The Depth of Darkness

by L. T. Ryan

  “Just be prepared,” Huff cautioned.

  “For what?”

  “To be removed.”

  “What are you talking about?” I had to argue against the possibility, if only to get Huff on our side.

  “I know you date one of these teachers,” Huff said, looking around the crowd of lost faces. “Might be a conflict of interest.”

  My patience ran out, and I snapped. “You listen to me you good for nothing piece of crap. Those kids that were taken were under my girlfriend’s care and protection. By extension, that puts them under mine. I don’t care where this leads or who it goes through, you are not pulling me off this investigation. I’m not going to rest until those kids are found. You got that? If that means I find Bennett’s killer, so be it. But don’t you stand there and tell me what the hell I’m gonna do and what I’m not gonna do, you pencil pushing flabby excuse for a cop.”

  I had the distinct feeling that all eyes were on me. A quick survey of the area in front of the school confirmed that.

  Huff’s face reddened. He took a step forward, pointed at me, stopped, turned and walked away. He erupted into a tirade of obscenities after he stepped off the curb.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said, pushing through the front door.

  The teacher led us down a short stretch of hallway that ended at the administrative offices. The area was empty both inside and out. Everyone had cleared the room and were either out front or in the auditorium. We had a team of uniformed officers that went through the school and escorted teachers and students, room by room, outside and into the auditorium. No doubt they would have done the same for the front office employees.

  “When did you say this guy started?” I asked.

  “Last week,” she said. “Mid-week maybe? That’s the first time I recall seeing him.”

  “The principal and assistant are the only two who have access to personnel files?”

  She shrugged. “I really don’t know. I’m a teacher, not an office worker.”

  “We need to start tearing this office apart,” Sam said.

  “Wait,” she said. “Let me go find someone.” She started to walk away. Before I could look away she turned around. “Where did everyone go?”

  “Besides out front?” I said. “The auditorium.”

  She left the office. I looked over at Sam.

  “You want to go find her?” he asked, referring to Ella.

  “More than anything,” I replied.

  “Go.”

  “No, not yet. I can’t leave this yet. I know she’s safe right now.” My words almost convinced me of this. “I’ll find her before we leave and let her know I’m involved and she’s going to be okay.”

  Sam nodded and went back to pulling open drawers, searching for the personnel file. I walked around the office and took a few steps into a narrow hallway with glass walls. From there, I saw the offices of the principal and vice principal. They were on opposite sides of the hall, facing each other. The principal had the better of the two, in my opinion. Bennett had a view of the outside. He could look up from his computer and gaze out a nice wide window. Not too far away was a fenced in lake. The fence must have been put there to protect the children from getting too close and falling in. I imagined my little Ella standing in front of the fence, little fingers wrapped around the chain links, watching ducks on the pond. She had a fascination with water and everything that lived in it and on it. Half the books in her room were on turtles, sharks, whales and dolphins. The rest were on birds, mostly sea faring birds. I read two or three of them to her every night at bedtime. If I was home, of course.

  On Principal Bennett’s desk were several framed pictures. His kids and his wife, I presumed. It looked like his kids ranged from age five to fifteen or so. There were four of them, all girls. His wife was fit and attractive. They looked like a happy family. No longer.

  I heard the main door to the office area click open. I set a family photo back on Bennett’s desk and left his office. When I reached the end of the hall, I saw the blond teacher standing there with an older woman with dyed brown hair. She wore a brown pants suit and no makeup.

  “I’m Barbara Winder,” she said. “You need access to our personnel files?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “In particular those of a janitor you just hired.”

  She nodded and walked around the long counter that divided the room. “I know where that is. If you’ll just give me a minute.” She slipped behind the desk and logged into a computer. A printer came to life a few moments later. Its fan whirred into action and then it began spitting out paper.

  Sam walked over to the printing station and waited for it to complete the job.

