The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (2 page)

“Waited,” I finished for him.

He nodded. His gaze dropped from mine and
fell to the table. Tears tracked down his cheeks again.

We waited for him to stop and asked the same
questions in different ways. He never altered his answers. Finally,
Sam left the room and I followed him out.

“What do you think?” he asked me.

“Story sounds legit, if not a little forced.
Then again, could be ‘cause he’s telling the truth.”

Sam nodded. “Want to keep him overnight and
work on him some more in the morning?”

I studied Roy Miller through the mirrored
glass. I didn’t see a killer. I saw a man grieving over the loss of
his wife. “Send him home. We can pick up again tomorrow at his
house.”

The following evening I went back to the
Miller residence. The wind had picked up. A tropical storm had made
its way up the east coast and was poised to strike our area the
next day. As long as it didn’t interrupt my cable signal, it could
do whatever it wanted. The regular season started tomorrow.

I rapped on the door and waited. The porch
light flipped on, casting a yellowish hue across the front of the
house. The door opened and Roy Miller’s head poked around the
edge.

“Detective Tanner?” he said.

“Evening, Roy,” I said. “Just wanted to ask
you a few more questions.”

He chewed on his cheek for a moment, lowered
his head a notch and said, “I’ve got nothing else to say.”

He tried to close the door. I wedged my foot
just enough inside the frame to keep him from doing so. “It’ll only
take a few minutes, Roy.”

He relented, opened the door and invited me
in. The smell of chicken wings loomed. I glanced toward the kitchen
and saw a yellow and white striped bucket on the table. A bottle of
ranch dressing had been set next to it. On the other side of the
bucket were two beer bottles. One looked empty, the other halfway
there.

“This is interrupting my dinner,” he
said.

“Yeah, well, mine too.” I took a look around,
paying attention to the furniture, the floors and the walls. If the
fall had been staged and the death had been due to other reasons,
there might be some evidence that had been overlooked. Seeing none,
I turned to Roy and gestured for him to head over to the
kitchen.

He took a seat at the table and glared up at
me. His demeanor had changed considerably in the past twenty-four
hours. Another step in the grief process, or just tired of
acting?

“Mind if I eat?” he asked.

“Yes, I do mind,” I replied. “Now, take me
through what happened once again, Roy. I want you to start from the
beginning.”

He sighed and watched me for a minute.
Finally, he relented. “I was walking home from work.”

“Which is where again?” I interrupted,
pulling out my notebook to jot down his answer.

“Kessler’s Auto Detail. I mostly handle the
window tinting there. Anyway, I stopped off and had a drink.” He
stopped and picked up the bottle and took a drink. From there, he
recounted the story in minimal detail. It was either the truth or
he’d rehearsed it enough times to sound convincing.

When he was through, I asked, “Did Dusty Anne
have any enemies?”

“Enemies?”

“Anyone who she might have angered, or who
had an issue with her? Maybe she owed someone money and hadn’t paid
it back yet. It could be something that was trivial in your mind,
but blown way out of proportion to someone else, Roy. So I need you
to think about it.”

He leaned back in his chair. His head dropped
back and his eyes scanned the ceiling as if the answer might be
there. He crossed his arms over his chest and returned to a normal
sitting position. “No, nothing like that. Why do you ask? Do you
have a witness who saw someone coming or leaving?”

There was something about the way he looked
at me just then. It went beyond surprise. His face held a look of
intrigue, or perhaps suspicion.

“Roy, did you ever wonder if Dusty Anne
cheated on you?”

He placed his hands on the table and pushed
back in his chair. I gestured for him to move no further. “Who’ve
you been talking to?” he said. “I want to know who.”

“That’s none of your concern, Roy. At this
time, I’m here with you and I’m the one asking the questions. Now,
you might not have had anything to do with that fall, but if
someone else did, and you have information that you are
withholding, that’d be obstruction of justice and you’ll do jail
time.”

