“Massey residence,” he announced. “How may I direct your call?”
He was stunned to hear the sobs and Faith Ann's fractured voice. “I . . . I . . . I. Rush. It's me, Faith Ann. Please . . . I need help.”
“Faith Ann. We've been worried sick about you! Where are you?”
“Rush, Mama's dead. I saw him . . . So is . . . Aunt Millie and Uncle Hank.”
She cried loudly, and his heart went out to her. “I know, but Hank's not. He's just unconscious—he's not dead. He's at the hospital where they have real good emergency doctors. Daddy went there when they shot him in the leg.”
“He's not . . . dead? Are you sure? I saw him. I thought sure . . . But . . . Rush, I saw them run over them.”
“He's not good yet, but he's alive.”
“Who ran over them?”
“I'm not sure. Have you seen my daddy yet?”
“No.”
“Well, he's looking high and low for you.”
“Where?”
“In New Orleans.”
“Where in New Orleans?”
“Sean knows the hotel name. She'll be back in a few minutes.”
“Can you ask her and call me back?”
“I can call her on her cell phone. What's your number?”
As fast as she told him, he had it committed to memory.
“Faith Ann, Daddy said you didn't ever call the police. Why didn't you tell them about your mother?”
“One of them did it.” She was crying again. “They're trying to kill me too.”
“No, Faith Ann. My daddy won't let them. You know him.”
“Will you call me right back?”
“Sure. But I'll call Daddy and tell him where you are. Where are you exactly?”
“I'm at the aquarium.”
“Where is that?”
“Right by the Mississippi River.”
“I'll tell him. You just sit tight and wait. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Why did the police kill your mother?”
“Because of Horace Pond.”
“Just wait there, Faith Ann.”
“Okay, I will.”
“It's going to be okay, Faith Ann.”
“Thanks, Rush.”
“Good-bye, Faith Ann.”
“Good-bye, Rush.”
“And, Faith Ann?”
“Yeah.”
“We love you.”
“I love you too.”
Rush took a deep breath, pressed down the button, and dialed his father's cell number. There was no answer, just his voice mail. “Dang it.”
Rush tried again, same result.
He dialed Sean, and she picked up.
55
Marta and Arturo approached the aquarium from the rear. “Remember, Arturo. No guns. She's seen you, so we let Tinnerino and Doyle get her, and they'll hand her over.”
“What if people see them take her? How can they hand her to us after that?”
“They'll do what they're told to do.”
“We don't know for sure that she saw me,” he said sourly.
“You don't know that she didn't. So we aren't taking any chances. There are a lot of people around. We can't afford to do anything stupid. Remember that we have to get the tape.”
“And the negatives.”
“And those too. If we can.”
“Maybe the two cops will get the negatives and the tape and try to keep them. Bennett would pay a lot more for them than he'll pay if they just hand her over to us. I don't trust them.”
“If they try something like that, we'll handle them. We'll have to anyway, eventually. But we should plan everything so we get them all before they know what we're doing.”
“That's cool. But when I take them out, I want them to know I'm doing them.”
56
Winter had turned off his phone at the club, so he turned it on and called Detective Manseur to fill him in on the conversation with Bennett in his office. He described the couple: “Short woman in leather with long hair and a young dark-haired man in a black Lincoln Town Car. They were in Bennett's office just before we got there.”
“They aren't with Homicide, Vice, or Narcotics,” Manseur told him. “They could be uniforms on special assignment, but if they were working with the detective bureau, I'd know about them.”
“I don't think Bennett had anything to do with the Trammels' hit-and-run,” Winter told him. “He was easy to read because we came out of the blue and rattled him good. I don't think he ever expected to be connected to anything, because he didn't have a straight story and he mentioned his close friendship with Suggs. By the time we left he was almost under control, but I'm sure he's never heard of Hank.”
“But it has to be connected to Kimberly Porter,” Manseur said.
“Oh, Bennett's tangled up in that. Proving it is going to be a different matter. He'll lawyer up.”
Adams, overhearing the conversation, nodded, agreeing with Winter's assessment. “He's a narcissistic jerk. He thinks he's bulletproof and smarter than everybody else. He'll get more pissed if you criticize his lousy office decor than if you accuse him of a crime,” Adams said.
Winter said, “Amber didn't take any money from him, but she might have taken something worth killing her for. That charade probably allowed him to get the cops to locate her. I'd bet Suggs helped him with that. Maybe Bennett found her, he went postal, and Suggs is trying to cover for Bennett.”
Manseur said, “I don't think Bennett confronted Amber in Porter's office and there was an argument that escalated. The choice of the weapon says that whoever did it was there to kill Amber all along.”
“If Faith Ann saw Bennett do it, and Bennett ran to Suggs—his pal—that could explain why Suggs immediately started stacking the deck against her.”
“It's worth considering, but I can't imagine Suggs risking everything to cover up a murder for Bennett. Kimberly Porter wasn't exactly popular with our department.”
Winter had an incoming call, so he asked Manseur to hang on while he took it. “Yeah?”
“Daddy,” Rush said.