  “His name is Michael Lipsky,” she said. “D.O.B. is August 19th, 1974. He came to us—”

  “What the hell?” Sam said. He held the paper in front of him, shaking his head. “Get over here, Mitch.”

  “What is it?” I asked, crossing the room in a couple steps.

  “Look.” He held the paper out for me to inspect.

  I nearly fell over right then and there. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Who was responsible for hiring this man?” Sam asked, crossing the room with me close behind.

  “That’s what I was about to tell you,” Barbara said as she scooted back in her chair and rose. Her lips quivered. I imagined that Sam and I were an intimidating duo. “He’s childhood friends with Vice Principal McCree. Apparently he had a bit of tough luck and Ben stuck his neck out for him.”

  “And Ben McCree hasn’t shown up for work today,” I said. “Is that right?”

  “I…I suppose he hasn’t. What’s this you’re getting at?” She paused and drew in a long breath. “You don’t think?”

  “What kind of car does McCree drive?” I asked.

  “A truck of some kind.”

  “Color?”

  “White, I think.”

  Sam and I stared at each other.

  “We need his address,” I said. “Now.”

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  The teacher and Barbara Winder shared a tense exchange. Had a killer and kidnapper been in their midst all this time? Barbara printed off another piece of paper. Sam grabbed it off the printer. He nodded at me and we left the office. We made quick work of the short hallway and then headed toward the school’s entrance. He stopped and placed his arm in front of me. I skidded into it.

  “What about Ella?” he asked.

  I looked over my shoulder and said, “You’re right. Come on. This won’t take a minute.”

  We found the auditorium and Sam pushed the door open. I passed through the open doorway, cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted, “Ella Tanner. Come over here.”

  Hundreds of small faces turned my direction. I scanned the sea of children and saw my daughter get up and wave at me. She picked her way around the tangle of kids until she stood in front of me. I scooped her up and gave her a big hug.

  “I’m scared, Daddy,” she said.

  “I know, baby,” I said. “You’re safe in here. Nothing’s gonna happen to you. You know that, right?”

  She shrugged. Her eyes watered. Her bottom lip trembled. She bit it to keep it from doing so. “I want to go home with you, Daddy.”

  “Daddy can’t go home yet, Ella. I’ve got to go catch a bad guy.”

  “Please, Daddy.”

  “Look around, baby. See all these men with uniforms? These are Daddy’s friends. His co-workers. They’re gonna take real good care of you.”

  She nodded and let her weight drop. I let her down to the floor. Before she took off, I leaned over and gave her a big hug. She squeezed my neck extra tight. I took one last look around the room in search of Lana, but didn’t spot her. I figured she wasn’t in there or she would have come over at the same time Ella did.

  “Ready to go?” Sam asked.

  “No,” I said. “But we should anyway.”

  “Let’s go get this bastard.”

  I didn’t need
for Sam to tell me twice. I stormed down those halls with a purpose. I heard Sam get on his cell phone and call Huff. He filled Huff in on what we found and gave him McCree’s address, telling him to get a few cars to meet us nearby.

  Sometimes things move fast. This appeared to be one of those times. But if there’s anything eighteen years as a cop had taught me, it was that appearances weren’t always what they seemed.

  Chapter 18

  News trucks lined the main road beyond the school parking lot. The entrances had been blocked off by a couple police cruisers. Good call on someone’s part. A few reporters who were hell bent on getting the story first made the rest of the journey on foot. It seemed every ten feet they encountered another line of cops whose purpose was to keep them away. Our forces on site had doubled since Sam and I went inside the school building. Philly’s finest were all on site. The killer and the kids were anywhere but here.

  We used the fire trucks to shield us from view as we made our way to my car. Once I had it in sight, I said, “Toss me my keys.”

  “I’m driving,” Sam said. “You’re too worked up.”

  I felt my blood boil. My ears burned. Maybe he had a point. “Fine, whatever. We need to get there before those other pricks do.”

