3rd Body: Just try to keep your head (Book 1 in the 2nd Darc Murders Collection) Read online

  From the #1 bestselling authors in Hard Boiled Mysteries and Police Procedurals, Carolyn McCray and Ben Hopkin, comes 3rd Body, the sensational beginning to The 2nd Cycle of the Darc Murders Collection.

  There is a new, easy and super exciting new way to get updates. Read about it here in the Afterword!

  **Warning: This book contains graphic/disturbing violence that can give you nightmares. This book is NOT for the faint of heart. Please do not purchase this book unless you are prepared for some sleepless nights!

  Praise for 3rd Body...

  " I was glad to see these characters back for another series! The book follows our favorite Detective-on-the-spectrum, and his partner Trey as they work to catch yet another serial murderer. The interesting part of the last series and this book as well is the way the story seems to jump from working on Darc’s Asperger’s breakthroughs to the crime scenes to Mala’s struggle with adopting Janey. All of it was compelling and kept me intrigued at what would happen next. There’s some good misdirection on who could be involved with the murders, and at the end I was left with a deep appreciation for what Mala did for Carly. The way that Darc’s thoughts are described as colored bands intertwining and connecting is, as always, fascinating. It takes something that most of us have a hard time comprehending and makes it both more understandable and more mysterious at the same time. It’s easy for us to picture the colored bands in our heads, but we still don’t understand how someone can live with that all the time. Or how those bands mean anything in the logical scheme of crime-solving. The fact that his colors are changing shows how he’s learning to use more than just logic, which is a huge part of his progress.

  The last half of the book is one big roller coaster ride that I could not put down.

  This is a very good thriller that I recommend!"

  Cole Wiegmann

  Amazon Reviewer

  “This latest story found our cast of characters evolving and growing, each in their own way and as with the previous books, Trey, Darc and Janey had me in stitches, no pun intended, at certain parts of the story that really helped lighten the mood in the book while still making you remember that they were working on some horrible crimes. This time I had about 3 suspects for the killer, and I love that about the authors; they always give you such interesting characters that it's easy to be fooled and sidetracked. I will say that the way the authors describe how both Janey and Darc process facts, information always leaves me a little for a loop but it's interesting to see how both of them think and why they do the things they do and why they act as they do with those around them and it's cool to see them both growing with new experiences while still holding on to their original charm & stubbornness. The best part of it is, even though it helps if you've read the previous books of the Darc series that've been written, if you haven't yet, it won't detract from your enjoyment of this book and I think once you've read this story you'll really want to go and get your hands on the previous stories.”

  Mike S.

  Amazon Reviewer

  Praise for The Darc Murders Collection…

  “WOW, just WOW! I don't think I've ever come across such a gruesome series of crime scenes! Further knowing each of the scenes were booby trapped, had me cringing and then to read the full spectre of the carnage, left me in equal parts awe and queasiness of the macabre imaginings of the writers! They pulled out the big guns! There was gore galore! Luckily, I like that in a thriller, it makes the suspense that much higher and the take down of the bad guy that much more satisfying. What I didn't expect was to be so enchanted by the characters. I loved the eclectic mix, from the brilliant but emotionally challenged Detective with Aspergers to his laid back empathetic partner plus the razor sharp mind of the child psychologist consultant and the adorable and brave sole survivor, little Janey. All these nuances and traits give a rich tapestry to the book and endear you to the clever writing of… Ben.”

  Kizzle79

  Amazon Reviewer

  “I definitely recommend the Darc Murders Collection. The character development is phenomenal, story development is superb-- I thoroughly enjoyed reading both 9th Circle and 7th Sin; the story telling entwined with the characteristics of Darc's aspergers is incredibly entertaining. Not for the faint of heart, lots of gore and suspense, great mystery series. ”

  Tetch

  Amazon Reviewer

  If you are a fan of characters such as Alex Cross and Hannibal or movies like “7” and “Saw,” 3rd Body is sure to shock and satisfy.

  Main Menu

  Start Reading

  About the Authors

  Afterword

  Other Works by Carolyn McCray and Ben Hopkin

  Copyright

  3rd Body — Just Try to Keep Your Head

  PROLOGUE

  Doug hated the smell of cows.

  Hate was a strong word, but at this particular moment, he was thinking that maybe it wasn’t strong enough. Not all-inclusive enough to fully describe the loathing he felt toward the scents that were invading his nostrils right now. In stereo.

  For that matter, Doug wasn’t too keen on the whole “fresh air” thing. But he and his friends had decided that the best way to get blitzed without having to worry about getting busted was to drive a half-hour outside of Seattle, to a dairy farm. In retrospect, Doug thought that getting busted might be preferable to being out here in the middle of nowhere.

  And it wasn’t bad enough that it smelled. The air was foggy… and cold. Like witch’s tit cold, as his Uncle Bart always said. Doug’s mom would frown when Uncle Bart said stuff like that, but since he was Dad’s brother and didn’t come around much, she always kept quiet. Bart’d probably love it out here.

