The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (6 page)

Debby spun around. The brown haired boy stood
there with a broad grin on his face.

“You ever do that again you little freak, and
I’ll beat his four-eyed face into the ground.”

She dropped her bags and shoved him in the
stomach. “Get out of here, piss pants!”

The boy spat in Beans’s direction, then
turned and jogged off. Debby looked around. No one paid any
attention to the situation. It didn’t surprise her. To most of the
world, she and Beans were invisible. She extended her right arm,
then her middle finger and shook it in the boy’s direction.

“Don’t do that,” Beans said. “You’ll get
suspended.”

“I don’t care,” she said, turning around and
offering him her hand. All fingers extended this time. He reached
up and she pulled back until he was back on his feet. “Besides,
none of them wanted to help, so it was meant for all of them.”

The school bell rang. Lingering kids ran
through any available door.

“Shoot,” she said.

“Is that the final bell?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“We better go.”

She scooped up both of their backpacks. It
was better for Beans not to run with any extra weight. Together,
they raced through the main entrance. Principal Bennett stood
outside the office. His perfect brown hair was perfectly brushed
back and his beard perfectly manicured. He shook his head, the hair
bounced and then settled back down, and he held out his hand in a
stop gesture.

“Please,” Debby said. “Beans… I mean, Bernard
had a bad fall. He tripped on the pavement, then he had an asthma
attack, and no one would stop and help us. So that’s why we’re
late.”

Principal Bennett cocked his head to the side
and leaned forward. His eyes traveled up and down and back up
Bean’s short frame. “Mr. Holland, it looks like you should head
over to the nurses’ office.” He angled his head in the other
direction a couple times. “Ms. Walker, hurry on to class now. If
your teacher has an issue with you being tardy, you tell her that
you were talking with me, and I’ll be happy to take the matter up
with her.”

This was why Debby liked Principal Bennett.
He treated her like an adult, not a kid. He didn’t use little kid
words with her. He showed her respect.

“Yes, sir,” they answered in chorus.

So Beans headed left and Debby turned right.
She hurried to class. The halls were empty. Her footsteps bounced
off the walls that surrounded her. She thought she heard her name.
When she looked over her shoulder, Beans and Principal Bennett were
gone. But a man she did not recognize stood outside of an open
closet. He leaned on a broom or mop handle and watched her. She’d
heard the phrase “a chill went down my spine” spoken before. She
never knew what it meant. Until that moment.

Room one-twenty-two couldn’t come fast
enough. She ran, holding the straps of her backpack tight. She
hoped the door would be unlocked when she arrived. If not, she was
prepared to scream as loud as she could. That turned out to be
unnecessary, though. The handle turned with no resistance. She
burst through the open doorway, and slammed the door shut behind
her.

“Ms. Walker,” the teacher said.

“Sorry, Ms. Suarez. I was speaking with
Principal Bennett. He said if you need to discuss my tardiness,
take it up with him.”

“That’ll be okay, Debby. Go ahead and take
your seat.”

She did. And she watched the window in the
middle of the door. And when the guy passed by, he stopped and made
eye contact with her. And that chill went down her spine again.

By the time we reached the house, Ella had
left for school and Mom had changed into her clothes. She insisted
that Sam come inside for a few minutes and catch her up on his
life. They hadn’t talked in about six months. Sam held back, which
was good, otherwise we’d have been there a long time. Mom had a
follow up question for every answer he gave. It got to the point
that I texted another detective and asked him to call in pretending
to be Huff just to get us out of there.

It worked.

We took off in Sam’s Camaro and went straight
to the station. We could pick up my police issued Chevy later that
day. The Homicide Detectives’ room wasn’t much to look at. Two sets
of four desks butted together to form two big squares. Some called
the room the Block. An old timer named Anderson who was on his way
out when I was on my way in referred to it as the Square.

“
The only person you can trust in this
city is the guy sitting across from you, Tanner. And once he moves
on, forget about him. He won’t have your back anymore.”

I’ll never forget his advice.

I simply called it the office. It didn’t need
a nickname. Wasn’t like we were on some network TV show.

