The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (26 page)

Cassie again threw up her hand. “No, not
yet.”

“Why not?” Bridget asked. “Don’t you need it
to contact her or whatever you do? We should have stopped by her
house and brought a shirt or her favorite doll or something.
Right?”

Cassie smiled at Bridget and then me. She
leaned forward, placed her elbows on her knees, resting her chin on
her hands. Her gaze traveled back to Bridget and remained there for
two or three minutes. Bridget shifted around a few times. I could
tell it made her uncomfortable. Cassie smiled, looked away, and let
her eyes close slowly.

Bridget glanced over at me. I shrugged. I had
no idea what Cassie was doing.

Finally, Cassie opened her eyes and
straightened up. “It doesn’t work that way, Bridget. I don’t call
in to anybody or have some spirit guide that follows me around. At
least, not that I know of. I can’t hold something of the child’s, a
doll or favorite piece of clothing, and see where she is. Honestly,
I don’t control this.”

“Then how does this work?” Bridget looked
intrigued, like she had started to believe that the woman could
help us.

“They come to me.” Cassie’s gaze remained
focused on Bridget, unblinking.

Bridget’s tone and chin both dropped. “Who
does?”

“The deceased. I give them a voice.”

“So, you can only help us if she’s dead?
She’ll come and tell you where her body is?”

“Sometimes.”

“But I thought you said that they had to come
to you?”

“Sometimes it is the victim. Other times it
is a friend or family member. Once, it was a total stranger who had
witnessed the events but had been too scared to speak up. At least,
while alive.”

“Right.” Bridget slapped her hands on her
knees and rose. “I’m sorry we wasted your,” she glanced at me, “and
our, time.” She started toward the door.

“Please, don’t go,” Cassie said. “I know this
makes no sense. Trust me when I say I used to be the biggest
skeptic there was. Even growing up in a place like Savannah, where
there is no shortage of ghost stories, I never believed in any of
that. I wasn’t born like this, Bridget. I didn’t ask for it. It
just…happened.” She glanced at me. The look in her eyes told me
that she did not want to recount the story of how she received this
gift. She’d told me once that it drained her to relive it. So I
shook my head and gestured for her continue. “I understand what
you’re thinking. Even Detective Tanner has doubts I can really do
this. He’s only here because he’s superstitious. You guys came
here, and if anyone out there was watching, they might have
followed. And if they did, they might approach me. And then I might
be able to tell you something.”

“Lots of mights in there, Cassie,” Bridget
said.

Cassie’s lips parted, but she said nothing. I
imagined that she was used to this level of skepticism.

“All right then,” Bridget said, sitting down
on the sofa next to Cassie. “Can you tell us where she is?”

Debby’s hands hurt. The muscles of her
fingers were frozen in a death grip. The skin between her thumb and
forefinger on each hand was split open and raw from broken
blisters. Wooden splinters of every size stuck out of her palm and
fingers. She pulled them out by pinching them between her
fingernails or her teeth. Some splinters were buried so deep she
couldn’t get them out at all. She wondered if turning off the light
would make the pain go away. Maybe the darkness would wash away her
misery. It didn’t. She flicked the flashlight back on and moved
forward to inspect her progress.

A smile crossed her face as she realized that
she’d broken through the wall. No light passed through the small
hole. She stood within a few inches of it and shone her light. It
appeared to be wide enough for her to maneuver around in there. All
she had to do now was break through enough of the wall to allow her
to slip through. She considered this for a moment. If she made the
hole too big, then the man could get through it as well. His body
looked frail. The trick would be creating a hole big enough for
her, but too small for a less than normal sized man.

So long as they didn’t have a dog with them,
she figured she’d be safe back there even if the room behind the
wall turned out to be nothing more than a few feet of space. It’d
devastate her of course, but at least she’d go out on her own
terms. And while Debby wasn’t quite sure what that meant, it
sounded better than being murdered.

