by Hopkin, Ben
Trey stepped off to the side, flipping switches that looked like they controlled the lighting within. The darkness continued unenlightened.
“Well, guess that clears up the question of whether or not she’s expecting us,” Trey grumbled. He returned to Darc’s side, a flashlight in one hand, his gun in the other.
The beam of his light swept from one side of the studio to the other, catching on random objects within. A tattered backdrop. A decrepit tripod leaning against a wall. A camera that looked large enough to take out a fair sized tank in a collision. Remnants of a better, more prosperous era, when the studio was still up and running.
Darc heard a slight scuffing noise above them. He shoved Trey to the side at the same time that he leapt in the opposite direction. A large studio light crashed to the ground right where they had been standing.
Trey got up and brushed himself off. “You missed!” he called up toward the ceiling.
“Did I?” A lilting laugh floated down from the lighting grid above, the series of catwalks that crisscrossed the entire area. “Or was I just firing a warning shot over the bow?”
“That was a warning shot? Hate to see you go in for the kill, babe,” Trey responded.
“Aw. Officer Keane. So cute and charming.” Tracy’s voice purred, silky and smooth and rough and raspy all at once. “You know, you were one small step from getting me to go home with you this morning.”
Trey cleared his throat. “Yeah. That’s what all the gender-switching hotties say to me.”
The voice above fell silent. Sounds of movement filtered down, but the directionality of the sounds was hard to determine. Strands of light removed themselves from the noises, forming a matrix in Darc’s mind. He needed additional data to determine her location.
“The shaving… a way to remove the sex of your victims?” Darc probed. The answer was unimportant. Ascertaining her position was not.
“Sure. Let’s call it that.” A slight chuckle. Another light crashed down right next to Darc, the glass from the lens shattering. A piece of the glass sliced across Darc’s cheek, drawing blood. She made a tsking sound with her lips and tongue. “Detective Darcmel. You really should be more careful.”
“Careful. Like you were careful. The precision with which you removed the hair, the detail of the Roman numerals—so refined. Exact.” Another shifting sound. More light strands descended to join the others in Darc’s mind.
“Don’t flatter me, Detective. I know you don’t mean it. Although I will say I’m a sucker for a man who truly appreciates art.”
A wrench flew down from above, catching Trey on the side of his head. He crumpled to the ground with a grunt.
“One down. One to go,” the killer called down.
From the floor, Trey’s voice drifted up. “I’m not down, baby.” He tried to get up, then let out a groan as he fell back. “Okay, I’m down, but I’m not out. Maybe. Not sure.”
To draw attention away from the downed vice cop, Darc started his conversation back up. “The Roman numerals themselves. XIII. Thirteen. That must have some significance.”
“Detective, please. With all the gender dichotomies, you can’t figure out my symbol? You strike me as smarter than that.”
The lines of logic rearranged themselves, falling into a pattern and ejecting a gleaming symbol. “The positioning of the number. The choice of thirteen. It refers to the mythical thirteenth pair of ribs that Adam possessed before God removed it to create Eve.”
“See?” Her voice caught for a moment. “Not so hard, was it? The proto-gender. Before male and female came along and ripped us all apart. Before all the pain.”
“You seek a return to some sort of sexless existence?” Darc was zeroing in on the woman’s location, the lines coalescing, condensing, narrowing their focus.
“No!” Her tone hardened, became razor-sharp. “Not sex-less. Sex-full. Complete. Fulfilled. Rather than in constant conflict.” The voice moved once more, but Darc’s threads of logic followed, tracking and pinpointing her location in real time. “You see all this? Look around you, Detective. It was finally happening. I was going to be the first transsexual celebrity. My own web show to gather in all the outcasts like me. They would have come. I know they would have. I would have sacrificed all that I had to know I wasn’t alone.
“But my investor didn’t understand. He offered to back me thinking of me only as the attractive reporter from News 2. When he discovered who I really was…”
Darc thought back to the first victim. An older man of means, known for investing in new technologies and innovative ideas. “He became your first victim.”
