by Hopkin, Ben
“Hang on. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be—”
The pressure pulling the woman down snapped like a taut wire, and Trey fell over backward with the abrupt shift in weight. A wave of nastiness washed over the edge of the pool and hit Trey full in the face. Like this whole thing hadn’t been bad enough before. That dollar burger he had snarfed down earlier was going to come back up. It was only a question of when.
The woman flailing her arms around and whapping him in the ear took Trey’s attention off his stomach for a second. He fought to keep his arms around her.
“Whoa there! Hang on.”
Darc resurfaced, the strain of keeping his head up clear in his face. The glow from the porch light painted the blood and bits of flesh that clung to his face, making him look like some demon zombie creature surfacing from the depths of hell. You know, that or one of the statues of the saints—it was sometimes hard to tell the difference. Trey stifled the urge to genuflect as Darc called out to him.
“Got it.”
Trey’s partner made his way to the side of the pool, heaving a large cinder block up and over the edge in a splash of blood. Whoa. Seeing the hunk of concrete his partner had carried to the surface, Trey was totally impressed with how much strength it must’ve taken to get that sucker up from the bottom. Darc pulled himself out of the pool, trailing gore behind him.
“It’s covered in symbols.”
And with that, Darc began walking back toward the house. The woman they had rescued from the pool was coughing and choking, gagging on the blood she was hawking up from her lungs. Trey held her head up, hoping it was helping at least a little bit. He yelled after his partner.
“Yeah, hey, Darc. How about some help?”
Darc didn’t even twitch as he entered the back door of Janey’s home. He was making a beeline toward something, as usual, his goal just about as clear as his expression. Which, just to be clear, was not clear at all. Typical Darc move.
“Darc! Darc!”
But Trey’s voice just echoed back at him, the ringing as hollow as the pit in his gut.
* * *
For once, Darc ignored the beckoning striations of logic that crisscrossed his vision. Not that they were pointing at anything specific. They were a tangled web that spoke nothing but confusion to his mind. The darkness of the night around him contrasted sharply with the riot of color in his head.
As he moved through the black, a light rain began to fall, growing in strength with every one of his steps, covering the metallic scent of blood mingled with the effluvia of rotting flesh. The puddles he left behind went from red to pink to a blissful clear.
He walked. Time had no meaning. Distance was an illusion. There was only the steady plod of his footsteps as he put one leg in front of the other, over and over and over again.
The weight of the brick pulled at him, but he hardly noticed it. The additional heaviness was less than the pressure of the deaths that were mounting by the day. The pictures of the victims, laid out with glowing precision in his mind in all their grotesque glory, mocked his ineffectiveness.
The symbols on the surface of the brick swarmed around him, nipping at his consciousness as mosquitoes would at his skin. He mentally brushed them aside, only to have them return in full force mere moments later. They buzzed about, refusing to settle into a coherent pattern, or even something that indicated where the missing data might be. They hissed and whined, their cries the cries of those murdered. Additional reminders of his repeated failures.
Too late. He had been too late. Once more, too late. The man had already been dead when they got there. The woman would soon follow. The amount of blood she had been coughing up left little doubt as to her ultimate fate. The lines of light surrounding her were a dark violet, drifting toward darkness. Merging into the night, as Darc himself was.
Black. Like his name. Darc. Dark. Darkness. This was his element. This was where he belonged. Where he was supposed to stay.
But the light always called. The lines that sparked and gleamed. The glowing symbols and pictures. The visions and glimpses of light that existed only inside his head.
The other, silver light toward which he was moving right now. The light that should be one gigantic patch of grey emotion but had always shone so bright and fierce that it almost seared him, even as it soothed his raw edges. The light that had moved out, leaving nothing but a wedding picture and bleakness behind. The one that made everything all right. The one that had made everything so wrong.
Maggie.
