by Hopkin, Ben
It was pretty much the only day in the last two months when the clouds hadn’t covered the sky. Humidity plus hot sun plus exposed granite equaled death, as far as Trey was concerned.
Somehow, Darc seemed immune. He stalked over to the edge of the quarry, a site manager fluttering around, looking as nervous as a chicken in a fox den.
One of the uniformed cops approached from a nearby trailer. He called out to Trey.
“Hey!”
Trey waved the uni over, shading his eyes with his hand. It didn’t help.
“What’s up?”
The uniform grunted and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Workers called it in. It was weird, so we thought…”
Trey nodded. He had heard it before. “Yeah, who better than the freak squad?”
The cop shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. Trey decided to let him off the hook. This time. Trey turned to trot over to the side of the quarry, thought better of it, and walked. Slowly. Man, it was hot. And so early in the morning? Oy.
As he got close to the cliff, he saw that the site manager’s vibrating had ramped up a couple of notches. And he could see why. Darc was standing with his toes a couple of inches over the edge of the quarry and was leaning over. Trey decided to take pity on the poor suit.
“Darc. Back up a bit. You’re giving the guy a heart attack here.”
But not only did Darc not back up, he started looking like he wanted to climb down the sheer face of the quarry. Okay. The only thing to get the manager’s face to turn from purple back to dark red was to figure out what had Darc so focused. Trey moved close to the edge, fighting the vertigo.
And then he saw it.
Down on the floor of the quarry, two enormous boulders sat. They looked like they had been smashed together by some mythical giant. Between the two stones, three bodies had been crushed so badly that their hands were on one side of the seam separating the boulders, while their feet were yards away on the other. From where Trey and Darc stood, the scene seemed bloodless, the effect like some kind of freaky Salvador Dalí painting. Trey let out a whoosh of air.
“Oh, man. That’s like Wiley Coyote on acid.”
Darc’s eyes were darting around, probably seeing all kinds of clues or patterns or whatever the freak he saw. As for Trey, he was in the dark, even in the glaring sunlight. Par for the course.
“I don’t get it.”
The cop at his side perked up at that, his tone sarcastic. “Which part?”
“The killer goes from drowning to slashing to drowning and now crushing?”
His face a study in I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, the uni just shrugged his shoulders again. But Trey couldn’t let it sit at that.
“Is he just trying to check off all the murder verbs, or what?”
Darc stiffened up suddenly, stumbling sideways along the edge of the quarry. The site manager let out a bark of pure terror. Trey rushed over to his partner’s side, grabbing for his shirt.
“Whoa there. Crumbling cliff.” He pulled Darc back a step or two from the edge. “Stable ground. There ya go.”
Trey glanced over at the manager, who had his head between his legs and was breathing heavily through his nose. He patted the guy’s shoulder.
“Yeah. I feel ya.”
As Trey followed Darc out to the Rover, his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He reached in and flipped his phone open. It was dispatch.
“You guys need to head back over to the hospital as soon as possible.”
Trey looked ahead at his partner’s back, seeing the tight set of his shoulders. Darc was wound pretty tight. Whatever he was looking for here, Trey was betting he hadn’t found it. Which meant there was really only one way to go.
“Yeah. I think that’s where we’re heading anyway.”
Time to go terrorize a little girl again.
Sometimes Trey really hated his job.
CHAPTER 9
Mala watched from across the ward as the detectives entered. She moved to the middle of the room to meet them halfway. They were like a walking sitcom, those two. The tall, dark, and brooding straight man and the rumpled sidekick who was always spitting out punch lines.
Trey looked up at the red scribbles on the wall. “Wow. This just keeps getting…”
The detective trailed off, spinning around in a complete circle to take in all of the blood-red artwork. Problem here was that this wasn’t a stand-up routine, and there was no possible way to make a joke out of a little girl’s nightmare.
