by Hopkin, Ben
Janey sometimes saw colored lines in her head. And they told her things about the way people acted. Or sometimes about how things fit together. But even without the lines telling her stuff, she would have figured this one out.
The curtains in the front of the stage opened up and bright lights turned on, and all of a sudden Janey wasn’t so worried about why they were here. She was just watching what was happening out there in front of her.
Then a young man came out in funny clothing and started talking. He looked like a prince and he was very handsome. Janey was starting to think that this musical was going to be okay. Maybe.
“Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young prince lived in a shining castle…”
And then, Darc’s phone vibrated.
“Darc,” Mala whispered. “You were supposed to turn that off.”
“That would not be responsible. Trey might need me,” Darc answered in his regular voice. That made everybody around them turn around and look at them with mad faces. Popeye said they all looked like they had to go potty. That was not polite, but it didn’t surprise Janey. Popeye was a naughty bear.
“Darc, shh!” Mala said. “Lower your voice.”
Darc pulled out his phone and looked at the message that was glowing there. Janey could see what it said, and that it was from Trey. It was about a crime scene. At the zoo again. All of a sudden, she didn’t want to see this stupid musical.
Mala looked at the text, then at Darc and then at Janey. She sighed.
“Okay, I can see this isn’t going to work. Everybody out.” As they got up and started moving down the aisle, making the grumpy people even grumpier, Mala said something else under her breath. “There’s five hundred bucks down the drain.”
Darc turned back and corrected her. “Four hundred and fifty.”
“No, I got a t-shirt for Janey.” she answered. “And I’m still counting this as going to see a musical in my report to Richard.”
That sounded great to Janey. She would get a new shirt that would have Beauty and the Beast on it, and she’d still get to go to a crime scene.
This night was turning out great. Even Popeye thought so.
Of course, that might have something to do with them going to where the lady bears were. Popeye didn’t say anything to that.
But he looked pretty smug.
* * *
As they walked through the entrance of the zoo, Mala dealt with a bizarre sense of déjà vu. The last time she and Janey had been here, they’d found a foot and Mala had ended up illegally confiscating all the patrons’ cell phones on the off chance they had taken a picture with Janey in it. The thought of having a chance image of her foster daughter at a crime scene had given Mala fits.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Richard Templeton, Janey’s social worker, didn’t seem to have it out for her. It seemed that no matter what she did to try to make things better, he got more and more offended. There had been moments where Mala felt paralyzed as a mother, terrified of what Richard would think.
After her last successful confrontation with Templeton, Mala was feeling much better about being able to handle anything he threw at her. That being said, she had no desire to tempt fate by waving Janey’s involvement in his face.
His newest monkey wrench was to force Mala to keep an activities journal of everything she did with Janey. Something about promoting mother-child bonding. Mala was all for creating familial ties, but that usually didn’t happen by having to report back to a nasty social worker who wanted to take Janey away from her.
Yet here they were, back at the zoo with another dead body. Mala was already thinking about how she would phrase this one. A nocturnal educational excursion to the zoo. Sounded good to her.
At least this time there wasn’t really any blood.
Although, looking at the last bit of the body that was still entering the hyperextended jaw of the snake, maybe some blood wouldn’t be such a bad thing. And with the forensic evidence being sucked into the maw of this gigantic reptile, how were they going to be able to figure out what had caused this?
As if he were reading her mind, Darc stepped forward. “We will need to take the snake in as evidence.”
A man in a suit materialized. “I’m Bill Waterhouse,” he said. “Chief Operations Officer. Don’t know if you remember me from last time?” The tall, portly man stuck out his hand, looking to shake Darc’s hand. Darc didn’t respond.
“I remember you. You were unhelpful in our investigation.”
“I was…?” the man sputtered. His false cheer evaporated. “You and your partner managed to almost get me fired last time you were here. So let’s not talk about me being unhelpful.”
Mala moved to step in, but Trey beat her to it. They both knew that public relations wasn’t an area where Darc excelled.
“I’m sorry there, big guy,” Trey said, taking the man’s hand and pumping it up and down. “My partner can be a bit prickly when he’s investigating a murder.” He paused and glanced over at the bald detective. “Actually, between you and me, he can be prickly no matter what’s going on.”
“Well…” the COO groused. “I guess that’s understandable. But he said something about taking our python?”
“Yeah. Sucks, I know, but the snake’s got a guy inside him. Got to get that guy out so we can know what killed him.”
“But that python is our one of our most popular reptiles in one of our most popular attractions. Surely you can understand—”
“A murder investigation is of more import than your exhibits,” Darc cut him off. Mala watched as Trey waved his partner off.
“I totally get it,” Trey said in a conciliatory manner. “We come in here with our murder investigations and ruin your business, but think about if we didn’t.”
“Excuse me?” the big man said.
“Well, look at it this way. If we didn’t find out what happened with that guy in there, people might think that somehow the python…” Trey let his voice trail off in a suggestive way. Mala had to admit, he knew how to work people.
