9th Circle

by Carolyn McCray; Ben Hopkin

  Yet Trey had gotten her to open up in, like, ten seconds. She looked at his sleeping form. He was on his fourth nap. Count them, four. Granted, she had taken two, but four did seem a bit excessive. But maybe that was what gave Trey his emotional resiliency. She knew detectives that cracked under half the pressure he was under. Yet to look at him, he seemed…happy. Not just content or compensating, but truly happy.

  He’d grabbed one of the kid’s rag dolls and was now hugging it to his chest as he slept. Occasionally, or actually frequently, he would smile. Sometimes he’d even giggle. After everything he’d seen, he was giggling.

  Mala nudged his bed. There were only so many times you could look through a chart by yourself. There were only so many times you could check in on your patient who was fast asleep in a comatose detective’s lap. Only so many times you could take a stroll around the ward or around the floor. Hell, Mala was pretty sure she’d explored the whole hospital at this point.

  Perhaps she should take another nap, like Trey. Then her hand went to a kink in her neck from the last nap she’d taken. She really didn’t want to make it worse. So she gave Trey’s bed another nudge—you know, on accident.

  He started awake and rubbed his eyes, giving her a bleary look. His normally messy hair was now sticking straight up.

  “What’s up? Darc figure something out?”

  “No. He hasn’t ‘figured something out.’ He hasn’t moved,” Mala stated, with perhaps a bit more bitterness than she had intended.

  “Yeah. That’s Darc.” Trey craned his neck to give his partner a gander. “I’m telling you, he can go twenty-four hours without rest. Actually, he just had a full night’s sleep. He could go days.”

  “This can’t be healthy for him.”

  “Who said anything about healthy?” Mala opened her mouth, but Trey held up his hand to stop her. “I’m telling you. Go ahead and move him, take him home, put him to bed, but he is going to be doing exactly this.” He then nodded toward Janey. “And she is going to be doing exactly that.” He swept his arm around the room, indicating the gory symbols on the walls.

  And then Darc croaked out a word.

  “Need.”

  Mala hopped from her chair as Trey knelt down next to Darc. “What? Buddy. What do you need?”

  The tall detective swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He opened his mouth again. “Art dealer.”

  Trey sat back on his haunches and ran his hand through his hair, spiking it even more.

  “An art…? Sorry, dude, I…” He looked up at Mala, his face a question mark. “Wow. I did not see that…What kinda shape ‘spells out’ ‘art dealer’?”

  “I don’t know,” Mala said, equally confused. “But—”

  Darc spat out words, cutting her off. “Blake. Series. Inferno.”

  Next to her, Trey took out a pad of paper and scribbled down words as fast as he could go. “Jehoshaphat. I wish he’d go slower!”

  Mala put out a hand to shush him. She had a tiny inkling of what Trey’s partner might be talking about. Maybe.

  “Are you talking about Dante’s works?” she asked.

  But Darc shook his head, the sharp movement causing Janey to stir a bit in his lap. He let fall another word. “Aristotle.”

  What? That didn’t make any sense at all. Mala looked at Trey. “I don’t understand.”

  Trey leaned back and stood up in one smooth motion. “Get used to it, babe.”

  But it appeared Darc wasn’t quite finished. He spoke once more.

  “Christie’s.”

  After releasing that one last word, his gaze sank inward once more. Darc was no longer really with them. Trey made a loud raspberry sound, then grimaced as Janey stirred. His next words seemed more directed at himself than at Mala.

  “Great. Now we need another savant to figure out what he just said.”

  Mala couldn’t help but agree.

  *

  Trey had looked up the only art dealer known to deal with prints of Dante’s work in less than an hour. Did anyone throw him a parade? Nope. King Darc had requested an art dealer, and so Trey delivered one. Unfortunately, she was about as friendly as a librarian when you had fourteen books overdue. The uniformed officers had deposited the mousy art dealer at Trey’s side all of thirty seconds ago, and already her voice was making the bones of his inner ear decalcify. Where was a roll of duct tape when you really needed it?

