by L. T. Ryan
The Depth of Darkness
(Mitch Tanner #1)
L.T. Ryan
http://LTRyan.com
Stay up to date with L.T. Ryan:
http://LTRyan.com/newsletter
Feedback on this book can be sent to [email protected]
PUBLISHED BY:
L.T. Ryan at Smashwords
Copyright © 2013
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.
Quick Links:
Start Reading
Other Books by L.T. Ryan
Full Table of Contents
Visit http://ltryan.com/newsletter/ and sign up to be notified of new releases.
Special thanks to Amy, Gail, Helen, Keith, Nikki, Marianne, Melanie, and Steve.
Chapter 1
"The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach."
- Pliny the Elder
I closed the grill lid over three plump hamburger patties and leaned back against the sliding glass door. The fire hissed every time fatty juice dripped between the grill grates. Wispy smoke escaped through the slots on the side and wrapped around my head. The heat from the grill felt comforting, despite the lingering eighty degree temperature.
I watched as Ella Kate leaned forward and brushed the first fallen leaves off of the round patio table. She rested her elbows on the blue and orange mosaic glass tiles. Her gaze drifted from the trees behind our house to the dull pink sky. For a six year old, Ella didn’t talk much. Of course, all I really had to compare it with was my son Robbie. I knew that the reason she didn’t speak much was because of Robbie and her mother, my estranged wife, Marissa. When Marissa left in the middle of the day twelve months ago, she took Robbie with her, leaving Ella and me behind. Which really meant that Ella was without both of her parents most of the time. Being a homicide detective in Philadelphia didn’t leave much time for family, I’m afraid.
People died at the oddest hours.
But I did the best I could and made every moment count. And so did my mother, who always seemed to be around.
I rapped on the glass door to get Momma’s attention. She set her cell phone down on the kitchen island and slid off the barstool she had been perched upon. The sliding glass door screeched open and she stuck her head out.
“What?”
“Could you tear yourself away from that conversation long enough to bring some plates, buns and the ketchup out here?”
“I’m going to tear you away from something if you talk to me like that again, boy.”
“Don’t forget pickles, Grandma,” Ella said.
“Sure thing, sweetie,” my mother said.
I held out my hands and acted offended. “What’s with the preferential treatment?”
Momma scowled at me like she was a pit bull, then she winked at Ella and went back inside, closing the door behind her. I looked over at Ella, who now had a sizable smile on her face. It was enough to make my heart skip a beat. Although she smiled more frequently now than she did a year ago, the moments were still too far in between.
It took my mother five minutes to return with the plates. I lifted the grill lid as she stepped outside. A rush of smoke greeted me. Using a stainless steel spatula, I flipped the burgers over. A fresh stream of fat juice coated the fire below. Flames rose up a good eighteen inches. I reacted a second too late and wound up with a couple of knuckles full of singed hair. The smell of burned hair momentarily overpowered that of the burgers.
Closing the lid I said, “Momma, would you mind grabbing me a beer?”
“Get it yourself,” she said while placing her feet on an empty chair and crossing her legs at the ankles.
“I’ll get it for you, Daddy,” Ella said.
“Thank you, honey.” I turned toward my mother. “At least someone around here appreciates me.”
She waved me off and went back to playing a game on her cell phone.
“You just stay seated, Ella,” I said. “I’ll grab it myself.” I reopened the grill lid and turned the burners down to low. The burgers were about ready, and if I got caught up in the garage a minute too long, they’d burn. I went inside, through the living room and the kitchen, and into the garage. That’s where I kept my beer fridge. I flipped on the light. My 1969 Boss 429 Mustang was parked in the middle and took up most of the usable space in the two-car garage. I’d resurrected it from the dead eight years ago. Lately I’d had little time to tinker with it, so it remained alone in the garage. I traced a finger along the fender. It turned dark with dirt and dust. Time to give the Boss a bath.
I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and closed the door. I stood there for a moment admiring Robbie’s artwork, held there by magnets. I pulled out my phone and flipped through my contacts list, stopping when I came to Cassie’s number. Cassie was a woman who had helped me out in the past. You could say she had a knack for finding information in places others couldn’t. I pressed the little phone icon next to her name and brought the phone up to my ear.
“Mitch?”
“Cassie, sorry to bother you. Hadn’t heard from you in a while and I was wondering if you’d uncovered anything on Marissa and Robbie?”
“Mitch, as I’ve told you, when it happens, if it happens, I’ll let you know. You can’t press this. I’m doing what I can.”
“I know you are. Just keep me posted.” I hung up and slipped the phone into my pocket and returned my attention to the beer in my other hand. I had managed to twist the cap off when my phone rang. My heart leapt at the possibility that my call to Cassie had jarred some new piece of evidence loose. I glanced at the caller ID. Sam Foster, my partner, was calling.
