The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (3 page)

Roy said nothing. His eyes were shut, his
mouth open a bit. I felt for a pulse. Found one. I pinched his hand
and he winced in pain. A good sign, I thought. If his neck was
broken, he wouldn’t have felt that.

Roy came to somewhat and said, “What the
hell, man?”

I grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged
him around the water tower until we reached the door. The wind had
blown it shut. Luckily, it hadn’t been locked.

Now, that tower ledge was at least a
hundred-fifty feet off the ground. There was no way I was going to
carry that guy down the stairs. So I pulled out my radio and called
in for back up. Soon, the firefighters’ flashlights lit up the
corridor.

Jerry Haynes appeared first. Jerry and I go
way back, before he was a firefighter and I was a cop. Together,
with Sam, the three of us raised some hell as kids.

Jerry said, “You OK, Mitch?”

“Yeah, just remind me to check my shorts when
I get back on solid ground.”

“We’ll take it from here,” Jerry said,
pulling Roy from my arms. He laid the guy on the ground and began
to assess his condition. “Where’s this blood coming from?”

“His head,” I said. “He did a reverse endo
over the railing and his skull broke his fall.”

Jerry tossed me a thumbs up. I suppose he was
telling me he got the info, but I like to think it was one of those
congratulatory thumbs up for a job well done. After all, I hadn’t
killed the guy and I didn’t let him take his own life. I deserved a
pat on the back for that.

I relinquished my control of Roy over to
Jerry and his firefighter buddies and then started down the spiral
staircase that ran along the water tower’s outer wall, inside of
course. Overhead light bulbs encased in black metal cages cast a
yellowish glow that seeped over the railing. They probably would
have provided me with a view to the bottom. I didn’t look to verify
that. With every step my adrenaline level dropped. I certainly
hadn’t overcome my fear of heights up there on that balcony.
Temporary insanity helped me through it.

Two uniforms passed me at about the halfway
point. Fresh faces. I didn’t know either of them. We needed someone
on this side of the law to watch over Roy now that he’d been
upgraded from person of interest to suspect. I sure as hell wasn’t
going to do it. That’s what we paid the young guys for.

“What’s the scene like down there?” I
asked.

“Sam’s out there,” the baby faced guy said.
His red cheeks gave away his Irish ancestry. That or he’d been
drinking on the job. Judging by the look on his face, his sack
hadn’t dropped enough for that. I glanced at his nameplate.
Jennings. Didn’t ring a bell with me.

“Did he light into that woman from Channel
3?” I asked. Sam couldn’t stand that woman. Attractive, yes. Even
more of a pest, though. She was always the first to the scene of a
homicide. Everything else, too, I suppose. I wondered how this
young guy knew Sam. Didn’t ask.

“Oh yeah,” Jennings replied. “And that douche
bag from Seventeen.”

“Hey, I like that guy.”

The smile dropped from Jennings’s face faster
than his body would have fallen to the water tower’s ground floor.
Or a ton of bricks, for that matter. Eighty or eight hundred. Laws
of physics.

“I’m just messing with you, Jennings,” I
said.

“You’re a douchebag, Tanner.”

Hey, look at that. The left one dropped. I
couldn’t help but shake my head, laugh, turn, and continue on my
way down that spiraling staircase. Their footsteps faded as mine
echoed off the surrounding walls.

As I stepped off the metal stairs onto the
concrete bottom, I noticed Sam standing right outside the doorway.
At six-four and built like a linebacker, he blocked most of the
artificial light from outside. He leaned against the frame with his
left elbow propped up next to his head. His right leg was straight
while his left leg crossed over the other at the shin, all casual
and relaxed. Did anything faze the guy? Guess that’s what the
Rangers does for someone. He had the door propped open with a red
brick. I recalled seeing several of them on my way inside. At the
time, I had thought about grabbing one to use on Roy.

Sam glanced over his shoulder, did a double
take. “You look like ten-day-old garbage.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“That your blood?”

I hadn’t realized that Roy had bled on me. I
had the sudden urge to strip down and find the nearest shower. I
resisted looking down. “How bad is it?”

He pointed at my chest. “Just on your shirt.
Your hands, too, I guess.”

