by Hopkin, Ben
It wasn’t true, but it was a good idea. Well, a good bad idea. Maybe if there was a time that she really, really, really had to help…
But no. She didn’t want to lie to Mala. She loved her.
Maybe sometimes she would sneak a little bit, but she wouldn’t lie. Not ever.
So she told Popeye to hush and she went back to thinking about the rocks.
“Janey, are you almost finished?” Mala called out to her. “It’s past your bedtime.”
Mala walked into the bedroom, dressed in her grownup pajamas. They were silky and flowy and Janey thought they were the prettiest things she’d ever seen. It didn’t seem fair that something that pretty was only for bedtime.
Janey liked it when Mala came in at night to tuck her in. She always had her hair in a ponytail, which made her look like a mommy. And she would read Janey stories and sing to her and give her goodnight cuddles. Mala would even kiss Popeye goodnight.
Her mommy had done that too. Daddy had always said her bear was gross and that he wouldn’t kiss him unless he took a bath, but Popeye said it was because he was a boy and boys weren’t supposed to kiss each other. But that didn’t make any sense because there was Dillon at school who had two daddies and he said that boys sometimes do kiss other boys and stuff.
It was confusing.
But it wasn’t confusing when Mala lay down next to Janey on the bed and brushed her hair back with her fingers. It felt almost like Mommy doing it, except that Mala smelled different and sounded different. But the feeling was the same. Like Janey was all warm on the inside and safe on the outside.
It felt good.
Mala was about to lie down, when her phone buzzed. It was a text. When Mala got texts came in at night, there was only one person they came from.
Darc.
Janey sat straight up in bed and held out her hand for the phone. Mala gave her a look that was supposed to look mad but really wasn’t. Looking at the phone, Mala breathed out heavy, like she was upset. But she really wasn’t. Then she handed the phone over to Janey.
“They found another body at the zoo,” she said. “And Darc wants me to come.”
Janey looked down at the text. She was good at reading, and she knew that wasn’t all that the text said. She stared up at Mala, and then pointed at the text.
“Yes,” Mala answered. “He wants you there, too.” She sighed again. “Good thing it’s a Friday. Let’s get some clothes on.”
As she left the room, Janey thought she heard her say something else.
“Maybe we can call it an overnight zoo camp.”
* * *
Darc moved toward the crocodile habitat with Trey at his side. Trey was, as usual, talking. Quite a lot.
“So then I went through the whole list of employees… twice, mind you… and there was no one missing. But then I thought, whoa, what about volunteers? They have to have tons of volunteers here at the zoo, right?”
Pausing for a moment to make sure that Trey was not asking one of his rhetorical questions, Darc glanced over in the direction of the crocodile enclosure. There was the normal hub of activity surrounding a murder. It was accentuated by the fact that it was the second one in less than twelve hours.
Several seconds had passed and it appeared that Trey’s question was, in fact, a sincere one. Darc began to answer right as Trey began speaking again. Once more, Darc had failed to identify a social cue correctly.
“Right!” Trey answered his own question, oblivious to Darc’s issues. “So I went through those, and guess what?”
Darc waited, determined not to make the same mistake twice. Trey stared at him.
“Go on,” he urged his partner. “Guess.”
Darc felt the stirrings of some gray emotional response deep within himself. What it was, he could not say, but it seemed to have something to do with irritation.
“You found a volunteer who is missing,” Darc obliged.
“Right again!”
Actually, Darc had only been right the once. The first time Trey had answered himself. But it did not seem expedient to correct him at this moment. The chains of logic were gleaming as they pointed to what Trey was saying.
“Was the volunteer male?” Darc asked. It was one of the few pieces of information they had on the victim, other than his shoe brand and size.
“Yep! Hasn’t shown up for his shift today.”
“Do we have a picture we can get to the ME and the veterinarian?”
