9th Circle

by Carolyn McCray; Ben Hopkin

  From the #1 bestselling author in Hard Boiled Mysteries and Police Procedurals, Carolyn McCray, comes a new blockbuster mystery suspense thriller, 9th Circle.

  Praise for 9th Circle...

  “Five stars for an extraordinary hero who senses his way through clues and is seemingly clueless about ordinary give-and-take relationships. a very satisfying, engrossing novel.”

  Dot Day

  Amazon Reviewer “Very good book with enough twists and turns to make you attached to the book until the end. Nice characters and a goon and interesting story indeed. A real thriller for enthusiasts.”

  Pedro

  Amazon Reviewer

  “I loved this book!!! First book I've ever read by these authors... and I thought it was totally amazing. Well written and def kept me on the edge of my seat! Darc had me completely fascinated. Totally unlike any other detective I've ever seen! Being a fan of detective novels, horror and some gore, I found this book right up my alley!! I bought it on a whim but now I def want to see what else they have written!!!”

  Andrea Severino Amazon Reviewer

  “I absolutely loved this series. Ive recommended it to several people. If you visualize what you are reading, the author will walk you through the most unusual and gorry murders. Very unique. I found a new favorite writer!”

  Alicia Dries

  Amazon Reviewer

  If you are a fan of characters such as Alex Cross and Hannibal or movies like “7” and “Saw,” 9th Circle is sure to shock and satisfy.

  Main Menu

  Start Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Authors

  Afterword

  Other Works by Carolyn McCray

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  Henry whistled as he crossed the street toward the slaughterhouse. For most of the men working there, it was just a job, and not a great one. They made their way through the shifts bitching the whole time about how miserable their lives were. They made Henry laugh. Not a set of stones between ‘em.

  The building was not all that much to look at. Okay it was downright ugly. Down in the warehouse district, not a lot of time or effort was put toward curb appeal. The real action always happened inside. And inside this building there was more action than anyone could ever hope for.

  Walking in the front door past the office, Henry gave his daily greeting to the old lady who manned the phones. It was something between a grunt and a hello, but he didn’t even know why he bothered. She rarely looked up from what she was doing to even glance his way. And when she did, the look she gave was what you made when you smelled something bad.

  Whatever. She wasn’t long for this world anyway. He moved past her and around the corner and opened the door into the main floor, where they did most of the final prep before sending the carcasses out. The smell hit him like a strong jab to the face. He inhaled deeply, taking in the scent. It was a heady mix of decaying flesh and iron, and it was part of what Henry loved about his job.

  One of the day-shift guys, Carl, was poking around, apparently trying to do as little as possible. He looked up from the cutting table in front of him and gave Henry a mock glare.

  “Man, late again. I was starting to imagine this was you here on the table. I got my lady to get home to, and she don’t like it when I take too long.”

  “What can I say? Busy life.”

  Carl huffed, blowing out his cheeks like a chipmunk. “Whatever. We had a banner day and left it all for you to clean up.”

  “Cool.”

  Henry moved toward the gutting room, pushing the door open in front of him. If the scent out in the main room was strong, this was enough to kill a horse.

  The scene in front of him was right out of a slasher flick. Puddles of blood with bits of viscera floating about covered the floor, with gobbets of flesh dripping red down the walls around him. Henry started whistling again.

  Carl poked his head in and wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Dude, how can you stand that smell?”

  “You get used to it.” Henry looked back and Carl and gave him a wide grin. Carl did a double take, then shook his head in disbelief.

  “You are one sick puppy, dude.”

  “Yeah, ain’t we all?”

  Carl retreated out the door, rubbing at his nose. Henry went back to his survey of the room, before grabbing the high-pressure hose and turning it on. The water mixed with the blood and began to swirl in pink clouds toward the drain. Henry was sure he had never seen anything quite so pretty.

  Man, he loved his job.

  CHAPTER 1

  Bang.

