Darc Murders Collection (The #1 Police Procedural/Hard Boiled Mystery Series)

by Hopkin, Ben

  * * *

  Darc heard his partner’s protests like a quiet buzzing in his ear.

  “Darc, don’t!” Trey exclaimed. “Your shoes!”

  The line of Darc’s logic created a visual in his mind, a literal line that he could follow. It sat bright in his vision, glowing with a blue intensity. Blue for certainty. This was the place. Not the final place. The next place.

  He followed the blue line to the middle of the blood-soaked room. As he neared the center, the light expanded, welcoming him into its embrace. He pivoted on his heel, feeling the blood squelch beneath him. The chatter of Trey’s speech continued in the background.

  “You know how Crime Scene hates it when you—aw, man. Your cuffs!”

  The walls were covered in symbols, an amalgamation of different societies. The Latin letters were easy enough to follow, but others, in ancient Aramaic and nontraditional Incan, made the equations challenging. Yet each was traced in the stark maroon of coagulating life blood. Not the glowing red of uncertainty. That would matter. This blood red did not. Only the symbols. The symbols mattered. Each took on a green aura as it circled and spun in Darc’s mind.

  In the doorway, his partner barked into his cell phone, “We are going to need at least two tech units. Make that three.” Trey pointed at Darc’s clothes. “Those pants are done. Gone.” He turned his attention abruptly back to the phone. “Yes, it is definitely a crime scene. Jeez. Seriously.”

  Pushing his partner’s incessant chatter to the deep recesses of his mind, Darc called the symbols to him. They radiated outward, then spun inward again, rearranging themselves in a never-ending dance of light, color, and not-sound. The spaces where the symbols would land began to beckon to the ciphers, calling them to their rightful places. The symbols flitted madly, fighting the process, loving the freedom of the dance more than the solidity of the answer that awaited them.

  Darc coaxed, soothing their fears, following them down to where they belonged and encouraging them to stay. He nurtured their wild spirits, finding in them the echo of his own unspoken yearnings.

  Beyond the doorway, a crowd had gathered. Their strident speech agitated the symbols, causing them to spiral up once more, away from their designated places.

  “Why you marrónes always up in our barrio?” a large tattoed man shouted, as if Darc might care for anything but the puzzle before him.

  “Tryin’ to catch us ridin’ dirty,” another said, spitting.

  “Move along,” Trey said. “Nothing to see here.”

  Despite his partner’s efforts, one of the men pushed past.

  “What is that shit?” the man demanded. “Yo, is that blood? That’s sick, ese! Sangre. Que chingadera.”

  “Okay, there’s something to see,” his partner conceded, quite correctly. “But we’ve got it under control,” Trey said, then turned to Darc. “Right?”

  Nothing was under control. Not in this room and certainly not in Darc’s mind.

  Especially with so much mollifying gray antilight coming from the hallway. The raw, churning emotion of the complex’s residents was anathema to the pure, glowing lines of logic. Darc knew that most humans felt emotions were bright and colorful. Green for envy. Red for anger. Black for hatred. Yet Darc saw them as a single bland, amorphous mass. A grey cloud that other humans hugged to themselves like a blanket on a subzero night.

  There was nothing important nor informative about this cloud. Its sole purpose seemed to Darc to function as a pacifier. To make humans feel secure in a vastly insecure world.

  He looked to the large man, tattooed from head to toe. His lips curled up in what Darc knew to be rage. Darc had no intrinsic understanding of facial expressions; they all seemed vaguely the same to him. Instead, he had spent time studying the various emotions and memorizing them. The man’s brows were furrowed together, his lips contorted. It was either rage or sorrow.

  Normally, he found, people in great sadness did not use terms like pendejo. So rage it was. What Darc did find fascinating was that for such an aggressive emotion as rage, fear, blatant fear, was its base. This man’s strutting and preening in front of his counterparts was all a mask for the panic he felt underneath. For all the time spent analyzing and researching human emotion, they might as well go study baboons in the wild. That was how far human emotion had gotten them.

