9th Circle

by Carolyn McCray; Ben Hopkin

  Darc put aside the scene at the door, cutting off the flow of grey noise. Trey would have to find a way to take care of himself. Although even now, at the front of the maelstrom, his partner was wooing the crowd. Using his own grey cloud to calm the others. Darc did not have to worry that he would be disturbed by the men.

  Darc could now turn his full attention to the dancing letters and herd them back to their assigned places. The agitated puzzle pieces darted about erratically, radiating fear and distrust. Darc isolated and gentled each one, soothing and encouraging them toward their home. The symbols began to settle, finding their respective positions. As they locked into place, they left a space between them.

  The space glowed blue.

  CHAPTER 2

  “What?” Trey asked the guy trying to horn in past him. “You’ve got a CSI degree I don’t know about? You’re gonna analyze the blood and tell me whodunit?”

  The inked man seemed to chuckle despite himself. Darc may have had the brains, but Trey had the charm.

  “All right, then—avoid a huge therapy bill and take a step back, please,” Trey asked. This time the crowd grumbled a bit, which was a vast improvement over the full-blown verbal berating of a minute ago.

  One of the men stood on his tiptoes, raising his cell phone far over his head, snapping pictures.

  “Seriously,” Trey scolded. “What are you going to do with that? Make it your wallpaper?”

  “Hey,” another said. “What’s the suit doing?”

  Trey glanced over his shoulder to find Darc facing the exit. And he had that look in his eye. Trey had seen it way too often.

  “Oh, crap,” Trey exclaimed, urging people to the side. “Get out of his way!”

  One of the vatos, tattoos creating the sleeves that his wifebeater didn’t, shot back, “Or what?”

  Darc burst out of the apartment, a force of nature, knocking the men back like bowling pins.

  “Or that, dude,” Trey stated as he got up. He turned to the biggest of the men, who was still peeling himself off the floor. Trey pointed to the apartment as he rushed after Darc. “Don’t let anyone in there!”

  He really should stay to protect the crime scene, but Trey knew a kid’s life was on the line. The crime scene could wait. He was just about to catch up to his partner, when Darc opened the stairwell once more and sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  “Darc! Wait, will ya?”

  The tall detective made no indication he had heard or cared as he expanded the distance between them. Trey picked up the pace while flipping his phone open and punching the speed dial for dispatch.

  He didn’t bother to identify his badge number. The shrillness of his voice should identify him clearly enough. “Darc is on the move in an unsecured environment. We need that freakin’ backup! Now!”

  Trey had almost caught up to his partner, at great sacrifice to his ability to breathe, when Darc jerked open the sixth-floor stairwell door and raced out into the hall. Trey yelled into his phone, gasping to get enough air into his burning lungs to make his voice work, “We are on the sixth floor!”

  “What apartment are you headed toward?”

  “How the eff would I know what apartment?” Trey responded. These people really expected too much. “Listen, I swear on all that’s holy, if I don’t hear sirens—”

  And then Trey was backpedaling to avoid running into Darc’s back. His partner had stopped with no warning and was facing an apartment door. The number read 666.

  Trey groaned. “Of freaking course.”

  The voice on the other end persisted. “What? Do you have a location?”

  “Affirmative,” Trey stated. “We are at apartment six-six-six.”

  “Seriously?”

  This was Darc. Of course Trey was serious. He didn’t bother to tell the dispatcher that, though. He just snapped the cell shut. In the distance, sirens wailed. Their backup was almost here. But in spite of the welcome sound, Darc reached for the doorknob.

  “I really think we should wait for—”

  Darc shook off Trey’s grip and turned the knob. Locked.

  “See?” Trey said, never more grateful for a locked door. “Maybe this isn’t even—”

  His partner backed up a step and thrust out with his leg. Hard. The door shook but held. Darc eyed the door, then reared back again even harder. The door remained intact.

  “C’mon, Darc. We don’t even have a search warrant for—”

  A third time, Darc lashed out with his foot against the obstacle of the door. This time, the wood of the doorframe splintered and the door slapped with all the force of the kick against the wall. It rebounded, almost closing again, before Darc’s shoulder pushed it back and out of the way.

