9th Circle

by Carolyn McCray; Ben Hopkin

  Trey waved a lazy hand at his partner and the little girl. “Well, you should be getting her a juice box or cookie or something, then,” he stated, “‘cause this could take a while.”

  Mala looked back to the little girl and her brooding protector. In the little girl’s expression, she could see pain, determination, but now hope. Darc, though? Darc’s head swiveled slowly from side to side, apparently taking in the symbols on the walls. But his gaze seemed unfocused and vague.

  “So, you have no idea?” Mala asked the rumpled detective. “No sense of what he does in these ‘trances’?”

  All the air seemed to deflate out of Trey as he settled onto the bed beside her. His shoulders slouched a bit, and he stared down at his hands.

  “You must know about image-based mathematics?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  Trey’s head popped back up, his face becoming its usual, animated self. “Awesome! Can you explain it to me?”

  “Um…” That was unexpected. Instead of getting some insight into the Dark Knight over there, she was going to have to explain the whole thing to his partner.

  “Yeah,” Trey said. “I mean, I toss that term around when I have to, but…”

  Rising, she grabbed a wheeled easel from the central play area of the ward, a slew of colored chalks in the tray at the bottom. She rolled it over to where Trey was waiting. Picking up a piece of pink chalk, Mala started on the board. Trey flopped down on his stomach on the bed, cupping his face in his hands. He put on an I’m paying attention expression, his eyes huge.

  Maybe this would be a welcome retreat from the horror of this case.

  “Okay,” Mala stated, drawing a 2 + 2 equation on the board. “Mathematical savants don’t see calculations as numbers.”

  “Whoa. What? That can’t be right. How can you do math without numbers?” Trey’s face scrunched up in confusion.

  “I know, right?” Even after all these years of study and clinical practice, this stuff still fascinated her. “But savants see the numbers in terms of shapes.” Mala drew tight-fitting bubbles around each of the numbers. “Now, you and I add one plus one and get two. However, savants put the ‘shapes’ of the numbers together…” Mala brought the two shapes side by side until they touched. With blue chalk, she outlined the negative space. “The remaining space between them is a new shape and hence a new number, which is the answer to the numerical equation. The end result is what Darc sees.”

  The detective’s eyes dilated even further. “Oh, crap. Really?”

  “Yeah. It almost seems silly at this basic level of math, but when you get into complex equations figuring into the millions”—Mala looked over to Darc as his eyes scanned back and forth, back and forth—”they’re not multiplying anything. The answer is instantaneous. It’s remarkable, really.”

  “No kidding,” Trey said, glancing at his partner. “So, that’s what he’s doing now?”

  “I would guess so. But the answers should be immediate.” Mala hadn’t had tons of clinical experience with autism or savants, but she’d studied their process in-depth. Many psychologists believed that the autistic state was actually an evolutionary step forward, that savants used far more of their brain, in far more situations, than “normal” humans. Yet with all of her research, Mala hadn’t run across a situation like Darc’s in any of her reading.

  Trey flipped himself over onto his back and grunted. “Huh. Guess these freaky symbols are different.”

  He pulled out his phone, opened up what looked like Tetris, and started playing, the cell emitting blips and beeps as he moved the pieces around. He glanced back over his shoulder at Mala.

  “Best get comfy, Doc. It’s gonna be a loooonng day.” He settled back into his game. “Oh, and I call dibs on the bed.”

  Mala nodded. She seriously doubted she could lie down. Despite her fatigue, her nerves were on edge. Perhaps she couldn’t decipher the killer’s bizarre symbols, but maybe she could unravel one mystery. Grabbing Darc’s file, Mala dug in.

  *

  Trey hated it when he was right. Five hours later, and Darc was still doing the “savant trance dance.” The captain had already called to complain about their lack of progress six times. That averaged out to more than once an hour. There was little any of them could do, though. They needed Darc. No one else had a clue as to how to proceed. Sure, the CSU guys had combed every crime scene, but, just like every other time, they had found only what the killer wanted them to find.

  The symbols.