“He deserved it!” she screamed down. The woman took a deep breath, then restated in a much more reflective tone. “He deserved it.”
Darc had her. He lifted his gun, sighted along the lines of glowing color and fired. The sound of the shot rang in his ears, followed by an exclamation of pain from above, and a clattering.
The bullet had struck her, possibly even incapacitated her, but it hadn’t killed her.
The studio had fallen silent once more. There was no rustle of movement, no ragged breath to lead him forward. Darc strained his ears, listening for the smallest indicator of where the reporter might be.
And then he heard her. Her voice rang out… from the ground floor. She had somehow made her way down to his same level. He flashed his light toward the sound, catching her full on in its beam. She was holding Trey up, a gun held to his head.
“That was a good shot, Detective. Took me off guard.” She shoved the muzzle of the gun into Trey’s temple, causing him to wince. “But the question is, what shall we do now?” She smiled, showing all of her very white teeth. “I have an idea. You place your gun on the floor, and I leave unharmed.”
“Why would I relinquish my weapon?” Darc responded.
“So that I don’t kill your partner,” the reporter barked, her tone uncertain.
“Darc! Don’t do it,” Trey begged him.
“He’s not my partner. At least not permanently. He was assigned to babysit me.” Darc watched the lines carefully, sighting along them.
“Hey!” Trey protested.
“I don’t care!” the woman snarled. “He’s a person, and no matter what your issues, you don’t want to see someone killed right in front of you.”
Darc held up a hand and lifted the muzzle of his weapon up so that it pointed at the ceiling. “Stop. You are correct. I do not wish to have him killed.” He began to stoop over, moving the gun down.
Midway through the motion, Darc repositioned the gun, pointing it at the nexus of the glowing lines. He fired twice in rapid succession, hitting the woman in the middle of the forehead both times.
The reporter staggered back and crashed into one of the cameras, knocking it over as she fell atop it, dead. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling, blank and lifeless.
“Dude! Nice shot,” Trey gushed. He moved up to Darc and clapped him on the shoulder. “Now please promise me you’ll never do that again.” His knees suddenly dropped out on him and he grabbed onto Darc’s jacket for support. “Okay. Medical attention might be a good idea.”
Darc helped him back to standing and walked him out toward the rare Seattle sunset that was glowing on the other side of the studio door.
EPILOGUE
Trey’s head throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Thud, thud. Thud, thud. It was annoying, but at least it told him he was going to be okay. At least that’s what he thought it meant.
“Hey, medic guy,” Trey called out to the paramedic who had bandaged his head wound. “You sure I’m gonna be all right?”
“You’ll be fine. No concussion that we could find. It was more of a graze. Just a slight bruise—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Trey cut him off. No need to have that information get out there. Not with Captain Merle wandering around. Trey might be a wuss, but he had no desire to look like one.
“I can get you some more pain meds if you’re hurting, Officer.” The
paramedic rustled about in the ambulance for a moment, coming out with a promising-looking syringe.
“That’s what I’m talking about. Gimme the drugs!”
“Hm. That seems a tad inappropriate, coming from one of our finest in vice,” a voice rumbled behind Trey. Spinning around, Trey grabbed at his head, which had blossomed into a blaze of pain the moment he moved.
“Ow.”
Captain Merle, the owner of the rumbling voice, laughed. Trey wasn’t positive, but it seemed like that might be a first for the guy.
“Take it easy, son. You’ve got quite the lump there.” He peered at the bandage wrapped around Trey’s head, then refocused on the vice cop’s eyes. “You did good today.”
“Yeah… I dunno. Darc was the one who figured all the stuff out.” Trey was many things, but he was not someone that would take credit for another man’s collar.
