by Hopkin, Ben
“I’m sorry.” Dr. Charan looked around the room, her eyes settling on Darc. “I just need to speak with Detective Darcmel.”
“Yeah, babe, get in line,” Trey chuckled, without much humor.
And then the impossible happened. Darc actually got up. Not only that, but he went over to the doctor to speak with her. The entire room rustled in response to something that none of them had ever seen before.
Darc was interacting. With someone he didn’t really know. On purpose.
* * *
As Darc moved toward the doctor, the swirling lights in front of him sparked, bouncing off of one another and melding into interesting variations. Whatever information the symmetrical Dr. Charan was bringing, it had the effect of a nexus where all the logic strands came together and collided. Right now, he had no idea which one would emerge on the other side.
These moments were uncomfortable. Not having a clear vision of the path ahead when so many lives were in jeopardy made him…feel a bit disjointed. As if someone else controlled his limbs. And the doctor had been trying to push him out the door the last time they spoke. That usually meant that he had done something wrong, something in the grey area of non-logic, and that his partner would end up having a conversation with him about people’s feelings. And apologizing.
But Darc had not apologized, and here the doctor was. He needed to find out why. He searched through the options before him and settled on a direct question.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Well, she was agitated and started drawing these after you left.” She handed over sheet after sheet of the drawing paper that Darc had left on his last visit. Each one held a symbol. Darc snatched them away from the doctor and examined them. The symbols practically leapt off the page, spinning and whirling. The doctor was still talking.
“I even sedated her, but she wouldn’t stop. Then we took away the crayons…” Dr. Charan’s voice trailed off as she held up one last picture, its form much rougher and less defined than the others. The doctor took a deep breath before continuing.
“So on this one, she pulled out her catheter and drew it in her own blood.”
Trey inhaled sharply. “Is she all right?”
“Relatively,” the doctor stated. “After that, she actually fell into a sound sleep.”
Darc realized that there was no further information that he could glean from this conversation. He left the doctor with her mouth half-open, strode over to the board, and yanked off every photo and drawing, tossing them aside on the floor. The new symbols chattered at him as he placed them carefully, in order, in the place of the other, much less useful, evidence.
Now he would see what lay on the other side of the nexus. The symbols cavorted, shedding bright, gleaming drops of blood as they promised to yield their secrets to him.
* * *
Well, this was a unique experience. Mala found herself talking to thin air after being left in the middle of a sentence. Ah, the joys of working with a savant. But his odd behavior only stoked her curiosity. What did he see in the symbols that she could not?
Damn, but he intrigued her. Which might not be a good thing. She had a traumatized girl to look after. Her overriding concern had to be Janey’s well-being. Mala was here for that sole purpose. And maybe, if she was being honest, a tiny sliver of the reason was that she wanted to see Darcmel again. To see him in his element. To study him and his smoldering good looks.
Okay, so maybe that part was more than just a sliver.
The captain stepped in to fill the void of the detective’s absence. When he spoke, his tone was apologetic. He more than likely had to deal with complaints about Darcmel on a regular basis.
“I’m sorry, you must be Dr. Charan. You are treating our Jane Doe?”
“Trying to, yes.”
The captain smiled at that. “Well, why don’t you stick around in case Darc—uh, Detective Darcmel—has any questions.” The captain seemed to hear what he had just said and did a little course correction. “I doubt it, but would you mind?”
To be honest, that was exactly what Mala had been about to ask permission to do. Janey was sedated back at the hospital and should be down for several hours.
“It would be fascinating to see him work.”
The captain nodded his head, seeming grateful for her willingness to stay. He gave her an appraising look that lingered a little too long for Mala’s comfort, nodded once to himself, and then turned to Darc’s partner and waved him toward the front of the room.
“Go on, Keane.”
Detective Trey Keane moved back to a position at the front of the room and took a moment, she guessed to recollect his thoughts, before starting back in.
“As you can see, after saving this last victim, she was able to communicate through pictures.” Trey gestured to the collection of drawings his partner was working with on the board. He now paused for an even longer moment.
“First off, we have learned that the children do witness the murder of their parents.”
The group of police officers moaned their collective distress at the news. Even men and women this hardened felt the blow. It was one thing to know they were going after a serial killer. It was another to understand just how sick this person really was. If these officers were anything like Mala herself, they couldn’t help but think of what Janey had been forced to witness. Keane continued.
“Luckily, though, it seems they are separated from them before the real butchery. And lastly…” The detective turned toward the board, did a little double take at the damage Darc had done to the board, and then stooped over to sort through the discarded items on the floor. He came back up with the map showing the magic store.
“Darc now believes that the families are chosen at and possibly kidnapped near the Magic Mouse Toy Store.” As Trey finished this statement, the room erupted into a cacophony of questions. The detective held up his hands.
“We have already got every on-duty and off-duty CSI unit over there sweeping the store and surrounding areas.”
At that point, the captain stepped forward. “And starting at oh eight hundred hours, we will have three round-the-clock teams staking out—”
“Don’t bother,” Darcmel spoke over his shoulder.