  But Darc did not state his observations. Trey had taught him that emotional humans became even more emotional when told their emotions were useless. As a matter of fact, Trey had written down a list of subjects that Darc should avoid in order to smooth his interactions with other humans. The list was in Darc’s chest pocket. He had it laminated.

  And number four on the list was, do not ever compare human behavior to animal behavior. And, dude, never talk about a person’s skin color, especially if they are darker than you. Never.

  Which, of course, went against every grain of logic. To not acknowledge that the man pressing to get inside the room was seven degrees darker, based on the standardized broca skin-tone scale, was simply idiotic. Evolutionarily speaking, Darc’s skin was only lighter due to the fact that his ancestors had moved into the northern hemisphere, where UV light was not as abundant. In order to produce the vitamin D needed to properly calcify their bones, their skin tone had lightened.

  The only reason Darc might mention the Latinos’ skin color would be to suggest they take a vitamin D supplement, due to the latitude and heavy cloud cover of Seattle.

  Alas, Darc did not think a discussion of rickets prevention would calm the residents. The grey fog they created with their obscenities billowed into the room, threatening to scatter the symbols.

  Darc put aside the scene at the door, cutting off the flow of grey noise. Trey would have to find a way to take care of himself. Although even now, at the front of the maelstrom, his partner was wooing the crowd. Using his own grey cloud to calm the others. Darc did not have to worry that he would be disturbed by the men.

  Darc could now turn his full attention to the dancing letters and herd them back to their assigned places. The agitated puzzle pieces darted about erratically, radiating fear and distrust. Darc isolated and gentled each one, soothing and encouraging them toward their home. The symbols began to settle, finding their respective positions. As they locked into place, they left a space between them.

  The space glowed blue.

  CHAPTER 2

  “What?” Trey asked the guy trying to horn in past him. “You’ve got a CSI degree I don’t know about? You’re gonna analyze the blood and tell me whodunit?”

  The inked man seemed to chuckle despite himself. Darc may have had the brains, but Trey had the charm.

  “All right, then—avoid a huge therapy bill and take a step back, please,” Trey asked. This time the crowd grumbled a bit, which was a vast improvement over the full-blown verbal berating of a minute ago.

  One of the men stood on his tiptoes, raising his cell phone far over his head, snapping pictures.

  “Seriously,” Trey scolded. “What are you going to do with that? Make it your wallpaper?”

  “Hey,” another said. “What’s the suit doing?”

  Trey glanced over his shoulder to find Darc facing the exit. And he had that look in his eye. Trey had seen it way too often.

  “Oh, crap,” Trey exclaimed, urging people to the side. “Get out of his way!”

  One of the vatos, tattoos creating the sleeves that his wife-beater didn’t, shot back, “Or what?”

  Darc burst out of the apartment, a force of nature, knocking the men back like bowling pins.

  “Or that, dude,” Trey stated as he got up. He turned to the biggest of the men, who was still peeling himself off the floor. Trey pointed to the apartment as he rushed after Darc. “Don’t let anyone in there!”

  He really should stay to protect the crime scene, but Trey knew a kid’s life was on the line. The crime scene could wait. He was just about to catch up to his partner, when Darc opened the stairwell once more and sprinted up the st
airs, taking them two at a time.

  “Darc! Wait, will ya?”

  The tall detective made no indication he had heard or cared as he expanded the distance between them. Trey picked up the pace while flipping his phone open and punching the speed dial for dispatch.

  He didn’t bother to identify his badge number. The shrillness of his voice should identify him clearly enough. “Darc is on the move in an unsecured environment. We need that freakin’ backup! Now!”

  Trey had almost caught up to his partner, at great sacrifice to his ability to breathe, when Darc jerked open the sixth-floor stairwell door and raced out into the hall. Trey yelled into his phone, gasping to get enough air into his burning lungs to make his voice work, “We are on the sixth floor!”

  “What apartment are you headed toward?”