Trey grinned at him. “Already done, my friend. And here’s another copy for you.” He passed over a picture of the victim, which was clearly the one that had been taken for his identification badge here at the zoo. “I talked to the guys in HR, and they said he’d only been working here for a little while. Just moved in.”
The man’s name was John Coluccio. He was Caucasian, with tattoos crawling up his neck from out of his collar. It seemed he had taken some pains to hide the markings, as they were inexpertly covered with makeup.
As Darc looked over the picture, Trey squinted over his shoulder. “Those tattoos…”
He was interrupted by the docent, Ms. Phillips. She stalked toward him, her sturdy heels striking the concrete with a staccato rhythm.
“Another one?” she barked, pointing back toward the crocodile attraction. “How am I supposed to do my job?”
Trey cleared his throat. “Your job? It’s past ten o’clock at night.”
Ms. Phillips wrinkled up her mouth in what Darc decided must be either disgust or the puckering caused by an acrid taste. “I work with high school seniors when they come out for their late night zoo experience. They then go to some sort of pizzeria and play video games all night.” From her tone, it seemed that Ms. Phillips did not approve of this extracurricular activity.
Darc moved to speak, but Trey cut him off. “We’ll do everything we can to take care of this, ma’am.”
“See that you do,” she said as she turned and strode away, passing by Mala and Janey, who were walking toward the exhibit.
“We got here as quickly as we could,” Mala said. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Darc had never seen it like that before. She was also wearing jeans that hugged her form. He found the effect… distracting. Pulling his eyes away from Mala, Darc knelt down to give Janey a welcoming hug.
That greeting had become standard for them, but Darc still found it disconcerting how much the hugs meant to him. And how much he missed them when Janey was not there. Having people touch him was not pleasant under normal circumstances. In so many ways, his interactions with Janey were not typical.
He kissed Janey’s bear. Another part of the ritual. Once completed, Darc stood and observed Mala watching him. She had an odd look on her face. Food poisoning, perhaps? They had gone to that falafel kiosk before the musical tonight.
They moved off toward the crime scene, Mala reaching out to hold Darc’s hand. The bands of light swirled around this interaction, attempting to make sense of the gray landscape surrounding the simple act of placing one’s hand inside another person’s.
This was less pleasant than the hug, but still something that he was willing to tolerate. Especially considering the effect Mala in her tight clothes was having on him.
As they neared the crocodile enclosure, Mala slipped her hand out of Darc’s. Was that out of professional courtesy, or was it possible that Mala was ashamed to be seen in Darc’s company? This was another part of the emotional topography regarding which he had no knowledge.
The crocodiles had all been taken inside, except for the two that had been a part of the dismemberment of the body found in the habitat. Darc peered down into the pit, viewing what seemed to be part of an arm and a shoe.
The shoe was not empty.
Mala hissed and pulled Janey away from the edge of the pit, but Janey resisted, glaring up at her foster mother. There was a moment’s hesitation, in which Mala looked to Darc. For what, he was uncertain. It was just more indecipherable gray area for him.
What
was not unclear was that he needed Janey’s help. He motioned for the girl to come closer. Mala held on for another moment, then took a deep breath and released her.
As Janey neared the lip of the pit, Darc scanned the floor of the enclosure, looking for what the pathways of colored light told him would be there. Stones. Once more extraneous to the environment, but arranged in a pattern that was unclear to him. Clearly not random, but not connecting together in a coherent fashion that the threads of logic could unravel. There was an element of emotion to this that was Janey’s domain.
Walking up beside him, the little girl propped her bear up on the railing, where he perched in a precarious manner. She patted Darc on the hand and held up her paper and a crayon. Darc, seeing that she was going to be busy drawing, turned to face several people who had broken off from the main contingent of uniformed officers and CSI team members. Two of them Darc recognized. Dr. Hutchinson, the ME, and Bill Waterhouse, the COO of the zoo.
The ME, Dr. Hutchinson, was accompanied by someone that Darc did not recognize. The lines converged, hypothesizing that the individual was the zoo’s veterinarian.
