Darc had not moved or made a sound.
A third face rotated up to turn its blank eyes toward the black heavens. Mala.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
It was too much for him. God would understand.
“Shit, no. No. Mary, mother of god.”
Darc stood motionless above the bubbling metal vessel, his face uplit by the flickering flames. His spine was rigid, his face without expression. Trey hit him on the arm. Hard.
“Don’t you care, man? Don’t you effing care?”
Darc didn’t even deign to answer the question. He just looked him right in the eye and asked one simple question.
“What about the girl?”
That was more than enough to send Trey back to the pot.
Trey’s movements were growing more and more frantic as he fished inside the cauldron for a catch that he did not want to make. Blood sloshed and spilled over the side, sizzling down the red-hot metal, splashing down to hiss in the depths of the crackling fire.
“No, no. God, no. Please, oh God, no.”
Dropping the stick and stumbling back, Trey retched and heaved with equal portions of disgust and relief. He wiped his sweaty hair back from his forehead and sobbed.
“She’s not in there. She’s not in there.”
Turning to his still-rigid partner, Trey hit him again, calling out to him, trying to penetrate the armor of stillness Darc had wrapped around himself.
“Did you hear me? She’s not in there.” Nothing. No response. Trey raised his voice even further. “Darc!”
Once last time, Darc made a pronouncement of lifeless words. “Then he’s got her.”
The words did not want to enter into Trey’s brain. They were clear enough, their meaning straightforward, but he couldn’t bear them. “No. No. Just no.” Trey fell back to the ground, not even feeling the impact. He looked up, wanting for once to see something in Darc’s eyes. Hope. Comfort. Even an indication of pain. There was nothing. His face was a black hole, sucking in Trey’s torment and giving back nothing.
And then a glimmer of hope burst into life inside Trey’s head. “But wait! You baptized her. That will protect her, right?”
From his partner issued forth a groan. It was filled with all the torture that Trey had been looking for on Darc’s face. It spoke of all the chaos that must be unleashed within his partner’s soul. It also gave Trey the answer that he didn’t want to hear.
“But how would he know that?” Trey muttered, mirroring the agony of Darc’s exclamation. “Would Janey know to tell him?” And then another step down the pathway to hell opened up before him. “No. Oh, no. What will he do once he finds out? What will he…? No.” Trey grabbed his hair in both fists, pulling and tearing at his own scalp. He took deep breaths, trying to calm himself. “All right. Don’t freak out, Keane. We can figure this out.” Trey stopped, then glanced over at his statue of a partner. “Well, Darc can figure this out.”
Trey walked over and planted himself in front of Darc, reaching out and placing a hand on each of his partner’s shoulders. “Come on, man. Hit me with some genius. Where would he take her? What do we do?”
There was no visible response to his questions. He might as well be talking to the trees around them. “Darc! Don’t you dare retreat into mute-ville.” Trey shook his partner over and over, each time with more energy. “Get your ass back to reality, dude.”
After several long moments, his hands dropped down to his sides and Trey released a long breath. It was no use. Darc was gone. Trey started pacing back and forth in front of the fire, tugging at his hair.
“This is not okay. What the hell am I supposed to do?” He paused in his ranting for a second, peering over at the tall figure that almost appeared to be one of the statues of the cemetery. “Better question. What would you do? What’s the last thing you were working on?”
And then he knew. He had it. Snapping his fingers, he started tugging on Darc’s sleeve.
“Come on, dude. Come on.”
They had some drawings to find.
*
It was so dark here. And so, so scary.
She had never seen anything like it, ever. So scary that it made her want to be asleep again, like when the man had put the smelly cloth over her mouth. That had been scary, too, but not as scary as this. The only thing that made her stay awake was that she had to pay attention. Like in class, but even more important that learning how to spell and stuff.
She knew she was supposed to be brave, but sometimes it was so hard. And the man, the bad man, the sneaky-meanie man, had taken Popeye away from her. She didn’t know where he was.