  Ms. Steinway—she had insisted on the “Ms.”—clutched her portfolio even closer to her chest as she spoke, her tone like a cat scratching its claws across glass.

  “I still don’t understand why you couldn’t come to my office.”

  “You’ll figure it out when you see it,” Trey assured her.

  The art dealer took one hand away from her precious portfolio to push her glasses back up on her nose. Her face was pinched enough that it looked like she had taken a big bite out of an unsweetened lime or something. When Trey had first seen her, he’d thought she was in her late fifties. Looking closer, he saw she was probably closer to her late thirties. The rest of the creases just looked like frown lines.

  Her hair was pulled back in a bun, making the whole effect that much more severe. But here again was another indicator that she wasn’t nearly as old as she made herself look. Her hair was jet black. And she didn’t seem like the type to invest in a good colorist. Oh, and she smelled like old books. And dust.

  “But even these lithographs of the original plates are worth—”

  Trey cut her off. “Trust me. Theft is the least of your problems…” He paused as he pushed open the door to the peds ward. “Therapy bills, on the other hand…”

  He watched Ms. Steinway for the expected reaction. He wasn’t disappointed. The woman whirled around, the portfolio held out like some kind of shield. Her mouth was wide open as she whipped her head from one set of drawings to the next.

  “I don’t…I can’t…”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t freak out,” Trey soothed. “Come on in and show us whatcha got.” Trey grabbed her by the arm of her pantsuit and halfway dragged her over to where Mala was waiting.

  The dealer’s eyes darted from the walls to Darc and Janey, there on the floor inside the detective’s badge. Trey could only imagine what was going through her head. He had to give her props, though. After just another second or two of gawking, she straightened her jacket and pulled out several lithographs with shaky hands. She propped the first up on the easel.

  “As instructed, I brought along reproductions of Blake’s commissioned works on the Inferno.”

  The picture she placed in front of them depicted children with almost no expression on their faces huddled in a white space. The woman turned back from the print to eye both Trey and Mala.

  “The first is limbo, where virtuous pagans and unbaptized children go.”

  Peering more closely at the painting, it started to feel eerily familiar. Where had Trey seen this before? The art dealer lifted up another print, covering the first. Naked figures writhed in what looked like columns of wind, their faces eerie and corpselike. This one reminded Trey of something, too. It was starting to freak him out.

  “The second is those that could not contain their lust, tormented by a permanent storm.”

  A voice spoke at Trey’s elbow, making him almost jump out of his own skin.

  “Look familiar?” Darc asked.

  “Aaaah! Sonofa…I hate it when you do that. Oblivious to obnoxious in two seconds flat.” Trey did what he could to get his heart rate back down to normal operating levels. Mala stared at the painting, tilting her head at an angle as she viewed it.

  “So, we are looking at Dante’s Divine Comedy?”

  The art dealer reacted to that, her lips pressed into a thin line. “No, no, no. Not Dante. Whoever requested the Christie’s auction pieces knew their art history.”

  Lady, you have no idea, Trey thought. Out loud he just said, “Yeah, he’s awesome that way.”

  “You see,” Ms. Ste
inway continued, “Dante did nothing more that borrow—some might even say ‘stole’—from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.”

  Darc spoke up again. Apparently, after his little “nap,” he was all chipper and raring to go.

  “Dante’s third circle contains sinners tormented by black snow and hail slush.”

  That got the art dealer all excited. She started pulling out more prints as she gushed.

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  This wasn’t making a lick of sense. Okay, the first couple of paintings were pretty spot-on, which was why they must’ve looked so familiar. But this one didn’t compute. Trey raised his hand.

  “Umm. That’s not what we found at the house.”

  The art dealer scanned each of their faces, her standard puckered expression turning to one of confusion. It was clear she had no idea what they were talking about. “At the house? What…?”

  Mala peered with such focus at the print that it looked as if she was trying to see through it. Her eyes reflected the vision of what they had found at Janey’s house.

  “It was a blood-and vile-filled pool,” Mala remarked. “But isn’t that Dante’s fifth?”