  Trey followed on Darc’s heels to find the last thing he expected.

  The apartment was completely white.

  There was nothing else in the brightly lit room other than the painfully white walls. No furniture. No windows. No doors. Just the stark white walls. And the strong smell of fresh paint.

  “Man, the fumes are almost as bad as that effing blood soup downstairs,” Trey complained.

  But Darc just stepped out into the middle of the room, staring at each of the walls in turn. His gaze was intense, appearing to look beyond the walls, not at them. Trey had seen this before.

  “Darc. Don’t. You. Dare.”

  Robi Darcmel swiveled his head to glance at Trey for a brief moment of nonrecognition before returning his attention to the walls. Trey might as well not be there. Once more, par for the course.

  This was not okay.

  “C’mon, Darc,” Trey said, backing away from his partner. “You know the walls are booby-trapped.”

  Given the fact that Darc’s facial expressions were nearly nonexistent, Trey had gotten to know Darc’s “tells.” His partner was displaying pretty much all of them right now. The thousand-yard stare. The retreat away from discernible reality. The abruptness of his movements. All pointed to some upcoming act that Trey was positive he wasn’t going to like. The only balm for Trey’s rising panic was that Darc hadn’t cocked his head.

  A frown crossed Darc’s face as he stared at the wall to the left. His eyes traced something undetectable to those not gifted with his brand of insight. Or those who weren’t clinically insane. Tomato. To-mah-to.

  Darc directed his attention to the right wall. His fist clenched tight against his thigh. It was another one of his classic tells. This was going to be bad.

  Trey opened up his cell again, punching through to dispatch.

  “I need an effing bomb squad and a hazmat team…” Trey wasn’t finished. “And maybe animal control.”

  “Animal Control?” the dispatcher asked. “Why would you need animal—”

  “I don’t know—just send them, send everyone! I need them all now. Effing now!”

  The crowd of Latinos must have tired of the blood show downstairs, because they were once more crowding in around the apartment door. If they were the cats, this was the curiosity that could kill them.

  “Stay back,” Trey pleaded. The last thing they needed was for civilians to get blown up. “C’mon, people, give us some room here!”

  Trey glanced over at Darc and saw him turn his eyes to the back wall. And then Darc cocked his head.

  “No!” Trey cried. He wasn’t ready to die.

  Darc’s fist punched through the freshly painted drywall. Trey winced, but nothing exploded. For now. Darc wasn’t done, though. He punched and tore and broke through the wall. Guess if was going to blow, it would have blown by now. Trey joined his partner, and together they tore out a large hole in the wall.

  Behind the Sheetrock was a metal barrel, rusted so thoroughly that just touching it caused flakes of metal to drift to the ground. Trey flinched at that first touch, but, seeing how no blast sent him hurtling back out of the apartment, he got his hands behind the barrel and helped Darc to walk it forward through the gaping hole. It was enormously heavy.

&
nbsp; As they got the barrel to the edge of the hole, the bottom edge of the container caught against the lip and the barrel tipped over onto its side. The lid flew off, sending the contents spewing forth in a gush of crimson.

  The barrel was filled to the brim with blood.

  As the foul fluid gushed out, it delivered a small package with it. A young girl, her hair and dress matted with coagulating blood, sprawled out onto the surface of the linoleum. Trey felt words spilling out of him along with the contents of the barrel.

  “Oh, dear Mary, mother of god.”

  Before Trey could finish his litany, Darc was on his knees and delivering CPR to the girl. Blood spilled out of her mouth, mixing with the growing puddle around them.

  Trey punched the button for dispatch. “I need an ambulance. A bus. Now! For the love of all that’s holy, now!”

  Darc leaned back from the girl for a moment, revealing her non-responsive form. There was no movement, no sign of breath. If he could have disregarded the gore, the scene would almost have struck Trey as peaceful. Only it wasn’t. They were too late. Again.

  “Sorry,” Trey said into the phone. “Make that a coroner’s wagon.”