The clenched muscles in Roy’s jaw stood out
on his shaven face. His breathing had turned heavy and ragged. It
seemed he was either going to lash out at me or have a stroke.
Finally, he settled down and said, “I have no information other
than what I’ve told you, Detective Tanner. Now, I’d appreciate it
if you’d leave and let me eat my dinner.”

I rose from the table and took a few steps
back, keeping my gaze fixed on him. “I’ll be in touch with you
soon, Roy.”

He followed me to the front door. “Don’t
bother. I’m getting a lawyer.”

“You certainly can do that, but it’ll just
make you look guilty.”

“I’m not getting one to defend me, Detective.
I’m getting him so I can go after you assholes for harassing
me.”

I laughed as I stepped off the porch. Then,
something caught my eye. I’d missed it the night before, perhaps
because the lighting had been different, or maybe because I was out
of touch with the surroundings. On the hedges I spotted a few drops
of what appeared to be blood. I stopped and turned around. By the
time I swung my head around to say something to Roy, he’d taken
off.

I crossed the porch in two large steps and
kicked the door wide open. It hit the wall and bounced back at me.
I kicked it again. I heard a door slam from the back of the house.
I went to the right around the stairs, which led to a bedroom with
no exit. I cursed and turned around and headed to the other side of
the house. A mudroom led to the backyard. The door hung open on the
hinges. The wind blew it further open for me.

My feet hit the ground in time to spot Roy
hopping the back fence. He went over it quickly and gracefully. I’d
underestimated the guy. I gave chase, hopping the fence with almost
as much grace. For five minutes, I followed behind him as we passed
through a half-dozen of his neighbors’ yards.

We came to a clearing and Roy broke into a
sprint. I did my best to keep up. He hurdled a chain covering the
driveway to the old water tower. I did the same. My ankle felt
unstable as it hit the ground, but I kept pushing. Roy ran right to
the tower, put his shoulder into the door and busted it open. By
the time I made it through, he was a quarter of the way up the
spiral staircase. What the hell was the guy doing?

I stopped, took a moment to collect myself,
then called Sam. He figured his ETA to be around ten minutes. He
also said he’d get help out there. Fine by me. One less call I had
to make. I hung up with Sam and made another call to let forensics
know about the evidence. We needed them there before the storm hit.
I stuffed my cell in my pocket and continued up the staircase. The
metal door at the top whipped in the wind, banging into the wall.
The sound echoed through the hollow body of the old tower. The
higher I climbed, the tighter my stomach felt. When I finally
reached the top, I wasted no time stepping through the open
doorway.

Then I froze.

I’d been told to wait for the negotiator. But
I knew that guy was playing poker tonight, and he wouldn’t respond
until at least the third page. By this point, they’d paged him
once, maybe twice. So it was up to me. Now, staring out into the
open sky, I realized I should have waited.

I balanced on a two-foot wide ledge that
surrounded the old water tower. I don’t think it hadn’t been used
since the ‘80s. I was a bit busy, so I didn’t bother to call the
town historian to find out. The wind blew in from the south.
Fortunately, I was on the north side. Unfortunately, while the
circular contraption protected me from the full thirty-mile per
hour gust, I found myself being pelted by two razor thin wisps of
wind that followed the gracious curve of the tower and met
precisely where I stood.

I had a moment of clarity, during which I
questioned my sanity by blurting out, “Fuck me.”

I suppose I could have tried to say something
to Roy, who had climbed over the waist-high railing about thirty
seconds ago. There was the temptation to let him jump. The sooner I
got off that tower, the better.

I watched him release one hand, then the
other. He leaned back against the railing, sometimes jerking
forward and back because of the wind that whipped around and pelted
him, the same as it did me.

I knew I should have said something to the
guy. Sanctity of life and all that bullshit. That's the reason I
got into homicide to begin with. To give a voice to those who could
no longer speak. This guy could still speak though. And it wasn't
like someone was taking his life here. He was prepared to do that
by himself.

I could no longer hold my tongue. I was hot
and sweaty and starting to have a panic attack, dammit.

"Well, then jump you bastard," I said.