“Really?” The captain’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s not what he says.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that he credits you for figuring out the clue that led you to that reporter. Said something about the probability being less than one percent. Sometimes I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Trey grinned at him. “I know what you mean. I don’t understand half of what comes out of his mouth.”
The captain chuckled, then sobered. “Seriously, Keane, he’s never said a positive word about any of his other partners.” He held up a finger to forestall Trey’s next statement. “Any of them. You want the spot, it’s yours.”
“You’re giving me a choice?” Trey asked, his tone wry.
“I don’t want to. But yeah, it’s your call. I want you on board because you want to be.”
“I’m not so sure Darc feels the same way. I mean, he seemed totally willing to sacrifice me for the killer.”
Captain Merle sighed. “That’s just Darc. Would’ve done the same thing if it’d been his mother.” He broke off for a moment, looking over at the bald detective, who was in a heated conversation with the medical examiner. “You need to know, he’ll never be like other partners. Ever.”
“Yeah. I got that,” Trey replied. “Let me sleep on it?”
“Sure thing. Just make sure and wake up,” the captain said, pointing at Trey’s head injury. He moved away, his gait heavy and slow.
Trey watched him go until a body in front of him blocked his view.
It was Darc.
“Hey, dude.”
Darc nodded at him.
“So.” Trey had to know. “Seriously, no qualms about risking my life back there?”
Darc stared at Trey’s left eyebrow. “I knew I wouldn’t miss.”
“Yep. Sounds about right.” Trey groaned and lay back on the stretcher. Darc stayed motionless for a moment, then turned to go. Trey reached out a hand to stop him. “Hey, hold on a sec.”
Darc turned back around, his face expressionless. Trey looked into that face, wondering if he’d ever get used to seeing so little emotion from the man that he’d be trusting with his life, day in and day out.
“I made you something.” Trey held up a paper towel he’d begged off the paramedics. “I wrote down some stuff for you. Let’s call them Trey’s Rules. First one, we’ve already gone over… pretend to be interested. But I wanted to read the second one to you, make sure you actually got it.”
Darc folded his arms and held Trey’s gaze, his face impassive. Good enough for Trey. He cleared his throat and continued.
“Okay, second rule: Never, ever, ever shoot a perp when he or she is holding a gun to your partner’s head.”
At that, something crazy happened. Darc’s lips quirked upward. It wasn’t much more than a twitch, but Trey would have sworn on his life that he hadn’t imagined it.
“Anyway, I wrote down twenty of them.” Darc took the scrap of paper from Trey’s hands, his face more thoughtful than Trey had ever seen it before. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Darc was experiencing some kind of emotion. “I don’t want you to think that’s the end of them. I have a feeling there will be more where those came from. Lots more.”
Darc nodded, then turned on his heel to head back to the crime scene. Trey watched him go, studying the back of his head, the motion of his torso as his arms swung freely at his side.
He was getting to know his new partner.
DECEIVED – Another prequel short story to 9th Circle
PROLOGUE
As Trish—her name was Trish, wasn’t it? —bounced up and down above him, Robert thought to himself that he really was a lucky bastard. Every man in the office had been looking to make something happen with the hot new temp. Every man… and more than a few of the women.
But here she was with him, in his car, grinding away on top of him like he was a rough slab of wood and she was sandpaper. Okay, all of their clothes were on, but it was only a matter of minutes before that changed.
The widows were steamed up completely, so Robert couldn’t see outside the window. Not really a problem, as they were parked underneath an overpass in an area that got no traffic. No one came out here unless they were coming to do exactly what Robert and Trish were doing.
Dammit.
It was Trish, right? There hadn’t been a lot of the screaming out of names up to this point, but Robert didn’t want to rule it out completely.
Whatever her name was, she placed the palm of her hand against the window, sliding it down, the moisture from the window making little rivulets of water running down the glass. It was like something straight out of Titanic.
