Marta dialed Arturo's cell phone as she made for the exit.
“Cover the front entrance. She just ran outside.” Marta walked fast, but she couldn't risk being captured on video rushing out.
Marta exited the aquarium knowing that the audiotape was in the backpack the girl wore on her back.
Arturo came rushing up the side of the building. Tinnerino and Doyle came outside. They didn't know how to react to meeting Marta in a public place, so they smiled like idiots caught playing with themselves.
Marta told them all, “The girl is dressed up like a boy. She has very short blond hair and a khaki-and-green–colored zoo cap. Dark red sweatshirt, black backpack, and dark jeans.”
“She didn't come this . . .” Arturo said. “I see her. She's headed around the corner of Canal.”
Marta caught a flash of red as the girl vanished around the power-station wall.
The cops sprinted after Marta and Arturo, who reached the corner of the shaded VIP parking lot just in time to see Faith Ann dart into an opening in the side of the building where the ramp to the Canal Place concrete parking structure was visible.
“She's inside the parking garage,” she told the cops. “You two watch the deck exit in case she tries to come out that way. Turo, you take the far street corner and watch the side exits in case she goes that way. We have to keep her boxed in. I'm going in after her.”
Tinnerino tried to interrupt her, but she pressed on. “Just do what I say,” she snarled. “She gets away, you two are screwed. She walked right past both of you once already. On second thought, call your boss. You build a blue wall around this whole block and cover every exit.”
60
Knowing that the woman would come after her, Faith ran around the far wall of the power station, past a kiosk, and through a tree-studded parking area. Ignoring the door into Canal Place because there was a security guard there smoking a cigarette, she hopped over a low wall behind a bike rack. She ran straight up the vehicle ramp, which coiled up into the parking garage. She stayed to the left side, where a narrow raised walkway allowed her to avoid the descending vehicles.
Faith Ann had no idea how the woman got her cell phone number, but she reckoned the cops could find out anything they liked. How had the woman known to come to the aquarium? All Faith Ann could figure was that somehow they could listen in on it and they had heard her tell Rush where she was. She didn't think Mr. Massey had told the cops, because she had told Rush they killed her mother and were after her.
She knew they would search for her and watch the outside of the building. The Canal Place complex housed a hotel, shops, offices, a million places to hide. On the first parking level, located on the building's fifth floor, a winded Faith Ann had no more idea of where to go than would a rabbit being chased by hounds. Standing beside two cars, she looked down on the intersection below and fought back her fear.
Concentrate.
Okay, Faith Ann, stop being scared. You have to think. How can you stop them from catching you? You know why they are coming. You know what they want. How do you keep those butt cakes from getting it?
Faith Ann fought to figure something out.
Concentrate.
61
Just as Winter arrived outside the aquarium, Adams was pulling up and parking on the access street next to the power station near a police-issue Crown Victoria. He got out and joined Winter about the same time a limping Nicky arrived, carrying his cane.
“Keep your eyes out for her,” Winter told Nicky. After showing their badges, Winter and Adams were shown around the metal detector by a security guard.
“Just a quick run-through,” Adams told the guard.
“Who y'all looking for?”
“We'll handle it from here,” Adams replied gruffly.
“Thanks,” Winter told the guard. “We're just going to make a quick sweep through the building.”
“Happy to help,” the guard said. “You guys aren't having any luck finding whoever you've been searching for.”
“I'm sorry?” Winter said. “You said, been searching for?”
“Well, yeah. First the NOPD detectives—Tinnerino and Dale or something—and now you federals. USMS and FBI spells escaped federal prisoner doesn't it? The NOPD detectives said they were looking for somebody. One of them walked through the place upstairs and down while the other watched the exit. Then they just hauled ass. I'm surprised they didn't run smack into you guys.”
“When?” Winter asked.
“They came in about ten minutes ago. They just went by the doors there two minutes ago. I saw them all heading toward Canal Street.”
“All?”
“The two detectives that came in and a couple more people were with them outside.”
“Short woman? Tall thin guy?”
“She was inside for a few minutes. Dressed in leather—you couldn't miss her. Some other guy outside in a long black coat.”
“Did you hear them say where they were going?” Adams asked.
“No. They grouped up out there and went off the plaza toward Canal Street. I walked them around the metal detectors because they had gold detective shields. They said it was official business. I figure they're after whoever it is you're after. Sort of less than forthcoming and not open for questions, if you catch my drift. I did hear the shorter one call his partner Tin Man. Like in The Wizard of Oz.”
“We're looking for a twelve-year-old girl.”
“There's been about a thousand through here this morning.”
“This one has short blond hair, maybe five-five and ninety pounds,” Winter said.
