The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (8 page)

Ms. Suarez dismissed her class of third
graders for recess. Debbie and Beans were the last to leave the
classroom. Even Ms. Suarez had left before them. They took their
time walking down the hall. Ms. Suarez waited at the corner, waving
them forward.

“Come on, Beans,” Debby said.

“Bernie,” he said.

“Whatever,” she said.

She wrapped her hand around his wrist and
pulled him forward. She expected him to complain about his asthma.
He didn’t. He jogged along beside her. She heard his ever-present
wheezing increase a notch. Recess was their time to get outside and
away from the rest of the kids, most of whom tortured poor Bernard
Holland. Debby knew that one day her friend would show them all.
He’d grow up to program computers to run faster and bigger than
they ever had. He’d build planes that would cross the globe in an
hour while riding amid the stratosphere. Or maybe he’d invent a
stove that could cook dinner in a minute or two instead of thirty
to forty. That’s what he’d told her one time, at least. A snap of
the fingers, he’d said. Mac and cheese as you please.

“You two,” Ms. Suarez said. “Always lagging
behind.”

“He has asthma,” Debby pointed out to the
teacher.

Ms. Suarez smiled and offered a knowing nod.
She ushered them past the tinted glass door. They stepped outside,
his wrist still in her hand, and walked toward the outer edge of
the recess area. While the other kids turned into four-foot tall
savages, Debby and Beans found a shady spot under an old oak. He
went to sit down in the grass.

“Stop,” Debby said.

“Why?” he asked. “Did you see a spider?”
Beans was terrified of spiders. One time Debby had stuck a fake but
realistic looking spider in his cereal. He screamed so loud and so
long that he nearly passed out. She wished she had it on video. Not
that she’d ever share it with anyone.

“No,” she said. “The ground is wet from that
storm this weekend.”

Beans bent over and placed his hand on the
ground to verify this. When he straightened back up, he nodded.
“Let’s go over to the bench.”

They walked along the back fence toward the
other side of the recess yard. There was no shade to protect them
from the bright sun. The air felt heavy, like they were walking
through a cloud. Debby’s gaze traveled from one kid to the next.
Most of them played on the large play set in the middle. Swings and
slides and ladders and some kind of half-circle geometric
plaything. Fun, she thought. But not for Beans.

“Come on,” she said, taking his hand. “Hurry
up.”

“I’m already hurrying, Debby,” he argued.

They reached the corner and turned right. The
bench was close to the school building, just off to the side a few
feet in front of the gate. Debby once again turned her head and
watched the kids having fun. She felt a slight urge to join them.
She never did, though. Not even on the days when Beans had been
absent from school.

She felt Beans’s grip on her hand tighten,
and she looked back at him.

He stared at her with a serious look on his
face. “You should go have fun, Debby.”

“I am having fun. Nothing is better than
hanging out with you Beans. Besides, those kids don’t like me.”

“No, they don’t like me. If you ditched me,
they’d like you just fine.”

“Nonsense and gibberish, my good man.”

“What?” He smiled and let out a single
laugh.

She smiled back and tugged on him in an
effort to get him to pick up his pace. When they’d almost reached
the bench, she cast one last gaze toward the kids. Sometimes she
wished that Beans wasn’t there to occupy all her time. Those
thoughts were fleeting and she chastised herself for thinking such
things. There was no kid she’d ever met who spoke to her or
understood her the way he did. She’d be lost in the third grade
jungle without him by her side.

By the time they reached the bench, Beans
looked like he wanted to collapse. He sat down in a huff. His hand
reached into his pocket. She imagined that he wrapped his thin
fingers around his inhaler. But he didn’t pull it out. No, Beans
sat on that bench and took a deep rattled breath or two. He looked
like a fish who’d escaped from a hook after dangling over the water
for a minute. He glanced up at her and smiled.

She felt relieved.

So she reached behind her back and stuck her
fingers through the chain linked fence. The metal felt damp, like
it had been sweating. Everything else had been. Why not the fence?
She didn’t watch the kids playing and having a good time. Instead,
she looked up and stared at the clouds for a long moment. A cool
breeze passed. It had the same smell her yard used to have when her
dad was around and he mowed the grass on a Saturday morning. She
remembered lying on her belly, watching cartoons and hearing the
sound of the mower buzzing by the window. Those stinky gas fumes
would always follow, but they’d soon be replaced by smell of
freshly cut grass.

Beans said something that she didn’t quite
hear. She started to look down at him when she noticed the strange
man from earlier. He was on the other side of the gate, maybe fifty
feet or so away. He leaned against the side of the school and
watched her. That shiver went down her spine again. Three times in
one day. That, as her mother might say, was a sign.

The guy narrowed his eyes and then lowered
his head. He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a set of
keys.

Debby watched on in horror. Beans said
something again. Maybe he repeated himself. She wasn’t sure. His
words sounded like they came from a hundred miles away. Or a few
feet through the water. It was all the same to her.

The guy turned and stuck the keys into the
side of the building. He leaned forward into what she supposed was
a closet of some kind.

Along the outside of the building?

