smiled.

  * * *

  Trey looked around. How had he managed to get lost?

  Seriously, it was just a turn and then another turn, and then he should be at the elevators. Instead, he’d managed to take some kind of loop and now he was back in front of the waiting room where Janey and Darc were holding each other.

  That was something that he hadn’t expected to see. Rather than interrupt them, Trey started moving back in the direction of the elevators.

  Well, at least he hoped he was going toward the elevators.

  As he walked down the hallway, he saw two figures moving toward him. One abnormally thin, the other a walking m
onument to the joys of pumping iron.

  Laurel and Hardy.

  It was what the entire city called their Commissioner and Chief of Detectives. Commissioner Mark Laurent and Chief of D’s Charles Hardin.

  What were they doing here? Okay, maybe that wasn’t fair. A detective’s almost-wife was down. This was a big deal.

  But while he knew that he and Darc had been on the Commish’s radar for some time, Trey had always thought that it had kind of been in a suspicious way. Like a let’s keep an eye on those two kind of thing.

  “Detective Keane,” Chief of D’s Hardin said as they neared one another. “Is Dr. Charan okay? And how about your… ah… what was her name? Maggie, right?”

  Hardin stuck out his hand, and Trey shook it. The man’s grip was strong enough that Trey had to force himself not to wince. Jeez. When you were that strong, didn’t you know better than to bear down that hard?

  “Mala’s in surgery right now, sir,” Trey answered, opening and closing his hand to try to get his circulation to return. “I’m afraid we don’t know much. Oh, and Maggie’s fine.” I hope, he added to himself silently.

  In fact, he needed to be up there right now. If he wasn’t spending time helping Darc and Janey and Carly out, the least he could do was sit by and watch Maggie go through agonizing pain.

  Right?

  The commissioner nodded as he came up next to the much larger Chief of D’s. Where Hardin radiated a tightly wound masculinity, Laurent’s energy was much more refined. In fact, everything about the commissioner screamed precision, right down to the crisp part in his silvering hair.

  “We heard, of course, all that happened at the cathedral,” Laurent murmured, his speech distinct, even though his tone was soft. “Dr. Charan has been a great asset for your department, and we would hate to see any harm come to her.”

  “Well, I’m sure Darc and Janey would be happy to hear from you,” Trey said, trying to figure out how to exit gracefully from this conversation. “They’re in that room, just right over there.”

  “Thank you, Keane,” Hardin said. “We won’t stay long. Just wanted to make sure she was going to make it through.”

  Trey nodded and headed down in the same direction from which he’d seen Laurel and Hardy come. At least now he could be relatively sure he was headed toward the elevators, instead of back into the same loop he’d just traveled.

  Right before he turned the corner, some instinct caused him to turn back. The commissioner and the chief were both still standing right outside the door to the waiting room. They hadn’t entered yet.

  Maybe they could see through the window that Janey was still crying. Trey had to admit that he wouldn’t have gone in there with some kid crying her eyes out.

  But something about their stance felt strange. Proprietary, almost. Like they owned whatever or whoever was in there.

  Darc may have caused problems over the years, but everyone knew that he solved cases. So maybe that’s how they saw the bald detective. Their own little golden goose.

  Whatever it was, Trey didn’t much care for it.

  A gurney speeding past him with a squeaky wheel brought him back to himself. The groans of pain from the reclining patient forced Trey to recognize that the love of his life was going through something similar up in the maternity wing.

  Time to put on some speed before Maggie decided to get out of her bed and track Trey down. That would be bad.

  An image of Maggie in a hospital gown with her hair askew, wielding a scalpel entered into his imagination. Trey broke out into a run. For one simple reason.

  He knew that version of Maggie wasn’t too far outside of the realm of possibility.

  * * *

  Darc felt everything.

  The more he had allowed in the silver light that could illuminate his grey emotional landscape, the more Darc had begun to understand something that had before laid obscured behind the heaving mass of non-color. His feelings ran strong and deep.

  The accepted view of autism included the idea that those who suffered from such a condition possessed greatly diminished levels of empathy. Perhaps none at all.

  And yet as Darc had allowed his feelings to influence his daily activities, he had found the converse to be true. The emotional responses seemed far greater than those of other people around him.

  Within the past week, Darc had been forced to separate himself from Trey to find a private place to weep. One of those bouts of crying had been brought on by his discovery that the Starbursts were sold out in the vending machines at the precinct.

  What he felt now paled in comparison to that moment.

  The sensations within were so strong that they seemed to short out, leaving him hollow. Darc knew the feelings were there under the surface, but right now there was no access to them whatsoever.

