“See?” Her voice caught for a moment. “Not so hard, was it? The proto-gender. Before male and female came along and ripped us all apart. Before all the pain.”
“You seek a return to some sort of sexless existence?” Darc was zeroing in on the woman’s location, the lines coalescing, condensing, narrowing their focus.
“No!” Her tone hardened, became razor-sharp. “Not sex-less. Sex-full. Complete. Fulfilled. Rather than in constant conflict.” The voice moved once more, but Darc’s threads of logic followed, tracking and pinpointing her location in real time. “You see all this? Look around you, Detective. It was finally happening. I was going to be the first transsexual celebrity. My own web show to gather in all the outcasts like me. They would have come. I know they would have. I would have sacrificed all that I had to know I wasn’t alone.
“But my investor didn’t understand. He offered to back me thinking of me only as the attractive reporter from News 2. When he discovered who I really was…”
Darc thought back to the first victim. An older man of means, known for investing in new technologies and innovative ideas. “He became your first victim.”
“He deserved it!” she screamed down. The woman took a deep breath, then restated in a much more reflective tone. “He deserved it.”
Darc had her. He lifted his gun, sighted along the lines of glowing color and fired. The sound of the shot rang in his ears, followed by an exclamation of pain from above, and a clattering.
The bullet had struck her, possibly even incapacitated her, but it hadn’t killed her.
The studio had fallen silent once more. There was no rustle of movement, no ragged breath to lead him forward. Darc strained his ears, listening for the smallest indicator of where the reporter might be.
And then he heard her. Her voice rang out… from the ground floor. She had somehow made her way down to his same level. He flashed his light toward the sound, catching her full on in its beam. She was holding Trey up, a gun held to his head.
“That was a good shot, Detective. Took me off guard.” She shoved the muzzle of the gun into Trey’s temple, causing him to wince. “But the question is, what shall we do now?” She smiled, showing all of her very white teeth. “I have an idea. You place your gun on the floor, and I leave unharmed.”
“Why would I relinquish my weapon?” Darc responded.
“So that I don’t kill your partner,” the reporter barked, her tone uncertain.
“Darc! Don’t do it,” Trey begged him.
“He’s not my partner. At least not permanently. He was assigned to babysit me.” Darc watched the lines carefully, sighting along them.
“Hey!” Trey protested.
“I don’t care!” the woman snarled. “He’s a person, and no matter what your issues, you don’t want to see someone killed right in front of you.”
Darc held up a hand and lifted the muzzle of his weapon up so that it pointed at the ceiling. “Stop. You are correct. I do not wish to have him killed.” He began to stoop over, moving the gun down.
Midway through the motion, Darc repositioned the gun, pointing it at the nexus of the glowing lines. He fired twice in rapid succession, hitting the woman in the middle of the forehead both times.
The reporter staggered back and crashed into one of the cameras, knocking it over as she fell atop it, dead. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling, blank and lifeless.
“Dude! Nice shot,” Trey gushed. He moved up to Darc and clapped him on the shoulder. “Now please promise me you’ll never do that again.” His knees suddenly dropped out on him and he grabbed onto Darc’s jacket for support. “Okay. Medical attention might be a good idea.”
Darc helped him back to standing and walked him out toward the rare Seattle sunset that was glowing on the other side of the studio door.
EPILOGUE
Trey’s head throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Thud, thud. Thud, thud. It was annoying, but at least it told him he was going to be okay. At least that’s what he thought it meant.
“Hey, medic guy,” Trey called out to the paramedic who had bandaged his head wound. “You sure I’m gonna be all right?”
“You’ll be fine. No concussion that we could find. It was more of a graze. Just a slight bruise—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Trey cut him off. No need to have that information get out there. Not with Captain Merle wandering around. Trey might be a wuss, but he had no desire to look like one.
“I can get you some more pain meds if you’re hurting, Officer.” The paramedic rustled about in the ambulance for a moment, coming out with a promising-looking syringe.