  Doug looked over at his friends, watching as Jamal tipped the bottle back, slugging down more of the brown lighter fluid inside. Good times. Good times.

  The Triad, they called themselves. A tough name for some not-so-tough high school students. Their group could be a case study in diversity. Doug, the token white guy. Huang, the brilliant Asian stereotype. Jamal, the adopted black kid who might as well be white and was pissed off at the world because of it.

  All of them outcasts.

  Smart, nerdy, uncoordinated. The most athletic of the bunch was Jamal, and he was on the cross-country team. Not exactly a babe magnet.

  But now they were out in the middle of B.F.E., and Doug wasn’t exactly having the time of his life. Not too shocking, for a Friday night.

  At least back in Seattle, there was always the chance he’d run into someone of the female persuasion. Okay, maybe he wouldn’t have the guts to talk to any of them, but at least they’d be around. Right now, the only jugs he was seeing were ones attached to the bottoms of the cows. And damned if they weren’t starting to look tempting.

  Before coming out here to wherever this was, they’d scored some alcohol back in Seattle. Not rocket science. They’d hung around outside a convenience store, waiting for just the right moment.

  A homeless guy, looking for a handout, had been more than willing to go in and buy them some cheap liquor in exchange for some of his own. There was always the chance that one of these guys would get clever and decide to keep the haul to himself, but so far, they’d had pretty good success.

  Now they were out here. In “nature” or whatever.

  The farm was one of those organic, free-range jobs, so it wasn’t supposed to stink quite as bad as the overly industrialized ones. But at the end of the day, cow manure was cow manure. Wasn’t like it was go
ing to end up smelling like roses, right?

  Oh, and one other thing. Cows were not smart. Not even a little bit. They just stood there, watching the Triad get sloshed. Mooing from time to time, chewing their cud or whatever the hell it was they did.

  Which had led to the idea that the guys should finish off their rotgut rum and then start pushing the big bovine creatures over. Cow tipping. Wasn’t that something that only country hicks did? After a lot of giggling and whispering and creeping up on the docile animals, they’d managed to get close enough to start shoving.

  But after trying and failing to get even one cow pushed over, Doug was beginning to suspect that maybe it was only city folk that tried this whole thing. He turned to watch his friend, Huang, as the Asian… what was he, anyway? Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese? Some other Asian whatsit?

  Doug paused for a second in his thoughts, wondering if the fact that he didn’t know made him racist. But then the bellowing of the animal in front of his friend brought his attention back to what he was thinking before. That cow looked different than the others. Why was that?

  Oh, right. It had balls where the other ones had udders.

  Wait.

  The idea made its way through the fuzziness of Doug’s brain just about the same time as the disturbed bull turned around and started charging straight toward Huang. And then they were all running as fast as they could away from the enraged beast.

  How the hell had they ended up trying to tip a bull? Was this even a dairy farm at all? The fog created by the nasty rum refused to lift, and Doug had no idea where he was headed. Just away. He felt his ankle twist underneath him and he went down. There was no pain, but when he tried to leap back up, his leg wouldn’t support him.

  Fantastic. He was going to get gored by a bull out on a dairy farm in the middle of the night. Death by stupidity.

  Plus, he was still a virgin. No. Worse than that. Destruction was breathing down his neck, and he’d never gone to second base with anything other than a cow.

  But just as Doug was sure that his life was coming to the end at the point of a bovine horn, he felt a rush of wind that indicated the passing of the animal. Apparently, when you landed face down in a cow patty, it acted as camouflage.

  Doug lifted his head, searching around, trying to figure out what was going on. Huang and Jamal were disappearing into the fog, screaming their heads off, chased by the roaring bull. The mist swirled around their passing forms as they vanished from Doug’s sight. Then, like a switch had been turned off, the screams stopped.

  There was no sound. Not even from the bull.

  How was that possible? Had Doug maybe been trampled and was now in a coma in some hospital, hallucinating? Or even worse, he was dead, and this was his own private version of Hell?

  But the other evidences of his surroundings were still present. Doug could hear his own breathing. Smell the cow dung left on his face. Feel the tingling in his fingers from the cold.

  So why couldn’t he hear his friends or the bull?

  Pushing up on his hands and knees, Doug began moving toward the last place he had seen any of them. The mist clung to him, coaxing him to stay where he was. And maybe he should have listened, but these were his friends that he was talking about here.

  He couldn’t just leave them out here to get trampled by a pissed-off cow, now could he? That couldn’t be a part of the bro code, right?

  “Jamal! Huang!” he called out into the night air, his voice falling strangely flat. There was no answer.

  Limping along the path that he seemed to remember them following, Doug was taken by a sense of otherworldliness. The alcohol dulled his senses. The fog had thickened to the point that he could barely see five feet in front of him. He was no longer attached to this world, but found himself in another, alternate reality. One of the worlds he and his friends visited when they played WoW or when they went old school and pulled out their dads’ Dungeons and Dragons manuals.

  “C’mon, guys! This isn’t funny!” he called out again, disturbed to find that his voice trembled and almost cracked.