  And the symbols were Darc’s thing.

  Trey’s thing was that he had to eat every four hours. What could he say? He had a fast metabolism. And if he didn’t eat every four hours? Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. So here he was, strolling back into the peds ward after eating his “lunch” at the hospital cafeteria. Even in his own head, he couldn’t help but put quotes around that word. Anything that was made of meat that he couldn’t identify didn’t deserve to be called food. He could still taste it. That wasn’t a good thing.

  At least he’d been able to supplement out of the vending machine. Fanta and Cheetos should be in their own food group. Hey, you were supposed to get color in your diet, right?

  Pushing open the door to the ward, he saw that Darc had yet to move from his spot by Janey. To her credit, the girl hadn’t moved much either, though her head was now resting on Darc’s shoulder and she was fast asleep. Dude. If it weren’t for the fact that it was Darc, that would totally be a Kodak moment happening over there.

  Trey spotted the doctor over in the makeshift office she’d set up. She was sitting in a chair by the side of the bed. He had woken up to find her in that same chair beside him, also conked out. He had felt a little bad about that. A little.

  The doctor was leafing through a chart. Trey guessed it was Janey’s. Although maybe it was Darc’s. He wouldn’t put it past her. She was nearly as bad a dog to a bone as Darc. As Trey passed by her chair, he caught a whiff of her scent. It was clean, but not soapy. The smell of the ocean without the nasty fish stink.

  She was a riddle wrapped inside an enigma, this child psychologist was. And pretty in that exotic, I can’t tell where in the heck you hailed from kind of way. But something had been bugging him. Well, with so many dead bodies and bloody symbols scrawled all over a peds unit’s wall, something in addition was bugging him.

  He perched on the edge of the bed, catching the psychologist’s eye. She closed the file and dropped it into her lap, crossing her hands over it. She lifted one eyebrow at him.

  “What is it, Detective?”

  “Um. You can call me Trey. Since we’ve slept together and all.” He swept his arm back and forth from the bed to the chair.

  Mala went still for a second, then dipped her head down, shaking it softly. Wisps of dark hair broken loose from her ponytail swept back and forth. Such a small gesture, yet it changed her whole face. She looked ten years younger.

  “All right, then…Trey. Although I’m not sure how your girlfriend would feel about us sleeping together.” Her eyes glittered with a wicked light.

  “How did you know I have a…?”

  “Please,” the doctor said. “You’ve got taken written all over your face.”

  Trey went to argue, but why bother? Mala got paid to deduce stuff like that. Besides, he kinda liked the fact that he had Maggie written on his face. He also decided he kinda liked this Mala chick. But he still wanted to know something. Hopefully it wouldn’t strain the rapport they had built.

  “Okay, Mala. You’re a good doctor, right? I mean, you rock out loud, I’m guessing.”

  “Uh…I…”

  “C’mon,” Trey coaxed. “You’ve got super shrink written all over your face.”

  Mala let out another soft chuckle. Yeah, Trey knew how to make the ladies laugh. He couldn’t deduce his way out of a paper bag, but putting people at ease? He had that down.

  The doctor ducked her head, her dusky skin darkening another shade. Was she actually blush
ing?

  “Yes,” she conceded. “Yeah, I’m good at what I do.”

  “Right…” Here goes. “So why did you let Darc and me drag Janey all over Seattle? I’m guessing that’s not standard operating procedure for kid-head docs.”

  Mala paused before answering, pursing her lips. She opened her mouth, then shut it, then took a deep breath through her nose. When she lifted her head, her expression was serious.

  “That’s a bit…complicated.”

  Ah, Trey knew that one. If a chick used the word “complicated,” it meant she didn’t want to talk. A chick not wanting to talk about her feelings. For most guys, it was the Holy Grail. It also usually foretold the end of a conversation. Luckily, Trey wasn’t most guys.

  “I like complicated,” Trey said, crossing his legs, sipping his Fanta through a tiny straw. “You know, as long as you explain it to me slowly and thoroughly.”

