by Hopkin, Ben
The detective directed his attention back to Janey, took out a blank piece of paper and a red crayon, and drew a letter on it. Mala looked over his shoulder to see that he had drawn a symbol. It looked to be Greek. He held the paper up so that Janey could see it.
When the girl’s eyes landed on the symbol, she took in a sharp breath and her eyes widened. Mala couldn’t tell what the reaction was, but hey, it was a reaction. Anything other than her dead-on-the-inside stare was a step in a good direction.
“That’s the first response we’ve gotten.”
But as Janey continued to look at the symbol, she got more and more agitated. It was clear that the letter frightened her. Mala moved to the side of the bed opposite the detective and resumed stroking her hair.
“I would be careful,” Mala said to the detective. “Children in these circumstances have a hard time rebuilding trust with adults.” Mala tried to make eye contact with Darcmel, hoping to help him understand how important this was. Individuals with Asperger’s syndrome weren’t known for their warm fuzzies, and that could be a big problem with a girl as fragile as Janey.
The detective moved the paper back, still holding it up so that Janey could see it. He took another crayon, this one black, and drew a line through the symbol, using far more force than was necessary. Clearly the detective was telling the girl, without words, that those symbols no longer had power over her. A stunningly simple yet powerful technique. Mala wished she had thought of it.
Darcmel then removed the metallic gold crayon and drew a rough detective’s badge around the struck-through symbol. Janey instantly calmed.
Mala was stunned. “Okay, I take that back,” she conceded. “I guess she trusts you.”
All her cooing about how safe and protected Janey was clearly paled in comparison to Darcmel’s nonverbal message.
He then fished out the yellow crayon and drew a taxicab. Mala felt a twinge of discomfort as she saw where the detective seemed to be headed. She respected his ability to connect with the girl, but some bridges were just too far, too soon.
“I wouldn’t bring up such a reminder of her parents—”
But Darcmel just kept drawing. The only thing that kept Mala from intervening was that Janey wasn’t responding, even as the detective finished the picture and added a stick figure of a mother and a father. Mala heaved a sigh of relief.
“So she didn’t witness them being…”
She allowed her words to drift off as Darcmel handed the crayon box to Janey. The little girl pulled out the brick-red crayon and began scribbling with fierce intensity over the images of her parents. The detective spoke over his shoulder.
“Oh, she saw it. Just not at the cab.” He directed the next word back at Janey. “Where?”
The girl picked out a brown crayon and began drawing once more, her brow furrowed with intent. As amazing as the process had been up to this point, Mala knew they could not rush healing.
“Darcmel. You are very high functioning,” Mala said, not expecting an answer. “You are self-aware enough to know that your emotional radar is limited.” The detective’s gaze remained riveted to Janey, so Mala reached across the bed and grabbed Darcmel’s shoulder, forcing him to look at her. She spoke with quiet emphasis.
“You need to listen to me. You are pushing her too far.”
* * *
Darc knew the woman was saying something she felt important. Only it wasn’t. A woman of science should really know the difference. Because what could be in the face of the girl and her drawing? Bright lines danced all around the girl, creating a near-halo around her. The girl was breathing more and more quickly as she finished the picture. It appeared to be a teddy bear.
Dr. Charan’s voice buzzed about the surface of his awareness. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
But the pictures were pulling themselves up from the paper, limning themselves in bright light. The taxi. The teddy bear. The stick-figure family. A blank appeared in a space between them, right in the center.
Darc drew a picture of a store but purposely left the name blank.
Once more, the doctor’s voice waded into the shallow end of his focus. “That’s it.” The woman moved around the bed, placing herself between Darc and the girl. As she stood there, blocking Darc’s access, he noticed that her features were very symmetrical. There were few to no markers of fluctuating asymmetry. The psychologist apparently had good coping techniques for the stressors of daily life. She had very few wrinkles or blemishes. All this, taken together with her mocha-colored skin, full hips, and above-average bust size, meant that society would consider her highly attractive. Darc filed the information away, turning his attention back to the glowing pathways.
He shoved the picture past the doctor, placing it firmly in the little girl’s hands. The girl was breathing even more heavily than she had been before, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. The grey threatened, with its unreasoning blurry haze. Trey was constantly telling him how important that grey was, but right now Darc didn’t have the time to decipher why that might be.
The doctor called over to the nurses’ station nearby, “Get security.”
The voice of the nurse drifted into the room, her tone confused and more than a little nervous.
“Um…but he’s a cop…”
“Just get them,” the doctor insisted.
Dr. Charan then physically tried to push Darc out of the room. Again, as a person of science, she should have realized that she did not have the weight, leverage, or power to accomplish such a task. He stood unmoved from his spot. It was vital that he see what Janey was doing, as her crayon inscribed a single word across the top of the storefront in the picture. The girl was shaking so much that the word was almost unintelligible. Almost.
Across the front of the store, Janey had written the word “Magic.”