  Now Ms. Steinway was clearly back on familiar ground. She lifted a finger and pointed it for emphasis, looking more than a little like one of the nuns from Trey’s school.

  “Yes. Dante’s…”

  “But not Aristotle’s,” Darc finished for her. These two were turning into the dynamic duo of obscure art pieces. All they needed were matching tights.

  The art dealer smiled, actually smiled, at Darc. The expression did a 180 to her appearance. She was still a little bookish, but she was almost…human.

  “Exactly! While Dante plagiarized from the philosopher, he also took creative license and modified the order of the punishments to more suit his medieval audience.”

  She pulled more prints out of her portfolio, plainly excited by the topic and the fact that she had a captive audience. And Trey definitely was feeling held captive. He was pretty sure that this much concentrated history and art couldn’t be good for him. In fact, he could already feel a headache coming. The dealer was almost cooing as she continued her lecture.

  “Hence, Blake charged his patron, John Linnell, several hundred gold coins for Dante’s version, which he wasn’t able to finish before his death. But he painted another set before the other, what Blake considered to be the ‘true’ set of Aristotle’s original vision, for himself.”

  She propped up another print on the easel. It was easily the sickest painting Trey had ever seen. There was a large pool filled with blood, floating limbs peeking up through the sludge. Faces pushed up from the surface, their expressions agonized. Trey looked over at the dealer.

  “And you were worried about these walls?”

  Just like that, the pinched face came back. Ms. Steinway lifted herself up to her full height, her spine stiffening. Her tone was ice cold. “This is art at its highest form.”

  Just because it was high art didn’t mean it wasn’t totally gross. But hey, what did Trey know? He was just the guy who was experiencing what was in those pictures, up close and personal. The dealer started to put the paintings in order, starting with the one of limbo. Then the storm. Then the pool of blood. Trey finally felt like he was catching on.

  “Wait,” he said. “Let me guess. The next one is people squished by rocks…?”

  And, presto! There was the next print, just as if Trey had pulled it out of a hat.

  The doctor piped up again, making a guess at what was coming up. “So, the next one should be the River Styx?”

  “In Dante’s, yes…” Darc spoke over his shoulder while watching the easel without blinking.

  Trey was tired of feeling left out. Did everyone else know what was going on?

  “What?” he asked. “Did you guys take a class in this or something?”

  Mala gave a quick nod, lifting a finger to cut him off. Great. Everyone else did know what was going on. Maybe Trey should’ve partied less while he was at Puget Sound.

  But the art dealer was already on to the next print, pulling it out of her magical portfolio of grossness. “But in Aristotle’s…”

  Trey had been wrong. The previous one was not the sickest painting he had ever seen. This one was. The sinners were being pelted with guts, which were raining down from above. The ground was littered with bits of flesh and smeared with streaks of blood. It was just nasty.

  “Aw, suck! That’s what we have to look forward to?”

  Now it was the art dealer’s turn to look confused.

  “Look forward to?”

  Leaving the dealer to her confusion, Trey stepped back into the fray. He thought he might actually know what was going on here.

  “So, wait a minute,” Trey said. “This guy’s got a hard-on for paintings?”

  That seemed to get Ms. Steinway’s attention, big-time. Her back stiffened up, and Trey could swear he saw the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

  “A hard-on?”

  “No, he’s not painting. He’s re-creating,” Mala stated, her tone certain.

  Great. Now Trey was back to being in the dark. Ah, well. Enlightenment had been great for the three seconds it had lasted.

  “Wait,” Trey asked. “Did I miss something? Re-creating what?”

  But Darc ignored him, answering the doctor instead. “It is why I could not discern it before.”

  All right. Trey was used to getting ignored. He wasn’t used to getting ignored for another person. Usually he was just in competition with whatever crazy was going on in Darc’s head. Trey wasn’t sure how he felt about this new development. Time to get back in the loop before he was too far behind to catch up again.

  “Discerning what?”

  The doctor, unfortunately, was picking up whatever Darc was putting down, because she ignored Trey, too, her eyes locked onto the taller detective. No one seemed to exist outside those two.