“Dammit. Have to get tested again.” AIDS,
Hepatitis, and any other blood borne pathogen — these guys out here
carry all of them and don’t give two craps about warning you about
them. In Roy’s defense, he didn’t have the faculties available at
the time.

Sam laughed and punched my shoulder. “It’s
not that bad, man. Come on, let’s go deal with the hyenas.”

Hyenas, Sam’s pet name for the media, wasn’t
that far off in Philadelphia. Or most places, I suppose. Normally,
Horace “Huff” Huffman, our Lieutenant and esteemed leader, would
handle them for us. Not tonight. He was at the same poker game as
the negotiator. Huff would ignore his pager no more than two times.
Then he’d take his time getting down here and ream us for a job not
well done. So Sam and I were on our own. Two sacrificial lambs
wading through a pack of trained, vicious hyenas. There was only
one thing to say.

“No comment,” I said.

“No comment,” Sam said.

The leader stepped ahead of the pack. Her
dark wavy hair and eyes black as coal gave us reason to pause.
Behind the beautiful facade something evil worked, though.
“Detectives, do you think—”

“I think we said, no comment,” Sam said. “Now
kindly get out of our way before I charge you with tampering with a
crime scene.”

Sam had a way with words. He could say in two
sentences what would have taken me two paragraphs. Or one obscenity
laden sentence, which would do me no favors when the evening news
ran the clip repeatedly.

The news crews backed up past the point where
the tape should have been strung. They moved slowly, dragging their
feet. I thought hyenas were a hyper bunch?

“Are Jennings and that other doofus the only
two uniforms out here?” I asked Sam.

“Saturday night, that’s all we get this far
out. Half the precinct’s on loan downtown for that festival.”

“Which festival is it this weekend?”

“There’s so freaking many, Mitch. I can’t
ever remember.”

“Just another excuse to get loaded.”

“That’s right. So how’s about we finish up
here and get down there?” He threw his thumb over his shoulder for
emphasis.

I looked up at the pale blue tower and shook
my head. Had I really stood next to that railing? “We gotta
question this guy tonight. Hopefully forensics got a good sample of
that blood spot and can tell us something new. If anything, we can
BS our way with Roy. Maybe get him to open up.”

At that time, the firefighters emerged with a
still unconscious Roy. Two medics met them at the door and loaded
the guy onto a gurney. Jennings and his partner followed the group
out. Sam headed toward them.

“What the hell were you two thinking going up
there without cordoning off this area? Every one of them reporters
trounced around in front of the entrance. What if that guy had
dropped something? Now it’s pounded in the damn mud.”

I laughed at the tirade. For as smooth as Sam
could be with the media, he could light up a rookie cop. He would
have made a hell of a drill instructor if he’d stayed in the Army.
I left Sam to the discipline and jogged over to Firefighter
Jerry.

“Did a number on him, Mitch,” Jerry said.

“Kept him from jumping,” I said. “So, when do
you think we can get at him?”

“He’s going to the hospital.”

“Evaluation, then we can bring him back to
the station?”

Jerry laughed and hiked his thumb in the air
toward Roy. “Guy’s been out of it for, what, fifteen minutes now?
He’ll be under observation all night.”

“Dammit,” I said, looking toward the
ambulance as they hoisted Roy up and inside.

“He might not even remember what he was doing
up there to begin with.”

“Oh, he’ll remember once forensics processes
that blood.”

“You mean those guys?” Jerry pointed over my
shoulder.

I turned around and saw Sandusky leaning
against his black crime scene investigation van. His arms were
crossed over his chest, and his legs spread wide. A lit cigarette
dangled from his mouth. I supposed that, to a man in his line of
work, no one dies of natural causes.

“Hey, cookout tomorrow,” Jerry said. “You
wanna come over?”

I started to move toward the van. “It’s
supposed to rain all day tomorrow, Jerry. Tropical storm something
or another.”

Jerry cursed and said something else, but I
ignored it. I hollered for Sam. Together we jogged over to
Sandusky’s van.

“Fellas,” Sandusky said.

“Get that evidence?” I asked.

“What evidence?” he asked in reply.

“At the house,” I said.