  Detective Trey Keane’s hand flew to his weapon. Okay, so his hand was shaking and maybe it only jerked upward, but it still got to his gun pretty quickly. Of course his “partner,” Detective Robi Darcmel, didn’t even blink. Maybe Darc had chalked the noise up to a car’s backfire and not a gunshot. In this neighborhood, though? The odds favored a shot.

  Or maybe Darc was so deep in his head that he didn’t even register the loud sound. They could have been in the middle of the O.K. Corral, the Kevin Costner version with full Dolby surround sound, and Darc wouldn’t have care. Not with a child’s life on the line.

  As the sun dipped down on another gorgeously drippy Northwestern day, Trey scanned their surroundings, trying to shake off the jitters. The decaying apartment complex did little to calm his fears. The building sat squat in the middle of South Park, which didn’t resemble the Comedy Central show one bit. Nope, this South Park—the locals called it SP—was pretty much the only Latino barrio in Seattle. The sound from a soccer match spilled out from an open window on the front side of the complex, the voice screaming in an extended “Goooooaaaaaal!”

  Latinos weren’t necessarily the first thing you thought of about Emerald City, but here you could often find quinceañeras and Cinco de Mayo celebrations with banda music pumping out into the street when the doors opened for a new visitor.

  There was none of that now. Not as night approached and families headed inside and locked their doors when the more criminal elements in their ranks took over the streets. As an example, the only music playing right now came from an El Camino with souped-up suspension blaring reggaeton as it bounced past. The bandanna-clad driver eyed the two white detectives suspiciously as he settled farther back into his already nearly horizontal seat.

  The peeling paint and sagging walls of this particular housing tenement declared to any foolhardy enough to come into the area in the first place that this was not the residence they were looking for. As they approached the building’s entrance, Trey could tell that Darc wasn’t picking up what this building was laying down, but Trey was. Totally.

  But that was just Darc’s style. A complete and utter obliviousness to his own personal safety. Oh, and that of his partner, of course. Darc was very equal opportunity about his endangerment policies. Trey tried to remember any time Darc had actually taken basic precautions. Yep, Trey came up with a big fat zero. Ah, well. C’est la vie.

  As another “backfire” sounded in the distance, Trey caught up with his partner. “Remind me again why we’re checking out this part of town?”

  Darc, of course, didn’t answer. You’d think that Trey would have gotten used to that, given Darc’s Asperger’s syndrome, but he hadn’t. After four years, it still felt as if Darc was being rude on purpose. That wasn’t the case. Trey knew that intellectually. He knew that only if his partner saw a need to share would he do so. If he didn’t…well, you were just out of luck.

  In Darc’s world, answering was completely optional.

  Which left Trey to try and fill in the missing pieces. The only problem with that? Um, he wasn’t very good at it, even on the best of days. And on this one? On this case? Non
e of it made a lick of sense. All of the other victims had been found in environments very similar to their homes. Which were upper-middle income to filthy rich. So far the abductions had taken place in areas like Bellevue, Mercer Island, West Seattle. You know, the kinds of places where Bill Gates hung out. Nowhere near the south end of Duwamish. The kids were Caucasian, snatched from predominately upper-income streets and dumped in upscale neighborhoods.

  Nothing in the case pointed south.

  That is, until they found the cab. The one with the bodies. Just like the other three cabs they’d found over the past few months. Dead parents. Missing child. In each of those cases they had found the child, only hours too late.

  Would this time be any different? Sure, the killer had left another clue. Actually, another set of clues. Latin symbols or maybe Norse runes or something else ancient were scrawled all over the cab’s windows. He really wasn’t sure, since they all looked Greek to Trey.

  This time, though, it was like Darc was hit by lightning or a thunderbolt or some other electrifying force that never got close to Trey. Something in those symbols sent Darc heading straight to SP. Which, again, made no sense, since it didn’t come anywhere close to the pattern the killer had set up so far.

  Taking the few steps up to the door, Trey tried to give prudence another go. You know, just for kicks. “Guess you’re not feeling the need to call for backup?”