* * *
Paperwork. There was nothing in Trey’s life that he hated more than paperwork. Everything else about his partner, he could handle. Heck, he didn’t even mind them. The silences. The unanswered questions. The total lack of anything approaching a normal conversation. You know. Stuff that would drive most people up the freakin’ wall.
But not Trey. Nope. The only thing that really pissed him off was the paperwork. And here he was, doing paperwork once more. This sucked.
Oh, and the captain was here, breathing down his neck. That too. Seriously, what had gotten his panties in such a bunch? He never spent this much time out in the field. Trey was starting to develop a complex. Well, another complex.
At the least, Trey was getting used to being in the hospital. Sort of. Of course, part of that could be that the morgue didn’t paint its walls in primary colors. That almost made hanging out with dead people okay.
Except for that story he had heard from one of his buddies back in vice. The guy had known a homicide detective from Vegas who had made a trip down to the morgue just in time to see one of the corpses sit up and moan. According to the ME, it happened all the time. Didn’t faze him, but the detective had just about had a coronary.
Captain Merle cleared his throat. Man, that was an annoying habit.
“The second victim they found in the pool is dead as well?” he asked.
Trey looked up from the form he was filling out. If there was one thing worse than the paperwork, it was talking about the ones they couldn’t save.
“Yeah. The paramedics tried, but she’d just inhaled too much…”
Trey’s voice trailed off as the priest finished up the last rites on the body of the woman lying on the gurney. The nurse at his side pulled the sheet up and over the corpse’s head. Trey let out a huge sigh.
“Well, you know.”
Both Trey and the captain nodded at the pastor as he walked out past them. The captain called out to the reverend’s back.
“Sorry to keep running into you under such grave circumstances.”
“Yes,” The pastor stopped and turned back. “I couldn’t agree more.” He seemed to be looking for something in the faces of the captain and Trey before he continued. He gave a small smile, almost like he was half-laughing at himself. “I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I’m glad to see that she was wearing a cross.”
He gestured at his own collar. This time, his statement seemed aimed more at himself than at the two in front of him.
“If any of it is true, maybe she’s gone to a better place,” the pastor stated.
Trey had never had to cheer up a priest before. He wasn’t exactly sure where to start.
“Yeah, trust me, Father—”
“Please,” the man interrupted. “It’s just John.”
“Uh, yeah. Right. But look…anywhere is a better place than where she just was.”
The pastor nodded, distracted. “Let me know if you find any family. Under such…challenging circumstances, I’d like to give them comfort if I could.”
The captain stepped forward to shake the reverend’s hand. “We will.”
As the priest moved down the hall toward the elevator, the captain cleared his throat. Again. Maybe there was something wrong with the guy. Or maybe talking in that Darth Vader voice made his throat itchy. Trey stifled the impulse to ask as Captain Merle grumbled his next question.
“Where is the girl?”
“Dr. Charan i
s settling her in upstairs. Guess she’s stable enough to go into the regular peds ward.”
“So the doctor isn’t going to be calling the chief of d’s, complaining about Darc’s reckless behavior?” Yeah, it always came back to the ol’ CYA thing with the captain. Not that he had much of an A to be C’ ing, at least as far as Trey could see.
Trey shrugged as he finished up his paperwork. “I doubt it. I think for Janey, the trip actually helped. She’s got a death grip on that ratty ol’ teddy bear.”
“And you’re sure that you don’t know where Darc is?”
Trey signed his paperwork with a sweeping flourish and slammed the pen down, hard.
“Absolutely none.”
And now all he had to do was make a graceful exit without looking his captain in the eye. Trey, of course, knew exactly where Darc was. Trey’s partner was in pretty much the most awkward place he could be.
Trotting down the hallway, Trey rounded the corner, headed to the elevators, and found himself face-to-face with the priest, pastor, whatever.
The man of the cloth was munching on a bag of Sour Patch Kids that he must have picked up at the vending machines. The look he gave Trey wouldn’t have been out of place on a kid getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The reverend smiled, looking more than a little sheepish.