  “Your mind was trying to force the symbols into Dante’s Inferno.”

  “When he was following Aristotle’s Ethos,” Darc affirmed.

  “Re-creating them on this plane.” Her eyes glimmered.

  Yeah. Trey was done with this shiz. He snapped his fingers between them. “Hey!”

  They both turned to look at him. Wow. That had actually worked. Trey hadn’t thought past that. He had their attention. Now, what was he going to do with it? He took a couple of calming breaths and then spoke very slowly, drawing out the words.

  “Again. Re-creating what?”

  The two shared a look between them. Seriously, what the freak was going on here? Darc turned and directed Trey’s attention back to the prints as he spoke.

  “The nine circles of hell.”

  Trey looked at the print with the guts raining down on the huddled sinners and suppressed an urge to hurl up his nasty cafeteria lunch.

  “Oh. Is that all?”

  *

  Just another day at the slaughterhouse.

  They were in a huge, open, warehouselike space intersected by tracks. Hooks hung down from the tracks, where slaughtered animals could be drained of their blood and then slid along the tracks to wherever you wanted to put them in the room. It was cold enough to raise gooseflesh on Henry’s arms.

  After the carcasses were hung up to bleed out, they had to be sliced open and cleaned. Henry and Carl and the new guy had gone from corpse to corpse, hauling out the innards and dumping them into a container to be ground up for who knew what. Hot dogs or something, probably.

  Well, most of the insides ended up in the container. The rest ended up landing at their feet, making a nice squish when Henry walked over them in his boots. It was a mess. And that mess had to cleaned up.

  And who better to clean up the mess than Henry?

  Henry pushed the broom across the floor, shoving one of the hanging carcasses out of his way with his shoulder. The polished concrete was littered with bits and pieces of guts, hearts, and livers from the hog si
des they had just cleaned. Now they needed to be swept up.

  And Henry was just the guy for the job. Hell, he had volunteered. He was a real favorite with the other guys at the slaughterhouse. He took all the jobs nobody else wanted. Sure, they didn’t ask him out for drinks after work, but Henry had no use for that kind of shit.

  He had more important things to do.

  Every once in a while, as Henry shoved the broom forward, one of the intestines or liver chunks would catch against a crack in the polish and leave a smear of blood or partially digested food. The streaks swirled around the floor like some kind of freaky street painting.

  It was beautiful.

  One of the gutted pigs had a string of intestines still poking out from the slit in its belly. Henry moved over and yanked hard, causing the guts to rain down, pelting the floor with blood and bits of flesh.

  Beautiful. Just beautiful.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mala felt a bit sickened yet enervated by their discovery. A man, clearly deluded, had set himself on a course to re-create the nine circles of hell. Equally clearly, he was going to replicate them down to the tiniest degree. The thought of the suffering to come…

  She glanced at the paintings. The horror they encompassed. And not a metaphysical horror but a real, tangible, physical horror. Nothing in her professional experience had prepared her for dealing with this kind of rampant carnage.

  A psychologist’s life typically consisted of sorting through the rubble of a patient’s disintegrating life. There was carnage, sure, but the damage was of the emotional kind. The actual incident that created the pain, long over. Helping her patients through the existential angst when faced with their own possible death or the passing of a loved one. It did not mean seeing bodies rain down from the sky.

  Yet…

  Such a large “yet.” She had never felt more engaged then she had standing toe-to-toe with Darc. Sorting through all of the possibilities. Solving the riddle together. She had always said she liked the tough cases. That wasn’t completely true. She loved them. And this was the toughest.

  Everything about this case. Janey. Trey. Darc. Hell, the symbols, and the Blake paintings. It was like it was tailored specifically for her. She swept her gaze once more over the reproductions the art dealer had placed on the easel. Mala had studied Blake, of course. You couldn’t even touch the romantic era without bumping into Blake, mostly for his poetry. The juxtaposition of “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” was at least a semester’s study. She had even seen one or two of his incomplete Inferno series.