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) (35 page)

Popeye said something rude about Trey and going to the bathroom, but Janey just ignored him. Partly because he was using potty words, but also because she was worried.

She was worried because Trey and Darc weren’t here. And they were supposed to be. She had another picture she needed to give to Darc. And the bad thing was going to happen really close. Not wherever they were.

So she kept looking around, hoping to see Darc’s bald head or Trey’s messy hair. But she couldn’t find them anywhere. And Mala kept calling, but no one would answer.

She hoped that nothing bad had happened. Because it was important for them all to be here, and soon. That’s one of the things the lines in her head kept telling her. Now.

Now now now now now.

Sometimes she didn’t like the lines all that much.

But she knew they were right. And she also knew that only Darc could figure it all out. She was here to help, and so were Mala and Trey, but it was Darc who had to find the bad guy. Darc was the only one he would talk to.

Because that was what it was all about. At least part of it. The bad guy wanted to talk to Darc. He wanted to make him bad like he was.

It made Janey nervous, but she knew it would be okay. Of course it would be okay. It had to be okay.

It was Darc.

And Darc could never be bad.

* * *

It was almost evening.

The answers should be here, but they were not.

Darc moved around the office once more, still searching for what he knew was not there. He and Trey, as well as the CSI unit, had gone over the crime scene in depth, trying to find another clue, any clue, that might tell them where to go next.

There was a large group of people gathered together in a place that Darc knew was the point of attack. He needed information, but none was forthcoming.

There was his mind, which unaided kept returning to the Satanist. There was the information coming from the colored bands of light, which told him that the Freemason link was the one to follow. And then there was Janey’s picture, which had pointed him here, to the hub of influence that Bradley Moore had wielded.

But if it was Bradley Moore, he was now dead and unable to help with the crisis at hand. For even before the assistant had intimated that destruction was imminent, Darc had known that to be the case. Every part of this puzzle, including Janey’s input, had pointed in that direction.

The CSI unit continued to mill about, looking at everything in the office, taking pictures and samples, filing everything away in plastic evidence bags. The position of the now-corpse, the gun that was used, the spatter pattern of the blood and brain tissue on the back window all reduced to pictures and codified baggies.

Cody Lyons, the CSI intern, glanced up from his work to see Darc staring at him and nodded. He then looked away quickly. An avoidance? Or was he just getting back to his work? Perhaps he was still troubled by his own Masonic relationship with this case.

“So this was the guy?” Trey said for the third time. “All that buildup and this was the guy? And now he’s dead and we’ve got some kind of impending doom coming and what the hell are we supposed to do about it?”

“We are accomplishing nothing here at this point,” Darc admitted. “We should get back down for the Mayor’s speech before the parade.”

“Oh, it’s already started,” interrupted Cody. “He was getting up to speak when I got here a few minutes ago.”

The information sang through Darc’s head, the color a bright red. The probability that whatever attack was planned would come during the parade seemed dangerously high. He moved toward the office door, the urgency building within him.

There were people in danger, and he was moving forward blind.

* * *

Trey sighed as he watched his partner speed out of the office.

“I guess I should be used to that by now,” Cody muttered. “Hey, can I come with?”

“As long as you keep up,” Trey said, moving to try to take his own advice. Giving Darc too much of a lead was never a good idea. “But don’t they need you back there?”

“Naw. I’m not really supposed to be on today. I just wanted to help.”

“Well then, knock yourself out.” Right now, worrying about an intern was far less important than dealing with the fact that his partner was about to leave him behind. He picked up the pace, narrowing the gap for just a moment before Darc pelted down the stairs and across the lobby toward the entrance.

Back outside, the crowd had grown. The colors, sights and sounds were a wash of human heat as they stepped out into a space that had sprouted lights to beat back the encroaching darkness of the night.

The Mayor was stepping down from the stage as they crossed the plaza. Darc seemed to be searching for something, his movements more erratic than Trey had ever seen them.