  Trey rushed into the room, breathless. His physical state was brought on by a sprint from the maternity ward, where Darc’s partner had been dividing his time with the surgery waiting room where Darc, Janey and Carly awaited the results of Mala’s operation that had been going on for one hour, eleven minutes and fifty-four seconds.

  “Maggie’s at eight centimeters,” Trey gulped as he put his hands above his head. “What’s happening here?”

  The stance was one that marathon runners used after a race. Darc contemplated telling Trey that the posture would do little for one who had run a relatively short distance at a relatively slow speed. But a silver flash spoke of psychological deflection, so Darc refrained from mentioning that fact.

  “We have been given no additional updates,” Darc answered. “She is still in surgery.”

  Trey frowned and moved over to Janey’s side, rubbing her head. “You okay, kiddo?”

  Janey looked up and gave him a wan smile. There was a silver surge inside of Darc, but the emotional flotsam and jetsam of this experience had washed everything out.

  He had no idea what Janey might be feeling right now.

  “Carly,” Trey said, nudging the teenager’s shoulder. “You need anything?”

  “No, Trey. Thanks.” The young woman twisted up her mouth as she peered at Darc’s partner. “Shouldn’t you be hanging out with Maggie?”

  Trey coughed. “Well, um… That’s…” There was a pause, and Trey took a deep breath. “She kind of kicked me out.”

  “Kicked you…?” Carly asked, trailing off in what Darc guessed might be surprise. Or possibly the beginnings of a stroke. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I was trying to do that breathing stuff with her, and she got… well, she got kind of cranky. Things were said. Possessions were thrown. Security was called…”

  “She called security on you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Darc opened his mouth to comment on the fact that Trey was currently talking about it. Quite a lot. But just at that moment, Cat rushed in, her daughter Jessalyn trailing along at her side.

  “Hey,” Cat said to the room at large. “Got here as soon as I could. Had to go grab Jessalyn and send the sitter home.” She urged her daughter to go sit with Janey. “Is Mala okay?”

  “The last we have heard,” Darc answered, “is that she is in surgery and that it is serious. The bullet did not pierce the aorta, but is lodged right next to it.”

  The color seemed to drain from Cat’s face. “What does that mean?”

  “The concern is that when they remove the bullet, the aorta will prove to be damaged and that she will bleed out.”

  Somehow, putting words to the seriousness of Mala’s condition caused a reaction inside of Darc. His hands began to shake, and his vision began to narrow in, the edges of the room darkening.

  “Darc, are you okay?” came Cat’s words from a distance.

  He wanted to tell her that no, he was not okay. But the words would not come.

  Instead, the darkened shadows moved in from the corners, enveloping him in their lightless embrace, and Darc groped his way down into the depths of his own mind.

 
; The alternative was just too painful.

  CHAPTER 4

  Trey hopped from one foot to the other, trying to get rid of his impatience while appearing totally patient. From the look on Maggie’s face, it wasn’t working.

  “Will you stop moving?” she barked.

  Her face was covered in a sheen of sweat, and her color had gone from a healthy pink color to one that more resembled red velvet cake. Dark and angry. Oh so angry.

  “So, how about that epidural?” Trey asked the nearest nurse.

  “As I already told your wife while you were out,” she said in what sounded like a testy tone of voice, “it’s far too late for that. She’s going to have to gut it out.”

  “Oh, she’s not my wi--” Trey began, but then caught sight of Maggie’s expression. “I mean… ah… we wanted to do a natural childbirth anyway, right babe?”

  “We are not doing anything here, and I am not your babe,” growled Maggie. “I’m your victim.”

  “You don’t mean that,” he insisted. He turned to the nurse. “She doesn’t mean that.”

  The look the nurse directed back at him said, Oh yes she does mean that. Maybe right now wasn’t the time to argue the point. The room seemed awfully full of estrogen at this particular moment.

  Trey’s not-insignificant contributions to this whole party had moved down to the bottom of the list. Actually, he wasn’t even sure they made the list any longer.

  Then Maggie’s current contraction appeared to end, and her face relaxed a bit. She turned her gaze onto Trey and gave him a half-smile. Reaching out a hand, she waved him over to the bed.

  Taking her fingers in his, Trey gave Maggie a squeeze, happy to be back in her good graces, at least for the time being. But then her grip tightened, and the bones of Trey’s hands started to grind against each other.

  “Oh, is there another contraction starting?” Trey gasped. “That was fast.”

  “No, no contraction, babe,” she gritted. “Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one in pain.”