  Darc’s form slumped in defeat over the lifeless form of the little girl. It was the closest that Trey had ever seen to any kind of expressed emotion from his partner. Yet Darc didn’t give up. He went back to pounding on the girl’s chest, turning her on her side, shaking the blood from her lungs.

  “Come on, Darc,” Trey begged.

  Then the girl’s body convulsed. She coughed and spit out copious amounts of blood.

  “Mary and Joseph! Get the paramedics up here!” Trey yelled into his cell.

  Darc leaned in over the girl once more. Trey thought it was to continue CPR, but his partner grabbed the girl by both of her shoulders and shook her once to gain her attention. The girl’s eyes widened as they looked into Darc’s.

  “Did you see him?” his partner demanded.

  “Darc!” Trey stated, not believing even Darc would go so far. “Seriously, what are you doing?” Trey stepped in, trying to distract his partner.

  Without even a glance, Darc continued interrogating the girl. “How did the killer get you here?”

  That was it. Trey grabbed his partner’s arm, jerking him upward, away from the girl.

  “Look at her, Darc!” Trey took his jacket off and wrapped around the shivering girl. “She’s in no shape for questioning. C’mon, man.”

  Darc slowly straightened, standing above the two of them, his face a blank slate. At the least, he wasn’t berating a traumatized little girl anymore. Then his partner turned.

  “Darc, where do you think you’re…” Trey’s voice trailed off as he watched several of the largest men in the group outside the door move to block Darc’s path.

  “Don’t even care about a white chica that ain’t your own, do you, cabrón?” one of the more testosterone-laden men asked.

  “Yeah, where’s your gun, puerco?” another challenged.

  Darc stood in the doorway, locking gazes with the leader of the pack.

  “Try me,” his partner intoned.

  Something in Darc’s gaze convinced the huge chulo that he really didn’t want to test Darc. The inked man moved to the side, allowing Darc to pass, just as footsteps sounded down the hallway.

  “Police!”

  That was all the bystanders needed to hear, as they scattered into the night. The beat cops rushed into the room, then stumbled back a step.

  “What the fuck?” one sputtered.

  Trey tucked the girl’s head against his shoulder. “Tell me about it.”

  *

  Darc exited the building, feeling the cool mist of evening on his face. As he walked, Darc felt a grey flicker of some foreign emotion. Guilt? Responsibility? He wasn’t positive. The grey threatened the strands of logic, so the detective pushed it down without hesitation. Trey would take care of the talking. He always took care of the talking. He could not seem to stop talking. Trey would take care of it.

  Pausing, Darc assessed the risk of taking his partner’s Rover. Darc did not have the keys, and going back to ask for them would create additional problems. Those problems were drenched in grey. That wasn’t an option.

  He could hotwire the ignition. This presented some attractive positives. It would allow him real-world testing of what up until had been theoretical knowledge. It would afford him the familiarity of a known environment. He would also get there much faster.

  However, in testing his untried skills, he might damage the vehicle, rendering it incapable of movement. That would waste time not only for him, but for his partner, once Trey was able to leave the crime scene. Darc would also have to explain what he had done to Trey’s car to him at some point. For some unfathomable reason, that option was also tinged grey. So, no hotwiring. Perhaps another time.

  Darc moved away from the apartment complex and began walking south on Fourteenth Avenue. The majority of the lines of logic were pointing northwest toward Seattle Children’s Hospital. There were emergency rooms closer, but the lines encircling the girl had spoken to her medical stability. She was in need of medical attention, but she could travel without risk. They would take her to the best pediatric intensive care unit in Seattle.

  The strongest and bluest of the lines was the path that Darc now trod. A map of Seattle overlaid the glowing lines in his head, transit routes marked in a glistening yellow-orange. He strode toward the intersection of Fourteenth Avenue and Henderson Street. There was a bus stop just south of that intersection. He could pick up the 8:05 bus or hail a taxi on the busier thoroughfare of Henderson.