Darc passed right by Mala without even a sideways glance. His intensity brushed her back a step. She turned to watch the detective stalk up to Janey. The little girl scooted over and patted the ground next to her. Darc sank down inside the big badge that Janey had drawn.
Trey snorted. “Oh, yeah. They’re going to be BFFs.”
As the two silently communed, Mala sat down on one of the now-empty beds. The rest of the children had been moved to a far less “stressful” unit. If only she could say the same of Janey.
“She refused to move,” Mala explained to Trey. “We tried everything we could think of, short of brute force. And even there, I’m not sure but what she could take us. That kid’s fast. And wiry.”
“Tell me about it.” Trey chuckled, but his smile faded fast as he checked his cell phone, apparently awaiting some news. Mala had no idea what she’d called them away from, but her guess was that it couldn’t have been good. She glanced over at Janey, who appeared more at ease than she’d been since the last time Darc was here. Still…
“If she doesn’t eat or drink soon, we’re going to have to put her back on IVs.”
Trey waved a lazy hand at his partner and the little girl. “Well, you should be getting her a juice box or cookie or something, then,” he stated, “‘cause this could take a while.”
Mala looked back to the little girl and her brooding protector. In the little girl’s expression, she could see pain, determination, but now hope. Darc, though? Darc’s head swiveled slowly from side to side, apparently taking in the symbols on the walls. But his gaze seemed unfocused and vague.
“So, you have no idea?” Mala asked the rumpled detective. “No sense of what he does in these ‘trances’?”
All the air seemed to deflate out of Trey as he settled onto the bed beside her. His shoulders slouched a bit, and he stared down at his hands.
“You must know about image-based mathematics?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Trey’s head popped back up, his face becoming its usual, animated self. “Awesome! Can you explain it to me?”
“Um…” That was unexpected. Instead of getting some insight into the Dark Knight over there, she was going to have to explain the whole thing to his partner.
“Yeah,” Trey said. “I mean, I toss that term around when I have to, but…”
Rising, she grabbed a wheeled easel from the central play area of the ward, a slew of colored chalks in the tray at the bottom. She rolled it over to where Trey was waiting. Picking up a piece of pink chalk, Mala started on the board. Trey flopped down on his stomach on the bed, cupping his face in his hands. He put on an I’m paying attention expression, his eyes huge.
Maybe this would be a welcome retreat from the horror of this case.
“Okay,” Mala stated, drawing a 2 + 2 equation on the board. “Mathematical savants don’t see calculations as numbers.”
“Whoa. What? That can’t be right. How can you do math without numbers?” Trey’s face scrunched up in confusion.
“I know, right?” Even after all these years of study and clinical practice, this stuff still fascinated her. “But savants see the numbers in terms of shapes.” Mala drew tight-fitting bubbles around each of the numbers. “Now, you and I add one plus one and get two. However, savants put the ‘shapes’ of the numbers together…” Mala brought the two shapes side by side until they touched. With blue chalk, she outlined the negative space. “The remaining spa
ce between them is a new shape and hence a new number, which is the answer to the numerical equation. The end result is what Darc sees.”
The detective’s eyes dilated even further. “Oh, crap. Really?”
“Yeah. It almost seems silly at this basic level of math, but when you get into complex equations figuring into the millions”—Mala looked over to Darc as his eyes scanned back and forth, back and forth—”they’re not multiplying anything. The answer is instantaneous. It’s remarkable, really.”
“No kidding,” Trey said, glancing at his partner. “So, that’s what he’s doing now?”
“I would guess so. But the answers should be immediate.” Mala hadn’t had tons of clinical experience with autism or savants, but she’d studied their process in-depth. Many psychologists believed that the autistic state was actually an evolutionary step forward, that savants used far more of their brain, in far more situations, than “normal” humans. Yet with all of her research, Mala hadn’t run across a situation like Darc’s in any of her reading.
Trey flipped himself over onto his back and grunted. “Huh. Guess these freaky symbols are different.”
