The Depth of Darkness Read online

  “And check to see if Dusty Anne had a life insurance policy taken out recently with Roy designated as the benefactor.”

  I nodded. “Three deaths in two incidents that appeared to be accidents.”

  “Follow the smell to the barbecue.”

  My phone rang again and I pulled it out and looked at it and said, “Lana again.”

  Sam held his hand in the air holding an imaginary whip. His arm twitched. He wanted to snap that whip real bad. “Come on now, answer it.” The smile on his face broadened.

  “Come off it now,” I said as I sent the call to voice mail again.

  Huff reentered the office carrying three cups of coffee. Steam slid through the tiny slits in the lids. Maybe he felt bad for his childish outburst. “You geniuses figure anything out while I was gone?”

  Not that bad, I guess.

  “As a matter of fact,” Sam said. “We did. Turned out mom and pops had a small life insurance policy.”

  “Only problem is,” I said, “this happened over ten years ago. Banks are a pain about giving up records from that long ago. Turns out some guy actually has to get up and search for a physical file. Can you imagine?”

  Sam grinned.

  Huff sat down and said, “Don’t worry, fellas. I got this one. One of my old contacts can get that for us by tomorrow.”

  Sam and I looked at each other. He lifted an eyebrow and nodded. We had a running bet on whether or not Huff would ever be useful to us. Looked like Sam won. There goes that twenty from earlier.

  I opened my mouth to thank Huff for finally earning his pay when my phone rang again. I looked at the display. Lana. “There’s gotta be some kind of crisis going on.”

  “Go on man, me and Huff got this,” Sam said.

  I gave him a look.

  He held his hands up in retreat. “No whips this time.”

  I stood up, walked toward the door and pushed it open.

  “Kuh-cha,” Sam said to his own laughter. “See Huff, like a whip, ‘cause his girl has him whipped. You know what I mean?”

  I let the door close behind me and reached down to answer the call.

  Chapter 14

  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.

  Chapter 15

  “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.

  Chapter 16

  “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 o
n 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.”

  Chapter 17

  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 remaine
d 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.

  Sam tugged on my sport coat. I turned and saw cops swarming the area. Plain clothes, uniformed, and even some of the upper brass. They all were here. They entered the school as well as surrounded it. Those kidnappers couldn’t come back for seconds.

  I saw Huff park his car. He got out and walked toward us.

  “Oh, Lord,” Sam said. “Can we hide?”

  “Good luck with that,” I said, looking around at the crowd. “We’re in munchkin land, and I’m not talking about the kids. Come on, pretend like you didn’t see him and we’ll go inside. Grab Blondie and bring her with us.”

  Sam asked the teacher to walk with us. She was non-responsive to his request, so he threaded his left arm around her right and guided her along.

  “Not so fast,” Huff said, catching up to us.

  “Boss,” I said. “What’s up?”

  Between labored breaths, he asked, “What do you two think you’re doing?”

  “Investigating.”

  He took a moment and fanned his red, sweaty face with his hand. “This ain’t a homicide.”

  I glanced down at the dying principal. “It will be. And the sooner we get started, Huff, the better.”

  He wagged a finger in my face. “You can’t dig around the kidnapping angle on this.”

  I resisted the urge to slap his hand away. It wasn’t good for me to hold in my anger. It’d only come out ten times worse later on. I hoped that Huff would be around then.

  Sam said, “I think the two are connected.”

  “You know the Feds are gonna want in on this,” Huff said.

  “I don’t care what they want,” I said, knowing that Huff had a point and that we might be cast aside once the Feds arrived.