The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (19 page)

“Did you read it?” she asked.

“I haven’t.”

“Maybe you should.”

“I can right now.”

“You might want to be alone.”

My curiosity was beyond piqued. “That’s okay.
Come on.”

We walked back into the house. My garage
wasn’t very well insulated, so the air was hot and damp out there.
The kitchen felt like Canada in comparison. My laptop idled on the
kitchen island. I ran my finger along the track pad to wake up the
screen. A few moments later I had the email open and scanned the
transcript. When I saw Lana’s name, I stopped. I glanced over at
Bridget. She tried to hide the concerned look on her face. I
returned my gaze to the screen.

Fairchild said, “Tell me about Lana Suarez.”
He noted in the transcript that McCree smiled.

McCree said, “She’s a special one, all right.
She’s been with us since she was a student teacher. We got along
real well. Real, real well, if you know what I mean.” I imagined
the guy lifting one of his eyebrows high into his forehead or
winking. McCree continued, “I couldn’t let her leave, so I had to
clear a position. This old bat, I can’t even remember her name now,
well she chose to retire early and Lana Suarez took her
position.”

“Chose to retire early?” Fairchild asked.

It was noted that McCree nodded.

“Continue.”

“Well, every year, hell every semester,
brings in a new crop. I usually have nothing to do with the women
afterward. They go back to school and then onto their new jobs at
schools elsewhere. But Lana and I kept seeing each other on and
off. I guess seeing is the wrong word. It’s just sex.”

“When’s the last time you saw her outside of
school?”

“A couple weeks ago. At my place.” It was
again noted that Ben McCree smiled.

I’d read enough. Betrayed wasn’t a strong
enough word to describe my feelings. I closed the lid to my laptop
and finished off my beer.

“I’m sorry,” Bridget said.

I glanced over at her. “Want another?” I
asked, tipping my empty bottle in her direction.

She shrugged, pouted her lips and said,
“Sure.”

A minute later I returned from the garage
with a six-pack of beer. Stuck four in the fridge and opened
two.

“You okay?”

I sat down across from her. “I’d say I can’t
believe it, but, after nearly twenty years in this job, nothing
surprises me anymore.”

Bridget nodded, took a sip from her bottle
and said nothing.

“The thought that it wasn’t going to last, or
that it was going nowhere, was there. Ella, my daughter, enjoyed
her company. Lana had started spending more time with her recently,
watching her at night for me when I got stuck on a case. I guess I
thought something could grow from it. It had only been four months,
after all. But this, man, I didn’t expect this.”

“We never do.”

My gaze shifted from the ceiling toward
Bridget. I dipped my chin halfway to my chest. “You speak from
experience?”

She nodded.

“Recently?”

She nodded again.

I glanced down at her left hand and saw the
tell-tale sign of a recent divorce. A thin pale line below the
second knuckle of her left ring finger. She moved her hand below
the countertop.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay, Mitch. These things happen.”

“I suppose they do.” I took a deep breath and
exhaled, letting my lips flap. “Want to talk about it?”

A few tense minutes passed where we did not
speak. Our gazes crossed paths a few times. Uncomfortable stares
between two strangers who knew too much about one another.

“Was there anything useful from the McCree
interview?” I asked, re-breaking the ice.

She shook her head. “He answered everything
perfectly. Saw nothing. Knows nothing. Hates his brother, but feels
compelled to help him out in hopes that the guy would change his
ways. Hadn’t seen Lipsky in years. Said he’ll take responsibility
for the hire.”

“Responsibility?” My voice rose in anger and
my chest and arm muscles tightened. “Then he can carry his ass to
jail since he’s responsible for getting those two children
kidnapped.”

She reached over and placed her hand on mine.
“I know, Mitch. Trust me, they are going to go after him once this
is all over.”

“They?” I asked.

She stared at me for a moment before
answering. “I don’t know if I’m on this case anymore. All those
changes, Major Crimes and the Mayor, just posturing to get us
removed.”

“I see,” I said, nodding.

“My guys did find out that the little girl,
her name’s Debby Walker, her family is pretty poor. No real reason
for a motive there. Mother’s a piece of work. Said she seemed
distraught enough, but something was missing.”