Sweat broke out on the COO’s brow. “I suppose that’s true… But do you have to kill our snake?”
“Kill?” Trey repeated, appalled. “Not if we can help it. We’ll get a vet in here to sedate the snake. See if he can’t get the victim without hurting your python.”
Bill Waterhouse let out an audible sigh of relief. “That would be fine, but we do have our own in house veterinarian.”
“ Great. Then we won’t even have to pay for a house call.”
“Let me write down the number for you.” He jotted down the number on a scrap of paper that he pulled out of his pocket.
“Perfect!” Trey tipped an imaginary hat to the COO, who left in what seemed to be a much better mood.
“Can you really get the vet to sedate the snake?” Mala asked.
“Hell if I know,” Trey answered. “But I figured he was a money guy, so he probably wouldn’t either.” He pulled out his cell phone. “Time to give the old gal a call.”
“You do not know the age of the veterinarian,” Darc intoned as he walked toward the python exhibit. He seemed focused on something there inside the glass.
And when Darc focused on something, Mala found it was almost always something important.
* * *
The lines of logic radiated outward, touching on all visible, audible and tactile pieces of information. They then compiled and processed the data, leaving behind a shape that gave Darc the answer to the problem he sought.
Or at least that was how it was supposed to work.
On this occasion, there was a non-glowing hole left behind. Negative space that was a non-answer.
There were several stones scattered about the snake’s environment. They seemed to be foreign to the exhibit. There were no other loose stones located inside the glass cage, and the way the snake avoided them indicated unfamiliarity.
They appeared significant, and yet there was nothing in the way that they were pla
ced that created any form of meaning. For all the glowing pathways could ascertain, there was nothing meaningful about the rocks.
A logical dead end.
Darc moved back from the Plexiglas, searching for other indicators of tampering. The caulking around the transparent material seemed to have been cut and then re-caulked. That could be a marker for tampering. Or for recent maintenance on the habitat.
“Find out the last time this attraction was updated or repaired,” Darc asked one of the CSI team. It was the new intern. Rachel Mannis.
“I will,” she said, flicking a glance at the body. There were markers in her posture that revealed she was uncomfortable, but Darc could not see the reason behind that discomfort. Disgust, guilt, fear? It was impossible for Darc to tell.
“Hey,” Trey called out, cupping his hand around his cell phone. “I got someone.” He spoke back into the receiver. “This isn’t going to count as a house call, is it?”
Darc looked back to the snake and the rocks surrounding it. There was another option that he had not considered.
“Janey, come here,” he said, kneeling down and stretching out his hand to her. She came close and put her hand in his. That was unexpected. He had only intended to guide her to an advantageous vantage point, not to hold her hand.
Unexpected, and yet there was a reaction within him that he did not completely understand. He found that when Mala and Janey accompanied him to a crime scene, he gained… something. It was gray emotion, so it was difficult to pinpoint. A sense of well-being perhaps? Holding Janey’s hand increased that sensation.
She looked into his eyes and smiled, holding up her bear for him to kiss. He did so, with a solemnity that appeared to please the girl. Turning to look at the snake, Janey did not avoid gazing at the corpse. Darc had found that, unlike so many others who seemed to view death with disgust, Janey viewed it as information.
Similar to Darc’s own viewpoint.
Within moments, she was fixated upon the stones. Darc had not needed to point them out to her.
Once more, Darc felt something well up inside of him. An expansive sensation, one that made him feel almost as if his chest would burst from internal pressure. Yet, somehow, that feeling was pleasant.
Darc had very little context for this emotion.
Janey continued to study the pieces of stone in the habitat. After a moment, she released Darc’s hand and moved back over to Mala’s side, holding out her hand.
Without hesitation, Mala pulled out a piece of paper and a crayon, and once more Janey was beside Darc, sketching out the interior of the cage. In each of the locations of the stones, Janey drew a small circle. She then marked what appeared to be the points at which the glass was breached and then connected each of those circles together. It formed what appeared to be an asterisk with the two bottom arms slightly curved.
The symbol meant nothing to Darc. Or rather, to be more precise, it meant too many things. It was used as a symbol for multiplication, as an indicator of a footnote, even as a way to write offensive words without offense. Although to Darc, that last usage was incomprehensible. If the reader understands what word was intended, how does it alter the level of offense?
Janey glanced up from her drawing and smiled at Darc. But the smile was not her normal one. She seemed troubled. The gray landscape of interpersonal relationships and feelings always seemed to brighten when Janey was around.
Her expression was clear to him. The symbol made no sense to her, either.
CHAPTER 2
Trey was up to his eyeballs in zoo.
They were back at the precinct, and Trey had been checking through records to see if there was an employee of the zoo who had gone missing. That would be the simplest explanation. It would at least tell them that there hadn’t been a break in.
But even before he started looking, Trey was pretty sure there wasn’t going to be anything there. Simple might happen to other detectives, but not Trey.
Actually, that wasn’t true. His life had been simplicity itself before he started working homicide. As vice, things had usually been pretty straightforward. The guys with lots of tattoos and piercings that you would run into working vice were dangerous. The ones without were even more so.