“Can’t help it. I love them.”
Trey grinned back at him. “Yeah, I’m a total sugar freak. Well, I was. I gave sugar up last year for Lent. Dropped, like, twenty-five pounds.”
“Wow. That’s impressive. I’m not sure I could do it.”
“Aw, come on. You gave up sex to be a priest, right? Sugar’s nothing.” Trey grimaced. “Sorry, shouldn’t have said sex around a priest. That’s just mean.”
The pastor laughed, a big, huge laugh that totally caught Trey off guard. “No, no. I’m not Catholic, remember? I’m Anglican. We can get married.” A brief shadow crossed the priest’s face and then vanished so fast, Trey wasn’t sure it had been real.
The bell for the elevator dinged, and Trey and the priest stepped in. The priest pushed the button for the lobby, the doors slid shut, and the elevator lurched upward. Trey turned to the pastor.
“So I have a question, Reverend—”
“I’m really not going to be able to get you to call me John, am I?” The cleric shook his head, chuckling.
“Honestly? Probably not. Went to Catholic school. Lots of rulers on my knuckles. That stuff sticks with you. Call one nun ‘babe,’ and God and all the saints’ fury rains down on you.”
Trey had never had a conversation like this with a priest before. This guy was kind of cool. Maybe if the priests at his church had been more like this one, he would’ve gone to Mass more. The priest winked at him. Winked. A priest. And not in a creepy way.
“I can only imagine,” he chuckled.
“Okay, so back to my question…Do you guys do Hail Mary’s and stuff?”
“Some do, some don’t. I don’t.” He shrugged, his grey sport coat bunching up at the shoulders.
“You mean you won’t assign me some Our Fathers or Hail Mary’s or something? It’s just that it’s been a long time since I confessed, and…you know…”
The elevator dinged for the lobby, but before the reverend walked out, he turned to Trey and smiled, his eyes crinkling up at the corners.
“Fine. How does five Hail Mary’s and five Our Fathers sound?” He walked out the doors but called out over his shoulder, “Oh, and Detective?”
“Yeah?”
“Get back to church.”
Trey left the lobby…smiling.
* * *
Mala peered up at the walls of the pediatric ward. She’d been here before but somehow hadn’t noticed what was there. The bright colors depicted a scene with a bunch of cartoon animals in some kind of magical forest.
Maybe it was just what she’d experienced over the last couple of days, but there was something downright creepy about that much concentrated fluff. She knew that it was to try to cheer up the sick kids in the wing, but honestly, she wasn’t sure it was doing its job. Kids aren’t stupid. Especially not kids that’re seriously sick. They usually know what’s up.
Beds lined the walls, and little Janey was in the one farthest away. She was rocking back and forth, her bear in a death grip. Mala moved over to sit on the edge of Janey’s bed. The little girl barely gave her a glance, all of her attention centered on her toy. Mala cleared her throat, looking for something to say to attract the little girl’s attention.
“We’re going to track down your family and get you out of here as soon as possible.” Even as she said it, Mala wanted to suck the words right back in. They were just so…small. How do you comfort a girl as young as Janey who had lost so much? There really wasn’t ever an answer to that question.
Janey frowned, then scooped up her paper and a gold crayon. She rough-sketched in a police badge and looked back up at Mala, her bright blue eyes questioning. Mala cleared her throat again, this time for a different reason. Hmm. How to field this one?
“I’m sorry, Janey. He’s not here.” Janey continued to stare up at her, with no change in her expression. Mala shifted on the edge of the bed. Yeah, she wasn’t answering the real question here.
“I know he saved you, honey, and you trust him…”
Okay, that time her expression changed. Janey glared at her, her eyes filled with steel.
“I can’t imagine how much you trust him.”