I felt my heart break a little. Would the
girl truly be missed by anyone if she were never found? “The
motive, well, they said it looked like she attacked the guy that
took the boy.”

Bridget nodded, placed her forearms on the
counter and leaned over the island. “Bernard Holland. They call him
Beans. His parents recently started calling him Bernie, at the
kid’s request. The poor thing, he’s got a ton of health issues,
asthma, as we learned earlier, being the least of them.”

“What else?”

She waved her hand in front of her face while
taking a pull from the beer bottle. “I’ll get to that in a minute.
First, I wanted to tell you what Vinson found out.”

I waited while she took another sip of beer.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, leaving a small drop
behind. It slid past the corner of her mouth and dripped off her
jaw.

“Mitch, his parents are loaded.”

“Loaded?” I repeated.

“Rich,” she said. “His father is some kind of
engineer. They couldn’t give us all the details because it’s
classified. They,” she paused, “really him, because the wife
doesn’t even know.”

“Is that right? So, something he sold to the
government, then?”

She nodded. “Exactly. We’re working on
getting someone with the appropriate clearance and seeing if there
is anything that can be declassified if it pertains to the case in
any way.”

“Who else might know of this? I mean,
depending on what this is, we could be dealing with a situation
that none of us envisioned. What if someone wants what he invented
and won’t give the kids back until they have it?”

“Vinson thought of that and asked if it would
be anything along those lines. Mr. Holland really couldn’t say, but
he downplayed the notion.”

“When did all this happen?” I asked.

“It’s very, very recent from what the father
said. They only recently received the money, and hardly anyone
knows about it. Just some family. They wanted to get the funds
spread out, investments and so on, before moving away.”

“Did Beans know they were planning on
moving?”

She chewed on her lip a moment. “I don’t
know. Vinson didn’t say. We should follow up on that.”

“Yeah,” I said, wondering about her use of
we
. I went to the fridge, grabbed a couple more beers and
pulled out the last two slices of pizza. I offered her a piece.

“Cold is fine,” she said.

I grabbed a couple paper towels and handed
her one along with the slice.

“So if not espionage, then you’re thinking
that someone got wind of the Holland’s recent influx of money and
they’ve taken the boy for that reason?” I asked.

She nodded while taking a bite of pizza.

“Why haven’t they called yet?”

“Ransom?”

I nodded.

“Maybe the girl threw a kink into their
plans. They have to get rid of her first.”

My hand stopped with the pizza inches shy of
my mouth. Call me optimistic, but I’d held out hope that we’d find
both kids alive. This sounded more and more like the girl was
useless to the kidnappers. What would they do with her? My mind
flashed images of a child found half-buried in the woods, or
floating in a lake.

Bridget seemed to feel the effect of her
words as well. She looked down at the granite countertop. “We’re
going to do everything we can to get both of them home safe, Mitch.
They’ll call. We know they’ll call. This went down as it was
planned, not some random pervert taking a kid for some sick reason.
The FBI has people experienced in negotiating these things to a
safe resolution.”

I stepped back until I reached the wall. I
leaned my head back. A spider crawled along the ceiling. A quick
shiver ran through my body and I moved out of the spider’s path.
Every few seconds I glanced up at it.

“Want me to kill it?” Bridget said.

I glanced over and saw her smiling at me.
Sure, mock my pain, Special Agent. “No, he has as much right to
live as we do. Don’t do anything to piss him off, and I think we’ll
be all right.” Despite my words, I still couldn’t stop focusing on
the arachnid.

“Want to go in the other room then, Mr.
Pacifist?” she asked.

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

I followed her into the living room and set
my beer and pizza down on the coffee table. Lana smiled at me from
within a picture frame. I set it face down on the table. Bridget
noticed this, but didn’t say anything. She leaned back into the
cushion and pulled one leg up under the other, angling her body so
she faced me.