Then Trish gave an extra enthusiastic thrust that threw her off kilter. Her elbow caught against the door lock, popping all of the locks in the car up in an unexpected burst. Robert hoped that wasn’t a foreshadowing of what would be happening to him. He wanted this to last a very long time. Long enough to create some good fantasies for him to replay later on, when things got dull.
As if his thought had conjured it, his cell phone, resting on the dash of the car, rang out the tones to Social Distortion’s “Ball and Chain.” Jill.
His wife.
Both Robert and Trish went still for a very long moment. Trish craned her neck around to glance at the screen of the smartphone. When she turned around, she arched an eyebrow at Robert, her lips parting just a bit.
“That’s her, isn’t it?” Trish breathed. “Answer it.”
Oh, so she was like that, was she? Robert had heard that the crazy ones were usually the best in bed. So far, his experience with Trish was bearing that out. And the possibility of getting caught somehow made it all that much hotter.
Robert grabbed the phone and slid the bar on the screen over, trying to soften his heavy breathing as he did so. Trish gave him a wicked smile and pressed up against him just as he went to say hello, causing an inadvertent groan to escape his lips. He turned the sound into a cough and sputtered out a choked greeting.
“Hello?”
“Bobby?” Jill’s voice was like nails on a chalkboard right at this moment, and her using that stupid nickname wasn’t making it any better. She knew he hated to be called Bobby. It was a kid’s name. Not the name of a successful marketing guru for a Fortune 500 company. Her voice continued to drone on in his ear, a mosquito that wanted nothing more than to suck the life out of him. “What’s wrong? You’re breathing hard, and you made a weird noise.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, babe.” Robert was trying to think through the red haze of lust that matched the hair of the sweet young thing astride him. An idea blossomed. “Left my phone on my desk when I went to the restroom. Heard your ringtone and ran down the hall to grab it, but then I stubbed my toe just as I was answering.”
There was a moment’s silence, long enough to make Robert start to sweat. Maybe getting caught wasn’t such a turn-on after all.
“Oh, sweetie, you didn’t have to run,” his wife comforted him. “I just wanted to see what time you were going to be home.”
“Late, I’m afraid. We’ve got to get the
plans for the website redesign to the web designers tonight or else we’re screwed.” Trish slid a hand down in between herself and Robert, causing Robert to gasp.
“Honey, are you okay?” Jill asked, her tone concerned.
“Yeah, yeah. Just my foot again. It really hurts,” Robert assured her. Trish was laughing into her unoccupied hand, her body shaking with mirth. That wasn’t helping matters any for Robert, considering how the vibrations were pressing her up against his body in all kinds of distracting ways. And now he was going to have to take a hammer to his toe before he got home to really sell this whole thing.
“Well, I’m sorry… and I’ll miss you tonight. Want me to leave dinner out for you?” Jill cooed. Man, she could be so irritating when she was being all accommodating.
“No, no… I’ll grab something. Don’t worry about me.”
“Well, okay. I won’t wait up for you.”
And then Trish’s hand was over his, pressing the hang up button.
“I think that conversation had gone on more than long enough, don’t you?”
Why, yes. Yes he did, actually. He’d probably have hell to pay later for hanging up on his wife, but maybe he could convince her that it had just been a bad connection. Play stupid or something. That usually worked. She thought it already, so it wasn’t much of a stretch of the imagination for her.
All thoughts of Jill went out of his head as Trish started unbuttoning her blouse. Her skin was pale, with a smattering of freckles across her breasts that somehow made her even hotter.
Robert was reaching up to touch the vision of loveliness in front of him when the driver’s side door was wrenched open. A gloved hand darted in between Robert and Trish, a reflection of light glistening off of something gripped in the fingers.
Robert opened his mouth to yell at the intruder, but found it filled with something warm, wet, and salty. Red gushed from Trish’s throat, spilling over the white flesh of her chest, covering Robert’s white starched shirt with crimson.
A random thought ran through Robert’s mind—how in the hell was he going to explain this stain to his wife? There was no way out of this one.