Popeye would probably be mad at her because she hadn’t yelled when the man took her. That was what she was supposed to do. Stranger danger. But even with Popeye angry, she’d still rather have him with her. She didn’t have anyone to talk to. At least, not anyone nice.
“Don’t worry, little one.” It was the man again. “It won’t be too long now. Not so very long before you see your parents again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She knew what that meant. He was talking in a grown-up voice that meant that he thought she was stupid. She wasn’t stupid. She was very, very smart. Her mommy and daddy and all her teachers said so. She wanted to kick out at the bad man’s leg, but that maybe wasn’t a good idea. Besides, he had tied her down, so she couldn’t anyway.
She nodded instead.
Her mommy and daddy were dead. That meant the meanie man wanted her to be dead, too. She thought about that for a while. Maybe she would’ve liked that before. To be dead with her parents. Like, right after all the really bad stuff happened. But now she wasn’t sure. She missed her parents, but the tall man was there to protect her. He was so nice. Even though he didn’t smile at her, his eyes made it feel like he was.
He was going to come. She knew he was going to come. Nobody was smarter, braver, or handsomer than him, except maybe her daddy. Thinking of Daddy and Mommy made her sad, but thinking of the tall man made her feel like she was taller or something. Braver.
That was a good thing, ‘cause the bad man was putting things on her. And talking.
“You must stay calm, little one. Calm. Breathe slowly. Breathe deeply. We don’t want things happening too quickly, now do we?”
She didn’t know what he meant, but it didn’t sound good. It turned her stomach all gooey-stretchy inside. Not as bad as throw-up, but almost.
Things were bad right now. Really bad. It was like what Mommy used to say. “Things seem bad sometimes, but they get better. Sometimes it takes a little while, but they get better.”
She just had to wait.
And then he would come.
*
Flashes. Bursts of light. Incoherent swirlings of what he had once thought of as his muse.
He was anchorless. Formless. A floating mass of neurons firing at random in the darkness of the night. Dark.
Darc.
But that was someone else. Someone capable of ordering the chaos to suit his needs. Someone with the power to wrest the anarchy out of itself and from the broken tiles of bedlam create patterns.
There were no patterns here. Nothing but bombshells of fading glory, shards of broken logic, shreds of glimmering pathways.
His consciousness shrank and grew, as random in its variations as the supposed light of logic. Glimpses of trees, gravestones, statues. Flashes of the Rover, the blur of the passing city, the continued murmur of his onetime partner. His partner, who never knew how to shut his mouth. Even now, still talking.
This incarnation of self had known no partner. That was a past that was fading into the background of disconnected picture memories. It was minutes ago. It was an eternity ago.
The girl had counted on him. Trusted in him. And now her head floated in the bubbling reduction of her own life’s vitality.
She had counted on him. Sat within the circle of his protective badge. And now she was captured, possibly already dead.
The lives floated on the surface of the flotsam and jetsam of his shattered awareness. No more nor any less significant than the images that seeped in from outside. A streetlight, its light burning a streak of blue into his retinas. The circular port of the hospital’s emergency room. The pinched face of a nurse, staring at him as he was pulled past her toward some indeterminate goal.
They meant nothing. How could they mean anything? Nothing had meaning. Nothing had purpose. Nothing.
Nothing at all.
The wisps of light floated about, calling out to him with their siren song. They enticed him to dance with them once more. But he could no longer dance.
He had forgotten all of the steps.
*
The trip through the hospital to Janey’s room was an effing train wreck. Trey had never realized just how much he used Darc as a battering ram. Something about his partner made the crowds magically dissipate the second Darc wanted to walk through. Now that Trey was the one leading his semiaware partner along, it was pretty clear that Trey had no such talent.
