The Depth of Darkness

by L. T. Ryan

  “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.

  Chapter 9

  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.”

  Chapter 10

  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 tunes were nearly sucked out of the car before 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.

  “Come on,” Sam said. “Let’s go check this place out before that police tape gets cut in two.”

  We both exited the Camaro and walked up to the front of the store. A painted striped line covered two-thirds of the glass. Sam could see over it easily. I had to rise up on the tips of my toes. The area in front of us was where the clerk would have stood. They had to work all day with their backs to the pumps. Not a great idea in my experience. The cash register hung open, no one behind the counter to close it. The aisles were barren. So we went around to the left side of the store. The doors there were locked. I knocked on the glass door while Sam headed around back. No one answered or appeared from the back of the store. I knocked again. A minute later I saw Sam through the glass, on the other side of the store. He gave the door there a yank and then shrugged his shoulders. We met in front of the building.

  “I’ll call Huff,” I said, pulling out my cell phone.

  Huff answered on the second ring. “You guys there?”

  “Yeah, Huff, but the kid’s not.”

  “Where is he?”

  “How should I know? Ain’t no one here, man.”

  “Sit tight for a few. I’ll make a few calls and get back to you.”

  I wrapped my hand around my phone and stuffed both in my pocket. I stared over the hood of the Camaro at the fast food joint across the street. A line of cars wrapped around the side and back. A little early for lunch, I thought. Perhaps the late breakfast crowd.

  “What’s the deal?” Sam asked.

  “He’s gonna call us back.”

  “Sounds promising.” Sam shook his head and looked at the ground. He kicked a cigarette butt off the sidewalk.

  “Sounds like we’re wasting an hour of our time.”

  “At least we get paid no matter what.”

  “Screw the paycheck. I want Roy Miller in custody.”

  “I know, Mitch. Just giving you a hard time.”

  “Every minute we stand around here, Miller gets that much farther away.”

  “He’ll slip up. Don’t you worry about it. The guy ain’t that smart. Before you know it, he’ll make a mistake and we’ll have him in custody. Someone’ll have him in custody.”

  Sam, my ever-optimistic partner. I never understood it. With all the crap he saw in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger, how could he be so positive? He’d always said it was because he came home alive. Many of his friends didn’t. But I knew there were thoughts he did not share with me. Memories that were too painful. I could see it in his eyes and that distant stare out to nowhere.

  “He should have never escaped our custody,” I said. One of us had to be pragmatic.

  We fell silent. The rolling tide of vehicles filled the void, like at the beach. As soon as one wave headed back into the ocean, another broke. By this time of day, the morning commuters were already at work. These cars belonged to people heading from one far off destination to another. Truckers making that long haul up and down good old I-95. One long boring strip of highway that would take you from Miami to the Houlton–Woodstock Border Crossing, just east of Houlton, Maine, at the Canadian border.

  My phone vibrated in my hand. “Yeah, Huff,” I said.

  “Trail’s dead, Tanner. Lost my lead on the kid and nothing new on Miller.”

  I paused and exhaled into the phone. “All right.” I ended the call and looked toward 95.

  “Well?” Sam asked.

  “Wasted our time.”

  “Nah, we got to bond. Never a waste of time.” I didn’t have to look to know he had that boyish grin spread across his face.

  “Think we should try to track the kid down on our own?”

  “The security footage will tell us all we need to know once we get our hands on it. No need to waste any more time up here.”

  “Wanna get a drink?”

  Sam looked at his watch. “A little early for that.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe you got a point. It’s five o’clock somewhere, though.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “Get in the car and cut the cliches.”

  And so I did. We got back on the interstate, heading south. I spotted a sign for a Cracker Barrel and told Sam to take the exit.

  “Place is always packed,” he argued.

  “That’s ‘cause it’s good,” I countered.

  “Look, there’s a Waffle House, two more exits. We can get in and out and be back in town in time for lunch.” Good ‘ole Sam, planning with his stomach.

  “I want pancakes.”

  “You can get them at Waffle House.”

  “No you can’t. It’s not called Pancake House. It’s the Waffle House for a reason.”

  “I bet you twenty bucks you can get pancakes there.”

  “Twenty bucks?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Show me,” I said.

  He stopped at the light at the end of the exit and unfolded an Andrew Jackson in front of me.

  “Shoot, keep on going,” I said. “We’re going to Waffle House. You might as well hand that over to me right now.”

  It turned out that Sam knew there were no pancakes served at the establishment. He was willing to part with twenty bucks if it meant not waiting a half-hour or more in those stiff wooden rocking chairs that line the porch of every Cracker Barrel in
the U.S. of A.

  We slid into a booth just past the counter. A good seat, I noted. Not held together with duct tape like some diners I’d been at in the past. I ate my waffles, not leaving a single piece behind. Not pancakes, but they were good. A side order of sausage rounded out my meal. The coffee was better than I had expected. Good enough that I’d consider coming back. I had two cups, black. After I finished I licked the grease off of my fingertips and leaned back in the booth, stretching both arms out along the vinyl top. It didn’t take long for my stomach to feel like it contained a thirty-five pound kettlebell.

  “Aren’t you glad we came here?” Sam asked, tearing a corner from his over-buttered toast and stuffing it into his mouth.

  I nodded. At the same time, the waitress came by and asked if I wanted anymore coffee. I declined, as did Sam.

  “Just the check,” he said to her. Then he turned his head toward me. “You’ve had some time to think and eat and drink that coffee.”

  “I have.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think Waffle House makes good waffles and great coffee.”

  Sam smiled. “You’re easy to please, but that’s not what I meant.”

  “I know, man, I know.”

  Sam mirrored my posture and waited for me to give him an answer. I knew he wouldn’t agree to leave until I did. We’d been through this a time or fifty before.

  “This guy’s a bit odd,” I started.

  “That psychology degree tell you that?”

  “It’s a minor, which means I took about four classes. And yeah, it does. So does my common sense. And don’t you go ragging on me for getting some kind of education.”

  “Hey, I got my education out there in the ‘Stan.”

  I nodded. While not college, spending a year or two in Afghanistan should qualify any soldier for a degree. At least an Associate’s in ass-kicking and bullshit-bureaucracy.

  “So give me a diagnosis,” Sam said.

  “On you? We don’t have enough time for that you philandering fool.”

  Sam smiled as he used his last piece of toast to soak up the remaining egg yolk on his plate. “On Roy.”