  Darc grabbed the handle of the door and pulled. There was no resistance as it swung open.

  “Guess that’s a big fat no?” Trey responded. Darc didn’t even look his way.

  Trey could always call for backup on his own, but what, exactly, would he tell the dispatcher? “A bandannaed man looked at me sideways?” “Oh no, I’m scared?” Trey was not making that call. Not again. He didn’t mind a little heckling around the bullpen, but getting called Scaredy-Cat Keane for a whole month was a bit much.

  As Darc charged down the hallway, Trey cowboyed up and followed. The one unbroken fluorescent light flickered, casting crazy shadows in front of them. Trey glanced at his partner, seeing Darc’s jaw tense. Okay, if Mr. Nothing Fazes Me was stressed, this was some serious shiz up ahead.

  Darc moved without hesitation, seeming to know exactly where he was going, although Trey knew they had never been here before. His partner made a beeline for the stairwell, bypassing the elevator without even glancing at the Out of Order sign falling off of its door.

  They ran up two flights of stairs, Trey trying to clear the corners as his partner continued, heedless of any lurking danger. His intent solely on the clues left by the killer. As they exited the stairwell on the third floor, Darc turned to the right, following the numbers until he got to apartment 333.

  Even though this hallway looked like nearly every other run-down urban hallway in the city, something felt wrong. Horribly wrong.

  Trey gulped. He’d felt this way before. The last time they had found a child. Dead. The room riddled with booby traps set up for the first responders.

  “One more time, Darc,” Trey pleaded. “Can we call for backup? Please?”

  In answer, Darc placed his hand on the doorknob.

  “Yeah, yeah. I got it,” Trey conceded. Traps or no, imminent danger or no, Darc was going in. Which meant Trey was going in. “Just give me a sec, okay?” He rolled his neck from side to side, cracking the vertebrae, before taking a wider stance and lifting his gun to eye level. Trey nodded his readiness.

  Darc turned the knob, opening the door on blackness. He turned to Trey, his gaze intent. Forewarning. But of what? With Darc, you never quite knew. The ball of tension in Trey’s gut, already snarled and tangled into a Gordian knot, clamped down.

  Taking out his flashlight and flipping it on, Darc pierced the darkness with its beam. The light scythed back and forth across the walls of the empty apartment. Not quite empty.

  Blood covered the floor.

  Swaths of red crisscrossed the walls and ceiling. It dripped from above. It streamed down the walls, tracking around and across the symbols traced in crimson there.

  And then the smell hit Trey.

  “Sonofa…ah, oh.” Trey covered his mouth, trying not to empty the contents of his stomach. This was bad enough without his contaminating the crime scene.

  He pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open. “Yeah, dispatch, this is badge number 4421. We are definitely going to need backup.”

  And then his partner walked right into the middle of the room.

  *

  Darc heard his partner’s protests like a quiet buzzing in his ear.

  “Darc, don’t!” Trey exclaimed. “Your shoes!”

  The line of Darc’s logic created a visual in his mind, a literal line that he could follow. It sat bright in his vision, glowing with a blue intensity. Blue for certainty. This was the place. Not the final place. The next place.

  He followed the blue line to the middle of the blood-soaked room. As he neared the center, the light expanded, welcoming him into its embrace. He pivoted on his heel, feeling the blood squelch beneath him. The chatter of Trey’s speech continued in the background.

  “You know how Crime Scene hates it when you—aw, man. Your cuffs!”

  The walls were covered in symbols, an amalgamation of different societies. The Latin letters were easy enough to follow, but others, in ancient Aramaic and nontraditional Incan, made the equations challenging. Yet each was traced in the stark maroon of coagulating life blood. Not the glowing red of uncertainty. That would matter. This blood red did not. Only the symbols. The symbols mattered. Each took on a green aura as it circled and spun in Darc’s mind.