Not knowing the time had been the worst part
of the ordeal. She could handle being hungry and thirsty. But how
could she expect to manage her food and water without knowing the
time, let alone how many days she’d been trapped in the room? For
this reason, she limited herself to half a slice of bread when the
hunger grew too intense. Likewise, she’d only take two or three
sips of water at a time. The first bottle neared being empty. She
felt tempted to use the water to clean her wounds. She didn’t,
though. Wounds would heal. Once you died, that was it.

As she swished the water around the bottle,
her thoughts turned to Beans. What had they done with him? Did they
move her because they planned on killing him? She spent most of her
time awake thinking about him. A few times she shut her eyes tight
and did nothing but call out to him mentally. There hadn’t been any
response. Not yet, at least. She refused to give up hope.

Debby lifted the bottle to her lips and
drained the remaining liquid. It went down warm and did little to
squash her thirst. However, the water did dull the ache in her
throat and helped get rid of that cotton feeling in her mouth. She
set the empty bottle on the floor in the middle of the room. The
thought of urinating into it had crossed her mind. Once, she’d
stayed up and watched a show about a survivalist who’d done just
that and later drank it to stay alive.

“Gross,” she whispered, looking away from the
empty plastic bottle. She held the little flashlight between her
teeth and attempted to remove the remaining splinters from her
hand. They gave her varying levels of pain as she pulled them free
and tossed them on the floor. There were a few that remained
buried, joining the other splinters she had been unable to remove.
She hoped they would not fester and cause her skin to rot.

Debby rose, picked up the shovel and headed
toward the back of the room. She went to work creating her freedom
hole, as she’d dubbed it. The metal blade made a tiny clanking
sound with every thrust into the wall. She aimed for a spot a
couple inches below the hole she’d made. If she could create enough
small holes, it’d be easier to break apart the remaining wall
between them. She got the idea when she recalled the one time her
brother had let her use his pellet gun. He taped a target to a
large oak tree in their backyard. She stood a few feet away and
fired off ten or so rounds. The ten shots had all hit pretty close
to the center. He let her keep the target. When she pressed her
finger against the area, the paper tore. Punching a hole through
the wall would be as simple as tearing paper, she told herself.

It never crossed Debby’s mind that she might
be deluding herself. She didn’t think that far ahead. Her focus
remained on the next jab with the shovel and creating the next hole
in the wall. And it happened, eventually. It might have been ten
minutes, or maybe a hundred and ten. She had no way of knowing.

Cassie remained silent for several seconds
while her unfocused eyes gazed at a spot somewhere above my head. I
wondered what went through her mind at that time. Did she try to
force the image of the child? Could she do that? Did she plead for
someone to appear before her and show her the way?

Did I really believe all that?

No, not really. I had a tendency to think
things were simpler than that.

“I’m sorry,” Cassie said. “There’s
nothing.”

Bridget shot me an
I-told-you-so
look,
turned her head and smiled at Cassie, and pushed off of the couch.
“Thanks for your time, Cassie. Detective Tanner and I will be on
our way now. Sorry to have bugged you.”

Cassie didn’t move, seemingly still caught
between reality and wherever she had gone a few minutes ago. I
caught her glance as I rose, but she looked away.

“Cassie,” I said. “You call me if something
pops up. Even if you don’t think it means anything. I mean it.
Okay?”

She nodded. “Yes, Detective Tanner. I have
your number.”

Bridget had rushed out of the house, brushing
me with a stiff shoulder as she passed. By the time I reached the
front door, she had slammed her car door shut. I knew coming to
Savannah was a long shot, but we had little else to go on. Perhaps
I should have left Bridget behind and come by myself. After all,
her presence wasn’t necessary here. I’d brought her along for
selfish reasons, and it had the opposite of the intended effect. On
top of that, I wondered if having her inside the house had left
Cassie feeling uneasy and unable to perform.

I turned back toward Cassie. “Is there
anything else I can do or tell you, Cassie?”

She rose from her seat and walked toward me,
stopping a few feet away. A hint of lavender passed by me a moment
later. She leaned against the wall, resting her head to the side.
Her hair spilled down across her chest. She stared at me with
intense burning eyes. “You can pray, Mitch. Pray for that little
girl to get home safely.”

