9th Circle

by Carolyn McCray; Ben Hopkin

  “Darc now believes that the families are chosen at and possibly kidnapped near the Magic Mouse Toy Store.” As Trey finished this statement, the room erupted into a cacophony of questions. The detective held up his hands.

  “We have already got every on-duty and off-duty CSI unit over there sweeping the store and surrounding areas.”

  At that point, the captain stepped forward. “And starting at oh eight hundred hours, we will have three round-the-clock teams staking out—”

  “Don’t bother,” Darcmel spoke over his shoulder.

  “And why not?” the captain asked.

  “The killer won’t return,” Darcmel answered flatly.

  “But wait a minute,” Keane inserted, sorting through his notes. “On page…twelve, you said that he had formed a ritualistic bond to the store and—”

  “Not anymore. Not if the girl saw this.” And he pointed to the last symbol. The one Janey had drawn in her own blood.

  “And what, exactly, are we looking at?” The captain seemed to be seeking firm ground, but Darcmel was unresponsive once more. The detective stared at the remaining symbols, his eyes darting back and forth between them.

  Luckily, Mala thought she knew what was going on here. She hesitated to insert herself in a police matter, but Darc did not seem capable or willing to clarify for them. She directed her answer to the captain. “It’s the Greek symbol delta. It stands for change, or for progression.”

  “I don’t get it.” Trey had the forlorn expression of a lost puppy.

  “The killer is moving on.” Once more, Darcmel was engaged in the conversation, having come back from wherever he had been moments ago.

  “To what?” The captain’s deep voice cut across the chatter in the bullpen, his tone curt. He seemed almost angry at the new direction this was going. Mala homed in on the captain. He liked order. Surety. This sudden change-up seemed hard for him to take.

  “Unknown. But it will be soon.” Darc’s words were a declaration of certainty, and, looking at the symbols, Mala was pretty sure she could see what he was talking about. The letters were from a variety of ancient languages that most psychologists wouldn’t have any clue about. But she wasn’t most psychologists. She pointed to the drawings in order.

  “These others…Completion. Speed. Difficult. Now.”

  Darc turned his head, catching her eye. The look on his face was not quite as blank as it usually was. There was something there. Something Mala couldn’t identify. But her body could. She felt a flush creep up her entire torso. She had never been more grateful for her darker skin tone.

  A uniformed policeman stuck his head in the door of the bullpen. “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a 911 call the watch commander thinks you should take a listen to.” He paused for a second, his face twisting up. “It’s a weird one.”

  Detective Darcmel grabbed his jacket without a word to anyone and moved toward the door. Mala tried to follow him, speaking as she moved.

  “Detective, in case there is another child, do you mind if I come—”

  But Darc quickly outpaced her, shutting the door practically in her face. She looked over to see his partner gathering up his things as quickly as he could.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Trey, “but do you think he would mind if I joined you?”

  The detective gave a bark of laughter. “Doc, he won’t even notice.”

  “Then, would you object?”

  The detective smirked. “Keep that top one unbuttoned, and we’ll see,” he said, nodding at her blouse. Before Mala could even respond, Trey shook off his smile.

  “Sorry, Doc. Old habits.”

  As the two rushed off in pursuit of Darcmel, the captain yelled after them.

  “We’ll work the toy store until we figure out if there’s a new lead.”

  But Mala knew better. She had seen Darc in action. The toy store angle was dead.

  CHAPTER 5

  When Trey heard from dispatch where they were headed, he almost burst into laughter. The maniacal kind, not the ha-ha kind. An indoor skydiving training facility?

  Shut up.

  His job had taken them to some pretty freaky places, most of them bad. But this? This was awesome. The feeling of flying, without having to, you know, jump out of an airplane at ten thousand feet, entrusting your life to a scrap of cloth? Sounded perfect.

