The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (9 page)

Debby rushed toward the edge of the recess
yard. She hurdled Ms. Suarez’s body. Her teacher whimpered and
coughed. Debby reached out and grabbed the metal post. She used it
to whip her body around and through the open gate. The man had a
head start on her and was already close to halfway to the front of
the school. But she was fast. It was one of her powers. Brains and
speed. Watch out world, here comes Lil’ Debby Walker. Super
version.

“Let him go,” she yelled.

The guy looked back. He had Beans draped over
one shoulder. Her friend reached out toward her. His mouth draped
open and his eyes wide. In the man’s other hand, he held a cell
phone to his ear. He stuffed it in his pocket and seemed to pick up
his pace.

A van pulled up to the curb at the other end
of the long strip of grass that ran parallel to the school. The
rear door slid open. It was dark inside. She thought she saw a guy
in the back who then moved to the driver’s seat. White teeth and
whites of the eyes. That was it. Black, but not in skin color. She
saw his white hands. He wore a mask though.

Why didn’t the guy who grabbed Beans wear
one?

“Hey!” Debbie yelled.

The guy ignored her. He started to jog toward
the van. Debbie sprinted. No way would he get away with her friend.
Beans had always told her he had her back. Well, now she had
his.

“Son of a bitch,” Debby said. It was the
first time she ever used a cuss word outside of her own head. She
kind of liked it. Well, she would have if the situation wasn’t so
dire.

The guy couldn’t move fast enough and Debby
caught up to him. Without thinking, she launched herself head first
into him from a couple feet away. Whatever results she had been
expecting, they weren’t what she received. The guy turned to the
side right before she reached him. Her head slammed into his hip.
Pain shot through her head, neck, shoulders and back. She fell to
the ground. Grass clippings stuck to her face and found their way
inside her mouth. Her world went sort of black.

“Come on, Mitch. Answer!” Lana shouted into
her cell phone. She crawled along the ground, dragging her left
leg. It didn’t seem to want to move when she willed it to. She
reached the bench and pulled herself to her feet. Using the metal
railing atop the chain link fence, she dragged herself forward.

Debby had flown past her seconds prior. She
tried to tell the girl to stop. A lack of air in her body prevented
her from doing so. Now not one, but two kids were in danger. That
shouldn’t have happened.

Lana looked back and saw the rest of the kids
on the ground. Some had their hands over the backs of their heads.
They’d all been through the drills. A reality of life these
days.

She couldn’t support her weight on her left
leg, so she hopped forward using the fence for support. Pain
radiated from her calf, through her knee, to her hip. Was it
broken? No time to worry about that. A child needed her.

“Get off of me,” she heard Debby scream.

Lana moved as fast as she could, ignoring the
pain. Past the fence, she had to hop on one foot. Pain shot through
her body every time she landed.

Debby screamed again. No words, only pain.
Lana pushed forward. She saw the man lift Debby by her waistband
and toss her inside the van. Then he pulled Bernard off of his
shoulder and threw him in too. The van door slid shut and the guy
got inside the van through the front passenger door.

And like that, the van was gone.

“Lana!” Mitch’s voice called to her through
her cell phone, which she held down by her waist.

“Lana!” I yelled into the phone for the
fourth or fifth time. I heard doors opening all around me. I looked
up and saw Sam and Huff standing in the hallway outside of Huff’s
office. Up and down the corridor, cops stared at me.

“Everything all right, Mitch?” Sam asked.

I ignored him. The only thing I wanted at the
moment was to hear Lana’s voice instead of the sounds of chaos.

“Mitch?” she finally said.

“Lana, what’s going on?”

“Mitch, you have to get down here now,” Lana
said. She was in hysterics.

“Hold on,” I said, stepping into the empty
break room in an effort to find some privacy. “Lana, what’s going
on?”

“The kids, Mitch.”

“What about them?”

“And there was a man with a gun and he shot
it and he took them, Mitch. The bastard took them both.”

“Took who?” Ice went through my veins and I
swore my heart stopped. I prepared myself to hear the name
Ella.