Sam and I had been friends as little kids, then enemies from fourth through most of ninth grade, and then best friends as we formed an All-State duo on the right side of the defensive line on Bonner’s state championship team. He played defensive tackle. I was lined up as defensive end next to him. We still hold the record for most combined sacks in a season, I think. Neither of us headed off to college after high school. He enlisted in the Army and I became a cop. We remained friends through it all. He joined up after his second stint, and now we’re partners.
“What do you say, Sam?”
“We got one, Mitch.”
“Ah, you’re kidding me. I’m about to sit down to dinner with Ella and my mother.”
“Good,” Sam said. “At least you already have a babysitter in place.”
I stood five feet from the sliding glass door that separated my living room from the back deck. Momma must’ve said something pretty funny. Ella was in stitches. I could hear her laughter through the door.
“You at home?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen.”
I stepped outside, avoiding eye contact, and turned off the burners and cut the gas. I plated the burgers and set them down on the table. Ella looked up and smiled at me. I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Sweetheart, Daddy’s gotta go to work.”
Chapter 2
The uniformed officers did a good job of securing a perimeter around the house. Woman Found Dead by Husband didn’t get the media off, so tonight we were lucky on that front. The less I had to deal with them, the better. One of the guys suspected foul play. They said that the husband, a man named Roy Miller, acted a little like a weasel. Why a weasel? The of
ficer couldn’t say. Just said that’s what Miller reminded him of.
Inside we met our victim, one Dusty Anne Miller. She was thirty-eight, blond, and attractive if you could overlook the gash and dent in her forehead. Her silk bathrobe was cinched at the waist, but had fallen open during her supposed accelerated descent down the stairs. In addition to the possibly fatal wound on her head, she had a fractured arm and femur. The broken bone in her leg nearly penetrated the skin, which had become discolored. Both appendages were bent at odd angles. Shards of glass littered the back of her body. Whiskey had mixed with the blood that pooled around her body, creating a brownish tint. The bottom step had bits of hair and skull and brain stuck to it. I wondered which injury occurred first, and had the head injury done her in, or in addition to the fractures, had she broken her neck as well.
Roy Miller seated himself at the kitchen table. He wasn’t a big guy, but not little either. Average described him best. His brown hair looked disheveled. It matched the scruff on his face. Not quite a beard, but a bit more than stubble. He was too distraught to talk to us, but the responding officer told us that he’d said he came home and found his wife at the bottom of the stairs. The shower had been running. He figured she’d got into the shower, realized she’d forgotten to bring her new shampoo upstairs, then slipped at the top of the stairs due to a combination of wet feet and hardwood floors.
Her matted hair suggested that she had indeed been in the shower, and there was a paper bag from one of the local stores on the table. Inside the bag was a receipt time stamped from earlier that day. On the receipt were several personal items, including the shampoo that Dusty Anne never reached.
“Looks pretty cut and dry,” Sam said in a low voice.
I glanced up at him, arching an eyebrow. “You know what they say about looks.”
“Yeah, they get better with beer.”
I started to smile but managed to catch myself before it spread too far. Last thing we needed was for either of us to be seen laughing while hovering over a dead woman’s body. Most people wouldn’t understand, and when you said things like coping mechanism, they rolled their eyes.
Sam motioned for one of the officers to come over. I walked away as he told the young cop to bring Roy Miller down to the station and set him up in one of the interview rooms. Meanwhile, I walked the perimeter of the downstairs. Nothing stood out to me. Sometimes you get a sense about a scene that tells you something happened. I didn’t get that here. Like Sam said, cut and dry.
By the time we went back outside, the sun had set. We got inside my city-issued Chevy and headed toward the station. Neither of us spoke. We were like an old married couple in that sense. After knowing one another for going on thirty-five years, we didn’t have to fill the void with useless banter. That didn’t mean we didn’t at times. It just wasn’t required.
It didn’t take us long to reach the station bordering 61st, Thompson and Haverford in Carroll Park. I stood in front of the mirrored glass outside of the interview room where Roy Miller waited. Sam had set off in search of fresh coffee. Most of the time you wouldn’t find it at nine-thirty at night. But this was Friday. And Fridays in Philly were crazy.
As I waited, I saw Roy go through a myriad of emotions. He slammed his fist against the table in anger. He paced the room in frustration, tearing at his tangled hair. Tears and sobs expressed his sadness. I tried to imagine being in his shoes and wondered whether it was harder to come home and realize your wife had left you or that she’d taken a nasty spill down the stairs and died.
I smelled the coffee before I heard Sam. For the first time, I glanced down and saw he was wearing tennis shoes. He handed me a lidded cup. A tiny wisp of steam slipped through the lid. Station house coffee. Nothing beat it. Maybe I could retire and franchise it one day.
“Ready?” Sam asked.
“After you, my man,” I said.
Sam opened the door and stepped inside. He walked to the far corner of the room, crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. I stepped in, closing the door behind me, and took a seat opposite Roy.
“Mr. Miller, if you recall I’m Detective Tanner, and that’s Detective Foster. We don’t want to take too much of your time, but we do have some questions we’d like to ask you.”
