5th Pentagram: The sequel to the #1 Hard Boiled Mystery, 9th Circle (Book 3 of the Darc Murders Trilogy) (Book 3 of the Darc Murder Series) (24 page)

It was their ritual.

The one that they had engaged in every time Darc had come home from a particularly difficult case when they were married. She stroked his scalp, murmuring that it was okay, it was all right, everything would work out, he was doing the best he could, it wasn’t his fault, it was okay, it was okay, it was okay.

The act that had seemed so foreign to him when she had first done it. The one he had dreaded every time she had performed it. The one he had somehow known she would do again tonight.

And Darc felt something bubble up from within him. Something from that broken place inside that continued to ache with a dull throbbing pain that settled in his abdomen and kept him from eating, from sleeping, from doing anything but pursuing criminals.

He didn’t know what was occurring with him. The sensation continued to grow, exploding from his lungs, his mouth, his eyes. This had never happened to him before.

Darc was crying.

* * *

Okaaaaaay.

Trey hadn’t known what to expect when he brought Darc back to his and Maggie’s apartment. It had just been an idea. He had them all the time. Most of them were pretty bad.

One thing was sure. He had not expected
this
.

The bar had been set low. The side trip had really just been for Maggie to tag in for a sec. You know. Just to take some of the pressure off of himself. He’d known that Darc needed help and that what Trey had tried so far had been pretty much ineffectual.

Holy Mary mother of Jesus.

It wasn’t just that Darc was crying. Trey’s partner was
sobbing
. There was snot flying everywhere, Maggie’s jeans were soaked with tears and Darc was making sounds that might embarrass a five-year-old.

And Trey had no idea where to look.

The whole thing was fascinating, in a car-wreck-rubberneck kind of way. But staring at his partner while he was so vulnerable like that… It felt just wrong. In every way possible.

On the other hand, it seemed like this was something that might actually help. Darc kept so much bottled up inside, there were times that Trey was pretty sure if the guy got a massage he would either shatter right there on the table, or be completely incapable of standing back up. Darc’s tension had tension.

But it had always seemed like part of the package. There had even been moments when Trey had decided that the whole robot impersonation was really just Darc. His personality. It had soothed his conscience a bit for those moments when Trey had gotten irritated and lashed out at the tall detective. He’d assumed that it just didn’t affect Darc.

Clearly, he had been mistaken.

Well,
suck
.

Trey wasn’t the only one surprised. Maggie was still stroking Darc’s head, but her expression said that she had no idea what to do next.

Yeah. Speaking of. What
were
they supposed to do next?

He was saved from having to figure that one out by the ringing of his cell phone. It was a relief to not have to deal with Darc blubbering for a moment, but who was calling at this hour?

Before he could even identify himself, the voice on the other end began jabbering. “Detective Keane, this is Bradley Moore over at the Mayor’s office.”

Oh crap.

In all the hubbub, Trey had completely spaced the fact that they were supposed to have gone over to the Mayor’s office to talk about the protection detail. This wasn’t good. Not at all.

“Um, right… Bradley. Listen—”

“No, no,” the assistant interjected. “You listen. The Mayor’s been kidnapped.”

Trey felt his stomach fall out from the bottom of his shoes. The Mayor of Seattle had been kidnapped. And it had happened while Trey and Darc were off chasing down bad guys instead of meeting with the man’s staff like they were supposed to.

Apparently this night was all about the unexpected.

* * *

Mala had just sent Pyper home. The poor girl looked like she was pretty frazzled. Mala would have to talk to her about just what had happened that evening that had caused her distress. Janey wasn’t making many inroads when it came to stellar behavior with those who were tasked with her care and teaching.

After going in to check on Janey… who was still up, the little munchkin… Mala stayed for a while to cuddle with her foster daughter. This case had eaten up way too much of her time lately, and some things had fallen through the cracks. Some of those were Janey’s actions at school. Those were troubling, but at the end of the day, they were temporary. Mala knew enough to recognize that there was going to be an adjustment period, and they were still right in the middle of it. Janey’s behavior at school would most likely stabilize.

