The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (10 page)

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.

“Just be prepared,” Huff cautioned.

“For what?”

“To be removed.”

“What are you talking about?” I had to argue
against the possibility, if only to get Huff on our side.

“I know you date one of these teachers,” Huff
said, looking around the crowd of lost faces. “Might be a conflict
of interest.”

My patience ran out, and I snapped. “You
listen to me you good for nothing piece of crap. Those kids that
were taken were under my girlfriend’s care and protection. By
extension, that puts them under mine. I don’t care where this leads
or who it goes through, you are not pulling me off this
investigation. I’m not going to rest until those kids are found.
You got that? If that means I find Bennett’s killer, so be it. But
don’t you stand there and tell me what the hell I’m gonna do and
what I’m not gonna do, you pencil pushing flabby excuse for a
cop.”

I had the distinct feeling that all eyes were
on me. A quick survey of the area in front of the school confirmed
that.

Huff’s face reddened. He took a step forward,
pointed at me, stopped, turned and walked away. He erupted into a
tirade of obscenities after he stepped off the curb.

“Let’s go inside,” I said, pushing through
the front door.

The teacher led us down a short stretch of
hallway that ended at the administrative offices. The area was
empty both inside and out. Everyone had cleared the room and were
either out front or in the auditorium. We had a team of uniformed
officers that went through the school and escorted teachers and
students, room by room, outside and into the auditorium. No doubt
they would have done the same for the front office employees.

“When did you say this guy started?” I
asked.

“Last week,” she said. “Mid-week maybe?
That’s the first time I recall seeing him.”

“The principal and assistant are the only two
who have access to personnel files?”

She shrugged. “I really don’t know. I’m a
teacher, not an office worker.”

“We need to start tearing this office apart,”
Sam said.

“Wait,” she said. “Let me go find someone.”
She started to walk away. Before I could look away she turned
around. “Where did everyone go?”

“Besides out front?” I said. “The
auditorium.”

She left the office. I looked over at
Sam.

“You want to go find her?” he asked,
referring to Ella.

“More than anything,” I replied.

“Go.”

“No, not yet. I can’t leave this yet. I know
she’s safe right now.” My words almost convinced me of this. “I’ll
find her before we leave and let her know I’m involved and she’s
going to be okay.”

Sam nodded and went back to pulling open
drawers, searching for the personnel file. I walked around the
office and took a few steps into a narrow hallway with glass walls.
From there, I saw the offices of the principal and vice principal.
They were on opposite sides of the hall, facing each other. The
principal had the better of the two, in my opinion. Bennett had a
view of the outside. He could look up from his computer and gaze
out a nice wide window. Not too far away was a fenced in lake. The
fence must have been put there to protect the children from getting
too close and falling in. I imagined my little Ella standing in
front of the fence, little fingers wrapped around the chain links,
watching ducks on the pond. She had a fascination with water and
everything that lived in it and on it. Half the books in her room
were on turtles, sharks, whales and dolphins. The rest were on
birds, mostly sea faring birds. I read two or three of them to her
every night at bedtime. If I was home, of course.

On Principal Bennett’s desk were several
framed pictures. His kids and his wife, I presumed. It looked like
his kids ranged from age five to fifteen or so. There were four of
them, all girls. His wife was fit and attractive. They looked like
a happy family. No longer.

I heard the main door to the office area
click open. I set a family photo back on Bennett’s desk and left
his office. When I reached the end of the hall, I saw the blond
teacher standing there with an older woman with dyed brown hair.
She wore a brown pants suit and no makeup.

“I’m Barbara Winder,” she said. “You need
access to our personnel files?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “In particular those of a
janitor you just hired.”

She nodded and walked around the long counter
that divided the room. “I know where that is. If you’ll just give
me a minute.” She slipped behind the desk and logged into a
computer. A printer came to life a few moments later. Its fan
whirred into action and then it began spitting out paper.

Sam walked over to the printing station and
waited for it to complete the job.

“His name is Michael Lipsky,” she said.
“D.O.B. is August 19th, 1974. He came to us—”

“What the hell?” Sam said. He held the paper
in front of him, shaking his head. “Get over here, Mitch.”

“What is it?” I asked, crossing the room in a
couple steps.

“Look.” He held the paper out for me to
inspect.

I nearly fell over right then and there. “Are
you kidding me?”

“Who was responsible for hiring this man?”
Sam asked, crossing the room with me close behind.

“That’s what I was about to tell you,”
Barbara said as she scooted back in her chair and rose. Her lips
quivered. I imagined that Sam and I were an intimidating duo. “He’s
childhood friends with Vice Principal McCree. Apparently he had a
bit of tough luck and Ben stuck his neck out for him.”

“And Ben McCree hasn’t shown up for work
today,” I said. “Is that right?”

“I…I suppose he hasn’t. What’s this you’re
getting at?” She paused and drew in a long breath. “You don’t
think?”

“What kind of car does McCree drive?” I
asked.

“A truck of some kind.”

“Color?”

“White, I think.”

Sam and I stared at each other.

“We need his address,” I said. “Now.”

“I’ll get it for you.”

The teacher and Barbara Winder shared a tense
exchange. Had a killer and kidnapper been in their midst all this
time? Barbara printed off another piece of paper. Sam grabbed it
off the printer. He nodded at me and we left the office. We made
quick work of the short hallway and then headed toward the school’s
entrance. He stopped and placed his arm in front of me. I skidded
into it.