He pulled out his phone, opened up what looked like Tetris, and started playing, the cell emitting blips and beeps as he moved the pieces around. He glanced back over his shoulder at Mala.
“Best get comfy, Doc. It’s gonna be a loooonng day.” He settled back into his game. “Oh, and I call dibs on the bed.”
Mala nodded. She seriously doubted she could lie down. Despite her fatigue, her nerves were on edge. Perhaps she couldn’t decipher the killer’s bizarre symbols, but maybe she could unravel one mystery. Grabbing Darc’s file, Mala dug in.
* * *
Trey hated it when he was right. Five hours later, and Darc was still doing the “savant trance dance.” The captain had already called to complain about their lack of progress six times. That averaged out to more than once an hour. There was little any of them could do, though. They needed Darc. No one else had a clue as to how to proceed. Sure, the CSU guys had combed every crime scene, but, just like every other time, they had found only what the killer wanted them to find.
The symbols.
And the symbols were Darc’s thing.
Trey’s thing was that he had to eat every four hours. What could he say? He had a fast metabolism. And if he didn’t eat every four hours? Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. So here he was, strolling back into the peds ward after eating his “lunch” at the hospital cafeteria. Even in his own head, he couldn’t help but put quotes around that word. Anything that was made of meat that he couldn’t identify didn’t deserve to be called food. He could still taste it. That wasn’t a good thing.
At least he’d been able to supplement out of the vending machine. Fanta and Cheetos should be in their own food group. Hey, you were supposed to get color in your diet, right?
Pushing open the door to the ward, he saw that Darc had yet to move from his spot by Janey. To her credit, the girl hadn’t moved much either, though her head was now resting on Darc’s shoulder and she was fast asleep. Dude. If it weren’t for the fact that it was Darc, that would totally be a Kodak moment happening over there.
Trey spotted the doctor over in the makeshift office she’d set up. She was sitting in a chair by the side of the bed. He had woken up to find her in that same chair beside him, also conked out. He had felt a little bad about that. A little.
The doctor was leafing through a chart. Trey guessed it was Janey’s. Although maybe it was Darc’s. He wouldn’t put it past her. She was nearly as bad a dog to a bone as Darc. As Trey passed by her chair, he caught a whiff of her scent. It was clean, but not soapy. The smell of the ocean without the nasty fish stink.
She was a riddle wrapped inside an enigma, this child psychologist was. And pretty in that exotic, I can’t tell where in the heck you hailed from kind of way. But something had been bugging him. Well, with so many dead bodies and bloody symbols scrawled all over a peds unit’s wall, something in addition was bugging him.
He perched on the edge of the bed, catching the psychologist’s eye. She closed the file and dropped it into her lap, crossing her hands over it. She lifted one eyebrow at him.
“What is it, Detective?”
“Um. You can call me Trey. Since we’ve slept together and all.” He swept his arm back and forth from the bed to the chair.
Mala went still for a second, then dipped her head down, shaking it softly. Wisps of dark hair broken loose from her ponytail swept back and forth. Such a small gesture, yet it changed her whole face. She looked ten years younger.
“All right, then…Trey. Although I’m not sure how your girlfriend would feel about us sleeping together.” Her eyes glittered with a wicked light.
“How did you know I have a…?”
“Please,” the doctor said. “You’ve got taken written all over your face.”
Trey went to argue, but why bother? Mala got paid to deduce stuff like that. Besides, he kinda liked the fact that he had Maggie written on his face. He also decided he kinda liked this Mala chick. But he still wanted to know something. Hopefully it wouldn’t strain the rapport they had built.
“Okay, Mala. You’re a good doctor, right? I mean, you rock out loud, I’m guessing.”
“Uh…I…”
“C’mon,” Trey coaxed. “You’ve got super shrink written all over your face.”
Mala let out another soft chuckle. Yeah, Trey knew how to make the ladies laugh. He couldn’t deduce his way out of a paper bag, but putting people at ease? He had that down.