“Ain’t been to no house, Tanner.”

“Are you kidding me, Sandy? Roy Miller’s
house. I called it in and gave the address. Found a spot of blood
outside. We need that processed.”

Sandusky jerked his body forward and started
toward the front of the van. “Hey, all I heard was water tower,
Tanner.”

A crack of thunder roared overhead. I looked
up and noticed that the clouds no longer raced by the moon. They
had consumed it. I felt the first drops of water hit my face.
“Hurry, before this rain washes it away.” I opened the passenger
door of the van and hopped inside. Looking back over my shoulder, I
said, “Sam, get your car and get over there.”

Sam took off running. I watched him skirt
behind the reporters who were still bunched up around an imaginary
crime scene line. I hoped they wouldn’t see us. Last thing we
needed was one of them following us back to the Miller’s
residence.

Sandusky shot me a curious look.

“Just floor it, asshole.”

He dropped the van into drive. The tires spun
in the dirt and kicked gravel everywhere.

“Go easy,” I said. “Gonna attract attention
that way.”

He waved me off and ignored the narrow road
that led to the street, instead choosing to drive through the
grass.

“You know where we’re going?”

“I spent all day there yesterday,
Tanner.”

Had it only been one day since Dusty Anne’s
death? The episode atop the water tower felt like it lasted at
least a week. How long till the calendar caught up with my brain
this time?

“What do you think?” I asked.

“About what?”

One thing about Sandusky, the guy is
incapable of giving a straight answer after one question. If I
hadn’t been trained to go through this process, I’d have knocked
him out and stole his van right then and there.

“Dusty Anne and that crime scene?”

“Who says it’s a crime scene?”

“That’s what I’m asking you, man.”

“Why would you ask me that?”

“Because you’ve processed thousands of crime
scenes, so I’d like to get your opinion.”

“On or off the record.”

I’d almost had it by then. “Whatever, man,
I’m just fishing for opinions, gut feelings, intuition. If the Holy
Spirit came down and gave you any clues, I’d love to hear
them.”

He cleared his throat as he turned the
steering wheel and navigated toward the Miller’s house. “On the
record, it looks like a woman, mid-thirties, fell and hit her
head.”

“And off the record?”

“Signs point elsewhere, but you’ll have to
wait for the ME to confirm that.”

Sandusky, despite his shaggy outward
appearance and aloof mannerisms, had a tendency to be right on the
money.

So he pulled the van up to the curb on the
opposite side of the road. I heard Sam brake hard and stop on the
other side of the street. I hopped out of the van and held my hand
above my eyebrows to shield my eyes from the rain. That cursed
rain. I said as much, too. We all met on the sidewalk in front of
the Miller’s residence. Sam held his windbreaker over his head. The
rain hit it with a dull, hollow sounding
thump
.

“Where’s this evidence?” Sandusky said.

“Follow me.” I walked up to the gate and
lifted the latch, then kicked it open. The porch light was still
on. That’s how I noticed the blood earlier that night. I headed
right for it.

I stopped a foot from the hedges, and Sam and
Sandusky came to a halt behind me. I frantically searched for the
blood I’d seen earlier. My head jerked side to side, bobbed up and
down. I probably looked like the world’s worst dancer at that
moment, hands on my hips, doing some weird version of the Chicken
Dance.

“Well?” Sandusky said.

“Just hold on a minute here,” I said. It
didn’t matter though. The rain had washed it away. “Son of a…” I
kicked my foot across the ground, breaking a few of the lower
branches.

“Just point to the general area,” Sandusky
said while fishing through his pockets. He pulled out a multi-tool
and held it up in the light. In his other hand, he held a plastic
evidence bag, upside down. “I’ll clip the branches and we can see
what we find.”

“Will that work?” Sam said.

Sandusky shrugged. “Can’t hurt.”

I felt Sam grab my collar and tug me
backward. It came as a surprise. Nearly took me off my feet.

“Let’s get out of the man’s way,” he said to
me.

I took a few steps back and turned and
started walking with Sam toward the gate. Our work was done.

“Want to go back to the office and look over
the pictures?” he asked.

I did, but doing so would remind me of the
blood trail we had just lost. I needed a distraction. “No.”