“I can't talk now, Rush. I'll call you back.”
“But it's super-important.” Rush sounded frantic.
“Okay, hang on and I'll be right back.”
“But—”
He returned to Manseur. “I gotta take this other call,” Winter told him.
“Keep me posted,” Manseur said.
“We're going to meet Nicky Green. I'll call you back as soon as we get there.”
“No problem,” Manseur said. “Suggs knows you are coming this morning. I told him I was going to talk to you. So we've talked. You didn't tell me about Kimberly Porter, right?”
“No, I didn't tell you squat.”
Winter switched back to Rush. “What's up, Rush?”
“I've been trying to call you, but I kept getting the voice message.”
“I had it off for a meeting.”
“Faith Ann called. I told her you'd—”
“When?”
“I don't know for sure. Maybe about fifteen or twenty minutes ago—”
“From where?” Winter interrupted. “Rush, where did she call from?”
“The aquarium. It's near—”
“I know where the aquarium is,” Winter said.
“I told her Hank was alive. She didn't know. Daddy, she's real scared. She said a policeman killed her mother. She says the cops are trying to kill her too.”
“I'm not far from there. If she calls back, tell her I'm on the way.”
“I'll call her back.”
“You know her number?”
“She has her mother's cell phone. You want the number?”
57
Faith Ann turned off the telephone and slipped it into her pocket.
Rush's father is looking for me! He's coming here!
Uncle Hank is alive!
I'm safe.
Standing at the top of the steps leading up to the aq
uarium's plaza, she held on to those thoughts. Like a sign, she used them to cover the memory of her mother's body, of Millie and Hank lying in the rain-soaked street. Hadn't Rush said Hank was going to be all right? She replayed the conversation, but she couldn't remember if he had said so. Mr. Massey would know. He could use the negatives to save Horace Pond. And the tape held the proof of who shot her mother and the other woman. What was her name? Ms. Lee. Amber.
She wondered how long it would take Mr. Massey to get there. Of course he wouldn't recognize her with short hair, but she'd know him on sight. She'd run right up to him and throw her arms around him. She knew how happy he would be, how relieved. And after he straightened everything out, the cops would be in big trouble, and the man who killed her mother would be where Horace Pond was now, in prison. Her mother had always told her that justice, while it didn't always work fast, averaged everything out in the end—like the scales the blindfolded woman was holding. Faith Ann supposed that the sword she held in her other hand was for people who didn't want justice to win. She was the sort of a no-nonsense angel Faith Ann imagined when she had prayed for one to help her. Winter Massey was probably some kind of an angel.
Faith Ann was watching the streets when she spotted a big car drive up and pull over on the access road beside the walled-in power station and the wall that ran beside the aquarium. As the driver stepped out, her feeling of safety, of being rescued, evaporated. A wave of terror filled her and washed away everything else. The driver of the sedan was the larger of the first two cops who had come to her house. Faith Ann moved across the mall and joined the line of people who were entering the aquarium.
Turning her head in the other direction to look for Winter Massey, she spotted the driver's partner coming straight toward her from the downriver end of the structure. She paid the $6.50 admission and was aware that the cell phone in her pocket was ringing, that Rush must be calling her back, but she ignored it.
The security guards manning the metal detectors inside the doors didn't so much as look at her.
The two detectives met up outside the doors and came inside.
She turned her head to see that the cops were talking to the male security guard.
Inside the lobby, she turned to see that the big cop was behind her; he was scanning the crowd, surely looking for her. She left the slow-moving crowd, and as soon as she was out of sight of the cop she ran. Where is Mr. Massey? The cop had looked directly at her, but she didn't think he recognized her. She could hardly hear the canned music or the people talking over the roar in her mind, the fear that filled her. She forced herself to pause to look at a glass wall, behind which fish of all sizes swam lazily. How did the cop find her?
Any second the cop could spot her and grab her, and he would take the tape and the negatives and then they would probably kill her because she knew too much. When Mr. Massey came, it might already be too late. If Mr. Massey started asking questions about her, maybe they would kill him too. Two days earlier, she would have thought that was impossible, but now she knew it wasn't. If they grabbed her, she could scream bloody murder and fight them, but who was going to go against the police to help her?
She tugged down the bill of her cap and moved rapidly through the Caribbean reef exhibit, colorful fish swimming on the other side of the glass wall. On the escalator she dared to look back. She saw the big cop coming behind her and she fought the urge to break into a dead run, knowing it would only call attention to herself.
On the second floor, she walked hurriedly through the rain forest, past the food court and down to the first floor. After passing by the jellyfish tanks and the Gulf of Mexico exhibit, she came alongside the glass tunnel for pedestrians that was under the shark tank. She had never been at the aquarium that she didn't go inside that tunnel. She always imagined that she was scuba diving, without the dangers or the wet.
She had to get out of the building, into the open.
Faith Ann slowed when she saw the smaller cop standing near the drinking fountain, close to the exit. He was looking hard at every kid who was leaving the building. If he studied her face, he could recognize her—a kid alone.