But there were other, long term, actions that needed to be taken. Mala had fully intended to have all the paperwork filed to adopt Janey at this point. There were no relatives anywhere… both of Janey’s parents had been a bit older, and their own parents had passed on.

There was nothing keeping Mala from bringing Janey into her family full time. Nothing except for time.

That was all it was, right? Mala squirmed in closer to Janey, taking the little girl in her arms and holding her close. Janey squeezed her back, burying her head in Mala’s chest. She was such a fighter. The things this tiny one had suffered made Mala’s blood freeze when she allowed herself to dwell on them.

But then there were moments like these. Moments when it was clear how small Janey was. How fragile.

Maybe there was some fear there, too. It was possible that Mala was frightened that she wouldn’t be up to the task of healing her emotionally scarred charge.

It was something to think about, certainly. And if there were any truth to it, that was something that Mala would want to have all sorted out before she made their arrangement permanent. There was no doubt in Mala’s mind that Janey was hers. But she didn’t ever want Janey herself to ask that question because of Mala’s issues.

“Okay, stinker,” Mala said. “You need to get to sleep, or you’ll never be able to get up tomorrow.” She leaned over, tickling Janey and making her laugh. It was a beautiful sound to hear. The closest Janey came to speech. The laugh was full, from the belly. A gut laugh. It never failed to bring a smile to Mala’s face.

She was standing up when a call came in. Trey.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Mala, I’m so sorry, but we need your help.”

She turned and looked at Janey, who was asking the question with her face.
What’s going on? That’s Trey, isn’t it? Can I go?

For someone that didn’t talk, her face was a total chatterbox.

“Trey, I can’t. I just sent home the babysitter. I’m stuck here.”

He let out a deep breath. “Yeah. I figured. It’s just…” he trailed off.

It was a manipulation. Mala knew it was a manipulation. Trey knew it was a manipulation. Didn’t mean it wasn’t working.

“What, Trey?”

“We royally screwed up,” he confessed. “We were supposed to be at the Mayor’s office, working on getting him a protective detail, but then you called with the Freemason stuff…”

“And you guys headed out to the forest and the fire happened,” Mala finished for him. “But they can’t fault you for that, can they?”

There was the sound of Trey clearing his throat. “He was kidnapped.”

“What?!” Mala burst out. She looked over at Janey, who was still wide-awake and probably would be for several more hours, if the past were any indication.

This was important. The killer had the Mayor, and Trey and Darc could be held responsible. Surely this justified Janey losing a little more sleep, right?

But then there was Richard Templeton…

Screw it. She worked with the Seattle Police Department. She couldn’t take care of Janey the way she needed to if she didn’t also do her job that paid the bills. And right now, Trey and Darc needed her.

“I’ll be there,” she said to Trey.

“Great!” breathed the detective. “Oh, and one more thing. It’s about Darc…”

CHAPTER 17

Janey was
thrilled
.

She knew that it must have been something bad for Mala to have let her get out of bed and out of her PJs and go down with her to the parking garage. Really bad. But somehow Janey didn’t mind all that much.

Actually, it kind of made her happy. If things were bad, maybe she could help. Although if she were out really late, it would make things harder at school. There were some things that needed to happen tomorrow, and Janey had to be there for them.

Oh, well. She could always take a nap like her teacher kept trying to convince her to do. And Mala, too. Grownups were weird sometimes.

Popeye stuck out his tongue at her and said that she was weird, but she just ignored him. He always got cranky when he stayed up too late. Although how anyone could tell that he was cranky was beyond her.

She swung her bag of paper and crayons around, making a circle in the air that was traced by the colored paths in her head. The garage had that gasoline and dirt smell that always made Janey want to sneeze when she smelled it. She put Popeye up against her nose so it wouldn’t be so bad. And then if she sneezed, she’d sneeze into Popeye.

That made her bear pretty mad. He didn’t like to be compared to a tissue.