Sam’s desk was across from mine. That’s how
we did it. Partner across from partner to promote discussion
amongst each other. That’d never been a problem for Sam and me.
Even when we were pissed at each other, we found a way to talk. The
benefit of being boyhood friends, I suppose.

Sam opened a manila folder. His shoulders
slumped forward and he placed his head directly over the images. He
looked up at me. His face looked bleak and drawn.

“What you got there?” I asked.

“Dusty Anne.”

I swiveled in my seat and rolled my chair
around the block of desks. Sometimes we played hockey or football
like that. I stopped next to him. He scooted over a few inches and
shared the view. Seeing the digital images blown up in high
resolution did nothing for Roy Miller’s case.

“Doesn’t look like a fall to me,” he
said.

I nodded in agreement. “No more so than it
did in person.”

Sam pulled a piece of paper from the back of
the folder. He laid it neatly on the table. The Medical Examiner’s
report. “The ME agrees with our assessment.”

I used my finger to scan the document. There
I saw it. Written in Karen Dempsey’s unmistakable handwriting.

Homicide.

“We should have kept him here Friday night,”
I said.

“We had no choice,” Sam said.

“Bureaucratic BS, Sam. We should call the
shots.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you, man. But you
know as well as I do that he would have called his lawyer and been
out of here. Shoot, he’s still got a solid alibi.”

“And yet he ran. Twice. Now he’s roaming free
doing God knows what and who knows where.”

“We’ll find him, Mitch. Trust the process,
man.”

“Process my ass.” I got up and kicked my
chair. It rolled into the wall and tipped over. Perhaps I put a
little too much leg into it. I walked over and righted the chair.
The impact had dented the drywall. I’d have to find a new poster or
process map to hang there. I rolled my chair back to my desk and
took a seat.

“I’m gonna make us some copies,” Sam said,
getting up and heading to the door on his side of the room.

“Triplicates,” I said.

Sam nodded and left the office, leaving me
with the memory of finding Dusty Anne, half-dressed and dead at the
base of the stairs inside the Cape Cod house. A shattered bottle of
Jack spread out around her. Shards of glass stuck in her buttocks
and thighs and back. Whiskey mixed with blood surrounded her body.
Her hair was coated with the stuff, more blood than whiskey,
though, due to the gash on the side of her head. The bottom step
had also been covered with blood, hair, and bits of skull. The
final conscious stop on her trip down the stairs.

If Roy Miller’s story was to be believed.

I had the sudden desire to smoke. I hadn’t
done that since I was a rookie cop pounding the 26th District amid
the historic buildings.

Sam came back in the office, dropped a folder
on my desk, then went around to his side. He pulled out a drawer
and placed a second folder inside.

“I suggest you do the same, partner,” he
said.

So I gave the file a quick once over and
dropped it into my middle drawer. And just in time.

Huff stepped in and said, “You two, my
office, now.”

Horace and Fairchild made childish sounds and
said something stupid. Nothing new. The guys were as mature as
fourth graders, if that. Sam kicked Fairchild’s chair on the way
out. The guy nearly fell to the floor. That would have almost made
up for the crap start to the day.

Huff waited for us in his office. He sat in
his high back leather chair with his ankle crossed over his knee.
He’d ditched the sweats and now wore a navy blue suit, white
striped shirt, and a paisley tie.

“What’s up?” Sam asked.

“Have a seat, guys,” Huff said, gesturing
toward the seats in front of his desk.

We both sat down in the less than comfortable
chairs in front of Huff’s desk. Though we both towered over him
when standing, he now had the high-level view. He seemed to enjoy
looking down on us.

“We got a lead on your boy,” Huff said.

“Which boy is that?” Sam said, playing along.
Huff liked to talk younger person lingo when around us. For
fifty-something he didn’t do too bad.

“The asshole who escaped from the hospital
this morning.”

“Oh, that boy. Sorry, Huff. Just needed a
little clarification.”

I bit my tongue to keep from laughing.

“Yeah, well,” Huff said. “Whatever.”