It made no sense to her, but she had to trust
what her eyes were seeing. Besides, she’d never walked along the
outside of the entire school. He returned a moment later, holding a
brown bag. Not like a trash bag, but something else. He began
walking in their direction, his gaze fixed solely on her.

Debby said, “Come on, Beans.” She didn’t wait
to see if he followed along. The tone of her voice should have told
him that she meant business.

One of the boys from her class ran up to her
and blocked her path. His name was Peter. His red hair and freckles
always made her think of a pepperoni pizza. Strange? Yes, she
admitted that. What was stranger was she couldn’t look at him for
long, otherwise she’d get hungry. When she tried to go around him,
he held out his arms and stopped her.

“Let me alone, Peter,” she yelled.

He stepped to the side so that he was in
front of her again. “Go back to your little black boyfriend,
dweeb.”

She threw her arms forward and pushed him
back. Peter’s cheeks turned as red as the hair on his head.

“I ought to kick your little freak butt.”
Peter also rode the same bus as her. Everybody copied the
red-haired boy.

She shrieked and bulldozed her way past him.
By this point, Ms. Suarez had started toward her to see what in
God’s name was going on.

“What in God’s name is going on?” Ms. Suarez
said.

“She hit me,” Peter said. A few other kids
added their two cents to confirm this.

“Go away,” Debby said to him. Then she
grabbed Ms. Suarez’s hand and started to pull. “There’s a—”

“What are you doing, Debby?” Ms. Suarez freed
herself from the child’s grasp and placed her hands on her hips.
Her thin eyebrows angled downward in the middle. She tilted her
head to the side and leaned over a bit. “Are you okay?”

“There’s a strange man on the side of the
building, and he—”

Ms. Suarez straightened up. Her tone went
from caring to fast and serious. “What does he look like?”

“Old.”

“What’s he wearing?”

“A blue suit.”

“Like Principal Bennett wears?”

“No, like a trash man.”

“What color is his hair?”

“He has none.”

Her expression eased up and her voice
relaxed. “That sounds like our new janitor.”

“What happened to the old janitor?”

Ms. Suarez shrugged. “He stopped showing
up.”

Debby pulled away from Ms. Suarez and looked
toward Beans, the bench and the gate. The gate swung open. She
screamed. The man was coming for her.

Ms. Suarez said, “Wait here,” and she started
walking toward the open gate.

At that moment the bald headed man who had
seemingly been stalking Lil’ Debby Walker throughout the day burst
into the recess yard with a brown burlap sack. He pulled a rifle
from the bag and aimed it in the direction of Ms. Suarez.

“Don’t move, bitch,” he said.

It caught the teacher off guard. She had
picked her pace up to a run when the guy appeared, and now in the
presence of the rifle she tried to turn around. Her feet didn’t
cooperate with the rest of her body. At one point Ms. Suarez’s body
was parallel to the ground and three feet in the air. She hit the
ground with a thud and made a painful gasping sound.

Debby looked from Ms. Suarez on the ground to
where the man had been standing. He wasn’t there. She shifted her
gaze to the left. The man reached for Beans and yanked him off of
the bench. Debby tried to scream. She couldn’t. Neither could
Beans. So she did the next best thing. She started running after
the man who had Beans hanging over his shoulder.

Sam and I sat in Huff’s office, in the little
seats, while he lorded over us from his deluxe office chair. We
looked at copies of the papers that were spread out in front of
him. According to the documents, Roy Miller’s parents, Susan and
Robert, died when their Taurus sedan clipped the rear fender of
another vehicle and went over the side of a bridge. The reason they
ran into another car? The brakes didn’t work. And the reason for
that?

The line was severed.

I noted that the words “was” and “severed”
were used. Not “had been” and “cut.” That’s an important
distinction. There was a line crossed when the word cut was
used.

“So they both drowned,” Sam said, looking
up.

Huff nodded.

“Any insurance?” I asked.

“Life?” Huff asked.

The man had come up through robbery, not
homicide. I reminded myself to be patient with him. “Yeah,
life.”

“You mean like a reason why someone might
have severed the brake line?”

Sam and I stared at him and did not reply. At
least Huff was on the right track.

His face reddened. Those veins on the side of
his head stuck out around his temples. “You two are looking at the
same information I am. Find out for yourself.” He rose and walked
to his door and kicked it open. “I’m going for some coffee.”

“I’ll take,” the door slammed shut, “some.” I
looked at Sam and laughed. “Guess not.”

“You always giving that man a hard time.
Gonna give him a coronary one of these days.”

I shrugged. My cell phone rang. I pulled it
out and looked at the display.

“Who is it?” Sam asked.

“Lana.”

“
Kuh-cha
,” he said while snapping his
wrist.

“Shut up,” I said and then I sent the call to
voicemail. “There now. Would a whipped man do that?”

Sam laughed, then stopped abruptly. He
pointed at a spot on the paper in front of him. “There it is. Seems
that elder Mr. and Mrs. Miller had a twenty-five thousand dollar
life insurance policy.”

“Not all that much.” I drummed my fingers on
the edge of the desk. “We should check bank records for the
following two months and see if Roy made any large purchases or had
any debts, legal or otherwise, to pay off.”

“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 about to mention that we
ought to check and see if Lana had a life insurance policy 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.