The security guard's eyes grew serious. “Well, there was a boy that went out through these doors in a hurry. Wore a hooded red sweatshirt and a baseball cap and had a backpack. It could've been a girl, I guess. And that was just before the cops took off. The kid ran out so fast, I didn't have time to respond. I figured—”
“Thanks,” Winter managed to say before he and Adams left the same way they'd come in, this time through the metal detector, which sounded two distinct ear splitting alarms.
He figured that Tinnerino and Doyle were looking for Faith Ann, and they had flushed her and were in pursuit somewhere close by.
As he ran outside, Winter's mind whirred. The detectives had gotten there before Winter even knew about Faith Ann being there. Either someone spotted her and called the detective bureau or they were just checking places the girl frequented on the off chance she'd be there. The detective bureau's number had been on television since the night before and was published in the newspaper that morning. But because of the timing, and the fact that the picture they were using was two years old and she was now disguised, it was more likely something else. To have responded so fast, they had to have learned she was there about the same time Rush had. The pair in the Lincoln had left Bennett's club in a hurry, then had parked nearby and joined the detectives, so they must have known about it too. Once again, the couple was connected to Tinnerino and Doyle.
“She's gone,” Adams told Nicky. “The two detectives from that Crown Vic over there and that couple are after her on foot.
“You know,” he said, “we can track her too. You have the cell phone number. I make a request of my intelligence people and we can get fed the coordinates when she makes a call or takes one. In real time.”
“Damn!” Winter said when it hit him. “The cops have her cell phone number! That's how they found her. The minute she called Rush, they had her.”
“If they have the phone number, they'll know pretty quick who she's called. I think Suggs and his men will know about the connection to you pretty soon.”
“Then we can stop playing games,” Winter said. “They haven't had time to get far. They went toward Canal Street after her. Adams and I will go on foot. Nicky, you take our car. Where's yours?”
“Back there around the corner.” He handed Winter the key.
“Run a grid and look for them. You see them, radio us your position.”
Winter and Adams took off toward Canal Street. As the two men turned the corner where the power station wall ended, the city seemed to come alive with the sound of sirens. Blue strobe lights poured onto Canal Street as scores of patrol cars converged on their location.
“Good Lord,” Adams muttered. “Seems excessive to send in an army to deal with one scared little girl.”
62
There were hundreds of parked vehicles on several levels in the enormous lot: it would have taken hours for Marta to physically look under every car in the place. If she couldn't flush the kid, she'd be forced to let the cops' K-9 locate her. She didn't know how the detectives would explain her being there to the other cops. They wouldn't have to explain Arturo, because he was hooked up in the NOPD computers with official clearance.
Marta, unlike Arturo, did her best to remain in as few computers and as far off official radar as possible. She was a United States citizen. Her papers claimed she had been born on the right side of the border, in Brownsville, Texas. It was a lie, her name stolen. She owned her house and the twenty-nine creek-front acres it was located on. She had both wholesale and retail tax licenses and a retail antiques business on Magazine Street through which she laundered her earnings. She allowed a knowledgeable dealer, whose wife Marta had “accidented” so the unfaithful homosexual husband could inherit her estate before she could divorce him, to act as her partner and use her shop to warehouse his overflow stock. The real sales were his—he took the money off the books—and she got the paperwork on the sales for her purposes.
Marta heard the sirens of the approaching cruisers. She was totally relaxed, almost casual, as she strolled up the ramp to the first parking level, hunting for the child.
Maybe she would find the little rabbit herself in the next few minutes, but, if not, Faith Ann would be captured, because unless she could sprout wings and fly like a bird across the river, she couldn't escape. Before the day was out, she or Bennett would have the girl's evidence in hand. And Marta would have the opportunity to make sure she never made an identification of Arturo or herself.
Marta's attention was captured by a bulky object sitting by a stairway door. She approached it and lifted what appeared to be the girl's backpack. She squatted, opened it, and examined the contents. Among the items she found was a wadded-up red sweatshirt and a two-tone Audubon Zoo cap. She put the shirt to her nose and imagined that she could detect fear-induced perspiration in the material. Of course, Marta didn't have the tracking ability of a bloodhound, but her sense of smell was every bit as remarkable as that of a wine connoisseur or a perfume-scent tester. She was tuned in to her prey and knew her target didn't behave under pressure the way a normal twelve-year-old should. Marta's own similar behavior at that age had been influenced by years of survival in a hostile, unforgiving environment—a place filled with predators of all kinds. A place where the bodies of children were often collected from the gutters with the other garbage.
Setting aside the sweatshirt to look farther down in the backpack, Marta found the girl's Walkman with a cassette still inside it. She popped it open to retrieve the tape, which she slipped into her jacket pocket. The earphones for the device weren't there. After wiping prints from the Walkman, she replaced it and set the pack back where she'd found it. Marta had to hand it to the kid. The girl was smart enough to imagine that by abandoning the tape, her pursuers might break off the hunt. The trouble was that the child was that smart. She knew Arturo had killed her mother and that Marta was connected to him. She would still talk to someone, she would testify, and she might be believed, which simply wasn't acceptable.
