The Depth of Darkness

by L. T. Ryan

  “What’ve you got in there?” I called out.

  “Nothing,” a voice called back. “It’s empty other than a couple snake skins and some spiders.”

  I fought off a quick bout of the shakes. I hated both snakes and spiders. Crooks I could deal with. My 9mm gave me the upper hand there. A black widow or a brown recluse didn’t care about what kind of gun I carried. Neither did a cottonmouth or a rattlesnake. I hoped I’d never encounter any of them. I rose, walked back inside, through the kitchen, to the opened sliding glass door. Horace and Fairchild hung out on the back porch, smoking.

  “You two find anything out here?” I asked, trying to remain as polite as I could.

  They shrugged and said nothing to me.

  “Guys, we’ve got two kids who need our help. This isn’t the time to act on our grudges.”

  “Get lost, Tanner,” Fairchild said. “We were told to hang back and stay out here unless ordered inside. We can’t do nothing to help out here.”

  “Guys, look, I don’t mean—”

  “Oh, crap! Look, Tanner,” Horace said, hopping up and down and pointing to the corner of the fence. “See those bricks over there? I bet that’s a clue.” He jogged to the edge of the yard. “I’m gonna get these processed ASAP.”

  The two men fell out laughing. A couple of hyenas. They’d fit in nice with the media. I waved them off, then turned and stepped back inside while muttering a few choice obscenities under my breath.

  By the time I reached the hallway, Sam emerged with McCree. He’d handcuffed the man. McCree did not look happy about it.

  “Wait till you two hear from my lawyer,” the guy said.

  “Hey, he struck me. I got Jennings to back me up on that.”

  “Is that right?” I said.

  “Both of you can blow me,” McCree said. “When I’m done with you, your pensions will be mine.”

  I resisted the urge to stick my leg out in front of the guy, sending him sprawling to the floor with no way to break his fall. Instead, I grabbed his left elbow. Sam had his right. Together, we led him outside the house, where things took a turn for the worse.

  Chapter 23

  Huff stood at the edge of the front lawn, waiting for us. We tried to avoid him, but did not succeed.

  “Detectives,” Huff said. “Come over here.”

  I glanced around and saw Jennings close behind us. I got his attention and relinquished control over McCree to him. “Get him to the station. Don’t put him in the room with Wiggins. Separate rooms, close together. I don’t want to have to run up and down that hall. Got it?”

  Baby-faced Jennings nodded and led McCree to one of the patrol cars. I heard the man fussing about the cuffs and police brutality and unlawful arrest. I guess he figured his complaints would be addressed by the rookie cop.

  Standing close to Huff were two men and a woman. They wore dark suits and dark Ray-Ban-like sunglasses. They all looked to be in shape. The men were clean cut and fresh out of the academy. The woman looked to be in her mid-thirties. She had her long hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She had a slender face with a figure to match.

  “Detectives Tanner and Foster,” Huff said. “These are Special Agents Vinson, Braden and Dinapoli.” He pointed at each of them in turn. The woman was Dinapoli. “They’re with the FBI.”

  “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?”

  Chapter 24

  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 sett
led 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.”

  Chapter 25

  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.

  “Ouch,” Beans said.

  She’d stepped on his fingers. “Sorry, Beans.”

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  She didn’t know and she said as much. She also realized that if she angled her eyes to the right or left instead of straight ahead, she could sort of make out some of the features of the place. Directly ahead was a door. Tiny slivers of light crept in from the edges. Not enough that she could see anything, though. When she looked directly at it, the light disappeared. She wondered why this happened.