“That’s what I’m talking about. Gimme the drugs!”
“Hm. That seems a tad inappropriate, coming from one of our finest in vice,” a voice rumbled behind Trey. Spinning around, Trey grabbed at his head, which had blossomed into a blaze of pain the moment he moved.
“Ow.”
Captain Merle, the owner of the rumbling voice, laughed. Trey wasn’t positive, but it seemed like that might be a first for the guy.
“Take it easy, son. You’ve got quite the lump there.” He peered at the bandage wrapped around Trey’s head, then refocused on the vice cop’s eyes. “You did good today.”
“Yeah… I dunno. Darc was the one who figured all the stuff out.” Trey was many things, but he was not someone that would take credit for another man’s collar.
“Really?” The captain’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s not what he says.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that he credits you for figuring out the clue that led you to that reporter. Said something about the probability being less than one percent. Sometimes I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Trey grinned at him. “I know what you mean. I don’t understand half of what comes out of his mouth.”
The captain chuckled, then sobered. “Seriously, Keane, he’s never said a positive word about any of his other partners.” He held up a finger to forestall Trey’s next statement. “Any of them. You want the spot, it’s yours.”
“You’re giving me a choice?” Trey asked, his tone wry.
“I don’t want to. But yeah, it’s your call. I want you on board because you want to be.”
“I’m not so sure Darc feels the same way. I mean, he seemed totally willing to sacrifice me for the killer.”
Captain Merle sighed. “That’s just Darc. Would’ve done the same thing if it’d been his mother.” He broke off for a moment, looking over at the bald detective, who was in a heated conversation with the medical examiner. “You need to know, he’ll never be like other partners. Ever.”
“Yeah. I got that,” Trey replied. “Let me sleep on it?”
“Sure thing. Just make sure and wake up,” the captain said, pointing at Trey’s head injury. He moved away, his gait heavy and slow.
Trey watched him go until a body in front of him blocked his view.
It was Darc.
“Hey, dude.”
Darc nodded at him.
“So.” Trey had to know. “Seriously, no qualms about risking my life back there?”
Darc stared at Trey’s left eyebrow. “I knew I wouldn’t miss.”
“Yep. Sounds about right.” Trey groaned and lay back on the stretcher. Darc stayed motionless for a moment, then turned to go. Trey reached out a hand to stop him. “Hey, hold on a sec.”
Darc turned back around, his face expressionless. Trey looked into that face, wondering if he’d ever get used to seeing so little emotion from the man that he’d be trusting with his life, day in and day out.
“I made you something.” Trey held up a paper towel he’d begged off the paramedics. “I wrote down some stuff for you. Let’s call them Trey’s Rules. First one, we’ve already gone over… pretend to be interested. But I wanted to read the second one to you, make sure you actually got it.”
Darc folded his arms and held Trey’s gaze, his face impassive. Good enough for Trey. He cleared his throat and c
ontinued.
“Okay, second rule: Never, ever, ever shoot a perp when he or she is holding a gun to your partner’s head.”
At that, something crazy happened. Darc’s lips quirked upward. It wasn’t much more than a twitch, but Trey would have sworn on his life that he hadn’t imagined it.
“Anyway, I wrote down twenty of them.” Darc took the scrap of paper from Trey’s hands, his face more thoughtful than Trey had ever seen it before. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Darc was experiencing some kind of emotion. “I don’t want you to think that’s the end of them. I have a feeling there will be more where those came from. Lots more.”
Darc nodded, then turned on his heel to head back to the crime scene. Trey watched him go, studying the back of his head, the motion of his torso as his arms swung freely at his side.
He was getting to know his new partner.
To purchase the entire Darc Murders Collection, just click here.
MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY… The prequel short story to Humpty Dumpty
CHAPTER 1
The garden was lush, organic and a bit wild. This was very much a garden after the English tradition, not the French. No straight lines, no contorted figures carved out of the hedges. All growth and color and beauty and the natural light of a gorgeous sunrise.
Which made the hand sticking up out of the ground that much more disturbing.
Special Agent Sariah Cooper moved through the grounds, inspecting every blade of grass for additional clues. The officer who had found the crime scene had done an excellent job keeping the site from getting contaminated, but Sariah never trusted anyone, much less local cops in a small community, to find all that a crime scene had to offer.
Hell, she didn’t trust herself. At every point she could, Sariah made sure her work was double- and triple-checked. Her colleagues in the Behavioral Analysis Unit might call her a stuck-up, know-it-all bitch, but she knew what the truth really was. And the truth was no one was one hundred percent trustworthy. Not one single person.
Sariah redirected her attention to the task at hand. Sloppy killers were easy. They left behind so much evidence, the main problem was sorting through all of it and prioritizing what needed attention first.
This one, however, was anything but sloppy. Sariah had to give it to… her? Even the mental acknowledgment of gender made Sariah cringe. Local cops were blaming this murder on the serial killer who’d been labeled Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.
There were several problems with that. One, there was no conclusive evidence that the killer was a woman. Shallow graves for the victims, consistent M.O., and poison as the weapon of choice all pointed to a feminine perp, but without something concrete, the killer’s sex was still very much up in the air as far as Sariah was concerned.
Second, there was no way to know if this body was one of Mary’s. Sure, they were in a garden and there was a shallow grave. That fit the profile for the previous killings. Okay, fine. That was some strong circumstantial evidence, but… Making up one’s mind before all the information was gathered just ensured mistakes. It was so easy to overlook important details when you already knew what had happened.
Finally, and in Sariah’s mind most significantly, there had been a hand sticking up out of the ground. Did no one but her see the significance of that not-so-little point? Up to this point, the unsub had been so careful to bury the body three feet down. A careful killer didn’t just accidentally leave random body parts exposed, no matter how shallow the grave was.
“Agent Cooper,” Officer Kyle Hadderly called out. He was the BAU’s liaison from the police precinct here in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Come take a look.”
As she stepped closer to the turned earth where the hand had been found, she felt rather than saw her fellow team members from the BAU part around her, never coming within two arm spans of her epicenter. Sariah sighed. It was always like this, no matter what the setting.
At one point in her life, she might’ve blamed it on the fact that she was African American. Easy to see racism in the predominantly white department. But when counterexample after counterexample reared its head, after a while you just gave in to the quieter, uglier truth.
They just didn’t like her much.
The attitudes of her fellow Special Agents had not seemed to taint the opinion of their Michigan PD liaison, though. He seemed to have taken to her immediately, and although she was clearly not at the top of the pecking order, Officer Hadderly was treating her as if she were. Flattering. And awkward. But Sariah wasn’t about to correct the problem. Right now, all the information came to her first.
Hadderly stepped aside as Sariah got closer, giving her an easier line of sight to the excavation that was happening. “We’ve dug down more than two feet now, and that hand is getting pretty lonely. There’s nothing else so far.”
“The hand wasn’t attached to anything?” Sariah asked. Dismemberment wasn’t part of Mary, Mary’s modus operandi, and if the unsub really was a female, they were statistically unlikely to change six bodies in.
“Nopey-dope,” Officer Hadderly said, with a goofy grin. “And I think it’s pretty freaky that the only body part so far was stuck in the ground in a way that made it look like someone was reaching out to grab you.” He gave a mock shudder. “Creeee-peee.”
Sariah nodded, but she was lost in thought. There was another serial killer for whom random body parts sticking out of the ground was par for the course. But that wasn’t a name that would go over well with her team. And there was still another foot or so to go in order to rule out Mary. Her graves to date had been dug to a depth of three to four feet.