The phone in her pants began to ring again. She tilted her head down and ignored the rings. Using the bill of her cap to shield her eyes, she stared at the cop's feet and tried to look casual—like she was waiting for someone who was still wandering around in the building. Luckily there were tons of people for him to check out. She decided that her best route of escape was back out the entrance, because she doubted they would figure that anyone would go out that way, or have other cops hanging around there.
The bigger detective, now downstairs, approached the smaller one, and they started talking. Even though nobody seemed to take any notice of it, the phone ringing again in her pocket seemed to her to be a huge sound in the large space. Then it stopped.
She was moving toward the front doors when the phone rang again. Faith Ann was out of sight of the cops so she took it out of her pocket. The caller display showed a number she didn't recognize. She pressed the green button and put the telephone to her ear.
“Rush? Mr. Massey?”
As she listened for a reply, Faith Ann was aware of the sound of the canned music surrounding her, and that it seemed to be slightly out of sync where it entered her right ear through the phone. The caller's phone was picking up the same sounds she was hearing around her, sending them over lines or around a bunch of satellites before sending it to her ear. The echo ended when the incoming call shut off. He's here!
Faith Ann spun around, searching the figures and the faces, trying to spot Mr. Massey.
58
While Adams radioed Nicky to tell him to meet them at the aquarium, Winter dialed the number that Rush had given him. It rang several times and was answered by Kimberly's recorded voice asking him to leave his name and telephone number and that she would return the call at her earliest convenience. He ended the call.
“Hurry,” he told Adams, who was already driving as fast as the heavy traffic allowed. Adams honked, but the only effect it had was to earn them a few naughty hand signals from other drivers.
After they crossed Poydras Street, a truck swerving to miss another car slammed its rear bumper into a minivan, and they both stopped, completely blocking both lanes. Adams started honking. The driver of the truck jumped down and stamped over to check on the van's driver.
Adams cursed and craned his neck, looking for an escape route. A policeman parked his motorcycle and started walking casually over. He glared at Adams, who held his open badge case out the window. The cop gave him a “just a minute” dismissive wave and approached the truck driver.
“I'm going to hoof it,” Winter told Adams. “It's about six blocks. Park the car as close as you can to the aquarium—there a road on either side of it—and meet me in there.”
Winter jumped from the car and took off running. Under his jacket the holstered SIG Sauer swung against his ribs like a metronome, keeping perfect machinelike time with each long stride toward the Mississippi River.
When he ran, Winter was in his element. If he hadn't been so nervous, he wouldn't so much as broken a sweat. He took out his cell phone, pressed Redial, and listened to it ring. Answer it, Faith Ann!
He dropped the phone back into his pocket and took out the radio. “Nicky, Adams, I'm almost there. Positions?”
“I'm getting close,” Nicky's voice said. “I'm on foot. I can see the building.”
“I'm moving,” Adams added. “Two minutes.”
“When you get there, you two watch the front. Adams, park close and, Nicky, watch the entrance. We'll go in and look for her. I'll bring her to the car out front and we'll take her straight to the hotel.”
Winter pocketed the radio and extended his strides.
At the corner of Magazine Street, he turned right on Canal Street and saw the aquarium's distinctive glass tower, like a cake made of mirrors, its flat top canted at a sharp angle.
59
&nb
sp; Marta knew that the girl had called somebody from here at the aquarium. After scanning the plaza, she stood in line patiently, paid the adult admission fee, then went through the newly installed metal detectors without incident, since her blades were ceramic. Inside, she immediately spotted Tinnerino and Doyle over by the exit to her right and saw that they hadn't managed to find the girl. In the lobby, Marta checked the women's bathroom, figuring the cops hadn't thought to do that and it was a good place for the girl to hide.
Back outside the bathroom, Marta took out her phone and a slip of paper. Reading the dead lawyer's cell phone number, she keyed it in and listened. When the girl answered, the cops would have a new fix on her, and they would know if she was still in the area. She heard a phone ringing nearby. Marta's eyes stopped on a boy wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a ball cap, who nervously pulled a ringing phone from his pocket. As Marta watched, he looked at the display, pressed a button, and put it to his ear.
“Rush? Mr. Massey?” Marta saw the boy's lips mirror perfectly the words she heard. She realized that the boy wasn't a boy at all, but Faith Ann Porter in disguise! Marta had to hand it to her—this was one bright little girl. Too bad she was living her last day on earth. It was a crying shame she had seen Arturo. If only she had been in school, where she'd belonged, and not in her mother's office. Such a thin child, with such a fragile neck. One swipe and within seconds those bright blue eyes would lose their focus.
Marta saw the child searching the crowd. When the girl's eyes met hers, they filled with sudden shock, then abject fear. Marta hadn't imagined that Faith Ann would know her—had ever seen her before. Marta looked up to signal the two detectives to move in, but they were no longer standing there. Cursing under her breath, she watched the girl take off, weaving her way through oncomers and going straight through the doors the wrong way, Phone in hand, Marta headed for the exit, hoping she would attract less attention by going out that way. It would cost her time, but the security guards, alerted by Faith Ann's run past them, might stop Marta for a lot longer.
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