The doctor ducked her head, her dusky skin darkening another shade. Was she actually blushing?
“Yes,” she conceded. “Yeah, I’m good at what I do.”
“Right…” Here goes. “So why did you let Darc and me drag Janey all over Seattle? I’m guessing that’s not standard operating procedure for kid-head docs.”
Mala paused before answering, pursing her lips. She opened her mouth, then shut it, then took a deep breath through her nose. When she lifted her head, her expression was serious.
“That’s a bit…complicated.”
Ah, Trey knew that one. If a chick used the word “complicated,” it meant she didn’t want to talk. A chick not wanting to talk about her feelings. For most guys, it was the Holy Grail. It also usually foretold the end of a conversation. Luckily, Trey wasn’t most guys.
“I like complicated,” Trey said, crossing his legs, sipping his Fanta through a tiny straw. “You know, as long as you explain it to me slowly and thoroughly.”
Mala shook her head. “I think it is best we concentrate on Janey.”
Trey tossed a thumb toward the two on the floor. “I think Darc is doing enough concentrating for all three of us.”
The doctor’s eyes scanned over, and she finally sighed. “I’m guessing my supervisors will also be asking me that question before this is all done.”
“So practice on me,” Trey encouraged. He really, really, really needed something to take his mind off those bodies under the rocks. And the bodies in the wind tunnel. And the bodies in the taxis. Yeah, he really needed a distraction right about now. “It sounds like this particular ‘complicated’ probably started, like, way before Darc and I stumbled into your life…”
A faint smile flickered on Mala’s lips.
“Did you always want to be a shrinky-dink?” Trey shifted around on the bed, looking for a comfy spot. The sheets were stiffer than some cardboard he had come across in his life, and he’d felt sandpaper that was smoother. They expected kids to sleep on this stuff?
“No,” Mala finally answered. “I wanted to be a museum curator. I double-majored in ancient languages and art history. Loved them both.”
“What made you change your mind?” Trey asked, then licked his finger, sticking it into the bottom of the Cheetos bag and catching all the crumbs in the corner.
Mala looked away for a minute, and when she turned back, her eyes were glimmering. She to
ok another deep breath and continued. “My brother.”
From her sigh, Trey knew this part of the story didn’t end well. But what “complicated” story did? This was why most men bailed. Heck, even a lot of women bailed here. But that was what made Trey the conversation ninja. Tears didn’t dissuade him. If anything, it meant he was getting closer to the truth.
His partner might be all about figuring out crime puzzles. Trey was all about figuring out people. What made them tick. If you knew what was really going on inside, you could help on the outside. Like how he knew Darc. Really knew him. How else could a screw-up from vice squad land a gig with the department’s golden child?
As Mala breathed in and breathed out, memories, feelings, and pain crossing her features, Trey gave her space and turned his attention to Darc and Janey. The girl’s features were so placid. Peaceful. She was a princess who had called her knight.
Children got it—man, they really did. For such small creatures, they could really see the big picture. Darc was like a beacon in a stormy night. A battered, torn, and damaged beacon, which made him an even more trusted beacon. Why? Because Darc would never run away. He’d seen some stuff. He’d lived through a hell most others wouldn’t want to imagine, yet here he was, getting battered again.
The guy was like the Energizer Bunny of beacons.
And Janey knew she was in an epic storm. A storm most could never hope to survive, except she had Darc and his unwavering light. Well, the light, plus a bunch of really annoying personal quirks, but Janey probably couldn’t care less about those. Not when his light shone so brightly. Bathing her in its surety.
A twinge of jealousy surprised Trey. Back as a kid, he’d always wanted to be that knight in shiny armor. Turned out, he was just the guy who kept someone else’s armor shiny. But you know what? If that helped save a little girl like Janey, he’d buff that metal all night long.
A sniffle brought Trey back to Mala. This case had made her raw. Maybe too raw. He wanted to know but didn’t want to pry. “You know what? Forget it. It’s no biggie. I was just curious.”