It didn’t make it any better that he was pulling along a six-foot-two, vacant-eyed bald man in his wake. Trey just wasn’t used to this much attention. Okay, maybe he used Darc as an attention-battering ram, too. People tend to overlook the shorter, quirkier detective. You crack a few jokes, make a few people chuckle, don’t draw too much attention to yourself. Let your brilliant partner drift unawares through the sea of admiration and/or irritation. Worked for Trey. He supposed. Most of the time.
After a flurry of bumps and bruises, they managed to make it through to the peds area, only to walk into a beehive of activity. The hallway outside Janey’s room was swarming with cops and crime scene investigators. Bags of evidence whipped back and forth in the hands of serious people doing serious things in a serious way. Photos were snapped, orders were barked, careers were made and broken in moments.
And into the maelstrom drifted Trey, dragging his comatose partner along behind. When the frenetic press of people finally got to be too great, Trey cut Darc loose, leaving him to fend for himself. Who knew? Maybe if someone jostled him hard enough, he’d wake up and bitch-slap ‘em.
Trey rushed toward the cordoned-off area where curtains had been pulled shut in front of Janey’s room. Two steps away from getting inside, he felt a solid hand thunk down on his shoulder. It was the meaty fist of the captain. Here. Again.
“Whoa, Keane. It’s not pretty in—”
“I know. Just let me through.”
Captain Merle held on, though, and turned Trey around to face him. “There’s so many body parts in there, we’re not sure who is who.”
“But no heads, I know.”
“We’re not sure if it’s the little girl or—”
Trey cut him off. “It’s not Janey.”
“How could you know that for—?”
“I just do, okay?” Trey snapped, then pulled himself together, speaking more forcefully than…well, ever. “Now let me in.”
The captain moved out of Trey’s path, a look that almost could have been respect crossing his face. Weird. Trey opened up the curtain and passed into the room, feeling something underneath his left foot as he stepped inside. It was Father John’s collar, the white square turned to a dark red.
Seriously, what kind of a sicko goes after a man of the cloth? That was the problem with this serial killer. No sense of boundaries.
Compared with the white sterility of the hall outside, the room was a blood-soaked scene out of the worst that nightmares had to offer. It was like that scene from The Shining, times ten. Trey barely glanced at any of it. Not like he hadn’t seen it all before. Blood and guts? Ho hum. Nothing new here. He moved about the room, overturning chairs, looking under the bed, moving equipment doused in red. The captain entered, his jaw agape, apparently from Trey’s cavalier tossing of the room.
“What the—”
Trey ignored his boss’s shock, focused on his frantic search. “Have you seen any papers? Drawings? Little kid’s drawings?”
“No, but I don’t see—”
Knocking the medication cart over with a crash, Trey sent pills and vials scattering all over the floor of the room. Oops. Nothing. He had to find them. Captain Merle barked at him, his deep voice harsh with criticism.
“Keane! You are contaminating a—”
Trey held up a hand to ward off the rest of his captain’s speech. He peered around the room, seeing out of the corner of his eye that his boss seemed to be holding his breath and turning colors. Putting that uncomfortable thought out of his head, he finally focused on the bed. Racing over to its side, Trey ripped the blanket off, throwing it into the lake of blood covering the floor. The captain’s face was turning from pink to something more resembling a nice red wine.
“Keane! I am going to have to ask you—”
Yeah, yeah. Trey had heard it all before. Keane, knock it off. Keane, you’re a screw-up. Keane, stop blubbering. Whatever. There were more important things to occupy his brain right about now. Trey looked at the pillow still resting up at the head of the bare mattress. He gently lifted it up, exposing a stack of drawings beneath. Blowing out a sigh of relief, Trey snatched up the pictures and raced back out of the room, trying not to splash the blood too much with his boss right on his heels.
Darc was exactly where Trey had left him, his face even more expressionless than it typically was. Nurses and cops and CSI orbited around him, like somehow Darc had become the center of their little solar system. Trey knew what that felt like. He dashed over to his partner and started holding up Janey’s drawings, leaving each one there for several seconds before moving on to the next.
