by Hopkin, Ben
He would be a formidable opponent at the best of times, and Darc was injured.
“I need to let you know, Detective,” the man informed him, “that even if you manage to overpower me, the bomb will still detonate. Soon.”
“Explain.”
“Ah.” The Mayor smiled. “Such directness. But please, don’t try to distract me.” He moved closer to Darc, lashing out with his fist, connecting with Darc’s wounded side. The pain was intense enough to almost drown out the Mayor’s next words. “You know already, don’t you? You’ve seen how the explosive device is rigged.”
“The cell phone,” Darc croaked, wheezing.
“Yes, the cell phone. An email is scheduled to go out as a text message to that phone and others just like it all along the entire parade.”
Darc felt the streaming glow of the colors shift and move with each new statement the Mayor made. The empty spaces in the tapestry were filling in.
Finding the full pattern could lead to a solution, but Darc could feel his energy ebbing away with every beat of his heart. His shirt stuck to him where the blood continued to seep through, the wet area growing. He had to understand why the Mayor was doing this, and quickly.
“Why are you attacking the city?”
“Detective Darcmel, I’m disappointed. You haven’t understood something as simple as my motive?” Another blow punctuated the question. Darc stumbled to his knees for a moment before pushing himself back to standing.
“It is illogical.”
The Mayor sighed. “There is nothing illogical about it. I am gathering the best minds, the best bodies, the best spirits together in one place. They will congregate around the tragedy.”
He kicked out, but Darc managed to spin to the side, avoiding the blow. Darc snatched the Mayor’s foot and dropped his other elbow down in between the bones of the shin. The Mayor cried out in pain, but managed to pull back his leg.
Darc felt the conflict inherent in the Mayor’s statement, a conflict clarified by the glowing strands of blue and green that were dancing about in his mind. There was no hint of disharmony in his inner self. All the discordance was centered in his side.
“What of the heroes killed in the blast?” Darc asked, forcing the words out.
“I don’t understand.”
Darc circled the Mayor with shuffling steps, working to maneuver him closer to the float. The man would counter with every step Darc took, going exactly where Darc was trying to send him. All that remained was to keep consciousness.
“In the initial blasts, some of the best and brightest will certainly be killed,” Darc responded. It was simple mathematics. An indisputable fact.
It also seemed to rattle the Mayor. “That… that is part of the price that will need to be paid by the city.”
“There is no way of measuring the loss from the crowd. You are depleting the supply of those the city needs.”
“That’s not true.”
Darc took the final step, urging the Mayor into position with his back against the front of the float. All it would take is one more foot.
The mayor took that step.
Rushing at the Mayor, Darc lowered his head at the last moment, spearing the man in the chest. He fell backward onto the front part of the float, pulling himself up and onto the main flat area the front that appeared to have been designed for dancing.
Fake trees with the oversized circular saws shook from the impact, but before Darc could follow up on his attack, the mayor had moved around to the side of the float, avoiding Darc.
But in his avoidance, the mayor opened up a direct path. Straight to the driver’s seat. Running as fast as he could while keeping consciousness, Darc approached the wheel.
From around the corner of the float appeared Trey, wielding one of the fallen chainsaws from the float.
“You drive,” he said, pulling the chain of the saw and cranking on the motor. “I’ll take care of the Mayor.”
* * *
Trey stalked forward, keeping at least one tree between himself and the Mayor. Trey had been there long enough to see what kind of punches the guy could land, and he wasn’t excited to have any part of that action.
“Detective Keane,” the mayor addressed him. “I’ll admit, I didn’t think you’d make it this far.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.” Trey countered around to the side as the older man moved around the tree that separated them from one another.
And then Darc must have gotten the motor running, as the float suddenly lurched forward, throwing both Trey and the mayor off balance. Trey was pushing himself back up to standing when he felt a blow land on his left arm, crushing the newly healed bone there, left over from their last case. Letting out a scream, Trey fell back toward the middle of the float, where there were more trees to protect him.
“You think you’re ready for this game. What you don’t realize is that you’ve never been more than just one of the pawns, ready to be discarded whenever necessary.”
Well, that stung. Enough so that it propelled Trey into motion. He lashed out with his foot, catching the mayor square in the face. There was a mild sensation of surprise as the man’s nose was crushed under his heel.
He’d scored a major hit.
Trey recovered from his shock enough to follow up with another couple of blows, mostly landed with his legs. Every time he tried to wield the heavy chainsaw, especially with just the one arm functioning, he was slow enough that the mayor could dodge.
“You can’t beat me,” he yelled at Trey. “The floats will still explode.”
“Oh, see, that’s where you’re wrong,” Trey answered. “You should’ve seen how fast Cody caved once Mala started in on him. He gave up the codes in a millisecond.”
The mayor growled and attempted to rally, swinging his fists in a flurry at Trey’s head. But he couldn’t get past the whirling blade of the chainsaw.