Tissue. That word reminded Janey of a joke her mommy used to tell her and daddy all the time. When they’d ask for a tissue, she’d say,
Tissue? I hardly
know
you
.

Janey had never understood what that meant, but it had always made her daddy laugh. She missed his laugh. It was big and deep and growly, but nice and warm all at the same time. Darc never laughed. He did on the inside; she was sure of it. But it would be nice to hear, all the same.

Mala laughed and so did Trey and Maggie. But it wasn’t the same.

But now they were off. To the Mayor’s office, Mala had said. She didn’t know who this Mayor was, but he sounded pretty important.

The best part of the whole thing, though, was that Darc was going to be there. She would give him such a big hug. Darc acted like he didn’t like hugs, but he did. It was one of the things the lines in her head had told her.

There were some other things they had told her, too. Things that might help Darc. But it also sounded like everyone was in a hurry, so she should get started right now.

She pulled out a piece of paper and a crayon and started drawing.

* * *

Things were going according to plan.

Well, the word plan was always such a relative term. Such that it almost held no real information at all. Perhaps better to say that the overall goal was still achievable, in spite of all the interference from the two detectives.

Keane was proving to be more resilient than the Intermediary would ever have expected. It was pleasing, in a way, to see that excellence could indeed be bought with painful sacrifice. The man certainly worked hard enough.

Not that he would ever be on a par with his partner. Now that was a force for the greater good. Such a shame that it was a tool that had been warped in the fire.

Darcmel was broken. And broken tools were fit for nothing more than to be tossed into the garbage heap.

Ah, the fire. That had been a near thing. A survivor without a tongue to speak was, perhaps, less of a risk than many the Intermediary had taken. But usually the risks were taken of necessity.

This one had been for nothing more than ego.

Lesson learned.

But now it was time for the endgame to begin. The best and the brightest were to be gathered together, but as what would appear to be an afterthought. For it was anything but the best and brightest that would congregate in just a few days.

Darcmel. A shame, in truth. Such a beautiful gem, sparkling in the reflected brilliance of the sun of humanity.

But perhaps there was still hope for the flawed detective yet. The fracture that existed might be the type of fault that did no more than demonstrate that the gemstone was not artificial. It remained to be seen.

A sharp blow to the crack would determine the truth.

And the Intermediary held the hammer high.

* * *

“If you had been here like you were supposed to, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Darc watched as Bradley Moore paced around the conference room, where he and the Mayor’s staff had set up a temporary office for Darc, Trey and Mala. Janey had been put to bed in the next office over, after receiving kisses on behalf of herself and her bear from Mala and both of the detectives.

This location did not make sense. Yes, it was on one of the points of the pentagram that overlay the city of Seattle, but it was out of sequence. This should not be the next crime scene.

Bradley Moore had spent the entire two minutes and seventeen seconds making odd noises in his throat and bouncing back and forth from one foot to the other. From what Darc could tell from the executive assistant’s behavior, he was either highly agitated or had a methamphetamine addiction.

At the moment, Darc was leaning toward the latter explanation.

Trey stepped in, stopping the Mayor’s assistant in his tracks. “I get that you’re upset, but we were kind of busy trying to keep our only eye witness to the murders alive.”

Bradley jerked his head back up. “You have a witness?” It was impossible for Darc to ascertain whether the emotion expressed was hope or fear, and the consequences of an incorrect guess would send this investigation in a misguided direction.

“No,” Darc said, drawing the man’s attention away from his partner. “The man died in the hospital.”

“So you’re telling me that the Mayor was taken for nothing,” came the assistant’s response.

Trey threw up his hands. “This is not on us. We’re doing our jobs the best—”

“You went against what your Captain told you to do. You left the Mayor vulnerable when he suspected there might be an attack on him. You—”

“We are here now,” Darc interrupted. “What information do you have?”

Somehow, the interruption to Bradley’s ravings seemed to function as a slap to the face might have. He stopped, his face flushing. Anger? Embarrassment? Or perhaps the man was simply holding his breath.