“Dr. Charan,” The ME gushed, moving over to her and holding out his hand. “I was hoping you’d be here. Allow me to introduce you to Dr. Raleigh, the veterinarian who is consulting on this case.”
“Dr. Charan,” the woman stepped forward with a smile. She was in her late forties with a sturdy build and short light brown hair. “I have heard wonderful things about you from Dr. Hutchinson.”
Darc watched as Mala ducked her head and smiled back. “Thank you. I hope I can live up to the compliments.”
“So far I’d say you have,” Dr. Raleigh responded, looking her up and down. “He said you were stunning. And smart, of course.”
The ME’s face began turning red from what Darc would assume was a rush of blood to the surface of his skin. That usually was indicative of anger or sexual arousal. Considering the context of the conversation, Darc went with the latter explanation. He found that to be oddly troubling for some reason.
“Ah… Thank you?” Mala said, glancing from Dr. Hutchinson to Darc, seeming ill at ease. The reason for this discomfort was lost on Darc. It seemed to have something to do with the conversation, but Darc was too focused on his own gray feelings to determine its source in Mala.
“Well, let me tell you what we’ve found so far,” the veterinarian said. “The first victim we were able to extract from the python with no permanent damage.”
“That is excellent,” Darc responded. “We need the victim as pristine as possible to preserve evidence.”
“Oh.” The animal doctor seemed startled for a moment, then laughed. “I’m afraid I mean that there was no damage to the snake.”
“For which the zoo is very grateful,” Bill Waterhouse chimed in.
“She’s coming out from under the anesthesia right now. She’s fine, although I’m sure she’s disappointed to lose her meal.” The vet spared what seemed to be a fond smile for the absent reptile. “As for the body, I’m afraid we had to cut your victim into quite a few small chunks.”
“Don’t worry,” the ME chimed in. “We were able to discover quite a bit in spite of that.”
“Such as?” Mala asked.
“Well, for a start, the man wasn’t dead when the snake began eating him,” the vet answered. “He was sedated. With Azaperone.”
“Azaperone?”
“An elephant tranquilizer,” she answered. “It’s not used in humans because it can cause respiratory depression, but the dose wasn’t enough to kill him.”
The lines formed around the information that was coming in from the ME and the veterinarian. The fact that the man was alive in the stomach of the python could be a sign of a punishing act.
“Did you find anything else?” he asked.
Dr. Hutchinson pulled out a cell phone in an evidence baggie. Holding the device out for Darc, he shrugged.
“As far as I could tell, it’s still charged.”
CHAPTER 3
Trey nabbed the phone before Darc could get his hands on it. Darc was many things, but creative about communication… and the devices used for communication… he was not.
It was a touchscreen phone, so Trey could open it through the plastic without interfering with any of the prints that might be on its surface. He swiped across the screen, unlocking it, then moved to the recent calls.
Scrolling down the numbers there, one came up over and over again. All it said was “Boo”. A girlfriend or a ghost. Judging by the tats on the vic, Trey was going with girlfriend. He could wait until he got the okay from one of the higher ups, or he could just go ahead.
What the hell. Trey figured it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Hitting the last number, Trey held the phone up to his ear.
He needn’t have bothered. As the phone began ringing, across the enclosure Trey could hear Jay-Z’s “99 Problems.”
It was coming from one of the CSI team members. The intern. Rachel Mannis.
She looked down to see who was calling, then shoved her phone back in her pocket, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed. It was a furtive movement, one that didn’t speak well for Rachel’s innocence. As she pulled her hand back out of her pocket, she lifted it up to brush back her hair.
Exposing her gang tattoo.
All of the sudden, a tumbler turned over in Trey’s mind, opening up a memory that had gotten locked up. The tattoo. It was similar to the ones found on the victim.
CSI intern and zoo volunteer. Both with gang tattoos. Both recently moved to Seattle. One dead, the other at the place where he’d been killed and fed to a snake.
This wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be.