  His heart beat faster, and he could feel the throbbing beat in his neck, pulsing against the neck of his hoodie. Trying to breathe slower, Doug pushed down the fear that was creeping up from his gut.

  The distances were deceptive in his little fog bubble, but as far as he could tell, he’d limped quite a ways at this point. Was he going in a circle? There was no way for him to know for sure.

  Maybe it was time to get the parents involved. Doug cringed at the thought of what his dad would do to him when he found out what his oldest son had been up to tonight. But even worse was the look Doug would get from his mom. The face filled with disappointment, tinged with just the barest hint of sadness.

  But this situation had gone beyond mildly scary and was getting into the realm of terrifying. He pulled out his cell phone. The lit face said that it was 12:48 am. There was no way this phone call was going to go well.

  Doug swiped across the screen to open up the phone, but then saw that there was no reception. Of course. He and his friends were smart enough to maintain 4.0 averages, but not clever enough to stay in a place that had coverage. Brilliant.

  About to put his cell phone away, Doug stumbled on something sticking up from the ground and almost tumbled head over foot. Staying upright with only the barest of margins, he looked down to see what had tripped him up. The light from his cell phone screen illuminated the form below him.

  At first, the huddled mass at his feet made no sense to him. Then the cold blue light from the cell lit up what was clearly the back of a shoulder. But that couldn’t be the shoulder. If that was the shoulder, then what…?

  Doug gagged, and he vomited, spewing out the remnants of the rum onto the ground to the side of the form in front of him. The hard burn of stomach acid seared his throat and his mouth.

  The body was facedown in the wet soil, but Jamal’s dark face was staring straight up at the sky. The neck had been snapped, and the head turned one-hundred and eighty degrees on its axis. The numbers danced through Doug’s mind, distracting him from the horror of the expression on his friend’s face.

  A sob had barely escaped from Doug’s lips, when he felt two hands clamp themselves on either side of his head. A voice whispered in his ear.

  “A life of the mind would have been preferable to this.”

  He felt his neck wrenched savagely to the side, and there was a crack.

  The agony was blissfully short.

  CHAPTER 1

  Tiere. Animals.

  All around were animals.

  They wore their faces of daytime like the good little Menschen… humans… they pretended to be, but their actions spoke of something far more bestial. Base instincts ruled them every step of the way.

  These Jungendliche. These boys, how they screamed as they ran. And the stupid cow look on their faces as they died. They never deserved to be called Menschen.

  The blade parted the skin of the abdomen and the organ sac was exposed. Just as the true nature of this teenage boy had been exposed.

  There was a thrill of pleasure as the organ sac was cut and the viscera spilled out. Was this animal-like? Certainly not, as there would be no eating. No devouring of this, the inside of this beast of burden. Only exposure. Only that.

  All were this way. So many beasts, wearing human masks. So much needing to be cut away. Brought to light.

  The way they interacted with one another. Just walking down the street was an exercise in death-baiting. Two drivers honking and swearing at each other during the middle of rush hour. A customer screaming at a vendor that she’d been swindled.

  The way they conducted their daily business. This megacorporation swallowing up that smaller, family-built company. Layoffs that put loyal workers out on the streets to build up the bottom line of some fat-cat CEO looking to expand his retirement portfolio.

  The way they “loved” each other. Digital flirting with random strangers. Hookups at local bars
where the only thing that mattered were the visual markers of fertility in the potential partner. Subhuman mating that left both parties degraded both physically and emotionally.

  And these were all activities that occurred in the light of day. Or at least the electric glow of artificial illumination.

  What happened in the darkness defied even the vilest of imaginings.

  Tiere.

  They would be exposed.

  The secrets they thought they were hiding so well would be sounded from the pulpits, called out from the crossroads, trumpeted from the rooftops. They would writhe as the dark corners inside their souls were exposed to the shining rays of enlightenment. The cold, clear, white light of Reason would teach them even as it flayed them alive.

  For that was the purpose of all that was done here, was it not? The progression of the human race?

  This was not about religion. No, the more these creatures wearing human faces spoke of their gods, the more animalistic their actions became.

  No. This was Reason.

  And Reason would be made manifest in blood.

  * * *

  Trey moved to the left, ducking around behind a corner to avoid the gunfire he knew was coming. Darc was somewhere out there, and so was Janey, but he’d long since lost track of both of them.

  Why had he let his partner talk him into this?

  The place had been there as long as Trey could remember. It was rundown, with some parts of the drywall dented or even broken through. Graffiti covered some of the walls, giving the place a feel of urban decay. There was a sweet but unpleasant smell that pervaded the entire complex.

  Movement and a flash of light from back down the narrow hallway behind him caught Trey’s attention. Dammit. He’d thought that entire area had been cleared. Knowing he was taking his life in his hands, Trey squat-walked his way down to where he’d seen whatever-the-freak it had been.

  Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe it was just some random janitor or something like that. Some hapless minimum-wage employee who had just gotten trapped in the crossfire, instead of a member of what seemed to be a dark and faceless army that was doing all it could to get Trey in its crosshairs.