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

Page 37

by Hopkin, Ben


  She needed to know what was happening over there, but Popeye wouldn’t go to check it out. He was such a chicken.

  And then there was someone by her bed. She could hear the breathing. She didn’t want to open her eyes up to see who it was, but she did it anyway. Sometimes you had to do things you didn’t like. Daddy said that.

  But when she opened her eyes, she was happy. Super-duper happy.

  The person beside the bed was the tall man.

  Darc.

  He was drawing a badge around the bed, making a big circle around her and Popeye. He looked up at her and smiled. It was a nice smile.

  “It’s all right. I’m here, Janey.”

  That was the first time he had said her name. Not her real name, she knew that. But that girl wasn’t really her anymore. That girl had a mommy and a daddy and lived in a big new house.

  She was Janey now. And Janey still had Popeye. And she had Darc.

  Darc lay down by the side of the bed inside the badge and propped his head on his arm to watch over her. Janey smiled and snuggled down in her bed, feeling safer than she had in a long time.

  And then she went right to sleep.

  EPILOGUE

  Trey knew it was a dream. And that was okay. Because this dream was filled with talking animals. Three bunnies, four squirrels, and a beaver, to be precise.

  The beaver, whose name was Tesla, for some weird reason, was trying to get Trey to join him and the rest of the furry creatures on their trip. They were headed to a land where the rocks were soft and edible and tasted of cotton candy and bacon. And in his dream, that sounded glorious. Perfection.

  Trey had no desire to wake from this dream, although the talk of the bacon did make him realize that at some point he would need to get up, if only to be able to consume his breakfast meats. Trey did love his breakfast meats.

  But for now, he was content to follow behind Tesla and his motley crew of cutesies. One of the rabbits, a plump fellow named Jack, was complaining about his wife and kids and how they never gave him a moment to himself. Having hundreds of offspring would do that to a guy, but Trey thought it impolite to offer unasked-for advice, especially in a dream.

  There was some sort of a sound that didn’t quite seem to fit in with the fuzzy landscape around him. Trey figured it was probably not part of the dream, so it was best to just ignore it. The smell of frying sausage would be sure to wake him up when it was really time to get up, right?

  Besides, Roxie, a spitfire little squirrel, was jabbering at him, and it took every bit of his concentration to understand what the hell she was talking about. Squirrels. They were almost as bad as seagulls. But they did have nice tails.

  And then Trey felt a presence above him. He glanced up, but there was nothing there. Once more, it was pretty clear this wasn’t part of the dream.

  He tried to ignore it, but his newfound cuddly friends faded. Still, Trey squeezed his eyes shut more tightly.

  Like he’d been thrown out of a slingshot, Trey awakened, his eyes snapping open to find…

  Darc standing over him.

  No, just no. Trey closed his eyes again. This had to be a bad dream. A nightmare, really. But he could feel the sulking presence leaning over him, studying him. Then Trey remembered where in the hell he was.

  Maggie’s apartment.

  Crap.

  Trey opened his eyes, tilting his head to find Maggie sleeping. That would not do. He’d just gotten her settled down from the whole “not only did I almost die, but Darc knows about us” talk. He went to get out of the bed, when he noticed another figure standing next to Darc. A small figure. A figure with her little hand in Darc’s.

  “Janey?” he hissed, then instantly regretted it. Maggie stirred as Trey slipped from the bed.

  He put both hands on Darc’s chest and backed him out of the room. Once the bedroom door was shut and they were safely in the living room, Trey demanded, “What in the hell do you think—”

  “Together,” Darc interrupted. “We—”

  “No!” Trey barked. “There is no we with you and Janey. Dude, do you realize what you have done? You’ve kidnapped a ward of the state.”

  Darc’s features clouded. “She came freely.”

  How was he going to explain to Mr. Super Brainiac that it just didn’t work that way? Maybe, just maybe, if he could get Janey back to the group home before morning roll call, they could avoid the massive browbeating from the captain that loomed on the horizon.

  “Look,” Trey said, “Let me get a jacket and—”

  “She’s alive,” Darc said.

  His partner and his weird segues. Trey nodded to Janey. “Yeah, even I can tell that.”

  “No,” Darc said. “Not her.”

  Whether it was the head trauma or the sleep deprivation, Trey just wasn’t getting it. “What ‘her’?”

  “Mala,” Darc stated. “She is alive.”

  7th Sin – The sequel to the #1 hard boiled mystery 9th Circle

  PROLOGUE

  A sense of anticipation surged through the Lord’s servant like an electric current. The feeling was akin to sexual excitement, but it was so much more than that. More full. More refined. More exalted.

  The Lord’s work remained for the servant to fulfill.

  Not like that other. The man who had claimed the same divine origins for his cleansing, but who had taken the lives of innocents. And he was now dead. A clear sign of his failure before the Almighty.

  Martyrs died too, of course, but always with a strengthening of their designs. There was nothing like that happening in the Emerald City. It still reeked of depravity and decay. It still swam with the murky runoff of a million evil acts.

  It was a city ripening for a dark harvest.