“Where is he?” I asked, cutting through the
thickening BS.

“He was spotted outside of Quakertown.”

“That’s just a pit stop on 476,” I said.

Huff nodded and uncrossed his legs. He leaned
over the desk, resting his right forearm on his oversized calendar
pad. “At a gas station.”

“So he’s headed north and filling up a gas
tank,” Sam said.

“When was this?” I asked.

Huff glanced at his watch. “About an hour
ago.”

“Why are you just telling us now?” I asked.
“An hour’s a long time to waste.”

“I just found out a few minutes ago,” Huff
replied, holding his hands out toward me.

“So an hour ago,” Sam said. “He’s about
thirty miles away. That means he could be up to a hundred miles
away now.”

“If he stuck to the interstate,” I added.
“And there was no traffic.”

“That’s right,” Sam said. “Or he could have
picked up 76 and headed to New York from there.”

“Or gone west,” I said. “Using back
roads.”

“How’d we find this out?” Sam asked.

Huff said, “They knocked around the cashier
and took a couple hundred out of the register. Didn’t pay for their
gas either. Filled up two tanks on a tan and white F-250.”

“Plates?” I asked.

Huff shook his head. “Negative there.”

“Dammit,” I said.

“Dammit,” Sam echoed.

“So what now?” I asked.

Huff leaned back in his chair. He crossed his
ankle over his knee again and placed his hands in his lap. “You two
go up there and interview the kid. I don’t trust those hick cops to
have done it right. They might have missed something that will help
us find them.”

“You know that’s out of our jurisdiction,”
Sam said.

“Yeah, I know, smart ass.” Huff picked up his
paperweight and tossed it between his hands. He stopped and pointed
at us. “That’s why you keep this quiet. If I get any further leads,
I’ll reach out and we’ll go from there. Otherwise, I expect you two
back here in about three hours.”

We took Sam’s Camaro. It was fast and it drew
more smiles from the ladies than the police issued Chevy I drove. A
quick trip through the city and we were on 95 heading north.
Traffic was thick, but moving. Conversation was sparse and fell out
of our mouths like molasses. Typical, given the circumstances. Our
minds were elsewhere, yet at the same place. We filled the first
few minutes of that half-hour drive by surfing radio stations. We
settled on a jazz station. With the windows rolled down, the tones
were nearly sucked out of the car before I they hit my ears.

We reached Quakertown a half hour later. Once
a pit stop for travelers, it had tripled in size in the last
decade. To the west were farmlands, remnants of the once rural
community. To the east, new residential subdivisions established
for those who wanted to work in Philly or Allentown, but not live
in either of the cities. Plus, they could get more for their money
out here. Big houses, three to four thousand square feet, which
cost a fraction of a thousand square foot place in one of the
historic districts. There was a small downtown area. The only ones
who frequented it were the locals. An uncommon blend of farm folk
and suburbanites, like mixing coffee from Belize with a Turkish
blend. Surely not frequented by those who broke up the monotony of
their five hundred mile drive with a filling of the tank, an
emptying of the bladder, and a sandwich or bag of chips.

“What gas station did he say?” Sam said as we
pulled up to the red stoplight at the end of the exit ramp.

At the stoplight the open windows provided
the oppressive humidity an opportunity to envelop us. I felt my
forehead grow damp with sweat. I used the edge of my thumb to clear
my brow as I looked out the window and surveyed the scene. “That
one, over there.”

Sam turned right, drove a hundred yards or
so, and pulled into the Quik-Pit parking lot. A dark red overhang
covered the empty bay of gas pumps. Yellow police tape secured the
perimeter of the pump area and the entrances to the store.

That’s how you do it, Jennings.

“They’re losing more in revenue by not
pumping gas than Miller and his accomplice took off with,” Sam
observed.

“Most likely. Not our business or our choice
though. These cops have their own protocol.”

“Think it was the state police?”

“No idea, Sam. Don’t know much about how they
operate out here.” While I had experience working with detectives
in various police departments in the tri-state area, this area was
a mystery to me.