  “How the eff would I know what apartment?” Trey responded. These people really expected too much. “Listen, I swear on all that’s holy, if I don’t hear sirens—”

  And then Trey was backpedaling to avoid running into Darc’s back. His partner had stopped with no warning and was facing an apartment door. The number read 666.

  Trey groaned. “Of freaking course.”

  The voice on the other end persisted. “What? Do you have a location?”

  “Affirmative,” Trey stated. “We are at apartment six-six-six.”

  “Seriously?”

  This was Darc. Of course Trey was serious. He didn’t bother to tell the dispatcher that, though. He just snapped the cell shut. In the distance, sirens wailed. Their backup was almost here. But in spite of the welcome sound, Darc reached for the doorknob.

  “I really think we should wait for—”

  Darc shook off Trey’s grip and turned the knob. Locked.

  “See?” Trey said, never more grateful for a locked door. “Maybe this isn’t even—”

  His partner backed up a step and thrust out with his leg. Hard. The door shook but held. Darc eyed the door, then reared back again even harder. The door remained intact.

  “C’mon, Darc. We don’t even have a search warrant for—”

  A third time, Darc lashed out with his foot against the obstacle of the door. This time, the wood of the doorframe splintered and the door slapped with all the force of the kick against the wall. It rebounded, almost closing again, before Darc’s shoulder pushed it back and out of the way.

  Trey followed on Darc’s heels to find the last thing he expected.

  The apartment was completely white.

  There was nothing else in the brightly lit room other than the painfully white walls. No furniture. No windows. No doors. Just the stark white walls. And the strong smell of fresh paint.

  “Man, the fumes are almost as bad as that effing blood soup downstairs,” Trey complained.

  But Darc just stepped out into the middle of the room, staring at each of the walls in turn. His gaze was intense, appearing to look beyond the walls, not at them. Trey had seen this before.

  “Darc. Don’t. You. Dare.”

  Robi Darcmel swiveled his head to glance at Trey for a brief moment of non-recognition before returning his attention to the walls. Trey might as well not be there. Once more, par for the course.

  This was not okay.

  “C’mon, Darc,” Trey said, backing away from his partner. “You know the walls are booby-trapped.”

  Given the fact that Darc’s facial expressions were nearly nonexistent, Trey had gotten to know Darc’s “tells.” His partner was displaying pretty much all of them right now. The thousand-yard stare. The retreat away from discernible reality. The abruptness of his movements. All pointed to some upcoming act that Trey was positive he wasn’t going to like. The only balm for Trey’s rising panic was that Darc hadn’t cocked his head.

  A frown crossed Darc’s face as he stared at the wall to the left. His eyes traced something undetectable to those not gifted with his brand of insight. Or those who weren’t clinically insane. Tomato. To-mah-to.

  Darc directed his attention to the right wall. His fist clenched tight against his thigh. It was another one of his classic tells. This was going to be bad.

  Trey opened up his cell again, punching through to dispatch.

  “I need an effing bomb squad and a hazmat team…” Trey wasn’t finished. “And maybe animal control.”

  “Animal Control?” the dispatcher asked. “Why would you need animal—”

  “I don’t know—just send them, send everyone! I need them all now. Effing now!”

  The crowd of Latinos must have tired of the blood show downstairs, because they were once more crowding in around the apartment door. If they were the cats, this was the curiosity that could kill them.

  “Stay back,” Trey pleaded. The last thing they needed was for civilians to get blown up. “C’mon, people, give us some room here!”

  Trey glanced over at Darc and saw him turn his eyes to the back wall. And then Darc cocked his head.

  “No!” Trey cried. He wasn’t ready to die.

  Darc’s fist punched through the freshly painted drywall. Trey winced, but nothing exploded. For now. Darc wasn’t done, though. He punched and tore and broke through the wall. Guess if was going to blow, it would have blown by now. Trey joined his partner, and together they tore out a large hole in the wall.

  Behind the Sheetrock was a metal barrel, rusted so thoroughly that just touching it caused flakes of metal to drift to the ground. Trey flinched at that first touch, but, seeing how no blast sent him hurtling back out of the apartment, he got his hands behind the barrel and helped Darc to walk it forward through the gaping hole. It was enormously heavy.