Usually when Darc was moving anywhere, his lines were straight and unwavering. Maybe it was just a product of having to move through the crowd, although Trey had never seen that slow his partner down before.

And then, from what felt like out of nowhere, there were Mala and Janey, pushing their way out through the crowd to Darc. What was strange about it was that it was Janey that was pulling Mala along.

By the time those two met up with Darc, Trey had managed to get closer, with Cody right behind him.

“I tried calling—” Mala was saying.

“We were up with the Mayor’s assistant, who was part of this whole thing,” Trey explained. “He shot himself.”

But Janey was shaking her head violently, back and forth. What was she saying? The Mayor’s assistant wasn’t part of it? She grabbed Darc’s hands, placing a piece of paper in it.

A piece of paper with a drawing.

Looking over Darc’s shoulder, Trey could see that it was a depiction of the scene around them. Sort of. It was an aerial view, with all the floats of the parade going down the street.

And amongst the floats were pictures of… what were those things? Clouds? Bales of cotton? Popcorn?

No. Explosions.

Darc found Trey’s eyes, and for once in his life, he felt like he was on the same page as his partner. He knew where to look for the explosives.

“The floats,” Trey said as Darc turned to push his way through the crowd.

“Wait.”

Trey spun around and for a moment could see nothing out of the ordinary. There were Mala and Janey and Cody, all standing together. Except that Cody was standing close to Janey. Really close. Uncomfortably close.

And then Trey saw that part of Cody’s jacket was pressed up against Janey’s skull.

“Cody, what are you doing?” Mala asked, her voice low but still penetrating over the crowd noises. There was a tremor running through her voice that was the only indication of her extreme fear.

A fear that Trey felt coursing around his own veins. Because he knew exactly what Cody was doing. And from a glance toward Darc it was clear his partner did as well. They were going to have to exercise extreme caution here.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t Trey’s style. “That’s your finger,” he said.

“What?” Cody choked out. “No it isn’t. It’s a gun.”

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s your finger.”

“You… I… It’s a
gun
,” he said, pushing the bulge against Janey’s head to prove his point. “And I’ll use it.”

“Prove it,” Trey challenged him.

“I’m not… You can’t…” he stammered, then straightened up, his face going hard. “How about I prove it by shooting her.”

While he was speaking, Trey was watching and waiting. As Cody stood up, his spine stiffening, there was a moment where his hand went slack. It wasn’t much, the gun was still mostly pointed at Janey’s head. But it was an opening.

Trey decided to take it.

* * *

Janey wasn’t scared.

Popeye was, but Popeye was scared of everything, even though he pretended not to be. He was a silly bear.

She knew she should be scared. Guns weren’t good things, and even though Trey kept saying the man didn’t have one, she could feel it through his jacket.

But the lines were there, telling her things. Telling her that Trey didn’t really think that it was the man’s finger. Trey was just being tricky. They were saying to her that the man… Mala had called him Cody… didn’t really want to hurt her. He was scared, lots more scared than even Popeye. And Popeye was a scaredy-cat.

He corrected her.
Scaredy-bear.

Silly, silly.

But the man’s hands were shaking. Not enough that anyone could see it, but Janey could feel it. And his voice was weird too, almost like he was about to cry.

To everyone else he might sound mad, but to Janey he just sounded sad. And scared. Of course he was scared. He was doing scary things and he was going to get caught. Soon.

Darc was too far away to do anything. He didn’t have his gun out, and he couldn’t get anywhere close to where Cody was standing.

Trey, on the other hand…

The man was still talking, trying to convince Trey that it really was a gun. He pushed it up against her head to prove it, which hurt a little bit.

But then something changed. Trey made him mad.

She could feel the change in his body. It shifted a little bit. The movement made her nervous…
scared
, Popeye said… because the colors were telling her the man might hurt her now. But him moving gave Janey just the room she needed.

Lifting up her foot as high as she could, she stomped down on the inside of his ankle. There had been one time when Janey had hit that part of her leg on the corner of a curb and it had hurt so much. It seemed like a good idea right now, and the lines in her head agreed with her.