He made eye contact with me for the first time and nodded. He cleared his throat. “Anything you need.”
Turned out anything we needed was a rehashing of what the officer back at the Miller’s house had told us.
“I walked home from work, stopping off to have a few beers. When I got home, the door was unlocked. I opened it, stepped inside, and saw her at the bottom of the stairs. I ran up to her. She wasn’t breathing. I called nine-one-one and tried to do CPR, but her body was at such a weird angle and I remember reading that you should never move a body that was injured, so I waited. But, like I said, she wasn’t breathing and I couldn’t find a pulse. So I…”
“Waited,” I finished for him.
He nodded. His gaze dropped from mine and fell to the table. Tears tracked down his cheeks again.
We waited for him to stop and asked the same questions in different ways. He never altered his answers. Finally, Sam left the room and I followed him out.
“What do you think?” he asked me.
“Story sounds legit, if not a little forced. Then again, could be ‘cause he’s telling the truth.”
Sam nodded. “Want to keep him overnight and work on him some more in the morning?”
I studied Roy Miller through the mirrored glass. I didn’t see a killer. I saw a man grieving over the loss of his wife. “Send him home. We can pick up again tomorrow at his house.”
Chapter 3
The following evening I went back to the Miller residence. The wind had picked up. A tropical storm had made its way up the east coast and was poised to strike our area the next day. As long as it didn’t interrupt my cable signal, it could do whatever it wanted. The regular season started tomorrow.
I rapped on the door and waited. The porch light flipped on, casting a yellowish hue across the front of the house. The door opened and Roy Miller’s head poked around the edge.
“Detective Tanner?” he said.
“Evening, Roy,” I said. “Just wanted to ask you a few more questions.”
He chewed on his cheek for a moment, lowered his head a notch and said, “I’ve got nothing else to say.”
He tried to close the door. I wedged my foot just enough inside the frame to keep him from doing so. “It’ll only take a few minutes, Roy.”
He relented, opened the door and invited me in. The smell of chicken wings loomed. I glanced toward the kitchen and saw a yellow and white striped bucket on the table. A bottle of ranch dressing had been set next to it. On the other side of the bucket were two beer bottles. One looked empty, the other halfway there.
“This is interrupting my dinner,” he said.
“Yeah, well, mine too.” I took a look around, paying attention to the furniture, the floors and the walls. If the fall had been staged and the death had been due to other reasons, there might be some evidence that had been overlooked. Seeing none, I turned to Roy and gestured for him to head over to the kitchen.
He took a seat at the table and glared up at me. His demeanor had changed considerably in the past twenty-four hours. Another step in the grief process, or just tired of acting?
“Mind if I eat?” he asked.
“Yes, I do mind,” I replied. “Now, take me through what happened once again, Roy. I want you to start from the beginning.”
He sighed and watched me for a minute. Finally, he relented. “I was walking home from work.”
“Which is where again?” I interrupted, pulling out my notebook to jot down his answer.
“Kessler’s Auto Detail. I mostly handle the window tinting there. Anyway, I stopped off and had a drink.” He stopped and picked up the bottle and took a drink. From there, he recounted the story in minimal detail. It was either the truth or he’d re
hearsed it enough times to sound convincing.
When he was through, I asked, “Did Dusty Anne have any enemies?”
“Enemies?”
“Anyone who she might have angered, or who had an issue with her? Maybe she owed someone money and hadn’t paid it back yet. It could be something that was trivial in your mind, but blown way out of proportion to someone else, Roy. So I need you to think about it.”
He leaned back in his chair. His head dropped back and his eyes scanned the ceiling as if the answer might be there. He crossed his arms over his chest and returned to a normal sitting position. “No, nothing like that. Why do you ask? Do you have a witness who saw someone coming or leaving?”
There was something about the way he looked at me just then. It went beyond surprise. His face held a look of intrigue, or perhaps suspicion.
“Roy, did you ever wonder if Dusty Anne cheated on you?”
He placed his hands on the table and pushed back in his chair. I gestured for him to move no further. “Who’ve you been talking to?” he said. “I want to know who.”
“That’s none of your concern, Roy. At this time, I’m here with you and I’m the one asking the questions. Now, you might not have had anything to do with that fall, but if someone else did, and you have information that you are withholding, that’d be obstruction of justice and you’ll do jail time.”
The clenched muscles in Roy’s jaw stood out on his shaven face. His breathing had turned heavy and ragged. It seemed he was either going to lash out at me or have a stroke. Finally, he settled down and said, “I have no information other than what I’ve told you, Detective Tanner. Now, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave and let me eat my dinner.”
I rose from the table and took a few steps back, keeping my gaze fixed on him. “I’ll be in touch with you soon, Roy.”
He followed me to the front door. “Don’t bother. I’m getting a lawyer.”
“You certainly can do that, but it’ll just make you look guilty.”