“And why not?” the captain asked.
“The killer won’t return,” Darcmel answered flatly.
“But wait a minute,” Keane inserted, sorting through his notes. “On page…twelve, you said that he had formed a ritualistic bond to the store and—”
“Not anymore. Not if the girl saw this.” And he pointed to the last symbol. The one Janey had drawn in her own blood.
“And what, exactly, are we looking at?” The captain seemed to be seeking firm ground, but Darcmel was unresponsive once more. The detective stared at the remaining symbols, his eyes darting back and forth between them.
Luckily, Mala thought she knew what was going on here. She hesitated to insert herself in a police matter, but Darc did not seem capable or willing to clarify for them. She directed her answer to the captain. “It’s the Greek symbol delta. It stands for change, or for progression.”
“I don’t get it.” Trey had the forlorn expression of a lost puppy.
“The killer is moving on.” Once more, Darcmel was engaged in the conversation, having come back from wherever he had been moments ago.
“To what?” The captain’s deep voice cut across the chatter in the bullpen, his tone curt. He seemed almost angry at the new direction this was going. Mala homed in on the captain. He liked order. Surety. This sudden change-up seemed hard for him to take.
“Unknown. But it will be soon.” Darc’s words were a declaration of certainty, and, looking at the symbols, Mala was pretty sure she could see what he was talking about. The letters were from a variety of ancient languages that most psychologists wouldn’t have any clue about. But she wasn’t most psychologists. She pointed to the drawings in order.
“These others…Completion. Speed. Diffic
ult. Now.”
Darc turned his head, catching her eye. The look on his face was not quite as blank as it usually was. There was something there. Something Mala couldn’t identify. But her body could. She felt a flush creep up her entire torso. She had never been more grateful for her darker skin tone.
A uniformed policeman stuck his head in the door of the bullpen. “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a 911 call the watch commander thinks you should take a listen to.” He paused for a second, his face twisting up. “It’s a weird one.”
Detective Darcmel grabbed his jacket without a word to anyone and moved toward the door. Mala tried to follow him, speaking as she moved.
“Detective, in case there is another child, do you mind if I come—”
But Darc quickly outpaced her, shutting the door practically in her face. She looked over to see his partner gathering up his things as quickly as he could.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Trey, “but do you think he would mind if I joined you?”
The detective gave a bark of laughter. “Doc, he won’t even notice.”
“Then, would you object?”
The detective smirked. “Keep that top one unbuttoned, and we’ll see,” he said, nodding at her blouse. Before Mala could even respond, Trey shook off his smile.
“Sorry, Doc. Old habits.”
As the two rushed off in pursuit of Darcmel, the captain yelled after them.
“We’ll work the toy store until we figure out if there’s a new lead.”
But Mala knew better. She had seen Darc in action. The toy store angle was dead.
CHAPTER 5
When Trey heard from dispatch where they were headed, he almost burst into laughter. The maniacal kind, not the ha-ha kind. An indoor skydiving training facility?
Shut up.
His job had taken them to some pretty freaky places, most of them bad. But this? This was awesome. The feeling of flying, without having to, you know, jump out of an airplane at ten thousand feet, entrusting your life to a scrap of cloth? Sounded perfect.
He followed Dr. Charan and Darc inside. The roar of the simulator engine drowned out anything they might have wanted to say to each other. Although once Trey caught a glimpse of what was floating around in the artificial wind tunnel, he was pretty sure it would be a conversation killer.
Three bloody bodies tossed about in the turbulence inside the upright Plexiglas cylinder. They were lashed together somehow, but their arms flailed about wildly in the blast from the fans below. Occasionally a head or foot or hand would slap against the transparent wall, leaving a red smear behind, just in case you had managed to forget what you had seen.
Trey felt his face twist in disgust, and he watched as Dr. Charan gagged, apparently doing what she could not to lose her dinner. Darc strode directly toward the crime scene—no shocker there. Trey spoke mostly to himself, figuring no one else would ever hear him over the noise.
“Yeah, I’d say this is a new lead.”
Man, that fan was loud. He couldn’t hear himself. Not even in his own head. A uniformed cop approached, yelling something unintelligible, clearly trying to top the noise of the simulator.
“Can’t…blower!” The uni was gesturing to something off to the side of the tunnel.
“What?” Trey hollered.
“Controls…bypassed!”
Trey pointed at his ears. “Can’t hear you!”
“City…have to…cut…block’s power!”
“You’re going to have to speak up!”
Darc yanked something out of the panel on the other side of the cylinder. The noise cut off, leaving Trey’s ears ringing in the sudden silence. He turned to the uni and gave him a wry grin.
“Or not.”
The bodies fell to the grate on the floor of the wind tunnel with a huge crash that echoed through the suddenly silent complex. Dr. Charan jumped in response. Trey was about to go to join his partner, when he realized the doctor’s face had gone ashen. She swayed a bit, looking ready to faint.
“Look, there’s no kids,” he explained. “So why don’t you just wait out here?”