I nodded, turned and stepped outside,
glancing back a few times. I reached the car and took one last look
back. She stood behind the front window, staring out at the street.
I waved to her and she didn’t respond in kind.

The inside of the car had to be over a
hundred degrees. Bridget had been in there with the doors shut and
the engine and air conditioning off. She refused to look at me as I
slipped in behind the wheel. Her cheeks were flushed red. From the
heat, or anger?

I started the engine. The air conditioning
was set to max and blew on high. It took two or three minutes for
the air that escaped the vents to cool to a bearable temperature. I
used my thumb to wipe a sheen of sweat off my forehead.

“I’d just like to say that—”

“What, Mitch? That you wasted our time? That
you risked my job by bringing me down here for some supposed
psychic who told us absolutely nothing? God, what was I thinking
agreeing to this? We’re not getting these hours back. Every minute
we’re not out looking for that girl, or searching for those men,
they get further away, and our chances of finding Debby Walker
alive drop closer to zero.”

“Medium,” I said under my breath.

“What?” Her head whipped toward me. I didn’t
have to look at her to see the anger in her eyes.

“Cassie’s not a psychic,” I said in a hushed
voice. “She’s a medium.”

Bridget groaned and rolled her eyes. I wasn’t
sure which was colder by that point, her or the air
conditioning.

We didn’t talk the rest of the way to the
airport. I dropped her at the curb and then I continued on to the
car rental check-in. I found Bridget inside. We stood side by side
in line, but we might as well have been on opposite ends of the
country. I purchased two tickets back to Philly. She requested a
seat at least ten rows away from mine. I didn’t protest. As far as
I was concerned, our job was to do everything in our power to find
that girl and bring her home alive. If Cassie had given us a viable
lead, this trip would have paid itself back a million times over
and Bridget would be proclaiming my status as a hero.

Before boarding, I called Sam and asked him
to pick me up. I had the feeling that Bridget would want to be
alone in her government-issued sedan. Once seated on the plane, I
closed my eyes and dozed off, waking up every ten or fifteen
minutes it seemed. It helped pass the time at least. Coming to the
end of a particularly heavy sleep, I felt a presence and looked up.
Bridget stood in the aisle. She gave me a thin smile and then
plopped down next to me.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No,” I said, “I’m the one who should be
apologizing. I could have made this trip alone.”

She nodded while looking past me. “You were
only trying to help. To be honest, I don’t discount the method.
I’ve read case reports where those types of people were fairly
accurate. If she would have given us just one thing we could go on,
it would have been worthwhile.” She paused and I said nothing.
Bridget continued, “Chances are I would have been chasing my tail
in circles back in Philly. I just wish…”

“I know, Bridget. Me, too.” I reached out and
grabbed her wrist as she rose. “You don’t have to leave.”

She freed herself from my grasp. Looking down
at me from the aisle, she said, “Yes, I do.”

She walked away, and I turned my attention to
the view out the window. In between thick white clouds, I caught
glimpses of thin blacktop roads and neighborhoods full of dot sized
houses. I wondered if I’d ever run into Bridget again. It wasn’t as
if we had a long history together, no real relationship to speak
of. We shared a connection, though, and I couldn’t discount
that.

The plane landed and the few passengers on
board lined up to depart. Five people separated Bridget and me.
Might as well have been five miles. She never once turned to look
at me. As a group, we shuffled to the front of the plane, and then
picked up the pace through the stifling hot jetway. Bridget
practically jogged to the gate and through the terminal. I kept up
with her for the first few minutes, weaving through the
bi-directional foot traffic. Then, I stopped. I decided if she
wanted to be alone, I’d let her. Nothing good would come out of me
chasing after her and forcing the issue.

Sam met me outside. The sun hung deep in the
west. It was hot, but the humidity had relented. That made it a
little easier to breathe in the exhaust that plagued the area. Sam
had my Chevy and had taken full liberties with it, double parking
and blocking one of the traffic lanes. Every car that had to merge
into the other lane had a driver or passenger who shot a scornful
look in our direction.