“Hey, Rachel!” Trey called out to her. The intern’s head whipped up and she locked gazes with Trey right before she took off running toward the exit to the crocodile exhibit.
Trey swore and sprinted off after her. Why was it always running? Why couldn’t criminals just stroll? It would be easier on everyone. Fact was, Trey almost never won when it came to a footrace, and this one didn’t seem like it was going to be any exception. Rachel had almost gotten to the exit, after which she would have a whole park in which she could hide herself.
Just as she was making her escape, a foot stuck out from seemingly nowhere and tripped the young intern, sending her sprawling along the path. Mala shrugged and stepped out from beside the path.
“Looked like you could use a hand. Or a foot.”
Trey was so relieved he wasn’t going to have to run any longer, he didn’t even groan at the joke.
* * *
Mala had followed when Darc and Trey pulled the CSI intern off to the side of the crime scene to question her. She kept one eye out for Janey, who was now playing with her bear after she had finished drawing her symbol. Presenting the finished product to Darc, Janey had grinned and flounced back off to a nearby bench.
The symbol was one that was a bit odd. It was three vertical marks above, two below, divided by a horizontal line. It sort of looked like the symbol pi with three marks above it, as if the Greek letter had comic book surprise lines coming out of its top.
But right now, the intern was what was taking up most of her attention.
“Why did you run?” Trey asked, without even giving Rachel a chance to sit down.
The young woman scowled, “I knew how it would look.”
“How what would look?” he questioned in an innocent tone. “The fact that your phone number was all over the first Vic’s recent call list?” Trey shrugged. “It wasn’t so much that as all the other stuff.”
Rachel looked like she was about to ask, but then thought better of it.
“Oh, not going to say anything?” Trey leaned against one of the information signs that was next to the bench where Rachel was sitting. “That’s your choice, but it’s not looking good for you if you don’t. Gang tattoos on both of you. A relationship. The fact that you both just moved here…
from Idaho, wasn’t it? Do I need to check your residences to see if they’re the same?”
“I didn’t do anything,” she snapped.
Darc moved in at that point, his intense gaze and monotone voice a deadly counterpoint to his partner’s good cop. These two made a potent team.
“It is improbable that you would abscond if there were no malfeasance on your part.”
Rachel gaped up at Darc, then turned to Trey. “Where did you get this guy? Copy room at Webster’s Dictionary?”
“I know, right?” Trey muttered. “So annoying.” He tapped his foot against the pole of the sign on which he was leaning. “But I have to say, he’s got a point.”
“Look, it’s just that we’ve… he…” She choked a bit on her words and then swallowed. “We left Idaho because we were trying to leave the Bad Boyz.”
“That’s a gang over in Spokane, right?”
She shook her head. “I mean, yeah, but it’s moved over into Moscow. That’s where we hooked up with them.”
Mala watched and listened as Trey and Darc grilled the young intern. They were doing fantastic work, but there was something troubling Mala. Rachel wasn’t acting like someone who had just killed another human being. Glancing down into the crocodile pit, Mala revised her last idea. Two human beings.
It was always possible that she was a sociopath, but that didn’t really fit. The girl was clearly emotional, and it didn’t appear to be an act put on to throw the detectives off her scent.
At that moment, Mala felt a tugging on her sleeve. She looked down to see Janey at her side. Looking up into her eyes, Janey nodded at the intern and gave Mala a little shove. It seemed that Janey didn’t think Rachel was guilty either.
Mala was moving forward to try to get Darc’s attention when a hoarse male scream sounded from outside of the crocodile enclosure.
That couldn’t be a good thing.
* * *
Janey was sure that the man who was yelling was in trouble. It was also possible that she could help. So far, she’d helped Darc with the rocks and Mala with the young lady that Darc and Trey thought might be guilty.
The lady thought she was guilty, but she really wasn’t. At least not of killing anybody. And as far as Janey was concerned, if you hadn’t killed anybody, you could probably say sorry and it would be okay.