The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) by L.T. Ryan Read Free Book Online Page B

boyhood friends, I suppose.
    Sam opened a manila folder. His shoulders
slumped forward and he placed his head directly over the images. He
looked up at me. His face looked bleak and drawn.
    “What you got there?” I asked.
    “Dusty Anne.”
    I swiveled in my seat and rolled my chair
around the block of desks. Sometimes we played hockey or football
like that. I stopped next to him. He scooted over a few inches and
shared the view. Seeing the digital images blown up in high
resolution did nothing for Roy Miller’s case.
    “Doesn’t look like a fall to me,” he
said.
    I nodded in agreement. “No more so than it
did in person.”
    Sam pulled a piece of paper from the back of
the folder. He laid it neatly on the table. The Medical Examiner’s
report. “The ME agrees with our assessment.”
    I used my finger to scan the document. There
I saw it. Written in Karen Dempsey’s unmistakable handwriting.
    Homicide.
    “We should have kept him here Friday night,”
I said.
    “We had no choice,” Sam said.
    “Bureaucratic BS, Sam. We should call the
shots.”
    “I’m not disagreeing with you, man. But you
know as well as I do that he would have called his lawyer and been
out of here. Shoot, he’s still got a solid alibi.”
    “And yet he ran. Twice. Now he’s roaming free
doing God knows what and who knows where.”
    “We’ll find him, Mitch. Trust the process,
man.”
    “Process my ass.” I got up and kicked my
chair. It rolled into the wall and tipped over. Perhaps I put a
little too much leg into it. I walked over and righted the chair.
The impact had dented the drywall. I’d have to find a new poster or
process map to hang there. I rolled my chair back to my desk and
took a seat.
    “I’m gonna make us some copies,” Sam said,
getting up and heading to the door on his side of the room.
    “Triplicates,” I said.
    Sam nodded and left the office, leaving me
with the memory of finding Dusty Anne, half-dressed and dead at the
base of the stairs inside the Cape Cod house. A shattered bottle of
Jack spread out around her. Shards of glass stuck in her buttocks
and thighs and back. Whiskey mixed with blood surrounded her body.
Her hair was coated with the stuff, more blood than whiskey,
though, due to the gash on the side of her head. The bottom step
had also been covered with blood, hair, and bits of skull. The
final conscious stop on her trip down the stairs.
    If Roy Miller’s story was to be believed.
    I had the sudden desire to smoke. I hadn’t
done that since I was a rookie cop pounding the 26th District amid
the historic buildings.
    Sam came back in the office, dropped a folder
on my desk, then went around to his side. He pulled out a drawer
and placed a second folder inside.
    “I suggest you do the same, partner,” he
said.
    So I gave the file a quick once over and
dropped it into my middle drawer. And just in time.
    Huff stepped in and said, “You two, my
office, now.”
    Horace and Fairchild made childish sounds and
said something stupid. Nothing new. The guys were as mature as
fourth graders, if that. Sam kicked Fairchild’s chair on the way
out. The guy nearly fell to the floor. That would have almost made
up for the crap start to the day.
    Huff waited for us in his office. He sat in
his high back leather chair with his ankle crossed over his knee.
He’d ditched the sweats and now wore a navy blue suit, white
striped shirt, and a paisley tie.
    “What’s up?” Sam asked.
    “Have a seat, guys,” Huff said, gesturing
toward the seats in front of his desk.
    We both sat down in the less than comfortable
chairs in front of Huff’s desk. Though we both towered over him
when standing, he now had the high-level view. He seemed to enjoy
looking down on us.
    “We got a lead on your boy,” Huff said.
    “Which boy is that?” Sam said, playing along.
Huff liked to talk younger person lingo when around us. For
fifty-something he didn’t do too bad.
    “The asshole who escaped from the hospital
this