At that point, a large African American security guard burst into the room, glancing around to see what the issue was. When his eyes lighted on Darc, there was a flash of recognition, followed by a sigh. The doctor called out to the guard.
“Look, I know he’s a detective, but we need to get him—”
“Don’t worry,” the guard replied. “Not the first time I kicked him to the curb.” The big man faced off with him. “Come on, Darc. Time to trance your way home.”
The security guard placed a huge hand on Darc’s shoulder. The detective gave him no resistance. First, because this man did have the weight, leverage, and power to make Darc move, whether or not he complied. Second, because Darc already had what he had come for.
Another pathway of light.
This one led right to where the killer was finding and kidnapping his victims. Darc pulled out his cell phone and punched a single speed-dial number. A groggy voice crackled over the connection.
“You know what? I really hate you.”
“Wake the captain.” Darc disconnected before his freshly woken partner could protest further.
The bright light of the logic path in front of him beckoned, moving his limbs forward without any conscious force of will on Darc’s part.
It was time to find a madman’s hunting ground.
CHAPTER 4
Trey struggled to keep his eyes open as his brain adjusted to the call from Darc. You would think that after six years of dealing with this kinda stuff, that he would get used to it.
Hadn’t happened yet.
“Good night to you, too,” Trey spoke to the blankness of the cut-off line. He felt a form stir beside him as her voice spoke a one-word question into the night.
“Darc?” Maggie asked.
“How’d you guess?”
Maggie reached out and placed a hand on his arm. It was probably meant to be comforting, but in this context, it just made his guilt worse. Nothing like talking to your partner while lying right next to his ex-wife. A light bloomed as Maggie tapped the touch lamp on the nightstand.
“You’ve got to go, then?” Her voice tinged with sadness? Recrimi
nation? Which did Trey wish it was?
“Apparently.” He leaned over her, moving in to kiss her cheek. Maggie shied away from the intimacy, her face a mesh of conflicting thoughts. Trey sighed before speaking.
“You don’t have to feel guilty, you know.”
Maggie let her gaze drift up to meet his and gave him a sad half-smile. “Was that for you or for me?”
She kissed him on the ear, maybe to take the sting out of her words, before rolling over and tapping the light once more to turn it off. And the gesture worked, mostly. The sting was gone, washed away in Maggie’s gentle kiss. All that remained was the dull ache in his gut.
Because she was right and she was wrong.
He’d said it for the both of them.
* * *
She was at her new home, and her parents were there. Something about that was weird, but she couldn’t remember what it was. She just knew she was happy to see them. So happy.
Her daddy reached down and picked her up, rubbing her cheek with his stubble to make her giggle. She squealed, trying to keep the laughter inside, but it burst out of her like it always did. No one else could make her laugh when they tickled her, but her daddy could do it every single time.
After a minute more of tummy tickling, he finally stopped and gave her a big squeeze. She was getting bigger, she knew, and he didn’t carry her around as much as he used to. That made it so much more nice when he did. She reached up and rubbed his stubble with her hands, feeling the scratchiness against her palms. He always let his beard grow out on the weekends. He put her down, ruffled her hair, and went out back to watch the grill.
It was Saturday evening, and there were lots of people over for what Mommy had called a housewarming party. Stupid name, since it was summer and they were running the air-conditioning inside. She could hear people splashing around in the pool out back and smell the burgers cooking on the grill. It mixed with the smell of the grass that Daddy had mowed earlier. Cut grass and grilling. The smells of summer vacation. Her stomach started to grumble, and she realized she was hungry.
She went into the downstairs bathroom to wash her hands. It was a tiny bathroom in the front hall of the house. All it had was a sink and a toilet, but it was okay. The new house still didn’t smell like home yet, but it was pretty cool. She moved her fingers through the water, feeling it beat against her fingers, pushing them down as they went through the stream. Her old bathroom sink didn’t do that. She guessed she liked it all right.
Turning off the water, she noticed something different. It took her a second or two to figure it out, but all the sounds of the guests were gone. The house was quiet.
She stepped out of the bathroom to a dark house.
All the lights were off, and the light of evening had turned into the black of night. A feeling crept up inside her belly, empty like her hunger from before, except now she didn’t want to eat. It was the same feeling she got when the shadows in her room at night turned into monsters. She moved through the house toward the backyard, bumping into the furniture as she went. She still didn’t know where everything was supposed to be in this house.
After a minute of fumbling around in the dark, she got to the sliding glass door that led to the backyard and pushed it open. She stumbled out toward the pool, the lights from under the surface jumping and dancing with the waves of the water, casting crazy shadows on the ground.
She stood there, alone by the pool, and was just about to start calling out when a huge yell came from lots of voices behind her.
“Surprise!”
From around the sides of the house came all the guests, her parents out in front, carrying a huge cake with burning candles. On top of the cake were loads of pink roses, her favorite. This was the best birthday ever!
But her birthday was in October.
She looked into her daddy’s face, confused, but he looked funny. His eyes weren’t smiling at her like they always did. She turned to her mommy, but she was the same. And when she looked back down at the cake, the roses were red. Dark red. They had been pink before. She was sure of it.