He looked over his shoulder. The only light
up on that tower came from the moon, and while it was full on this
night, wispy clouds raced by and at that moment, they covered the
entire white orb.

I couldn't get a read on the guy. His eyes
looked black as coal. I could tell his mouth hung open from the
dark hole in the middle of his face.

"Look, man," I said. "I'm cramping up here.
So either you jump, or you get back over that railing and we go
downstairs, and then I kick your butt on solid ground."

Roy turned his head forward and tucked his
chin to his chest. He said nothing back to me.

Pissed me off.

I reached out for the railing and leaned
forward. It was amazing I was up there in the first place. I’d been
scared of heights since the age of eight or nine, when I climbed
higher in a tree than I ever had. The reason? To save a one eyed
tabby cat for the cute thirteen-year-old girl next door. Her name
was Victoria. The cat, that is. I don’t remember the name of the
girl anymore. Maybe if she had thanked me, I would. It hadn’t been
the fact that I was higher up in the tree than I’d ever been
before. Hell, that had been kind of cool to my eight or nine year
old self. What did me in had been the branch that snapped when I
was twenty feet off the ground. I’ve been told that it doesn’t
matter whether you weigh eighty pounds or eight hundred, twenty
feet passes pretty quickly when you fall out of a tree.

And that’s why I felt my stomach higher in my
throat with every step I took forward. Those boards below my feet
were old and splintered. At least, I imagined they’d be if I had a
light to shine on them. Not that I’d look. Hell, it could have been
plastic wrap under me. No way I was looking down. Not a hundred
feet or so up in the air.

“Don’t come any closer,” Roy said.

“Oh, now you can talk?” I said, my panic at
an all-time high as I realized I stood more than ten feet away from
the door that led back to sanity.

He eased along the outer edge, further from
me. I glanced down and saw that only his heels remained on
semi-solid above-ground ground. Big mistake. Not him on the ledge.
Me looking down.

A doctor might say it’s impossible for a
stomach to turn, but I swear mine did at that moment. My knees went
a bit weak. A lot weak, as a matter of fact. Next thing I knew, my
armpit collided with the metal railing.

“I got five bucks you hit the ground first,”
Roy said.

His words jostled me forward. “You don’t know
your physics,” I said. I stopped before explaining any further. It
would have been lost on him.

The episode I suffered through a moment ago
seemed to cure me, at least temporarily, of my fear of heights. I
rose and let go of the railing and walked toward him. This time he
grabbed the railing with his left hand and spun, stopping so that
his right leg hovered out in the air while the tip of his left foot
balanced on the ledge.

Crazy SOB
, I thought. “Get back over
here,” I said.

Red lights bounced off the trees. I saw the
same lights reflected off the water tower. I looked down, twisted
stomach and all, and saw a ladder and engine pull up to the tower.
A moment later a flood light shone up at us.

I got a good look at the man who stood in
between life and death. I’d just upgraded him to person of interest
in his wife’s death. Thus far, we’d labeled Dusty Anne Miller’s
death as accidental. But I didn’t believe that now. Roy’s actions
on this humid, windy night only served to convince me that he was
guilty as sin. Maybe more so.

“C’mon, Roy. Let’s go downstairs, have a
Starbucks, and talk this thing through.”

I wasn’t a fan of coffee I didn’t make
myself, but since I seemed to be in the minority, I thought it a
good line to use.

Then Roy said something I don’t know that
I’ll ever forget. He said, “Coffee? It’s almost midnight.”

Did dead men care about such things?

Roy looked down for an awfully long time. He
eased his butt to the railing again and placed both hands on it.
His stare remained focused on one of the fire trucks below. I
wanted to look over, too. I’d never been involved in a jumper
situation and found myself wondering if they pulled out one of
those circular bouncy things like in the old cartoons. Might be
fun, for the right person.

I didn’t look though. With Roy distracted, I
reached out and grabbed hold of his collar. He yelled something
indecipherable. I pulled back as hard as I could. He toppled over
backward, landed on his head. I hovered over his body, leaned
forward.

“Roy?” I said.