Deeper (The Deeper Chronicles #1) (2 page)

To appease her, he said, “Okay. So you’re no kid.” He peered closer. “But hand to God, I swear I’ve seen your face before.”

He probably had.

Before their deaths, images of the girl’s parents’ faces hung in neighborhood stores identifying them as regular shoplifters. They had been arrested so many times they were on a first-name basis with their arresting officers.

With her face blazing in embarrassment, the little girl toed the cracked pavement. “I want your best.” Her words came out low and stammering. She wasn’t a kid, and she planned to prove it. “I want the best you have,” she repeated louder, then shoved the formerly crisp bills into his face.

Greed alighted his eyes.

“Yo, man, she’s only a ki—”

“Shut the fuck up,” he yelled at the sole dissenter. “If it’s green, we take it.” He pocketed the money then looked around.

“Hey,” she shouted, taking a step toward him. If he thought he would stiff her, he had another thing coming.

“Relax, kid,” he said with a canny smile. “I wouldn’t do you dirty when your folks were my biggest customers.” His evil laugh chilled her, though the air was balmy. “Take a walk with my friend over there.”

The young thug had at least a hundred pounds on her and towered over her by maybe a foot and a half. She tucked her chin into her shirt and kept her gaze low, following the boy’s sneakered feet to a nearby abandoned house.

“Stay here.” He looked up and down the street to ensure they weren’t followed before disappearing behind a door that was falling off its hinges. Before the girl had a chance to worry, he was back and shoving a small opaque rectangle in her hand.

Almost too beautiful, the deep purple petal and green stalk painted on the waxy paper dominated the small expanse. She giggled at the ornate flower.

“Take Over. Best shit on the market,” he said before walking away.

Holding the pretty bag against her heart, she turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Detective Harry Manning and his new partner, Detective Frank Giampa, were the first to arrive on the scene. Harry pulled the unmarked car in front of the home he was all too familiar with.

“Shit,” he said, hoping the two residents living inside were okay and the call was a mistake. He stepped out of the vehicle and braced himself for more bad news, which plagued this address.

A tall, slender teenager paced the tiny yard and blew smoke from their nose.

“About fucking time. She’s in there.” Direction was given by pointing a slim finger toward the front door, and a puff of cigarette smoke blew in Harry’s face as he approached.

Unapologetic brown eyes glared at Harry’s passing form. “It ain’t pretty,” the teen yelled at Harry’s stiff back.

And it wasn’t.

“Damn it.”

Harry, a confirmed bachelor with no prospects of ever becoming a father or having a wife since he was married to his job, had seen many things in his nearly thirty years with the police department. But never anything like this. There the birthday girl lay sprawled on top of her barely made bed with a syringe sticking from her arm.

A curse flew from his lips as he stepped closer to the bed. He had arrested her parents and the hard-eyed teen down in the yard more times than he cared to remember, but held out hope that at least this little one would make it out. He used to stop by once a month, well before her parents’ deaths, to make it a reality.

He surveyed the room, noting the water stains yellowing the ceiling. Life never gave this family a chance. It was probable the teens were born to become drug addicts. A family of four now down to one, and by the looks of that one, there’d be hell to pay for that fact.

He moved closer to the bed, his keen eyesight catching something under the bed covers despite the clothing strewn around the dingy carpet. The calla lily’s purple petal was now marred with a single crimson dot. He thumbed the waxy glassine envelope used by dealers, tracing the image the man behind the drug had seen many years ago inside Harry’s small Brooklyn home.

“Damn it,” Harry repeated.

Someone trudged across the wooden floor in the hallway. He shoved the evidence into his pocket and grimaced as it fell into its hiding spot.

“Fuck. She’s young,” Frank said, entering the room and looking around. “But she knew what she was doing.” A spoon with a darkened piece of cotton ball and a lighter lay on a night table. “I wonder what made her do it.” He shook his head at the dismal scene.

“Did you see it?” a voice queried from behind the two detectives.

Harry and Frank turned, but it was Frank who spoke up. “I didn’t see anything.”

Pinched brows amplified the face that was morphing from confused to furious. “I’m telling you. I saw it. It had a fucking purple flower on it.”

Frank turned around, searching the area at his feet. “Maybe you were mistaken.”

Wide, mistrustful eyes landed on Harry. “Right.” The word was enunciated and anchored in disbelief.

Frank looked from Harry to the youngster in the doorway. “You should probably go back downstairs. You don’t want to see this.”