“I’ll tell you something else, just between you, me and Thing over there.” Hadderly nodded in the direction of the appendage. “Mr. Happy Hand was not lookin’ so happy, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m afraid I don’t, Officer.”
“Right. Sorry. I get a little macabre at a crime scene. Gallows humor runs in the family. Dad’s a mortician, so…” Hadderly shrugged. “Anyhoo. Hand looks like it’s been preserved somehow. Frozen, maybe. A hand-sicle!” He looked into her face, apparently didn’t see what he was looking for, and hung his head. “Again, sorry.”
Sariah wished she was better at the social game. A small smile from her would have gone a long way towards breaking the ice here. She liked Officer Hadderly. Even thought he was funny. So why not show it? Would it really be risking all that much?
Looking around at the rest of her team, Sariah realized that perhaps it would be. Sariah heaved another large sigh.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for, Officer. Really.” His face brightened up, like a switch had been thrown. Sariah felt her own lips twitch upward in response. “So what makes you think the hand wasn’t fresh?”
“Father. Mortician.” He shrugged his expression sheepish. “Agent Cooper, I’ve seen a lot of preserved bodies in my day. Used to give me nightmares. Dad just thought it was funny.”
“He sounds like he must have been a real laugh riot.”
Hadderly chuckled. “You have no idea.” He gazed up into Sariah’s eyes, his smile deepening.
The officer was shortish, with a face that looked far younger than the lines in his forehead seemed to indicate. Most of the ravages of time appeared to be from smiles and laughs, the wrinkles combining with the mischief radiating out of his eyes to form a singular image of a man who hadn’t lost his ability to play.
The eye contact went on for a moment or two longer than was comfortable for Sariah. She dropped her eyes, not wanting to give him the wrong idea of where this could go. He was handsome, interesting and funny, but there was no chance of anything happening here.
Officer Hadderly seemed to get the message. He backed off the intensity of his gaze, but somehow managed to do it in a way that didn’t diminish any of his warmth towards her. No wall, no defensiveness, no show of wounded masculine arrogance. Sariah was surprised and more than a little pleased. She had been sure she’d just pushed
away her best ally here in Michigan.
Glancing around, Sariah saw that the space around her—and now Officer Hadderly—had increased to four arm lengths. She needed all the allies she could get.
As Officer Hadderly shifted his weight from one foot to another, Sariah focused on the reason he had called her over in the first place. What now looked like it was a disembodied hand, stuck in a shallow grave in such a way that it would look like part of a corpse poking up out of the ground. A hand that may have been on ice until just now.
“I know what this is,” Sariah whispered.
“What?” Hadderly perked back up, his attention having been diverted by a shiny object. Literally. One of the team had recovered a piece of costume jewelry out at the far edges of the garden. “You find something?”
“No,” Sariah corrected, her skin heating up. There was no way of explaining her ideas without some level of embarrassment, but she was now convinced that this crime scene was not from the same killer that had been terrorizing this area.
“Okay, so you didn’t find anything, but something just happened, right? That, or my emoto-meter needs to be recalibrated.”
Sariah glanced into the face of this local cop who had, for some unfathomable reason, decided that she was worth speaking to. Without consciously deciding to do so, she found herself speaking the words that could very well scuttle any respect for her this officer might have.
“I think this is Humpty Dumpty’s work.”
The officer’s eyes dilated. “Whoa. Humpty Dumpty? Really? I thought that guy was an urban legend.”
Okay, at least that wasn’t the worst response she’d ever gotten when she’d brought up this particular serial killer. “No. People think that because he hasn’t been active in almost thirteen years. But I have… I’m… connected to the case. Sort of.” Once more, her skin flushed.
“You’re kidding! So… connected how?” He looked intently into her face and then backed up a step. “Unless that’s a bad question to ask…”
“No, no…” Sariah cleared her throat, making a decision. “I work on body parts.”
2nd Cycle of the Harbinger Series Collection Page 26