  Mala shook her head. “I think it is best we concentrate on Janey.”

  Trey tossed a thumb toward the two on the floor. “I think Darc is doing enough concentrating for all three of us.”

  The doctor’s eyes scanned over, and she finally sighed. “I’m guessing my supervisors will also be asking me that question before this is all done.”

  “So practice on me,” Trey encouraged. He really, really, really needed something to take his mind off those bodies under the rocks. And the bodies in the wind tunnel. And the bodies in the taxis. Yeah, he really needed a distraction right about now. “It sounds like this particular ‘complicated’ probably started, like, way before Darc and I stumbled into your life…”

  A faint smile flickered on Mala’s lips.

  “Did you always want to be a shrinky-dink?” Trey shifted around on the bed, looking for a comfy spot. The sheets were stiffer than some cardboard he had come across in his life, and he’d felt sandpaper that was smoother. They expected kids to sleep on this stuff?

  “No,” Mala finally answered. “I wanted to be a museum curator. I double-majored in ancient languages and art history. Loved them both.”

  “What made you change your mind?” Trey asked, then licked his finger, sticking it into the bottom of the Cheetos bag and catching all the crumbs in the corner.

  Mala looked away for a minute, and when she turned back, her eyes were glimmering. She took another deep breath and continued. “My brother.”

  From her sigh, Trey knew this part of the story didn’t end well. But what “complicated” story did? This was why most men bailed. Heck, even a lot of women bailed here. But that was what made Trey the conversation ninja. Tears didn’t dissuade him. If anything, it meant he was getting closer to the truth.

  His partner might be all about figuring out crime puzzles. Trey was all about figuring out people. What made them tick. If you knew what was really going on inside, you could help on the outside. Like how he knew Darc. Really knew him. How else could a screw-up from vice squad land a gig with the department’s golden child?

  As Mala breathed in and breathed out, memories, feelings, and pain crossing her features, Trey gave her space and turned his attention to Darc and Janey. The girl’s features were so placid. Peaceful. She was a princess who had called her knight.

  Children got it—man, they really did. For such small creatures, they could really see the big picture. Darc was like a beacon in a stormy night. A battered, torn, and damaged beacon, which made him an even more trusted beacon. Why? Because Darc would never run away. He’d seen some stuff. He’d lived through a hell most others wouldn’t want to imagine, yet here he was, getting battered again.

  The guy was like the Energizer Bunny of beacons.

  And Janey knew she was in an epic storm. A storm most could never hope to survive, except she had Darc and his unwavering light. Well, the light, plus a bunch of really annoying personal quirks, but Janey probably couldn’t care less about those. Not when his light shone so brightly. Bathing her in its surety.

  A twinge of jealousy surprised Trey. Back as a kid, he’d always wanted to be that knight in shiny armor. Turned out, he was just the guy who kept someone else’s armor shiny. But you know what? If that helped save a little girl like Janey, he’d buff that metal all night long.

  A sniffle brought Trey back to Mala. This case had made her raw. Maybe too raw. He wanted to know but didn’t want to pry. “You know what? Forget it. It’s no biggie. I was just curious.”

  “No, no. It’s okay,” Mala said, dabbing the corner of her eye with a napkin. “I think maybe Janey reminds me of Baasim, my brother. He was kind of an intense kid.” A grin broke out across the doctor’s lips, despite the obvious pain. “But with our parents, kind of hard not to be, you know?”

  No, Trey didn’t know. His parents had spent his college fund when he was about ten. They thought a sequence of low-level construction jobs was probably in his future. He got a lot of “the point is that you tried” speeches around report-card time. Imagine their surprise when he made detective. Kind of one of the best things about being constantly underestimated. The look of sheer shock on people’s faces when you succeeded.

  He nodded to the doctor, though. This wasn’t his story, it was Mala’s.

  “I wish we’d been closer…” she said, looking out the window as rain splattered against the panes, creating a living, dripping piece of art. “But I was so much older and usually ended up babysitting him, so there were a lot of ‘you aren’t the boss of me’ kind of situations.”