  He followed Dr. Charan and Darc inside. The roar of the simulator engine drowned out anything they might have wanted to say to each other. Although once Trey caught a glimpse of what was floating around in the artificial wind tunnel, he was pretty sure it would be a conversation killer.

  Three bloody bodies tossed about in the turbulence inside the upright Plexiglas cylinder. They were lashed together somehow, but their arms flailed about wildly in the blast from the fans below. Occasionally a head or foot or hand would slap against the transparent wall, leaving a red smear behind, just in case you had managed to forget what you had seen.

  Trey felt his face twist in disgust, and he watched as Dr. Charan gagged, apparently doing what she could not to lose her dinner. Darc strode directly toward the crime scene—no shocker there. Trey spoke mostly to himself, figuring no one else would ever hear him over the noise.

  “Yeah, I’d say this is a new lead.”

  Man, that fan was loud. He couldn’t hear himself. Not even in his own head. A uniformed cop approached, yelling something unintelligible, clearly trying to top the noise of the simulator.

  “Can’t…blower!” The uni was gesturing to something off to the side of the tunnel.

  “What?” Trey hollered.

  “Controls…bypassed!”

  Trey pointed at his ears. “Can’t hear you!”

  “City…have to…cut…block’s power!”

  “You’re going to have to speak up!”

  Darc yanked something out of the panel on the other side of the cylinder. The noise cut off, leaving Trey’s ears ringing in the sudden silence. He turned to the uni and gave him a wry grin.

  “Or not.”

  The bodies fell to the grate on the floor of the wind tunnel with a huge crash that echoed through the suddenly silent complex. Dr. Charan jumped in response. Trey was about to go to join his partner, when he realized the doctor’s face had gone ashen. She swayed a bit, looking ready to faint.

  “Look, there’s no kids,” he explained. “So why don’t you just wait out here?”

  The doctor tried to make a face that Trey was sure she meant to be brave and reassuring but only managed to make her look worse. Trey started moving to join Darc, peeking over his shoulder every few steps to make sure Charan was still upright.

  As he neared his partner, he saw that Darc was deeply engaged in observing the bodies on the other side of the plastic. Trey studied the gruesome view for a few moments but then couldn’t hold in the thought that had been nagging at him since they had arrived at the scene.

  “I don’t get it. Parents and kids. Now these Gen Y’ers.”

  “He doesn’t care about the victims.”

  Hey. A response. Curt and distracted, yes. But a response. Trey snorted. “Well, that’s pretty clear. Even to…you know…like, me. It’s not like you need a different perspective to come up with that little nugget.”

  Darc turned to stare at Trey, his eyes flaring. He then looked straight up.

  Trey gazed upward alongside his partner, trying for the life of him to figure out what Darc was seeing. As usual, he got nothing.

  “What?”

  And then Darc was off, running up the staircase that led to the catwalk above the simulator, taking the steps two at a time, his usual pace. Trey trudged along behind him, doing what he could to keep up.

  “Holy Mother,” Trey gasped. “He’s got thighs of steel…”

  When Trey finally managed to make it up to the top, he was winded enough, and the catwalk was up high enough, that he had to catch both his balance and his breath. The floor beneath did that cartoon wobbly thing on him, sending his vertigo
ratcheting up another couple of notches. After taking a couple of moments to reestablish his equilibrium, Trey moved alongside his partner.

  “What was the rush? Those guys down there look pretty well dead, and I don’t think they’re going anywhere,” he managed to pant. He looked over the railing, and then immediately pulled his head back into safer territory.

  This time, it had nothing to do with heights. Okay, maybe a tiny bit, but most of it was the view of the victims, unrestricted by the blood-smeared plastic. Not only had their throats been slit, but their faces and any other exposed skin was completely mangled, bludgeoned by the severe buffeting the wind tunnel had delivered on a continual basis since they were killed. If the damage was any indication, it had been more than a little while.

  This took “getting the wind knocked out of you” to a whole new level.