  In the doorway, his partner barked into his cell phone, “We are going to need at least two tech units. Make that three.” Trey pointed at Darc’s clothes. “Those pants are done. Gone.” He turned his attention abruptly back to the phone. “Yes, it is definitely a crime scene. Jeez. Seriously.”

  Pushing his partner’s incessant chatter to the deep recesses of his mind, Darc called the symbols to him. They radiated outward, then spun inward again, rearranging themselves in a never-ending dance of light, color, and not-sound. The spaces where the symbols would land began to beckon to the ciphers, calling them to their rightful places. The symbols flitted madly, fighting the process, loving the freedom of the dance more than the solidity of the answer that awaited them.

  Darc coaxed, soothing their fears, following them down to where they belonged and encouraging them to stay. He nurtured their wild spirits, finding in them the echo of his own unspoken yearnings.

  Beyond the doorway, a crowd had gathered. Their strident speech agitated the symbols, causing them to spiral up once more, away from their designated places.

  “Why you marrónes always up in our barrio?” a large tattoed man shouted, as if Darc might care for anything but the puzzle before him.

  “Tryin’ to catch us ridin’ dirty,” another said, spitting.

  “Move along,” Trey said. “Nothing to see here.”

  Despite his partner’s efforts, one of the men pushed past.

  “What is that shit?” the man demanded. “Yo, is that blood? That’s sick, ese! Sangre. Que chingadera.”

  “Okay, there’s something to see,” his partner conceded, quite correctly. “But we’ve got it under control,” Trey said, then turned to Darc. “Right?”

  Nothing was under control. Not in this room and certainly not in Darc’s mind.

  Especially with so much mollifying gray antilight coming from the hallway. The raw, churning emotion of the complex’s residents was anathema to the pure, glowing lines of logic. Darc knew that most humans felt emotions were bright and colorful. Green for envy. Red for anger. Black for hatred. Yet Darc saw them as a single bland, amorphous mass. A grey cloud that other humans hugged to themselves like a blanket on a subzero night.

  There was nothing important nor informative about this cloud. Its sole purpose seemed to Darc to function as a pacifier. To make humans feel secure in a vastly insecure worl
d.

  He looked to the large man, tattooed from head to toe. His lips curled up in what Darc knew to be rage. Darc had no intrinsic understanding of facial expressions; they all seemed vaguely the same to him. Instead, he had spent time studying the various emotions and memorizing them. The man’s brows were furrowed together, his lips contorted. It was either rage or sorrow.

  Normally, he found, people in great sadness did not use terms like pendejo. So rage it was. What Darc did find fascinating was that for such an aggressive emotion as rage, fear, blatant fear, was its base. This man’s strutting and preening in front of his counterparts was all a mask for the panic he felt underneath. For all the time spent analyzing and researching human emotion, they might as well go study baboons in the wild. That was how far human emotion had gotten them.

  But Darc did not state his observations. Trey had taught him that emotional humans became even more emotional when told their emotions were useless. As a matter of fact, Trey had written down a list of subjects that Darc should avoid in order to smooth his interactions with other humans. The list was in Darc’s chest pocket. He had it laminated.

  And number four on the list was, do not ever compare human behavior to animal behavior. And, dude, never talk about a person’s skin color, especially if they are darker than you. Never.

  Which, of course, went against every grain of logic. To not acknowledge that the man pressing to get inside the room was seven degrees darker, based on the standardized broca skin-tone scale, was simply idiotic. Evolutionarily speaking, Darc’s skin was only lighter due to the fact that his ancestors had moved into the northern hemisphere, where UV light was not as abundant. In order to produce the vitamin D needed to properly calcify their bones, their skin tone had lightened.

  The only reason Darc might mention the Latinos’ skin color would be to suggest they take a vitamin D supplement, due to the latitude and heavy cloud cover of Seattle.

  Alas, Darc did not think a discussion of rickets prevention would calm the residents. The grey fog they created with their obscenities billowed into the room, threatening to scatter the symbols.