Harry’s partner didn’t speak again until they were alone in the little girl’s room. There was a serene look upon her face with a smile curving one side of her lip.

One of her cheeks was tear-stained.

“What the hell was that about, Manning?”

Harry blinked slowly. Flashes of the young man he once offered a second chance to, much like the youngsters who lived here, filled his mind before his eyes closed from the memory. “Who knows?” He shrugged and opened his eyes to the cruelties around them. “You know you can’t trust an addict.”

Paramedics arrived next, moving about with haste, but not bothering to resuscitate the young girl. They placed her corpse in a body bag and were gone just as quickly as they had arrived. The officers interviewed neighbors and onlookers who lingered at the edge of the yellow tape that sequestered the front of the home.

Two hours later, Harry made his way out of the small house and found himself face to face with the dead girl’s sole surviving relative. The onslaught began before Harry’s foot landed properly on the cement walkway.

“What’d you do with it?” The teen marched toward Harry with hell in their eyes and venom on their tongue.

Harry’s gaze settled on the teen’s fiery eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“You said you’d look out for us. Guess you were lying then, just like you’re lying now.”

“Asshole” was muttered as the teen made their way up the wooden steps.

Guilt ate at his soul, but he’d never go back on the promise he made to the boy with the black eyes. Bile rose in his throat. With all the heroin-related deaths around Manhattan, Harry could no longer turn a blind eye.

“Hey, Detective,” the teen called out from near the screen door.

Harry turned and found the teen’s fingers in the shape of a gun and trained at his head. They pulled the imaginary trigger and added the sound effect with an unrepentant twist to their lips.

At the ‘shot’, Harry staggered back against the metal gate. The teen disappeared into the home as if what transpired couldn’t end with a lengthy jail sentence. He took a few cleansing breaths before leaving through the gate.

He walked two blocks in a direction that would take him right to the drug spot. Under the flickering light of a lamppost, several young men laughed as if they didn’t have a care in the world on this warm night. A car with an out-of-state license plate slowed down. One of the men approached and stuck his head into the driver’s window. Harry leaned against a street sign and watched the familiar scene unfold. The driver and the pedestrian exchanged a few words, and then the man jumped into the passenger seat before the car drove off.

Harry shook his head, and took his cell phone out to call a number he’d been given no more than two weeks ago. It was answered on the second ring. “I’ve found something of yours.”

The line was quiet for about a minute before a deep voice responded, “Oh, yeah?”

“This is the second time I’ve put my job on the line for you.” Harry paused, watching the drug dealer return and the car speed away. “I saved your ass. I found your shit on the floor of a thirteen-year-old’s bedroom.” Harry’s harsh tone was laden with unrestrained accusation and condemnation. Gone was his usual patient and conciliatory manner.

Again, silence washed over Harry.

“We’re done.” Pain seeped through Harry’s words and clogged his throat. “I’ll put this in the safe, but I’m washing my hands.”

A long sigh was the only response. Its heaviness pressed on Harry, though the two men were separated by miles.

“It’s better this way. You are the law...”

“And you’re...you.” Harry finished their long-fought argument with agony slicing through him.

The line went dead.

Two Years Later

“B
ye, Miss L.” A little girl waved then grabbed her mother’s hand.

The hot September sun bounced off the asphalt; parents’ and their children’s shadows shimmered on the blacktop. Late seemed to be the word of the afternoon. Teachers waited with children whose caregivers were slow to pick up their charges.

Despite the long day, Avianna Linton’s enthusiasm wouldn’t dim. She was doing the one thing she’d longed for since the first time she played dress up in her mother’s heels, lined up her stuffed animals on her bed, and taught them how to count to five.

A small smile lifted the corners of Avi’s lips. The urge to skip up the old school building’s steps and to her classroom, like her students were known to do, was almost too much to resist. The word ‘classroom’ turned her small smile into a full-on grin that pulled Avi’s sandy-hued cheekbones up, brightened her deep violet eyes, and tugged her generous lips upward.

She ran her fingers over the groves of the carved numbers on the door of her class and mouthed, “My classroom.”
That has a nice ring to it.

Turning the knob, the smell of crayons, markers, and children’s innocence overwhelmed her senses. Her internal squeal became audible when she spied large colorful posters hanging from the drop ceiling and other returned hand-drawn assignments dotting the homework line at the back of the class. Avi clapped a hand over mouth to contain her excitement as it bubbled its way out.

She squealed, behaving nothing like the twenty-four-year-old college graduate she was.