It wasn’t her birthday.
This was a dream.
She woke up. All the happiness from the dream drained out of her, leaving behind a cold, numb hole that burned and ached along its edges. Her parents were gone. They weren’t coming back. It had been a dream. She rocked back and forth, looking for something to help stop the pain.
And as she looked around the bed, she found the pictures the man had drawn for her. The tall man with the shaved head and the dark eyes. She scattered the pages, searching for the one she needed. There it was. The picture of his golden badge. She hugged the picture to her chest.
The pain didn’t go away, but it hurt a little bit less.
* * *
Trey would describe the atmosphere in the bullpen as acidic. Yeah. That sounded about right. And to be honest, that pretty much worked as an adjective for how he was feeling himself right about now. It was three o’clock in the morning, and they were all here.
Not that they never got called in at bizarre hours in the morning. That was just part of the job. But they all knew who it was that had made this call. None of the men seemed happy about it.
Only difference between Trey and the rest of these shmucks was that they were going to be asking him for answers. Answers he didn’t have. Darc, the guy with all of those answers, was right over there in the corner of the room, but he wouldn’t be responding to any of their questions. They’d be lucky if he even glanced at them.
Dude, Trey was his partner, and Darc wouldn’t answer him half the time. More than half the time. Come to think of it, Darc wouldn’t answer him most of the time.
What made it all worse was that Trey knew exactly why he had been paired up with Darc. He knew it. The captain knew it. Half the room knew it. Trey was a screw-up. He didn’t belong here. But…he did have a purpose. He was the Rain Man whisperer. No one else could do what he did. Even if they decided they wanted to give it a try.
The captain walked through the door, his face showing that even he was not particularly amused at the proceedings here. And when the captain wasn’t happy…He approached Trey, pitching his voice low enough that none of the others could hear.
“What’s he got for us?”
Trey continued flipping through the pages and pages of Darc’s hastily scribbled notes, trying to get up to speed before he had to start talking.
“Yeah, I’m figuring that out now.” He gave a half-grin, half-grimace to his superior.
The captain gave a nonspecific grunt and moved off to the side. Trey glanced over at Darc, who wore his typical expression that seemed to say, your concerns are not mine. But in spite of his distant demeanor, Darc had posted the photos of the three sets of murdered parents, the two young girls they hadn’t been able to save, and “Janey.” Hey, that was more involvement than Trey was used to. He’d totally take it.
The pictures the little girl had drawn were all there as well. In spite of the varying sizes of the photos and the drawings, Darc had managed to post them in such a way that they were all evenly balanced. There was even a Google map of the Magic Mouse Toy Store.
The captain cleared his throat. “Anytime, Keane.”
“All right. Let’s get this party…” Trey looked at the gruesome pictures on the board and reconsidered. “Well, get this briefing started.”
One of the beat cops already had his hand up, ready with a question. Trey rubbed a hand over his face, trying to wipe the weariness out of it.
“As always, don’t bother with questions, because I do not know the answer.” The cop’s hand dropped. “The only reason I do these things is because I’m the only one who can read his chicken scratch.”
Trey moved over to the board, pointing at the three sets of parents. “Now, as everyone is aware, there have been three ritualistic killings involving three families in as many weeks.”
“Does Darc think the victimology is related or random occurrences
?” one of the officers queried.
Trey fixed him with a steady gaze. “What did I just say?” Again, the slow dropping of the hand. That was better. Trey shook his head, re-gathered his focus, and continued.
“As far as we can tell, the parents were killed first, drained of their blood, gutted, and their bodies dumped in a cab.”
“Has he determined any connection between the cab companies? Or their drivers?” It was a different officer this time, at least.
“Seriously. I’m here basically to make sure he keeps his fly up.” Speaking of which…Trey glanced over at Darc’s crotch to check. Darc gave him a frown. Yeah, he had that expression down, didn’t he? Trey responded to Darc’s implied criticism with a touch of defensiveness.
“Dude. You changed clothes. I just had to be sure.”
Darc gave a curt nod of acknowledgment. Had to give the guy credit. Once you pled your case, if it made sense, he backed off. Trey turned back to the group and clapped his hands in mock excitement.
“Okay. Back to gruesome. The children are then placed in vats of their own parents’ blood, then sealed into the wall of a pure white room.”
The first officer raised his hand again. “What’s the significance of the white?”
Did no one listen? Ever? “Ya know…I passed my detective’s exam by one point. One point, and that was on my third try.” He glared at the officer for a moment, before moving on. “Now, each was found in a separate—”
“Does the fact that all the barrels came from a company that supplies meatpacking plants have any bearing?” It was the second officer this time.
Trey was saved from finding yet another way to say that he was an idiot by the entrance of the child psychologist from the hospital. Still, it was one more break in his already fractured briefing session.
“Great, another interruption,” Trey muttered to himself.
The captain stepped forward to meet the doctor. “Can I help you?”