And Trey still had the man on the ropes, in spite of his arm. The blow to the nose seemed to have at least partially blinded him. The mayor reeled back under Trey’s onslaught, grasping at the trunks of the false trees he battered up against. He knocked out one of the circular saws, which sang a metallic song as it bounced against the floor of the float.
“Who’s the pawn now?” Trey yelled at him, kicking out once more.
The last blow sent the older man to his knees, facing away from Trey. Scanning the crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle from the safety of the curb, the mayor called out to them as he staggered back to his feet.
“Oh Lord, my God! Is there no help for the widow’s son?”
What the hell was that?
But the question was driven out of Trey’s mind as the float gave a huge lurch. Glancing back, Trey could see that Darc’s head had fallen to the steering wheel. He must have passed out and landed his foot right on the brake.
It was all Trey could do to keep from tipping forward off of the float, but what happened next drove all such mundane considerations right out of his mind.
Another of the circular saws, loosened by the earlier fight, was propelled forward from the inertia of the rapid stop. The blade spun in the air, headed straight toward the mayor, who had turned to face it at the last moment.
The metal circle struck the man in the skull, but didn’t stop there. It sliced cleanly through his entire torso, bisecting him from head to groin.
Before Trey even had a moment to react, the momentum of the blow careened the mayor directly into the path of Trey’s still spinning chainsaw. Made clumsy by the use of only one hand, Trey couldn’t move out of the way fast enough.
The chainsaw cut straight through the man’s waist, completing the drawing and quartering of the madman. Blood sprayed everywhere, coating the blade, the float and Trey as the four sections of what was once a formidable serial killer fell to the ground.
Trey heard a voice screaming, and realized with some degree of alarm that it was his.
“Queen me, bitch!”
And then he
slumped to the blood-slicked floor of the float and knew no more.
EPILOGUE
There had been a second, right after Janey saw Trey and Darc covered in blood, when she’d been scared. Really scared.
But right now, she was happier than she remembered being in a long, long time.
They were all at the hospital, and Trey was being cranky with the nurse because she was giving him a shot. Popeye kept calling him a baby and Janey kind of had to agree. He was whining an awful lot. Even more than Popeye usually did.
Mala had spent the whole time right next to Darc’s bed, at least as soon as he came out of surgery. The doctor had said lots of things that Janey couldn’t understand, but the lines in her head told her that everything was going to be okay.
Trey was complaining, Darc was resting and Mala was holding onto Darc’s hand like she was never going to let go ever, ever, ever. It was a good night, even if the parade had been ruined.
Popeye said he would never go to a parade again, but Janey told him he was being silly. If you didn’t do things you liked just because somebody did something bad with it, it was like you let the bad person be in charge of you.
Janey was in charge of herself. Well, Mala too. And Darc. And even Trey. But that was because they loved her and she loved them. That wasn’t really like they were in charge. It was just that she knew they wanted to help her.
She trusted them.
It was funny. Not the kind of funny that makes you laugh, but the funny that makes you think.
If the bad things had never happened to her, she wouldn’t know Darc or Trey or Mala or Maggie. And not knowing them would be so sad. She missed her mommy and daddy. So much. So much that sometimes she cried and cried for no reason.
But they were still there with her. She could think of them and their voices were inside her head, telling her that they loved her. So she didn’t miss them quite so much.
And she loved her new family so much.
They were a family.
Her family.
She moved in closer to Mala, tucking herself under the arm that wasn’t holding onto Darc. Mala looked down at Janey, her eyes filling up with tears.
“I love you, Janey.”
And Janey answered back, using her hands to sign.
I love you, too.
Sinister – The wrap-up short story
CHAPTER 1
“Aw, man. I really used to like the zoo.”
Detective Trey Keane was standing in front of the Python exhibit in the Reptile House, watching as the reticulated python behind the glass continued trying to swallow the body of a human being whole. That was an image he was never going to be able to get out of his head. Ever.
The new CSI intern, Rachel Mannis, looked like she was turning a strange color of green. Of course, that could have just been the fluorescent lights. Seriously. No one looked good under fluorescents. But then she spoke.
“I don’t… I never…” She glanced back at the body and gagged.
“Yeah,” Trey said, patting her on the shoulder. “Guy getting swallowed by a snake. Not something they can prepare you for in school.”
She looked up at him with big eyes. Gagging, she spun around to face the exit and then rushed out.
Trey sighed. “Is it my breath?” he called out after her.
Good help was always so hard to find. Apparently it was even worse than normal in the CSI unit.
The ME was a total douche, none of the unit seemed to like Trey and Rachel’s predecessor had held Janey, Dr. Mala Charan’s foster daughter, at gunpoint, while trying to help the mayor of Seattle in a conspiracy to blow up a Halloween parade. Wasn’t much of a chance he was going to keep his job after that, Freemason brother or no.
The new intern seemed like a great girl, but she was going to have to develop a stronger stomach if she was going to work in this department. Trey looked back over at the python, which had convulsed again, swallowing a bit more of the guy’s hip. He felt the contents of his stomach roil.