  He glanced at me through narrow eyes. “Horace and Fairchild?”

  “Yeah. Got a feeling Huff has some kind of deal worked out with them. Notice how they get all the gravy assignments, and then how he brought them in on the Miller murder?”

  Sam stood on the other side of the car. He shrugged and said, “You worry too much about that stuff, Mitch. Everyone is not out to get you, man.”

  Perhaps his words were meant to provide a moment of clarity amid a chaotic situation.

  If so, they did not have the intended effect.

  Sam got in, fired up the engine, turned on the lights and hit the sirens. It took us longer to get out of the congested parking lot than it did to travel the next three miles. The traffic again parted for us as best as one could expect near lunchtime. Sam still had to dodge the odd vehicle or pedestrian. Ignorance never failed to show its face.

  McCree’s house was in Drexel Hill, a few miles to the west. He lived in a single story ranch with a brick front and gray siding around the side. The yard looked well maintained with trimmed shrubs and a few remaining flowers in the flowerbeds. We drove past the house and parked a block away. The squad cars couldn’t do that. Be a dead giveaway to anyone inside.

  Huff walked up to our car and waited without saying anything. A couple minutes later Horace and Fairchild pulled up and got out of their city issued Chevy, identical to mine.

  “What the hell are they doing here?” I said to Huff.

  “You want to go in there alone?” Huff said. “Be my guest. Get your head shot off playing hero.”

  Either Horace or Fairchild laughed. I couldn’t tell. By the time I glanced over at them they’d stopped and both had serious looks on their faces. I’d gotten into it with both of them at one time or another. They quickly learned they wanted no part of me, especially with Sam at my back.

  “We lead,” I said. “And we go now.” I started down the sidewalk toward the house.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Huff called after me. “We don’t have anyone in back to cut them off if they escape.”

  “Send those two assholes,” I said.

  Now, deep down I knew I had acted irrationally. The most important thing at that time should have been the kids. And by walking up there and announcing our presence, I risked putting them in danger. If they were there, of course. We still didn’t know that. There was no van, no big F-250. Just a ‘90s model red two-door Honda Civic parked in the driveway. The passenger side of the car looked beat to hell. Tint peeled away from the edges of the rear windows.

  Sam caught up to me. “What the hell you doing, Mitch?”

  “Forget those guys,” I said. “This goes down, it’ll be their faces in the papers, not ours.”

  “Is that what this is really about, man?” He grabbed my shoulder and turned me toward him. “You want some recognition? Really?”

  He knew I didn’t. Truth was we were in the middle of a turf war. Since the arrival of Huff, our turf had been shrinking by the week. At least, that’s how I felt.

  “No,” I finally relented.

  “Okay, then. Let’s be smart about this. Wait until those guys are in position and we have some backup squads positioned at the end of this street as well as the parallel streets.”

  I started to walk back toward Huff and the other two detectives. “How long till the backup squads get here?”

  “En route now, Tanner,” Huff replied in a subdued manner while avoiding eye contact. “Be in position any minute.”

  “Okay,” I said, and then I pointed at Horace and Fairchild. “Get those two in position.”

  Huff nodded and gestured toward the street that ran behind the house. “Get going you two. Let us know when you’re about to breach the backyard.”

  Both men shot me a look that said they wanted to argue, but they bit their tongue and did what Huff told them. Those guys weren’t dumb enough to bite the hand that fed them. I, on the other hand, made it my goal in life.

  “Get going,” Huff said to us. “You know the drill from here out.”

  We did, so we started moving. We didn’t bother with the sidewalk, instead cutting across lawns to stay out of view of the house. Angry faces watched us through drawn blinds and open front doors. I could read their minds. “What are these two big dudes doing running through my lawn!” Imagine their surprise when we pulled our Glocks from our holsters.