“What about Ella?” he asked.

I looked over my shoulder and said, “You’re
right. Come on. This won’t take a minute.”

We found the auditorium and Sam pushed the
door open. I passed through the open doorway, cupped my hands to my
mouth and shouted, “Ella Tanner. Come over here.”

Hundreds of small faces turned my direction.
I scanned the sea of children and saw my daughter get up and wave
at me. She picked her way around the tangle of kids until she stood
in front of me. I scooped her up and gave her a big hug.

“I’m scared, Daddy,” she said.

“I know, baby,” I said. “You’re safe in here.
Nothing’s gonna happen to you. You know that, right?”

She shrugged. Her eyes watered. Her bottom
lip trembled. She bit it to keep it from doing so. “I want to go
home with you, Daddy.”

“Daddy can’t go home yet, Ella. I’ve got to
go catch a bad guy.”

“Please, Daddy.”

“Look around, baby. See all these men with
uniforms? These are Daddy’s friends. His co-workers. They’re gonna
take real good care of you.”

She nodded and let her weight drop. I let her
down to the floor. Before she took off, I leaned over and gave her
a big hug. She squeezed my neck extra tight. I took one last look
around the room in search of Lana, but didn’t spot her. I figured
she wasn’t in there or she would have come over at the same time
Ella did.

“Ready to go?” Sam asked.

“No,” I said. “But we should anyway.”

“Let’s go get this bastard.”

I didn’t need for Sam to tell me twice. I
stormed down those halls with a purpose. I heard Sam get on his
cell phone and call Huff. He filled Huff in on what we found and
gave him McCree’s address, telling him to get a few cars to meet us
nearby.

Sometimes things move fast. This appeared to
be one of those times. But if there’s anything eighteen years as a
cop had taught me, it was that appearances weren’t always what they
seemed.

News trucks lined the main road beyond the
school parking lot. The entrances had been blocked off by a couple
police cruisers. Good call on someone’s part. A few reporters who
were hell bent on getting the story first made the rest of the
journey on foot. It seemed every ten feet they encountered another
line of cops whose purpose was to keep them away. Our forces on
site had doubled since Sam and I went inside the school building.
Philly’s finest were all on site. The killer and the kids were
anywhere but here.

We used the fire trucks to shield us from
view as we made our way to my car. Once I had it in sight, I said,
“Toss me my keys.”

“I’m driving,” Sam said. “You’re too worked
up.”

I felt my blood boil. My ears burned. Maybe
he had a point. “Fine, whatever. We need to get there before those
other pricks do.”

He glanced at me through narrow eyes. “Horace
and Fairchild?”

“Yeah. Got a feeling Huff has some kind of
deal worked out with them. Notice how they get all the gravy
assignments, and then how he brought them in on the Miller
murder?”

Sam stood on the other side of the car. He
shrugged and said, “You worry too much about that stuff, Mitch.
Everyone is not out to get you, man.”

Perhaps his words were meant to provide a
moment of clarity amid a chaotic situation.

If so, they did not have the intended
effect.

Sam got in, fired up the engine, turned on
the lights and hit the sirens. It took us longer to get out of the
congested parking lot than it did to travel the next three miles.
The traffic again parted for us as best as one could expect near
lunchtime. Sam still had to dodge the odd vehicle or pedestrian.
Ignorance never failed to show its face.

McCree’s house was in Drexel Hill, a few
miles to the west. He lived in a single story ranch with a brick
front and gray siding around the side. The yard looked well
maintained with trimmed shrubs and a few remaining flowers in the
flowerbeds. We drove past the house and parked a block away. The
squad cars couldn’t do that. Be a dead giveaway to anyone
inside.

Huff walked up to our car and waited without
saying anything. A couple minutes later Horace and Fairchild pulled
up and got out of their city issued Chevy, identical to mine.

“What the hell are they doing here?” I said
to Huff.

“You want to go in there alone?” Huff said.
“Be my guest. Get your head shot off playing hero.”

Either Horace or Fairchild laughed. I
couldn’t tell. By the time I glanced over at them they’d stopped
and both had serious looks on their faces. I’d gotten into it with
both of them at one time or another. They quickly learned they
wanted no part of me, especially with Sam at my back.

“We lead,” I said. “And we go now.” I started
down the sidewalk toward the house.

“What the hell are you doing?” Huff called
after me. “We don’t have anyone in back to cut them off if they
escape.”

“Send those two assholes,” I said.

Now, deep down I knew I had acted
irrationally. The most important thing at that time should have
been the kids. And by walking up there and announcing our presence,
I risked putting them in danger. If they were there, of course. We
still didn’t know that. There was no van, no big F-250. Just a ‘90s
model red two-door Honda Civic parked in the driveway. The
passenger side of the car looked beat to hell. Tint peeled away
from the edges of the rear windows.

Sam caught up to me. “What the hell you
doing, Mitch?”

“Forget those guys,” I said. “This goes down,
it’ll be their faces in the papers, not ours.”

“Is that what this is really about, man?” He
grabbed my shoulder and turned me toward him. “You want some
recognition? Really?”

He knew I didn’t. Truth was we were in the
middle of a turf war. Since the arrival of Huff, our turf had been
shrinking by the week. At least, that’s how I felt.