“Debby Walker and Bernard Holland,” she said.
The names did not spark recognition. “Two of the kids in my class.
We were outside. I…” She paused, during which time she choked a few
sobs down. “I couldn’t stop him, Mitch. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
She gasped, then groaned. “My leg, it hurts. I think it’s broken.
But that doesn’t matter. Those kids are gone, Mitch.” Her voice
broke down into sobs at the end.

“Listen to me, Lana. Are they still on the
property?”

A second passed and she composed herself
enough to resume speaking. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think? This isn’t the time for
that, Lana. I need a decisive answer.”

“I don’t see them. I think they left. Why
would they stay around?”

Unless the men intended to take anyone else,
she had a good point.

“Okay. Listen to me, Lana. You need to get
the rest of the kids inside. The school needs to go on lock down.
Do the officers there know what happened?”

“I don’t know. No one has come back here
yet.” There was a pause, then Lana screamed.

“What is it?” I said, worrying that they’d
come back. Panic began to fill every inch of my being.

“There was another gunshot, Mitch. Oh my God,
they’re still out there.”

“Get those kids inside. Now. I’m on my way.”
I waited for a response, but didn’t receive one. Glancing at the
display, I saw that the call had been disconnected. I jammed my
cell inside my pocket and ran out of the break room. Sam and Huff
stood a few feet outside the door. I grabbed Sam by his coat and
said, “Come with me, Sam.”

“What’s going on?” Huff called out.

Every eye in the building was on me at that
point. They looked as worried as I felt. My voice had been loud,
and I had no doubt they overheard my side of the conversation. Most
of the men and women in the precinct had kids and some of them
attended Ella’s school.

“Huff, get every available cop down to my
kid’s school.”

“Why?”

“Shooting and kidnapping.”

“Oh, Jesus. You sure, Tanner?”

I didn’t answer. There wasn’t time. The door
was a couple yards away. I hit it with my shoulder and pressed the
release. The sunlight blinded me as we stepped out into the hot and
humid air. The thin sheen of sweat on my forehead doubled.

“My car,” Sam said.

“We need lights,” I said.

“Fine,” he said. “Your car, but I’m
driving.”

“Okay with me.” I didn’t want to drive. My
nerves were beyond on edge. Lana sounded hurt. Not just emotionally
wounded, but physically. Something had happened to her, maybe
beyond the injury to her leg. She said there had been a gunshot
before the man took the kids. Had she been shot? It’d be just like
her to put off her own welfare so that we focused on stopping the
men from getting away with the kids.

Sam and I got inside my car. Me in the
passenger seat. Him in the driver’s. He fired up the engine and hit
the gas. I swear he had it to the floor before shifting into drive.
The car lurched forward. The tires smoked and left a set of long
black tracks on the parking lot asphalt. He turned on the lights
and the siren and cut down the middle of the road. We were about
four miles from the school. A straight shot, though. No turns.
Traffic parted as if one of us held some kind of mystical staff.
The drive normally would have taken eight to ten minutes this time
of day. We got there in three.

Sam pulled into the parking lot, laying on
the horn. Anyone within fifteen feet of the car ran. He pulled to a
stop past the main door. We knew the fire department and ambulance
service would need those spots.

I stepped out of the car and surveyed the
parking lot, then the front of the school. Puddles left behind by
the tropical storm soaked the parking lot and spots along the lawn.
There were dozens upon dozens of cars around, but I saw no vans.
There were no men with guns, aside from the cops that started to
fill the area. Scanning the front of the building, I saw a crowd
huddled around something at the school’s entrance. Sam and I ran
toward the group.

“Police,” I shouted.

A few heads turned. Their faces were pale.
They looked shocked and saddened.

“Help,” a teacher said. I recognized her from
a barbecue I’d attended with Lana back in July. I couldn’t remember
her name. Blond lady. Good looking. I remembered thinking that at
the party, too.

“What is it?” I asked.

Like the traffic a few minutes earlier, the
crowd separated. I’d say it was the nightstick that held the power,
but I hadn’t carried one in years. As the group shuffled and
stepped to the side, my jaw went slack at the sight of the man on
the ground fighting to gasp his last breath of air.

“Is that…?” Sam said.

“Yeah, Principal Bennett.” I stepped over the
man’s body. “Move aside, people.”