  *

  The lines of light branched and split, dividing and looping back on themselves, distracting Darc from what he was trying to do. They were not falling into any sort of coherent pattern. The detective’s head throbbed from the influx of random bits of information.

  The idea to view the crime scene from a different perspective helped. At least from here he could observe the bodies without any impediment. He searched the forms below, looking for patterns in the way their arms were joined together. Forms appeared for brief flashes, then dissipated, leaving nothing behind but afterimages against his metaphorical retinas.

  As he tried without success to force the symbols to appear and cohere, Dr. Charan arrived next to Trey. As she took in the sight below, her eyes widened.

  “Oh my…”

  The doctor’s hand fluttered around her face, the motion seemingly unconscious on her part. Darc’s partner moved closer to her in order to offer his support.

  “I told you to give it a wide berth.”

  The chatter of the two beside him occupied perhaps 2 percent of Darc’s mind, as he continued to have no success with the symbols. He threw one out, only to have it force its way back in, crashing into and almost completely interrupting the entire sequence. Something was desperately wrong here. He murmured encouraging words to the erratic letters. They skittered out of his mental grasp with ease. It felt like they were mocking him for all that he was trying to accomplish.

  “What’s he doing?” Dr. Charan asked his partner.

  “Who knows,” Trey responded.

  “He doesn’t tell you what he sees?” the doctor questioned.

  “Man, you really are new to the program.”

  Beads of sweat broke out on Darc’s brow. He gritted his teeth, trying to push the symbols together through sheer force of will, but they continued to bounce about, eluding his efforts. In his mind’s eye, he lifted the bodies so that they were suspended in air, where they had been when the air was still flowing. Still nothing. The letters would not coalesce. They hovered around the edges of his consciousness, taunting him in his impotency. Darc gripped the railing of the catwalk so firmly, his knuckles turned ached.

  The doctor voiced her concern. “Is he all right?”

  “Oh, scheisse. We need to get him away from the edge.”

  Trey and the doctor tried to pry his fingers from off the railing. Even if Darc had wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able to help them in their efforts. Everything he had was going toward figuring out the puzzle that was crouched below him, expressing itself in the bodies of the skydivers. He was missing something. Some fundamental shift that would allow him to see…

  And then he had it. He repositioned the bodies in his mind so that they were in the skydiving position: arms and legs extended, their forms cupping the air that flowed from beneath.

  The symbols extracted themselves from the resultant picture and rushed into place with so much force, they threw Darc back into the doctor’s and Trey’s arms. The two, surprised by the sudden reaction, were unprepared to take that much weight and allowed him to sink to the floor. Darc shook his head, but the ciphers remained intact. They had found their perfect arrangement.

  He knew what to do next.

  *

  Mala watched as Trey spoke in Darc’s ear. The way he held him and tried to comfort him was so…gentle. She had never seen a man take such good care of another man in that way. And without any apparent awkwardness or embarrassment.

  “It’s all right, man. Steady. You’re going to be all right.” He tried to help Darc back up to a standing position, but Darc pushed his hands away.

  Darc seemed to be struggling to express something important. The strain in his jaw and neck were apparent in the muscles standing out in sharp contrast against his taut skin. The more he tried, the more it was clear his body was fighting him. The anguish in him was crystal clear, and Mala’s instinctive response was to soothe and comfort. But that job was being handled by his partner at this moment. Trey massaged the detective’s arm, working to help his muscles relax.

  “Don’t force it, Darc.”

  What Trey was doing seemed to be working. The tension in Darc’s neck and shoulders slowly began to ease. His breathing slowed itself, and he began to speak.

  “The…next crime scene.” The words were halting, unsteady, but they came out. Progress.

  But his partner didn’t understand. “I don’t think there’s another one of these indoor skydiving rigs in the—”

  Darc shook his head with force, cutting Trey off. Mala could see that he was doing everything he could to communicate with his partner, but it still appeared to be an enormous strain.

