The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (13 page)

“Surprise, surprise,” Sam said.

I glanced at each agent. Their sunglasses hid
their eyes. I wondered if they even bothered to look at us.

The woman spoke first. “We’re not here to
take this case away from you, Detectives. From talking with
Lieutenant Huff, we understand that there are multiple facets
involved here, including two homicides and a potential suspect
linked to both of those, as well as the kidnapping. We’re going to
work together as a team on this. We’ll take point and you two will
be kept in the loop the whole time. We’ll rely on you as much as
you rely on us. If you cooperate with us, things will go
smoothly.”

“This is our case,” I said. “We started it,
we should be point on this.”

Huff stepped forward and cut me off. “What
Detective Tanner means is that we’re happy to help in any way we
can, but we want to be there every step of the way.”

“Like hell that’s what I mean,” I said. “I’m
not giving up control of anything.”

She lifted her sunglasses revealing eyes that
reflected gold in the sunlight. “I understand your frustration,
Detective. I really do. But we have a protocol to follow. I’m
serious about us being a team now. There’s no Feds versus Locals
here. Not with me. Not with my two agents here. You two will be
working with me while Special Agents Vinson and Braden are sent to
notify the families and do some—”

“I want to talk to the families. There has to
be something there, and I don’t trust those two kids to figure it
out.” The guys probably weren’t that much younger than me. I still
didn’t have faith in them to do this right. The Feds have a way of
screwing these things up. They don’t understand these people
here.

“And we’ll follow up with them after Vinson
and Braden notify them and gather some information,” she said.
“Don’t you think it’ll be easier to deal with the families after
they get over the shock?”

“Sometimes we can learn more while they are
in shock,” I countered. I felt Sam’s hand on my arm. He pulled me
back a step and leaned toward me.

“Let it go for now, Mitch,” he said quietly.
“They’ll pull us completely.”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a
second. Then I said, “So what now?”

Huff said, “You two are going to leave with
Agent Dinapoli. You’ll fill her in what you found out inside and
your reasons for taking those two into custody.”

“Parking tickets,” Sam said.

Huff shook his head. “And after that—” He
stopped and glanced down at his cell phone. He held a finger in the
air and said, “I gotta take this.”

As Huff stepped away, Dinapoli and I engaged
in a stare off. The slender five-foot-six woman had a slight smile.
She had us by the balls, and she knew it. She probably relished in
it. Sometimes I cursed myself for not going to law school and
joining in on the Federal fun. Must be nice to have that kind of
power and authority.

Huff rushed back over. By the time he reached
us, he was out of breath.

“What is it?” I asked.

“They found the van,” he replied.

“Where?” I said.

He looked at me, then at Dinapoli. That’s
what it had come to? He had to get her permission to tell me
something? Apparently so, because she nodded and he started
talking.

“About two miles from the school, off the
road. Some teenagers who were cutting class found it there and
called it in.” Huff then gave us the location. I knew exactly where
it was.

“Where is that?” Dinapoli asked.

Sam and I started toward my car without
answering her.

“Detectives?” she said.

“Hey,” Huff shouted. “Bring her along.”

I was fine with that. She could come along
and sit in the back of the Chevy. As long as we didn’t have to
follow her, I could live with the arrangement.

For the time being.

We all got inside my car. I let Sam drive
again. He started up the engine, pulled away from the curb and made
a U-turn in the middle of the street. Huff blocked our path. He
stood there in front of us, waving his arms. He must have run over
to us after we got inside. The front of his shirt had grown damp
with sweat.

Sam rolled down his window and shouted,
“What?”

Huff walked around the front of the Chevy to
the driver’s side. He stopped, leaned over and placed his hands on
his knees. He looked at Sam. “After you’re done with the Van,
return to the precinct.”

“What if a lead takes us elsewhere?” I
asked.

He shook his head. “We’ve got the footage
from the gas station. I want you to go over it with Agent
Dinapoli.”

Sam and I nodded. From the backseat, Dinapoli
asked, “What gas station?”

