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) Read Online Free
Author: Ben Hopkin
Tags: General Fiction
actionable plans. However, according to Trey’s Rule #23 for Interacting with Colleagues, You gotta give the other guy a chance to work it out, even when you know he can’t. Especially then. So Darc remained silent.
“I’ve got it!” Trey yelped. “You can wear your Bluetooth and I’ll just stay on the line the whole time. That way I can tell you what to do. It’s perfect! Like Roxanne !”
“I believe you are referring to Cyrano de Bergerac .”
“Whatever, man. You know what I’m talking about.”
The inner landscape of Darc’s mind heaved in response to this suggestion. What that meant, Darc had no idea. However, receiving emotional advice from Trey in real time seemed to be a rational response to an irrational social exercise.
Dating was a ridiculous endeavor. Darc found Mala attractive. She seemed to react in a similar fashion to him. Was that not enough for them to take the next logical step and discover if they were sexually compatible? And yet when Darc had mentioned that to Trey, his partner had shaken his head and repeated the word no seventeen times.
Apparently that approach was not acceptable.
Mala was symmetrical in a way that was physically appealing to him, and he found her intelligence above average. The rationality with which she approached the universe, however, was a question mark.
Darc returned to his perusal of the crime scene. Here was something that made logical sense. Clues were left behind for him to decipher. His mind decoded the messages left. The killer was caught.
Simplicity itself.
* * *
The rain fell with a random sameness that coated the night sky in a velvet cocoon of sound. In this cushion, it was possible to whisper, to speak, even to scream and have no one the wiser for it a mere block away.
It was an emotional blanket for a morally tired city.
There was no real ambiguity here. Nor was there theologizing or philosophizing. There was only the acknowledgement of a populace that was stagnant. Corrupt. There was an acknowledgement of the battle. The one of which little was spoken in the daylight hours of proper business dealings.
Looking out into the darkness, the Intermediary drew in the smells of the precipitation. Wet asphalt. Ozone. Something danker. More pungent.
The scent of things dead and dying.
Ah, Seattle.
The night was the time to get things done. Nothing significant could ever happen in the light of day. Not any longer. Politicians and businessmen were increasingly brazen about their illicit financial copulations. Law enforcement and the criminal element moved about one another in a dysfunctional dance that mimicked the death throes of a headless rooster. During the day, wrong was right and right was increasingly wrong.
But in the darkness, light blossomed, beating back the dark at the same time it intensified the shadows. The light of intuition that spoke of things going bump in the night versus the blackness that created those very bumps. Under that covering, it was impossible for upright citizens to doubt that evil existed.
Not the evil of hell. No demons, no devils, no succubi or incubi. Nothing so ghastly or bourgeois as all that.
No, this was the evil that was created by the very individuals who invented those dark denizens, as well as their smoky, fiery habitat below. This was the purview of something far more sinister than an avenging spirit.
This was the domain of humans, and they were making a right mess of things.
The Intermediary sighed, blowing air out past lips wet with the falling moisture. The others had failed. Miserably. Both so preoccupied with their version of righteousness that they had been blinded to the exigencies of their assigned tasks.
That would not happen this time. This time there would be a true purging. No religious sycophants to muck up the waters that were rising up to do the deep cleaning required in this septic tank of a city.
A woman passed close by, her high heels wobbling with every step, the click of her
“I’ve got it!” Trey yelped. “You can wear your Bluetooth and I’ll just stay on the line the whole time. That way I can tell you what to do. It’s perfect! Like Roxanne !”
“I believe you are referring to Cyrano de Bergerac .”
“Whatever, man. You know what I’m talking about.”
The inner landscape of Darc’s mind heaved in response to this suggestion. What that meant, Darc had no idea. However, receiving emotional advice from Trey in real time seemed to be a rational response to an irrational social exercise.
Dating was a ridiculous endeavor. Darc found Mala attractive. She seemed to react in a similar fashion to him. Was that not enough for them to take the next logical step and discover if they were sexually compatible? And yet when Darc had mentioned that to Trey, his partner had shaken his head and repeated the word no seventeen times.
Apparently that approach was not acceptable.
Mala was symmetrical in a way that was physically appealing to him, and he found her intelligence above average. The rationality with which she approached the universe, however, was a question mark.
Darc returned to his perusal of the crime scene. Here was something that made logical sense. Clues were left behind for him to decipher. His mind decoded the messages left. The killer was caught.
Simplicity itself.
* * *
The rain fell with a random sameness that coated the night sky in a velvet cocoon of sound. In this cushion, it was possible to whisper, to speak, even to scream and have no one the wiser for it a mere block away.
It was an emotional blanket for a morally tired city.
There was no real ambiguity here. Nor was there theologizing or philosophizing. There was only the acknowledgement of a populace that was stagnant. Corrupt. There was an acknowledgement of the battle. The one of which little was spoken in the daylight hours of proper business dealings.
Looking out into the darkness, the Intermediary drew in the smells of the precipitation. Wet asphalt. Ozone. Something danker. More pungent.
The scent of things dead and dying.
Ah, Seattle.
The night was the time to get things done. Nothing significant could ever happen in the light of day. Not any longer. Politicians and businessmen were increasingly brazen about their illicit financial copulations. Law enforcement and the criminal element moved about one another in a dysfunctional dance that mimicked the death throes of a headless rooster. During the day, wrong was right and right was increasingly wrong.
But in the darkness, light blossomed, beating back the dark at the same time it intensified the shadows. The light of intuition that spoke of things going bump in the night versus the blackness that created those very bumps. Under that covering, it was impossible for upright citizens to doubt that evil existed.
Not the evil of hell. No demons, no devils, no succubi or incubi. Nothing so ghastly or bourgeois as all that.
No, this was the evil that was created by the very individuals who invented those dark denizens, as well as their smoky, fiery habitat below. This was the purview of something far more sinister than an avenging spirit.
This was the domain of humans, and they were making a right mess of things.
The Intermediary sighed, blowing air out past lips wet with the falling moisture. The others had failed. Miserably. Both so preoccupied with their version of righteousness that they had been blinded to the exigencies of their assigned tasks.
That would not happen this time. This time there would be a true purging. No religious sycophants to muck up the waters that were rising up to do the deep cleaning required in this septic tank of a city.
A woman passed close by, her high heels wobbling with every step, the click of her
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