  “Different,” Darc said, as he rose.

  “All right.” Trey soothed him with his tone. “Just give me the address.”

  Once more, Darc shook his head. He stopped struggling and took a deep breath. Another. When he lifted his eyes once more, they sought out Mala.

  “I need to see the girl first.”

  The intensity of his gaze dried her mouth. There was something so incredibly intimate about it. In these moments of intense focus, Darc seemed to leave himself wide open to anything that might be directed at him. His vulnerability was beguiling.

  She wanted more.

  When Darc turned to leave, his movements direct and abrupt as always, the sudden lapse of his attention caused Mala to stagger emotionally. What was it about this detective?

  Trey caught her expression. “Yeah, don’t bother getting that look on your face.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  He sighed. “Respect. Admiration.” He turned to follow his partner, speaking over his shoulder. “Take it from me.” Trey stopped and held her gaze for a long moment.

  “He’ll never return it.”

  *

  Another of Henry’s special tasks at the slaughterhouse. The other workers always left the best jobs for him. And tonight’s was extra special. The other slobs hadn’t just left this one for him. He had planned it ahead of time.

  When the animals were killed, the blood had to be drained out of them. That blood had to go somewhere. And here was where it came. Buckets and buckets of it.

  One of Henry’s favorite games was Guess the Animal. He would try to identify what had come in through the gates outside just by the smell and thickness of the drainage that came down. He almost never got it wrong. He knew his blood.

  Henry rolled one of the metal barrels they always used at the slaughterhouse into place beneath the sluice. Blood and little bits of flesh poured down the chute, hitting the bottom of the container with a sickening, rhythmic sloshing.

  It started as a metallic sound against the metal bottom, but that soon turned into a wet, splashing sound as blood struck blood and spattered, sometimes against the walls of the barrel, sometimes against the ceiling. Sometimes against Henry as he got close to the container.

  Every once in a while, the spatter would land on his face. He didn’t mind too much. It was easy to clean off, and the dried blood on his face looked kind of cool when he caught sight of it in the mirror. Made him look tough. Like an action hero or something.


  As the blood continued to drain, Henry was amazed at how much was coming down. Especially considering what it was coming from. The liquid was dark, almost black, but with that touch of red that was unmistakable. The swirling waves and the sloshing in the barrel were hypnotic. Henry felt his head starting to nod, when a particularly loud slapping sound brought him back to full awareness.

  A large flap of bloody skin had fallen out of the chute. Henry went to pick it up but misjudged its slickness and ended up stepping on it with his heavy work boots instead. It gave a satisfying squish that made Henry decide to step on it a few more times for good measure.

  Seriously, this was the best job ever.

  *

  Darc was moving as fast as he could without impairing his future stamina. The lines thickened and converged here, in the girl’s hospital room. Without her input, there was nowhere he could go. The logic dictated, and there was no arguing with logic. Logic was implacable, insistent, uncaring about the cost to those from whom it demanded its pound of flesh. And Darc was both its master and its disciple, now and always. There really was no choice in the matter.

  Bursting into the room, Darc observed that the girl was awake. That was fortuitous. If he had needed to wake her, the girl’s faculties would have been impaired. With her alert, no time need be wasted.

  “Where do you live?” he asked without preamble.

  The doctor entered into the room just as Darc finished speaking, her breathing labored. Her tone was washed in grey. Dissatisfaction? Judgment? Impossible to determine.

  “Do you understand how young she is?”

  Darc wasted no time in arguing. Argument was a grey mess. Logic demanded. Logic would be served. That was the way it worked. The fact that this woman of science did not seem to understand this simple fact was baffling to Darc. It did not fit into the way things were supposed to be ordered.

  “The address?” He thrust papers into the girl’s hands, but she pushed them away, in essence rejecting their only method of communication. The bands of light inside him tightened, making it difficult to breathe. He needed the address. He needed to know where to go next. She knew.