  “Was.” Mala was using the past tense about her brother. Never a good sign.

  She shrugged as if she’d made some sort of internal decision to let Trey in on the source of the pain. “I went away to college, and you know how that goes. I didn’t really write or call or even show up to his twelfth-birthday party.”

  Tears ran down her cheeks, but Trey didn’t interrupt her. He could feel when people needed to get stuff out. It was like a sixth sense. Maybe not as sexy as Darc’s image-based mathematics, but hey, it got the job done.

  “I’m not even sure if I responded when my mom emailed that Baasim was going away to archeology camp. I was too busy taking twenty units in summer school to get my simultaneous degrees.”

  Trey might not have been the best detective in the world, or even in the 50th percentile, but he could feel where this story was going. A young boy, off to camp. Tragedy in her voice.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Trey stated softly. It didn’t matter what she explained next—none of it could be her fault.

  “No,” Mala said, “I couldn’t have stopped that counselor from doing what he did to Baasim…” She looked at him, taking a breath. “At least, I knew that after about five years of counseling.” Her gaze wandered back to the window again. “No, I blame myself for not being there for him afterward. Not protecting him from the system that should have been the ones protecting him in the first place.”

  Mala rubbed her thumb against the palm of her other hand.

  “You were just a kid yourself,” Trey comforted, although he knew from personal experience that knowledge didn’t always help.

  “I mean, at first my parents did everything they could. Once they finally got out of him what had happened, they got him into therapy. They alerted the authorities…”

  Trey waited as Mala’s tears fell from her cheeks onto the floor. Her lips scrunched up, then released, only to scrunch up again. Sometimes the pain needed a little prodding to come out.

  “Then?”

  “Ugh,” Mala sighed, using the back of her sleeve to wipe away the tears. “Some dick that called himself an expert in juvenile psychology convinced my parents that they shouldn’t press charges. That my brother should forgive his attacker and move past it.”

  “But that wasn’t what Baasim wanted?”

  Mala shook her head, tears streaming again. “But I agreed with my parents and the doctor. I. Me. I’m the one that talked Baasim into dropping the charges. I told him no good could come of the trial. The counselor had been fired. His wife was
divorcing him. Why put our family through all of that”—Mala said with a hiccup, having to force the last words out—”when the prosecutors said the chances were slim a jury would convict.”

  “Oh, Mala,” Trey said, reaching out and laying a hand on her arm. “How could you know better?”

  Her head snapped around, her tone sharp. “Baasim killed himself the next night.”

  Trey blew air out through his teeth but didn’t remove his hand.

  “Sorry,” Mala apologized, her face softening again, the tears flowing.

  “No worries,” Trey reassured her, squeezing her arm, though he could feel her pulling back into herself, putting up the walls, reconstructing the dam that held in all these feelings. She gently moved her arm out of reach.

  “So,” she said, obviously trying to sound a bit more chipper, “that is why I let the patient decide when they are ready and for what. No one, I mean no one, knows better than the patient.”

  Ah, now so much made sense. Back in the ICU room, he had seen the conflict in her face. As a matter of fact, Trey would have bet a month’s paycheck the doc would never have let Darc take Janey. But Mala in the end hadn’t let Darc take the little girl. She’d allowed Janey to go. There was a huge difference between those two.

  “The patient knows best,” Mala stated with more certainty. “Janey wanted to go with you, so she went. I could probably get fired for that decision. But I’d make it again in a heartbeat.” Mala reached over and play-slapped Trey on the arm, startling him. “Just so you don’t think I can be bullied into doing something I don’t think is a good idea.”

  Yeah, no. That was not something Trey would think about Mala. Ever.

  *

  Mala hugged herself. She’d been doing it a lot as they waited for Darc to rise from his trancelike state. She glanced at the clock. She blinked. She wiped her eyes, but the number did not change. It had been over seven hours since Darc had sat down next to Janey. You’d think in that time she would have settled. But after talking with Trey? She still felt unbalanced. It wasn’t like her to share like that. Just ask her fourteen therapists.