Simple.
And then Darc had come into his life.
Trey took a gander at his companion, who was currently grilling Rachel Mannis on what she had found out at the zoo. And grilling was a mild term for it.
“You were unable to determine whether or not the habitat had been renovated?” Darc pressed. “What resources did you use?”
“Well, I asked Bill Waterhouse, and he said he’d get someone on it right away,” she answered, quailing. She wasn’t the only one who had that response to Trey’s partner. Come to think of it, sometimes Trey did. He was just better about hiding it. There was something about the directness of Darc’s gaze as well as the laser-like precision of his questioning that lent itself to quailing. Poor girl.
And that answer wasn’t going to cut it when it came to Darc.
“You pursued no other avenues of inquiry?”
“Um… he seemed pretty put out about the snake,” she said, her voice trembling. “I didn’t want to make things worse.”
“It is our responsibility to find information regardless of how uncomfortable it may be,” he answered, his mostly inflectionless delivery sounding that much more brutal in this case. “You must go back and find a way to uncover the answers we seek if you wish to continue with your internship.”
Not cool. Intimidation tactics were one thing, but Darc promising to get the girl fired because she wasn’t learning fast enough for his tastes? A bit rude.
Plus, considering the fact the ME hated Darc, Trey wasn’t so sure how much pull he would have there. One way or another, time to step in.
“Hey, Darc,” Trey jumped in. “I’ll take it from here. You know, point her in the right direction.”
“I am not confident in your ability to do so. You are frequently mistaken in your approach.”
Yeah. That was Darc. Thing was, that statement was nothing but the truth. That was one thing you could always count on him for.
“I know, but in these cases you have to remember rule number twenty-three,” Trey answered, winking at his partner.
Back when Trey had first started working with Darc, he had made the tall detective a list of rules to use in cases that involved working with the public. Rule number twenty-three said: When a chick is about to cry, back the freak off, dude.
Darc glanced at Rachel, whose lower lip was trembling. It also looked like her eyes might be filling up with tears. Either that, or the girl had some allergy issues. The bald detective swiveled back to Trey.
“I understand the connection to rule number twenty-three,” he said. “I do not understand the significance of your wink.”
“Never mind, Darc. I’ll explain it later.” Trey took a hold of Rachel’s elbow and steered her toward the entrance to the precinct building. Once they had rounded a corner, Rachel paused for a moment and looked into his eyes.
“Thank you, Detective. I’m not sure what happened back there.”
“No prob,” he responded. “But you should probably get right on it. He’s brutal sometimes, but Darc is usually right.”
“I know,” she said, her eyes filling up again. “I just… That body… and the—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Trey stopped her, giving her elbow a gentle shake. “First time I saw a body, I puked up my guts and then started bawling. Cops in vice razzed me about it for days.”
It was a lie. Well, mostly. He had puked up his guts, but that could have been more about the borderline sushi he’d had for lunch that day. And as for the tears, he’d just finished watching Steel Magnolias. It had been an emotional couple of days for him.
Whatever. It worked. The tears abated and the girl even managed a timid smile. “Thank you so much. It was just so…” Her words trailed off and her lip started shaking again.
Time to get onto safer ground.
“So, you just started with the department, right?”
“Yeah. Just moved here from Moscow.”
“You lived in Russia?” Trey asked, astounded.
Rachel laughed. “No. Idaho. Just finished up at ISU out there.”
She reached up to brush back a strand of her auburn hair, and Trey noticed a tattoo on the underside of her wrist. It was a design formed of an R and a B followed by the number 14.
It wasn’t a very good one. Looked like it was turning green and the design was amateurish. Trey had spent enough time in vice to know a gang mark when he saw one.
Following his gaze, Rachel lowered her hand and blushed. “I was in a gang when I was younger. My boyfriend…”
Trey lifted a hand. “Hey. Don’t worry about it. Your secret’s safe with me. Well, me and whoever else sees that tat.”
“Right,” she said, giving a weak chuckle. She pointed in the direction of the entrance. “Guess I better get to it.”
“Talk to the guy who takes care of the tigers. Horace Walker. He’s an old coot, but if you tell him I sent you, he might just help you out.” Trey thought about that for a minute. “On second thought, maybe you don’t want to tell him I sent you.”
Horace might not have fond memories of the guy who had questioned him in connection to the foot that had shown up in his tiger’s pit. Oh, and it’s possible that Trey might have implied that he was a pedophile.
People seemed to dislike that for some reason.
Trey called out to her as she headed for the door. “Yeah, definitely don’t tell him it was me.”
* * *
Janey was back at home in her bedroom, but she was having a hard time focusing on the homework she was supposed to be doing. It was just reading a little book, and it wasn’t even one with big words, but all she could think about were those rocks.
They meant something.
Actually, that wasn’t true. They didn’t mean anything, but they wanted to mean something.
Popeye said that rocks don’t want things. That they’re just dumb rocks and she was just making it up so that Mala would take her back to another crime scene.