  “Stop,” Sam said, extending his arm out in front of me like I was a little kid and he’d hit the brakes too hard. “Wait for confirmation.”

  “You know what I think of confirmation, Sam?”

  “I know, man. Doesn’t change anything though. Be patient. Be one with the—”

  Huff’s voice came over the radio, saving me from the Tao of Sam. “Sam, Tanner, go now.”

  “Works for me,” I said. I’d reached the porch before Sam began moving. I wrapped my hand around the knob and gave it a turn. To my surprise, I found it unlocked. I turned it all the way and then pushed the door open an inch.

  “Got you covered,” Sam said from behind me.

  I squatted and pushed the door open a bit further. My pistol led the way from that point on. Working as a team, we cleared the first room. From there we had two choices. It looked like the kitchen was to the left, through the dining room. In the open space before us was an empty great room with a hall that I figured led to the bedrooms.

  We heard a scream that came from the hallway. Sounded female. A little girl had been taken. We didn’t bother to check out the kitchen.

  Sam relayed the development over the radio. I expected Horace and Fairchild to burst through the sliding glass door at the back of the house at any moment. They didn’t, at least not at that point. We rushed down the darkened hallway. There were three open doors and one closed one. We quickly cleared each room in search of the children. I hoped we’d find both, and that they’d be abandoned. Let us end their ordeal. All the rooms were empty, though. We were faced with one final room. The one with the closed door. Sam and I stood in front of it, shoulder to shoulder.

  “On my count,” I whispered.

  Sam nodded.

  “One, two,” I didn’t get to three. Sam cut me off and kicked the door open.

  We found Assistant Principal McCree inside the room. There weren’t any children in there, though. It turned out the source of the scream had been a woman in her mid-twenties. The owner of the Civic, I presumed. She laid on the bed, spread eagle, naked, with McCree hovering over her.

  Chapter 19

  “What the friggin’ hell!” McCree shouted as he rose up and the woman rolled away from us toward the far side of the bed.

  “Stop right there!” Sam yelled.

  The woman froze in place. She’d managed to get
herself tangled up in a satin sheet that covered half her round ass. She burrowed her head underneath a pillow. Tufts of brown hair stuck out and covered her neck and shoulders. McCree didn’t heed Sam’s warning. Instead, the vice principal—and wouldn’t the parents of the students love to know why he was absent on this of all days— rose up and lunged toward Sam.

  Bad move.

  Former Army Ranger and all that.

  McCree was about the same height as Sam, although half the weight judging by his concave chest, narrow shoulders and stringy arms. Sam nailed the guy in the solar plexus with a left uppercut. McCree collapsed to the floor and balled up into a fetal position. His face turned dark red, almost purple, while he struggled to pull air into his lungs.

  Sam knelt down beside the man and said, “One single breath, man. Bet that’s all you want.”

  I leaned out through the open doorway and said, “We need a female officer in here now.”

  A young female cop by the name of Marcy Wiggins entered. I’d worked with her before on a handful of occasions. Smart woman, very perceptive. Kind of lady that could go far if she kept applying herself. She stepped over McCree and walked around the bed. Her dark hands contrasted with the naked woman’s pale skin.

  “Bring her to the other room, Officer Wiggins,” I said. “And find a robe or something for her to put on.”

  After Officer Wiggins and the woman had left the room, Sam reached down and pulled McCree to his feet.

  “Where are they?” Sam barked.

  McCree had resumed breathing, although the forced and ragged action left him unable to speak. At least, that’s the way he made it seem.

  “Answer me!” Sam pushed the guy down onto the bed. McCree fell back, arms waving, overly dramatic.

  “What are you talking about?” the man asked.

  Sam pulled his shoulders back. He towered over McCree in this position. Quite intimidating. “I’m gonna give you to the count of three and then you had better answer my question.”

  McCree started to pull himself backward on the bed. He dug at his sheets and pushed his feet along the floor. Sam took a step back and drew his pistol.