“I was thirteen,” she said. “On my way home
from school. It was only a mile, so I walked there and back. It’s
warm most every day in Florida, so that was never a big deal. Rain
every once in a while. Again, no big deal. We lived in a quiet
community, for the most part. It had its bad part of town, just
like everywhere else.” Bridget paused to take a drink. “One day,
this beat up pickup truck pulls up next to me. The thing was all
rusted over. Big hole in it above the rear tire. Two guys were in
the truck. I recognized them as friends of my mom’s boyfriend,
Gary. I forget what they said to me at first. I ignored them, you
know, trying to act like I didn’t hear them. I was maybe three
blocks from home and I figured that if they kept it up, I’d run.
Anyway, they didn’t like that I wouldn’t acknowledge them very
much. One of them called me a whore and said something like, we’re
gonna teach you a lesson for Gary.”

“Gary, your mom’s boyfriend?”

She nodded and continued. “We didn’t get
along. I refused to listen to him, and he hated me for it. So,
anyway, they kept it up, so I started to run. The truck stayed
right behind me until I hurdled a fence into someone’s yard. Big
mistake. They had some kind of dog who came tearing after me. I was
forced to climb right back over, and the guys waited for me. I
tried to run, but couldn’t get away. The short one pulled a gun and
forced me into the truck. I sat in the middle on this torn up, duct
taped vinyl seat. The inside of the cab was covered in dirt. The
ashtray was full of cigarette butts. The wind whipped the ashes
around. I remember how they burned my nose. The whole ride, he kept
sliding the barrel of the gun along my leg, down to my knee, up to
my crotch. They passed a bottle back and forth, taking turns
drinking from it. It wasn’t long before the barrel was replaced by
his hand on my leg.”

I tensed, knowing where this likely led.

“They drove me deep into the woods. We got
out and they led me down a worn out path. Eventually the path
became overgrown. We kept walking. If I stopped, they jammed the
barrel of a rifle into my back.” She stopped and looked toward the
back door, holding her finger in the air. Eventually, she shook her
head and started up with her story. “They had a deer blind out
there. You know what that is, right?”

I nodded.

“So, this place was all boarded up, and there
were some old weathered two-by-fours scattered on the ground. They
forced me inside the blind. One of them followed me in there. He
kept coming toward me. I backed up into the wall, then slid along
to the corner. I ended up with this huge splinter in the back of my
leg. It got infected and they had to cut it out at the hospital.
Anyway, I had nowhere to go. I remember my heart beating so fast
and I wished it would just explode.” Her eyes glossed over, but she
didn’t stop. “He grabs me by my neck. His fingers were calloused,
and the skin jagged. It scratched me pretty good. He leans in to my
left, and licks the side of my face. He pulls back and smiles, and
even in the dimness of the room, I could see the stains on his
teeth. The putrid smell of his saliva stayed with me for a week,
even after I’d scrubbed my face so hard that the skin broke.”

“What happened next?”

“He backed out of the blind. They used the
two by fours to board up the door and the windows. Little cracks
let the light in. I heard a swooshing or a splashing sound. Next
thing, I smelled gasoline vapors. I went hysterical at that point
because I thought they were going to burn me. I remember screaming,
please help me, I’ll do whatever you want.”

I looked her over, wondering if she wore
jeans to cover up the burns.

She must have noticed my gaze. “They didn’t
light it. It was all to scare me. That bastard Gary put them up to
it. Worst part is, Mitch, my mother knew about it and didn’t do a
single thing about it. They kept me out there for a week. Every day
or two, they brought me some bread to eat and water to drink. There
was a bucket in there for me use as a toilet. A whole horrifying
week I stayed in there with spiders and mosquitoes biting me.
Snakes came in and out, slithering over my legs. Some lesson,
right?”

“How’d you get out?”

“They let me out. They rode in on
four-wheelers, pulled off the boards and then drove off. The sun
was setting at the time. No way in hell was I waiting there. What
if they came back the next morning? I had to find my way out of the
woods and then home. And I did it. It took me all night, but I did
it. I waited outside of the house until both my mother and Gary
were gone, then I went in, got a shower, packed, stole some money
and got on a bus to Charlotte. My grandmother met me there. She
took me in and raised me. My mom didn’t put up a fight, even after
Gary went to jail for attempted murder.”