  And here was the one who was the worker in the vineyard, preparing to do the work of the Master.

  The servant’s hands trembled with the urgency of the task before them. There would be much for them to do. Hands washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. Hands made ready. Made holy.

  The servant of the Lord watched as the subject of his observation primped and preened. Visions of the “changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins” of Isaiah washed before the servant’s eyes. Isaiah. Indeed, Isaiah had been a man of God.

  The figure came back into sharp focus.

  As the servant moved through the silence and peace of the deadly darkness, the continued sayings of the prophet walked alongside. The servant listened and smiled as the soul filled with the eternal light of the words from on high.

  And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty.

  Fitting words for the task at hand.

  CHAPTER 1

  Janey!

  Dr. Mala Charan’s eyes shot open.

  She was nestled in her bed, safe within her bedroom, the light from her alarm clock casting a soft green glow across the pattern of her blue and white bedcover. The display indicated that it was 2:37 am. Everything was in its place, familiar and comforting.

  This was dreadfully wrong.

  She shouldn’t be here. The last memory she had was of the priest lashing out with horrid and violent precision to slit the throat of the guard in Janey’s hospital room. He had turned to face Janey, moving toward the bed, as Mala had broken from her stupor and rushed to guard the mute little girl, her heart pounding in her throat.

  A hand had held a pungent cloth to her mouth, the odor fruity and sweet. And then there was nothing. Nothingness.

  Until now.

  Mala turned on the bedside lamp, whipped the covers off of her body and pushed herself to her feet, noticing in passing that she was dressed in her purple satin pajamas. What was going on here? If she hadn’t been sure of her own memories and experiences, she would be questioning whether the whole thing had been some horrific nightmare.


  But that had definitely happened. Father John had killed the guard. The memory was far too distinct and clear and connected to other events from the last few days to have just been some elaborate subconscious concoction.

  Moving around the room, Mala found nothing out of order. Things were just as she had left them before she headed back to the hospital room to stay with Janey. She’d made just a quick stop-off for a change of clothes… and glancing to her right, there they were, hanging over the chair of the desk that sat against the wall opposite the bathroom.

  There was something off about all of this. Something other than the fact that she couldn’t account for how she had gotten back to her apartment. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but the… feel… of the room was wrong.

  Mala strode into the bathroom, looking in the mirrored cabinet, under the sink, behind the shower curtain that covered the bathtub. Looking for… what? What was she trying to find? Something that would explain her sensation of wrongness, maybe?

  But nothing was wrong. Nothing had been disturbed. Even the box of tampons under the sink had the same number that had been there before. Everything looked completely and utterly normal.

  So why did she feel so jumpy?

  It was time to stop running around and figure this out. How would Darc do this? Mala had never seen anyone analyze available information better than Detective Robi Darcmel. His cognitive abilities surpassed any that she had ever seen.

  And while the savant aspect of his intellect was clearly beyond her, Mala knew herself to be a capable and intelligent woman. Time to demonstrate it.

  Time to do a little detective work.

  Everything around her looked normal, but Mala could not get away from her sensation of oddness. Okay, perhaps she should go with that. All looked like it was in order. How did it feel? Running her fingers over her pajamas and the bedcover, something did indeed seem not quite right, but she couldn’t quite identify what that was.

  Smell? There was the scent of the potpourri that she kept in the bathroom, cinnamon and clove and orange. But that was it.

  Wait.

  No it wasn’t. There was a faint odor of something else. Something rawer, which she hadn’t noticed due to the more familiar smell of the spices in the air.

  Paint. Glue. Something chemical that had recently dried.

  It had been at least a year since she’d had anything painted or had carpet installed. Nothing should smell like that in her apartment. Mala felt her pulse in her temples as she tried to quiet her harsh breathing. She kept her face as neutral as she could. If what she was beginning to suspect was true…

  Slowing her breathing down to the point that she could hear the ambient noise in the room, Mala’s fears were confirmed. Her heater had always had a slight metallic whir. Now, air was moving through the vents, but no whir was present.

  So unless her furnace repair guy had broken into her place to fix her heater—doubtful, since he was a lazy ass—this was not her apartment. Looking around, it seemed impossible. The placement of all of the objects in the room were so exact in their replication of her own living space.

  Brushing her hand over her pajamas, she realized what had bothered her before. The fabric wasn’t worn enough. She’d had them for at least a year and a half, and the cloth had broken down a bit. But these were new.

  Tiny details. Ones that would be easily overlooked. Mala continued to keep her face a still mask, showing nothing to the outside world. She refused to move to the door of her bedroom, as much as her body was screaming at her to do so. There was no need. It was almost certainly locked from the outside. Because she had realized something else as she had been examining the room.

  Mala had been staring right at the priest when the cloth had been placed over her mouth and nose. It hadn’t been him. There was someone else helping Father John.

  And whoever that person was had imprisoned her here. In this carbon copy of her own domicile. In a prison that suggested that her captor had an intimate knowledge of her.

  Her body wanted to shake with shock and fear, but Mala suppressed the response. She would continue to show nothing as she figured out what kind of person could have done this. Once she knew with whom she was dealing, she would get herself out of here.