The doctor tried to make a face that Trey was sure she meant to be brave and reassuring but only managed to make her look worse. Trey started moving to join Darc, peeking over his shoulder every few steps to make sure Charan was still upright.
As he neared his partner, he saw that Darc was deeply engaged in observing the bodies on the other side of the plastic. Trey studied the gruesome view for a few moments but then couldn’t hold in the thought that had been nagging at him since they had arrived at the scene.
“I don’t get it. Parents and kids. Now these Gen Y’ ers.”
“He doesn’t care about the victims.”
Hey. A response. Curt and distracted, yes. But a response. Trey snorted. “Well, that’s pretty clear. Even to…you know…like, me. It’s not like you need a different perspective to come up with that little nugget.”
Darc turned to stare at Trey, his eyes flaring. He then looked straight up.
Trey gazed upward alongside his partner, trying for the life of him to figure out what Darc was seeing. As usual, he got nothing.
“What?”
And then Darc was off, running up the staircase that led to the catwalk above the simulator, taking the steps two at a time, his usual pace. Trey trudged along behind him, doing what he could to keep up.
“Holy Mother,” Trey gasped. “He’s got thighs of steel…”
When Trey finally managed to make it up to the top, he was winded enough, and the catwalk was up high enough, that he had to catch both his balance and his breath. The floor beneath did that cartoon wobbly thing on him, sending his vertigo ratcheting up another couple of notches. After taking a couple of moments to reestablish his equilibrium, Trey moved alongside his partner.
“What was the rush? Those guys down there look pretty well dead, and I don’t think they’re going anywhere,” he managed to pant. He looked over the railing, and then immediately pulled his head back into safer territory.
This time, it had nothing to do with heights. Okay, maybe a tiny bit, but most of it was the view of the victims, unrestricted by the blood-smeared plastic. Not only had their throats been slit, but their faces and any other exposed skin was completely mangled, bludgeoned by the severe buffeting the wind tunnel had delivered on a continual basis since they were killed. If the damage was any indication, it had been more than a little while.
This took “getting the wind knocked out of you” to a whole new level.
* * *
The lines of light branched and split, dividing and looping back on themselves, distracting Darc from what he was trying to do. They were not falling into any sort of coherent pattern. The detective’s head throbbed from the influx of random bits of information.
The idea to view the crime scene from a different perspective helped. At least from here he could observe the bodies without any impediment. He searched the forms below, looking for patterns in the way their arms were joined together. Forms appeared for brief flashes, then dissipated, leaving nothing behind but afterimages against his metaphorical retinas.
As he tried without success to force the symbols to appear and cohere, Dr. Charan arrived next to Trey. As she took in the sight below, her eyes widened.
“Oh my…”
The doctor’s hand fluttered around her face, the motion seemingly unconscious on her part. Darc’s partner moved closer to her in order to offer his support.
“I told you to give it a wide berth.”
The chatter of the two beside him occupied perhaps 2 percent of Darc’s mind, as he continued to have no success with the symbols. He threw one out, only to have it force its way back in, crashing into and almost completely interrupting the entire sequence. Something was desperately wrong here. He murmured encouraging words to the erratic letters. They skittered out of his mental grasp with ease. It felt like they were mocking him for all that he was trying to accomplish.
&nb
sp; “What’s he doing?” Dr. Charan asked his partner.
“Who knows,” Trey responded.
“He doesn’t tell you what he sees?” the doctor questioned.
“Man, you really are new to the program.”
Beads of sweat broke out on Darc’s brow. He gritted his teeth, trying to push the symbols together through sheer force of will, but they continued to bounce about, eluding his efforts. In his mind’s eye, he lifted the bodies so that they were suspended in air, where they had been when the air was still flowing. Still nothing. The letters would not coalesce. They hovered around the edges of his consciousness, taunting him in his impotency. Darc gripped the railing of the catwalk so firmly, his knuckles turned white.
The doctor voiced her concern. “Is he all right?”
“Oh, scheisse. We need to get him away from the edge.”
Trey and the doctor tried to pry his fingers from off the railing. Even if Darc had wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able to help them in their efforts. Everything he had was going toward figuring out the puzzle that was crouched below him, expressing itself in the bodies of the skydivers. He was missing something. Some fundamental shift that would allow him to see…
And then he had it. He repositioned the bodies in his mind so that they were in the skydiving position: arms and legs extended, their forms cupping the air that flowed from beneath.
The symbols extracted themselves from the resultant picture and rushed into place with so much force, they threw Darc back into the doctor’s and Trey’s arms. The two, surprised by the sudden reaction, were unprepared to take that much weight and allowed him to sink to the floor. Darc shook his head, but the ciphers remained intact. They had found their perfect arrangement.
He knew what to do next.
* * *
Mala watched as Trey spoke in Darc’s ear. The way he held him and tried to comfort him was so…gentle. She had never seen a man take such good care of another man in that way. And without any apparent awkwardness or embarrassment.
“It’s all right, man. Steady. You’re going to be all right.” He tried to help Darc back up to a standing position, but Darc pushed his hands away.