Okay, maybe he understood where she was coming from.
An older woman, looked to be in her mid to late 50s, approached Trey, her face set in a stern expression that Trey was pretty sure she must have learned from nuns. Trey was doing what he could to not have flashbacks to Catholic school.
“Detective,” she said, her voice a perfect match for her expression. “I am the docent here.”
“The whosit now?” Trey asked.
Somehow, the woman’s expression worsened. Wow. Trey hadn’t expected that. This was off-the-charts unpleasantness. That was usually reserved for people who had dated him. Well, before he met Maggie, anyway.
“I am the docent,” she repeated, stretching out the word. Doe-sund. “That means that I work with the educational aspects of the zoo. Working with school groups.”
“Oh,” Trey said. Really, was there anything more to say? He was still trying to figure out why this woman wanted to talk to him. “Shouldn’t you be docent-ing or something, then? Sorry, but I’ve got a crime scene to clear.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the snake and the half-eaten man. Yeah, that was going to be easier said than done. A deep sigh issuing forth from the old woman reclaimed his attention, and he turned back around to face her.
“I cannot do my job properly without access to the reptile house,” she replied in a prim tone. “It is the students’ favorite exhibit.”
“I have no idea how long it’s going to take, Mrs.…?”
“Ms. Phillips.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Phillips,” Trey said, waving back at the exhibit. “But until I can get that body out of that snake, the snake sanctuary’s closed.”
The woman gave Trey one last beady-eyed glare and turned to leave. Trey shuddered. She did a spot-on impersonation of one of the Sisters at St. Johns. As she turned to leave, he thought he heard her mutter something about how she never should have moved here.
How could anyone feel that way about Seattle? Okay, it rained all the time, but that just made everything around so green. And there were hipsters everywhere, but that meant good food and good coffee. It was all about tradeoffs when it came to where you wanted to live.
“Hey, Keane!” one of the unis called out. “Where’s Darc?”
“What, I can’t show up at a crime scene on my own? We come as a matched set or something?” Trey answered back.
The uni… Trey was pretty sure his name was Halverson… got a puzzled look on his face. “Well, you are partners.”
Right. There was that. “He’s out on a date.”
“Whoa,” Dominguez, one of the CSI guys, whistled. He’d been in the department long enough to know Trey’s partner pretty well. “Darc’s dating someone? She, like, got two heads or something?”
“Hey, hey!” Trey barked. “That’s my partner you’re talking about. And no. She’s only got the one head, but she’s got twice the brains of a caveman like you, Dominguez.”
The rest of the team ooohed and aaahed about that one, poking elbows into the investigator’s ribs. For his part, Dominguez seemed to take the teasing in stride.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said to his teammates, chuckling. “Just wait, cabrones. I’ll find a way to get you all back.” He leveled a look at Trey. “You most of all, ese.”
The ME, Dr. Richardson, pushed through the midst of his team, treating them like the rabble he seemed to think they were. “It might be a good idea for you to call him. He will want to see this.” The doctor gave a general wave to the cage in which the python continued to choke down the victim.
“But they’re at a musical,” Trey answered back.
“And they don’t have cell reception in the theatre?”
“But… it’s… you know… the touring company of Beauty and the Beast. They were like a hundred and fifty bucks a ticket.”
The doctor gave a rather pointed glance at the half-eaten body in front of them and raised his eyebrow. Trey might not like him much, but the ME sure knew how to communicate a
lot with very little effort.
The doctor began to move off once more, then seemed to think better of it and turned back. “Oh, and is Dr. Charan coming?”
Wow. This was awkward. But then again, Trey had never really liked the ME, so he decided to give Richardson the bad news straight. And with relish.
“I’m sure she will. That’s who he’s out on a date with.”
The ME’s face turned a similar shade to the recently fled intern’s. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, you didn’t know?” Trey goaded the doctor. “Yeah, they’re going steady. I think that’s what the kids are calling it these days.”
The examiner made a face like a wrinkled apple and turned back to do whatever it was that MEs do. As for Trey? He was doing the best he could not to laugh.
At least until he pulled out his phone to text Darc.
Mala was not going to be a happy camper.
* * *
Janey was in a big theatre with Darc and Mala. They were holding hands. It was kind of funny, because Darc kept moving his fingers around like he didn’t know what he was doing. It made Janey laugh.
Who didn’t know how to hold hands?
Then Popeye said something about how Janey didn’t really know either, so she shouldn’t laugh at Darc. That was weird. Usually it was Janey that was telling Popeye not to laugh at someone. And Popeye never protected anyone but Janey.
But the show was about to start, so she didn’t have time to argue with him about it. There was music, a lot of it. It was really pretty, but Popeye kept complaining that he’d heard it all before in the movie.
Janey told him to hush.
They were here because Mala was in trouble. Well, that’s not what she had said, but that’s what was happening. The stupid social worker Richard was being a meanie and he was making Mala write about all the things they did together.
And then, all of the sudden, Mala got the tickets. The very next day.