  She hoped.

  * * *

  “Mala. She is alive.”

  Detective Trey Keane felt his heart rate soar. He had thought that it couldn’t get much higher than it had been a moment ago when he had opened his eyes from a deep sleep to see his partner, Detective Robi Darcmel, looming over his bed—and then looked to Darc’s side to see little Janey, who should be in a group home sleeping off her multiple traumas right about now.

  But here they were in the living room, and Darc was telling him that the woman whose head they had seen bobbing around in a cauldron filled with boiling blood… was alive. Trey battled between the surge of hope he felt swell up in his chest and the reality of what his eyes had seen.

  “Dude, we saw her…” Trey glanced down at Janey, who was looking up at him with big eyes. Trey looked at his partner and mouthed the word head. “Separated from her body, man. There’s no way she made it out of that hospital room alive.”

  Darc shook his head, one sharp shake to negate what Trey was saying. “It was wax. Just like the priest’s.”

  Trey sat down. Hard. He hadn’t chosen to sit down, really. It was just a reaction to way too much information coming his way. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been a chair in his immediate vicinity, so Trey was now on the ground, looking up at his partner and the little girl. Maybe he’d stay here for a minute or two. Yeah, that seemed like a good idea.

  “Mala’s… alive?” Trey pulled his knees into his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “That’s… I mean that’s… Wait. How do you know that she’s alive?”

  “Janey drew a picture,” Darc responded, holding down a piece of paper. Trey grabbed it and held it close to his face. He couldn’t make anything out. Perhaps that was because it was the middle of the night and the only light was coming from the street outside. Trey switched on the lamp next to the couch and winced as his eyes adjusted.

  “Just for the record, I’m okay with you coming to visit me during normal daytime hours,” Trey complained as he studied the picture in front of him. There was a lot of red, which was typical of Janey’s pictures, and a sad commentary on what she’d been put through at such a young age. There were also several figures standing around, with Janey in the bed. Trey squinted at the drawing, his eyes going a bit crossed in the process. “I don’t get what I’m supposed to be looking at here. All I see is people and what looks like a whole lot of blood.”

  Darc pointed at each of the figures in the picture. “That is the guard who was watching over Janey. This is Father John. Here is Mala—”

  “Wait. Then who is this other one behind the doc? The one that looks like he’s in a nurse’s mask” Trey gestured to behind Mala.

  “That is the person Janey saw abduct Dr. Charan.”

  “Hold the phone. You said the priest was over there.” Trey shifted his focus to the part of the drawing Darc had indicated earlier. This was confusing.

  “Yes,” Darc replied. “That is the priest, in the process of killing the guard. This individual is the one who abducted Mala.”

  “Oh! Gotcha.” Trey had it now. He was just a little slow on the uptake at one o’clock in the morning. “That’s the Henry guy from the slaughterhouse, right?”

  “Not according to Janey. She had seen Henry in the underground chapel, but when I asked her if that was who had taken Mala, she shook her head in negation.”

  Okay. It was maybe time to get off the floor. Trey pushed himself up to his feet and slumped onto the sofa. This was a lot to process at the best of times.

  “So… the priest had two helpers?” Darc gave Trey the beginnings of a frown, his typical expression when Trey was testing his patience. Not fair in this particular set of circumstances, but it was true that Trey
wasn’t on his A-game right now. Or even B or C. Trey rubbed at his forehead, staving off the beginnings of a headache. “Right. Moving on. But just because Father John didn’t take her doesn’t mean she’s not dead.”

  Darc moved into the pool of light cast by the lamp. “That is correct, but my assessment is that if she were to be killed, it would have happened immediately, as it did the guard. I believe she is being held.” Janey stirred at his side, nodding her head, her eyes bright.

  And there was a whole different set of problems. “Fine. But Janey can’t come, Darc.”

  “We need her. She is the only one who has seen the kidnapper.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Trey muttered. “And he’s six-foot-two, has a shaved head and an annoying habit of showing up in the wee hours of the morning.”

  Darc’s brow furrowed. “Your description does not fit the drawing Janey made.”

  “No,” Trey shot back. “But it does fit the guy standing in front of me. Dude. You kidnapped a little girl. I’m not even going to talk about the fact that it’s way past her bedtime.”

  “It was not a kidnapping. The worst charge that would be made against me would be that of custodial interference in the second degree. A misdemeanor. The likelihood is that I would never be prosecuted.”

  Damn that Darc and his superior knowledge of the statues of Washington state. Still. This was not going to go well when the people from the group home woke up and found Janey missing.

  “All right, all right.” Trey held up his hands. “I don’t have any other choice. I’m going to have to call the Captain. Then we’ll get Mala.”

  Captain Merle would know what to do. Sorting through the politics of a situation was his job, right? And he wouldn’t be that pissed off at having to wake up at this hour, right? It wasn’t like he already had issues with Trey’s performance as a detective.

  Trey sighed.

  Somehow, he was less than confident as he picked up the receiver and dialed.

  * * *

 

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