  As they got the barrel to the edge of the hole, the bottom edge of the container caught against the lip and the barrel tipped over onto its side. The lid flew off, sending the contents spewing forth in a gush of crimson.

  The barrel was filled to the brim with blood.

  As the foul fluid gushed out, it delivered a small package with it. A young girl, her hair and dress matted with coagulating blood, sprawled out onto the surface of the linoleum. Trey felt words spilling out of him along with the contents of the barrel.

  “Oh, dear Mary, mother of god.”

  Before Trey could finish his litany, Darc was on his knees and delivering CPR to the girl. Blood spilled out of her mouth, mixing with the growing puddle around them.

  Trey punched the button for dispatch. “I need an ambulance. A bus. Now! For the love of all that’s holy, now!”

  Darc leaned back from the girl for a moment, revealing her non-responsive form. There was no movement, no sign of breath. If he could have disregarded the gore, the scene would almost have struck Trey as peaceful. Only it wasn’t. They were too late. Again.

  “Sorry,” Trey said into the phone. “Make that a coroner’s wagon.”

  Darc’s form slumped in defeat over the lifeless form of the little girl. It was the closest that Trey had ever seen to any kind of expressed emotion from his partner. Yet Darc didn’t give up. He went back to pounding on the girl’s chest, turning her on her side, shaking the blood from her lungs.

  “Come on, Darc,” Trey begged.

  Then the girl’s body convulsed. She coughed and spit out copious amounts of blood.

  “Mary and Joseph! Get the paramedics up here!” Trey yelled into his cell.

  Darc leaned in over the girl once more. Trey thought it was to continue CPR, but his partner grabbed the girl by both of her shoulders and shook her once to gain her attention. The girl’s eyes widened as they looked into Darc’s.

  “Did you see him?” his partner demanded.

  “Darc!” Trey stated, not believing even Darc would go so far. “Seriously, what are you doing?” Trey stepped in, trying to distract his partner.

  Without even a glance, Darc continued interrogating the girl. “How did the killer get you here?”

  That was it. Trey grabbed his partner’s arm, jerking him upward, away from the girl.

  “Look at her, Darc!” Tr
ey took his jacket off and wrapped around the shivering girl. “She’s in no shape for questioning. C’mon, man.”

  Darc slowly straightened, standing above the two of them, his face a blank slate. At the least, he wasn’t berating a traumatized little girl anymore. Then his partner turned.

  “Darc, where do you think you’re…” Trey’s voice trailed off as he watched several of the largest men in the group outside the door move to block Darc’s path.

  “Don’t even care about a white chica that ain’t your own, do you, cabrón?” one of the more testosterone-laden men asked.

  “Yeah, where’s your gun, puerco?” another challenged.

  Darc stood in the doorway, locking gazes with the leader of the pack.

  “Try me,” his partner intoned.

  Something in Darc’s gaze convinced the huge chulo that he really didn’t want to test Darc. The inked man moved to the side, allowing Darc to pass, just as footsteps sounded down the hallway.

  “Police!”

  That was all the bystanders needed to hear, as they scattered into the night. The beat cops rushed into the room, then stumbled back a step.

  “What the fuck?” one sputtered.

  Trey tucked the girl’s head against his shoulder. “Tell me about it.”

  * * *

  Darc exited the building, feeling the cool mist of evening on his face. As he walked, Darc felt a grey flicker of some foreign emotion. Guilt? Responsibility? He wasn’t positive. The grey threatened the strands of logic, so the detective pushed it down without hesitation. Trey would take care of the talking. He always took care of the talking. He could not seem to stop talking. Trey would take care of it.

  Pausing, Darc assessed the risk of taking his partner’s Rover. Darc did not have the keys, and going back to ask for them would create additional problems. Those problems were drenched in grey. That wasn’t an option.

  He could hotwire the ignition. This presented some attractive positives. It would allow him real-world testing of what up until now had been theoretical knowledge. It would afford him the familiarity of a known environment. He would also get there much faster.