When she stepped on him, the man yelped in her ear… which also kind of hurt… and stepped back. So Janey turned around and kicked him.

She wasn’t proud of where she kicked him. It was in the private place where you weren’t supposed to touch anyone, especially not boys. But that was what the colors told her to do, so she did it.

Right after that, the man grabbed his privates… which was another thing you weren’t supposed to do… and his face turned purple. Then Trey jumped on top of him, grabbing the gun out of his hand.

A second later Mala was right beside Janey, hugging her and speaking in her ear.

“I am so proud of you.”

Janey was glad she said that, because she wasn’t sure what Mala would think of the privates’ thing. But for a second everything was okay.

Except not really. In fact, not at all.

She looked up and saw Darc, who was staring right at her. Janey knew where he was going to go. She didn’t want him to, but she knew he needed to.

And she wasn’t sure why, but it seemed like Darc wanted her permission. He wasn’t going to leave until she told him it was okay.

It was hard to do, because she knew he was going to do something that might hurt him. But she did it anyways.

Janey nodded her head.

A second later, Darc was gone.

CHAPTER 25

Mala felt her heartbeat slow gradually from the frenetic pace it had been at moments before. Now the main challenge in front of her was not to engage in all of the violent activities her brain was urging upon her in relation to the CSI intern, who was still on the ground with Trey on top of him.

This was no easy task. Mala was a rational person, a child psychologist, trained to be patient and to talk through difficult things, even when they were terrible. And yet, right now, all she wanted to do was rip the man’s face off.

And that was the gentlest of the options that were coming to her.

“Mala, can you take him for me?” Trey asked, struggling to pull Cody to his feet. He had cuffed the intern’s hands behind his back and wasn’t being too careful about the way he was yanking on the young man’s arms.

“Ow, ow, oooow!”

“Maybe next time don’t hold a gun to my friend’s head.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Cody blubbered. “I didn’t want to, it’s just I was so…”

“Scared,” Trey finished for him. “Right, right, I’ve heard it all before. Mala?” He turned back to her, motioning for her to take a hold of the man’s arms.

“But I don’t have a gun,” Mala responded.

“Just hold on to his arms and give a yank if he gets frisky,” he said with a half-smile. “Or do what Janey did and kick him in the—”

“Got it,” Mala assured him. “Go. Find Darc and help him.”

“You’re not going to be able to do anything,” Cody moaned. “There’s not enough time.”

“Heard the same thing from Bradley,” Trey muttered. “You guys are like a broken record.”

“It’s true. It’s all set to go off in just a few minutes.”

Mala stepped in, pulling Cody’s arms up sharply. He hissed in pain.

“How can we stop it?”

“I can’t tell you,” he whined. “There’s a failsafe, but he’ll kill me if I tell you.”

“He?” questioned Mala.

Cody’s face shut down, and it was clear from his expression that he didn’t want to talk. Mala was pretty sure she could do something about that.

The fact that she was going to enjoy it was only a little troubling to her.

* * *

Darc raced through the street, headed for the nearest float he could locate. It was necessary to ascertain the threat level, and that could only happen with a close up inspection of the explosives.

Nearing the first of the floats, a huge castle replete with its own princess, Darc held out his badge, waving his arms to get the attention of the driver. The man gave no sign he had seen Darc’s attempts to get his attention.

“Seattle PD! Stop the vehicle!”

It took a minute for what Darc was yelling to register. “You want what now?” the overweight man inside the back of the float called back.

“I need you to stop! Now!”

The float ground to a halt, nearly displacing one of the young women up top. She was dressed in a long gown and was waving to the crowd when her forward inertia almost pitched her over the front edge. She glared at Darc.

There was no time to determine what the expression meant. Darc dove for the underside of the motorized medieval castle, looking for anything that might appear out of place.

Nothing.

In the picture Janey had drawn, the explosions were not shown for every float. There was a certain randomness to the distribution of the destruction.