Let Suggs find out if she had Bennett's negatives. Maybe Amber had separated them from the prints before she went to the lawyer's office—holding back that ace.
She dialed Tinnerino. “She went into the stairwell. Give me a few minutes without interruption and I'll track her down. You'll find her backpack outside the stairwell door on level three. It would be a good place for you to start searching.”
“I'd say five is the best I can do,” he told her, sounding odd.
Marta cracked open the door and, stepping into the stairwell, took a knife from her jacket pocket. She closed the door, opened the phone with her other hand and dialed the kid's phone. She closed her eyes, tuned her ears to listen, and heard the phone ringing in the stairwell not far above her.
Marta almost started up, but something didn't feel right. Leaning over the rail, she looked up and then down. Her heart soared as she caught the sight of a small left hand, three floors below, sliding along on the surface of the painted steel banister as Faith Ann descended, noiselessly as only a child can manage.
Marta went down after her.
63
Faith Ann ran down the stairs from the top level, backtracking. She was several floors down when she heard a door above her creak open. Close to the railing, she peeked up and saw a sliver of black leather. It was the woman cop who'd chased her from the aquarium.
64
Marta hit the ground level and would have run into a woman pushing a stroller containing a sleeping infant if she hadn't leaped over it.
“What the hell are you doing?” the mother screamed.
Marta bolted through the glass doors and into the atrium of Canal Place. She caught a glimpse of a figure wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and a red cap moving around a group of pedestrians then turning right into a shop called Georgiou. Okay, little bitch, now I have you.
Marta made herself slow down, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself than necessary. She stopped at the edge of the showroom window and peered in. At the rear of the store, the kid stopped at a display table, flipped through a stack of sweaters, selected one, and went back toward the dressing rooms.
Marta waited to enter until after Faith Ann was out of sight. She walked between the racks, focusing on the rear of the store.
“Can I help you find something today?” an Asian salesgirl who was hanging up blouses asked.
“I'm just looking,” Marta said, smiling.
“Let me know if I can be of assistance.”
“If I find something, I won't hesitate to let you know,” Marta said.
Marta stopped at the table and picked up a pair of slacks. She went back into the dressing room and spotted her target in one of the cubicles, whose doors allowed her a view of the inhabitant's lower legs—tennis shoes and dark jeans. She saw a sleeve of the hooded sweatshirt when the occupant laid the garment on the chair. Marta slipped out her folding knife, opened the blade silently, and slipped her hand holding the weapon beneath the folded pants.
Marta waited until the girl was pulling on the turtleneck, then she pulled open the door. As the child's head was emerging from the neck of the garment, Marta reached out and put her hand on Faith Ann's shoulder, ready to drop the slacks, put the knife to the child's throat, and ask about the negatives. When she felt the hand, Faith Ann whirled around suddenly, and, eyes growing wide, emitted a surprised squeak.
Marta froze, her knife hand underneath the garment. It was a good thing, because Faith Ann wasn't Faith Ann at all. The young woman emerging from the sweater was roughly the same build as Faith Ann and had short blond hair but was in her mid-twenties, and she was pissed off.
“What the hell are you doing?” the woman spat.
“Sorry, I thought you were somebody else,” Marta said, already thinking where she'd lost the girl. Was it possible she had been chasing the wrong person all the way from the deck's stairwell? All she had seen was a sweatshirt sleeve and a hand. No, it had been Faith Ann in the stairwell, but she had somehow slipped by her. She might have taken any of a dozen exits. Marta had seen the woman, and assumed . . .
The woman in the sweater straight-armed Marta back out of the cube, and Marta let her. She put the knife away, rushed back past the table, and tossed the slacks onto it as she passed by.
65
Winter and Adams approached the detectives who were standing at the entranc
e to the packing deck. The larger of them was preventing cars from entering the facility by waving off the drivers. The drivers of the exiting cars were rubbernecking, so his partner was able to visually check inside the vehicles as they passed by him. The cops had to know that it was unlikely that in the time she'd been in the building she could have enlisted the aid of anyone who would agree to sneak her past the local cops.
“Let me handle these twats,” Adams said. As he and Winter approached the larger detective, Adams opened his badge case. “Special FBI Agent Adams. What's going on here?”
“Tinnerino, NOPD Homicide.” The detective's shield was displayed—suspended from a chain around his thick neck. “We've got a murder suspect in there.”
“That right?”
“Yeah. Armed and dangerous.”
Patrol cars started arriving, and officers stepped from them. Tinnerino's phone rang, and he took the call. “I'd say five is the best I can do.”
Doyle, a short, swarthy man with a five-o'clock shadow, started giving orders to the patrolmen to get the complex surrounded and await instructions. Winter overheard him giving them Faith Ann's description. “Skinny kid, short blond hair, dark red sweatshirt, black jeans, light brown over dark brown cap.”
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