“Come on, buddy. See something.”
Captain Merle stalked over to the side of the catatonic detective, his face gradually returning to a more flesh-colored tone. He looked on in disbelief. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Priming the brain pump,” Trey explained, lifting another picture into what he hoped was Darc’s eyeline. “Jump-starting the smarts.”
Frustrated with the lack of response, Trey darted off to the nurses’ station, shoving one of the orderlies out of the way. He ripped open the nearest desk drawer, rifling through it until he came up with some tape. In quick order, Trey plastered Janey’s sketches all over the wall closest to his partner.
He moved back over to Darc’s side, pulling him toward the wall. Grabbing the tall detective’s jaw, he moved his partner’s head from side to side, trying to mimic Darc’s own natural movements if he were studying the drawings.
“Take it in. Janey’s telling you something. I know she is, or she wouldn’t have drawn anything.”
Darc began to blink, the first sign of movement Trey had seen.
“That’s right, buddy. You know you want to show off that ginormous intellect of yours.”
The blinking intensified, Darc’s pupils contracting as they seemed to come into focus.
“Come on, dude. Say something insultingly condescending.”
And then Darc’s hand shot out, grasping Trey’s wrist in a vise grip.
*
The lines and symbols swam into and out of focus, the effect like a dreamscape that was forever warping and changing, flowing with the tide of the dreamer’s subconscious.
Meaningless chatter flooded his ears, filled his mind with dross. It was unimportant. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. He was nothing.
A band of discomfort gripped his jaw, his head swiveling back and forth as it floated freely above the vertebrae of his spinal column. A minor irritant. Nothing of import. Just additional white noise.
And then a dog floated into his view. It was small. It was fluffy. Its spine and tail formed a symbol that leapt off the page and slapped Darc across his mental cheekbones.
His surroundings began to take on substance, the other drawings yielding up their symbols, the letters cavorting and shuffling into place in his mind.
Darc reached up to pull Trey’s
hand away from his face.
“That will be enough.” Darc moved to the pictures, pulling them off and rearranging them to match the patterns in his head.
His partner backed off, rubbing his wrist. “Hmm. Insulting and condescending. You know what? I’m going to take it. And I’m going to like it.”
The captain looked at Darc shuffling around the papers on the wall, and then glared back at Trey.
“Well?” he asked, locking Trey’s gaze with his own.
Darc continued to turn the pictures over and around, moving them until they revealed themselves fully to him. He could feel Trey’s eyes on him, seeming to beg him to take over the explanation. Darc ignored him.
Trey shuffled his feet a bit, then spoke to the captain. “Let’s see, the ninth-circle punishment is a frozen wasteland.” The captain raised his eyebrow in apparent disbelief. Trey’s reaction sounded a touch defensive to Darc’s ear, although that pitch could possibly mean pain as well. “What? I know how to google.” He regrouped and started again. “Anyway. It’s filled with traitors.” Merle’s eyebrows crept up another notch. Trey sighed. “Okay, Darc gave me a primer.”
“Does that information help us at all?” the captain asked.
“No, there are, like, a thousand places this creep could have set up shop,” his partner answered. “All the way from the snowcap of Mount Rainier to an ice-cube plant.”
The symbols in front of Darc locked into place, the space between them filling and glowing with a new shape. The answer. Logic had come back to him. It had come back for him. And he had responded.
“Puffins,” he croaked. Switching from the extremes of inner vision to outer communication was always a difficult transition. And this one was worse than normal. He felt shaken in a way he had never experienced previously.
His partner pushed his hair back in frustration. “Puffins? Wow. Still so behind.”
The captain spoke over Darc’s shoulder at Trey. “Is he talking about the bird?”
Darc began removing the pictures from the walls in frustration. He forced words to form on his lips, directing the sounds at Trey. “Think. Frozen. Traitors.”
9th Circle Page 21