Neither of us responded. Huff made a snorting
kind of sound. I figured he was about to tell us to let her in on
it, but needed to breathe more than talk at that moment.

“Listen to me, Detectives,” she said. “The
FBI is taking this case over whether you like it or not.”

So much for being a team.

“If you want to be a part of the
investigation,” she continued, “then you better start talking
now.”

I shifted in my seat and looked back at her.
“Ms. Dinapoli—”

“Special Agent Dinapoli,” she corrected
me.

“I don’t care if it’s God’s Right Hand Woman
Dinapoli,” I said. “Right now you are in our car and counting on us
to take you to see the getaway vehicle. You’d be wise to sit back
and shut the hell up.”

Anger flashed in her eyes and across her
face, but she didn’t say anything. She stared at me for a moment,
and then looked out the side window. I felt a little bad at my
outburst, but did not apologize. My cell phone started to vibrate.
I pulled it from my pocket and turned away.

“Tanner,” I answered.

“Mitch.”

“Lana, where are you?”

“The hospital.”

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“Broke my leg. I’ll be fine. They say I hit
my head. I don’t remember that. They say that’s because I have a
concussion.”

“What do you remember?”

“All of it, Mitch. All except hitting my
head.”

I needed to be in the same room with her, for
one, to settle my nerves over her condition. Also, I figured she
might recall a few details that would help us. Plus, she knew the
kids. There had to be a reason all this happened.

“Lana, look, I’m on my way to see the van,” I
said. “It was ditched a few miles from school. After that I’m gonna
come by and see you. Which hospital did they take you to?”

“I’m at Mercy.”

“Okay, that’s not far from the station. I’ll
drop Sam and
Special Agent
Dinapoli off, and then come check
on you.”

“Okay. Mitch, if that turns out to be after
five—”

“It won’t be.”

“—well if it does, would you stop by my place
and feed Envy for me?”

Envy was her cat. As far as cats go, he was
all right.

“Yeah, I can do that.” We said goodbye and I
set my phone in the center console. I watched the trees pass
through the side window, hoping that I could attach my concerns to
one of them and leave it behind for a while.

“She doing okay?” Sam asked.

“Shaken up, I’m sure. Seeing the kids taken
like that.”

“Wait a minute,” Dinapoli said from the back
seat. “You have a witness and we aren’t going to see her?”

I said nothing.

“Detective?”

I still said nothing. They’d get their chance
with Lana soon enough.

“That looks like the spot,” Sam said.

“We’re not done with this,” Dinapoli said.
“After this, I want to know everything you can tell me about this
witness.”

I’d do everything in my power to prevent
that. The moment they found out about my relationship with Lana,
they’d kick me off the case. I looked up as Sam slowed the car
down. A line of about a dozen squad cars had hopped the curb and
parked along the road. Their rack lights rotated, alternating red
and blue. Traffic crawled along in the middle lane. Countless faces
stared in our direction. I’m sure folks passing by thought there
had to be a whole host of dead bodies in the woods just beyond
their view.

Sam pulled over and up onto the curb. He
parked my Chevy behind the last squad car.

“Leave some room,” I said. “I don’t want some
rookie pulling up here and blocking us in.”

I stepped out and let Dinapoli out of the
backseat. She stepped outside without looking at me. We walked
toward the ten-foot wide clearing. Grass had grown over two gravel
tracks. Turning into the clearing, I saw Sandusky’s van with the
white-stenciled lettering, FORENSICS. Beyond that stood the van
that had been used at the scene of the crime. Primer gray and maybe
sanded down in spots. Sandusky and a team of his men were busy
grabbing fibers from the carpet, as well as prints from all the
surfaces.

“Can you imagine being scooped up from your
everyday kid life and tossed into the back of a van with a couple
of madmen?” Sam asked.

Dinapoli turned to face us. “Yes. It happened
to me when I was thirteen.”

I hesitated, then asked, “What happened?”

She glanced at me, then over my shoulder. Her
eyes took on a sheen. “Some other time, Detective.” With that, she
turned again and went into FBI Special Agent mode directing people
here and there and yelling about the integrity of the crime
scene.