Mala halted, struggling for the right words to tell this little one what she needed to know to not get too disappointed. Janey had to understand that Darc wasn’t the one she should count on for comfort.
“It’s just that he’s not the most…He has significant emotional…”
This wasn’t working. Not even a little bit. Mala sucked on her teeth, thinking hard. How to couch this? It had to be positive to get past her hero-worship, but…
“He probably won’t be back, honey.” Ouch, that was abrupt, but at least now she knew where she was heading. “He’s got a job to do. An important job.”
Better. Maybe. Somewhat. At least Janey wasn’t glaring at her any longer.
“Now, why don’t you lie down?”
Mala tried to urge Janey back onto the bed, encouraging her toward sleep, but the girl fought back, her mouth a stubborn line. Janey pointed once more at the badge. She wasn’t going to sleep without seeing Darc. All right. Time for some tough love.
“I could give you something to help you sleep,” Mala warned.
Despite the stubborn set of Janey’s jaw, she shook her head at that and slowly lowered herself back down to the bed. But she didn’t close her eyes. Mala blew out a puff of air in frustration.
“I’ll be back in the morning. Maybe you’ll feel like talking then.”
But somehow Mala doubted it. She watched as Janey curled up with her bear in one arm and the picture of the detective’s badge in the other.
CHAPTER 7
Trey huffed up the last few steps of the fire escape that led up to Maggie’s apartment. Man, it was time to start exercising. How did Darc manage to keep his calves of steel? It wasn’t like he was hitting the gym every day. Knowing Darc, he was probably doing some freaky isometric stuff while he was supposed to be sleeping.
Wheezing up to the landing, Trey wasn’t at all surprised at the sight that greeted him.
Darc, his clothes streaked in blood from the pool, his scalp dripping from the constant Seattle rain, glared at the concrete block in front of him. His gaze was laserlike enough that anything less sturdy might have blown up by now. But the brick stayed right where it was, mocking them both.
Seriously, this scene was like something straight out of a ‘50s noir. Trey halfway expected Darc to fire up a cigarette, just to make the picture complete. He moved over to Darc’s side.
“Knew you’d be here.”
Darc didn’t even grunt in response. If it were anybody else, Trey would’ve figured he hadn’t heard. But…it
was Darc. Trey sat on the windowsill and pointed inside.
“Did you at least knock to let her know you’re here?”
Nothing but a stare, and not even at Trey. Trey was starting to feel like Costello to Darc’s Abbott, where Abbott was a non-talking genius nut job and there were no punch lines.
“You can’t keep doing this, you know.” Still nothing. “It was one thing when you were dating, but now…”
Without even a glance in Trey’s direction, Darc grabbed the cinder block and heaved it over the side of the fire escape. It exploded into a million pieces across the pavement. Well, that sucked.
“Um. That was…like, evidence.” At this point, Trey’s pauses were not so much for Darc to respond. They were more out of habit. “And nobody photographed…” Trey looked at Darc. Darc glanced up and then away in apparent disinterest. “Oh, wow.”
And Darc just continued brooding, like some dark hero in a graphic novel. Seriously, all the guy needed were tights in greyed-out colors. If you thought Batman could brood, well, you were in for a treat here.
“Granted, things are not going your way this week…”
Darc dragged his head up. He didn’t even have to change his expression to get his that’s the understatement of the year idea across.
“Okay, it’s been a week filled with crappy excrement, but you can’t play your ‘I’m autistic, so I get out of jail free’ card.”
His partner kept staring at him for a second or two longer, then peered out over the edge of the fire escape, apparently watching the rain fall through the glow cast by the streetlight. Trey continued.
“At least, not this time. This is too big.”
Conversations like this would be so much easier if there were two people talking. But hey, that was Darc. Love him or leave him, he wasn’t about to change anytime soon. And Trey knew Darc well enough to know that when he was walled off like this, nothing would get through to him. Well, almost nothing. Time to get him off the roof.