  The alternatives laid themselves out in front of him, symbols and pictures forming a dancing pattern in his mind. Taking a bus would require a greater expenditure of time. The taxi ride would be shorter by a factor of three but would require human interaction. The taxicab was a choice, once more tainted with grey. Strangely, the grey did not interfere with or obscure the line Darc followed. He would take the taxi.

  Decision made, he picked up his pace. Moving under a streetlamp, Darc noticed the bright red stain across his shirt. The rest of his suit was dark enough to mask the blood. This would not do. Any taxi driver would question such a stain. The cab would be filled with a nebulous grey. Turning the crisply ironed lapels of his jacket over his shirt, Darc minimized the stain.

  He made his way toward one of the new clubs that Trey deemed “trendy.” It seemed that the youth of the city preferred to hold their alcohol-and drug-laced parties in areas with a higher crime rate than the neighborhood they lived in. Could not everyone see why this grey cloud of emotion was useless?

  The reasons did not matter, though. What mattered was that cabs flittered to and from this establishment all night.

  Waiting at the curb for the next such one, Darc turned his mind back to the killings. This case, with its copious amounts of blood, had caught him off guard. Not the blood, per se, but the reason for the blood. This killer was no ordinary serialist. Statistically speaking, serial killers normally killed for several well-documented reasons.

  None of which applied to this case. There were no psychosexual elements to the killings. Not of the parents. Not of the children. And while placing a child in a vat of their own parents’ blood was deemed cruel by society, it did not seem that the killer had a sadistic streak. If anything, the killer sedated the children, apparently to keep them calm while they drowned.

  Until this one. This little girl who had survived.

  Had the killer miscalculated the dose? Did the girl have a resistance to the over-the-counter antihistamine the killer used? Or did the killer mean for Darc to find her alive?

  At the parents’ crime scene, Darc had thought himself to finally be gaining on the killer. That through his perception of logic and patterns he had cracked the killer’s code. Even after finding the girl and saving her, Darc did not feel that he could take any credit in the accomplishment. He felt like a valedictorian who ha
d been given the answers to the finals by the principal.

  The killer had led him to the girl. He had made the equation easier. Dumbing it down for Darc to solve. The logic lines only morphed into a pattern because the killer wished for Darc to see the pattern. The killer’s pattern was evolving, and now it seemed he wished for an audience to his triumph.

  Darc was now a pawn in the killer’s game. That knowledge did not sit well with Darc. It felt uncomfortable right beneath his sternum.

  Yet knowing that he was a chess piece brightened the logic lines. Knowing one to be a pawn and playing the pawn were two distinctly different paths.

  As a cab pulled up to the curb and deposited its sequined partiers, Darc waited patiently.

  In giving Darc a single clue, the killer had opened so many other lines of inquiry. This most recent set of symbols, a mixture of Greek, Latin, and Aramaic symbols combined with numbers. The patterns linked ancient Christianity with Catholicism but put them in the context of the humanism of the Greeks. These elements were then filtered through the rigidity of numerology.

  It should be gibberish, except for those bright blue lines. Lines that if urged and coaxed and tugged enough would lead back to the one who wove them in the first place.

  *

  Getting out of the crime scene had proved to be a bit of a challenge, but an efficient CSI and a helpful beat cop got Trey out of there sooner than he would have feared. Especially once he told them his partner was in the wind. Darc was kind of infamous amongst the members of the Seattle police force. Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. But no matter if they loved or hated him, everyone could agree that Darcmel should not be on his own. Bad things happened when Darc went off the grid.

  So everyone from the EMTs to the crime scene boys had hustled Trey out of there. He was pretty sure that he’d only lost a little time on his partner.

  Plus, he knew where Darc was going.

  Even after changing out of his bloody clothes and into his spare set in the trunk—he was partners with Darc, so having a backup was just plain ole common sense—he was still less than fifteen minutes behind. Trey glanced down at the T-shirt he had just pulled on. I’M WITH STUPID, the shirt proclaimed in block letters. Trey grinned. Sure, it was silly, but hey, he’d just pulled a kid out of a vat of her own parents’ blood. Right about now, silly wasn’t just good, it was essential.