A woman spoke up. “I’m the nurse.”

“Then help him,” I said. “Don’t just kneel
there.”

She looked up at me. Tears rolled down her
cheeks. She shook her head. She didn’t have to say anything. I
understood. Principal Bennett had no chance. That should have been
obvious to me by the gunshot wound to his chest and the amount of
blood he’d lost. I guess sometimes I’m the optimistic one.

“Make him comfortable,” I said.

She nodded and choked back her sobs as she
cradled his head in her arms.

“Did anyone see what happened?” Sam
asked.

The teacher spoke up again. “I was out here
with him. We were close to the front door. Heard a gunshot. Both of
us ran outside.”

“Is that what you’re supposed to do?” I
asked.

Sam grabbed my shoulder. I’d slipped up.
Should have never said that. The teacher looked at me, confused.
Maybe a little betrayed.

“Sorry,” I said. “Go on.”

“It all happened so quickly.” She lifted her
arm and wiped her eyes with the cuff of her left sleeve. The right
one was covered in Bennett’s blood. “A van pulled up. The side door
opened. You know, the sliding one?”

We both nodded.

“I saw a guy inside, sort of.”

“How do you mean, sort of?”

She gestured to her head. “He had on a
mask.”

“Okay.”

“Then another man appeared from behind the
school over there.” She pointed in the direction that we had
entered. “He was carrying a kid over his shoulder.”

“Who was the kid?” Lana had told me, but I
wanted to see if this teacher knew.

She shook her head. “Don’t know. But listen,
after that a little girl came out of nowhere and attacked the
man.”

“Attacked?” Sam asked.

“Well, ran into him,” she said. Her hands
animated her retelling. “She bounced right off of him. He picked
her up, tossed her into the van. Then he tossed the boy inside. He
spun around and aimed that rifle at someone.”

“Who?”

“I didn’t see.”

“How do you know it was someone then?”

“I just guessed it was.”

“You guessed?”

“I couldn’t see. They were behind the school.
But why would he stand there like that?” She mimicked the stance.
Legs spread wide, shoulders hunched, arms out and hands supporting
a large weapon. “He had to be aiming at someone.”

“Okay,” I said, figuring the ‘someone’ meant
Lana. “And then?”

“The guy slammed the side door shut, opened
the front passenger door and sort of got in.”

“Sort of?”

“He kept the door open. Half-stood, half-sat,
aimed the rifle at us. And then he…”

“Got it. Thank you, Mrs.?”

“Gladstone.”

“Mrs. Gladstone,” Sam said. “You said you got
a good look at the man who had the kids.”

“I said that?” she asked.

Sam glanced at me. “Well, did you?”

She nodded.

“Can you tell us what he looked like?”

“Sure, that’s easy. He’s been around here the
last couple of days. He was the new janitor.”

The sounds of over a dozen sirens approached.
Police, fire, rescue. Red and blue lights circled and reflected off
cars in the parking lot. The proverbial cavalry had arrived.

Too damned late.

Amid the wail of the sirens, Sam stepped
closer to the blond-haired teacher and said, “We need to see the
personnel records. Can you show them to us?”

The teacher’s gaze settled in between us,
fixed on the wave of emergency rescue personnel that had descended
upon the elementary school.

“Miss?” Sam leaned forward.

She shook her head.

“Who can?” Sam asked.

She glanced at Principal Bennett’s almost
lifeless body.

“Anyone else?” Sam asked.

“The Vice Principal.”

“Which one of you is the Vice Principal?” Sam
asked.

No one spoke up. Everybody stared back. Shock
had most definitely set in.

“He’s not here,” the teacher said after a
long pause. “Maybe out to lunch?”

I glanced at my watch. “A bit early for that,
isn’t it?”

I looked over and saw two paramedics running
toward us. An EMT and firefighter pushing a gurney followed, trying
to keep up. Those who remained around Principal Bennett were
ordered to step back a good distance. The medics needed room to
work, not that it would make much of a difference. I took one last
look at Principal Bennett. I hadn’t had the chance to get to know
him that well. Pretty much nothing more than a ‘hello’ in passing.
I figured this would be the last time I’d see him alive.