“Should we pull her back?” Sam said.

“Nah,” I said. “I just want to hear from
Sandusky what he thinks.”

“Well here’s your chance.” Sam pointed ahead
at the approaching forensics technician.

“Any luck?” I asked Sandusky.

“Pretty clean. Got some fibers out of the
carpet, some hair. Prints in the back. None up front. Little bit of
blood on the front passenger seat.”

I tensed at this.

“Up high, like maybe one of the kids got
their fingernails into the guy’s neck or the side of his face. From
the accounts, the man carrying the boy was the one in the passenger
seat. That right?”

I nodded, so did Sam. I wondered who had told
Sandusky that. Looking around, I didn’t spot any faces of those who
were in the know.

“Here’s something else,” Sandusky said,
waving at us to follow him. We walked past the van. Two men were
inside dusting the ceiling. We stopped in front of the van. There
were fat tire tracks on the ground and footprints in the mud next
to where I estimated the passenger side doors to be. Sandusky
continued, “My guess would be that they had a car parked back here
as opposed to walking off somewhere else.”

“Looks about right,” Sam said.

“Those footprints any good?” I asked.

Sandusky shook his head. “We can get a
general sense of the shoe size, but the imprints are bad. We’ll get
a cast of them, though.”

“What size are the shoes?”

“One set is an eleven or twelve, men’s. The
other belongs to a kid. And there’s only one print like that. So,
maybe the kid pulled free and got one foot on the ground or
something like that. Definitely not two.”

“So no kid got away here,” Sam said.

Sandusky shook his head.

“Have we sent men out into those woods?” Sam
asked.

“That’s not my call, of course,” Sandusky
said. “But, yeah, I saw some officers heading out there. Maybe
they’ll find something that’d been tossed from the van.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said. My gut was
telling me that this had been in the works for some time now.
“Who’s this van belong to?”

Kettle, a detective from robbery came
forward. “It was reported missing early this morning. Some old lady
out in the suburbs. Said she kept the van for her son. He’s doing a
stint up at SCI at Rockview for armed robbery.”

Sam and I glanced at each other and nodded.
Sandusky drifted back until he was no longer in view. I knew where
to find him if we needed him again.

“What is it?” Kettle said.

“We got a lead on one of the men,” I
said.

“Possibly,” Sam said.

“And?” Kettle said.

“An ex-con, maybe recently in the joint.”

“Rockview?”

I hiked my shoulders in the air an inch. “Not
sure. We’re going to find out. In the meantime, what’s this lady’s
name?”

By this point Dinapoli had wandered over and
positioned herself between me and Sam. Kettle glanced at her, then
back at me.

“Farrugio,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Do me a favor and make sure
that report hits my email inbox.”

“Yeah, you got it.” His eyes settled on
Dinapoli. He smiled at her. She turned away.

“You gonna impound the van after Sandusky’s
done with it?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” Kettle said. “We can hold it as long
as you guys need. Like I said, it belongs to her son, so she don’t
have any need for it.”

I watched Kettle walk away and disappear
around a corner. After he was out of sight, I turned toward the
tangle of bushes and trees. What was on the other side? What if the
van had been a diversion? The men could have split up there. They
could have split the kids up, too, each man taking one kid. Or, one
could have taken the van and the other man could have left through
the woods with both kids.

“Hey,” Sandusky shouted, breaking my
concentration. “Come take a look at this.”

When they told Debby and Beans it was okay to
remove their masks, she couldn’t help but feel relieved that she’d
see light again. It didn’t turn out that way, though. The room was
dark, dry, and cool. She placed her hands in the air over her head
before standing. While she assumed they were in a room, she
couldn’t be sure. The last thing she wanted to do was hit her head
again. She scooted her legs up under her and slowly rose. When she
was fully extended, her fingertips grazed what she assumed was the
ceiling. She took a step forward, then back. She stepped to her
left, then right. She planned on doing this until she had a general
sense of where the walls were. On her next step, she felt something
under her foot.