Marta turned off the jets and dried off using a thick towel. She stood before the full-length mirror and studied the most important weapon she owned—her chiseled and finely tuned body. The first and most important rule in her line of work was to stay in fighting trim. When she wasn't on a job she spent several hours a day in her well-equipped gym, working out on the Nautilus machines to maintain her strength. Her five-foot-five-inch frame was as close to perfection as diet and exercise could make it. She maintained a balance in her muscle structure because being too bulked would slow her and limit her range of movement, while having too little muscle would cost her strength and stamina. She swam laps in the pool behind the house, ran ten miles a day, practiced gymnastic exercises to give her stamina, balance, and strength. She kept up her proficiency with a wide variety of weapons. She could slow her heartbeat and hold her breath for over three minutes. She maintained her peak condition—pushed herself because her clients paid a lot of money for perfection.
Part of her regimen included training in absolute darkness, using the sounds and scents of her adversaries for orientation. Her sparring partner was a sixteen-year-old neighbor boy who lived a half mile up a dirt trail that ran along the Tchefuncte River. On those days the boy came, Marta wore a blindfold and went weaponless, while he used a bamboo sword and tried to hit her as many times as he could before she disarmed him. She would pay him five dollars for every blow he delivered until she took the sword away. He had never made more than five dollars, but he kept trying harder, which she appreciated. Like a blind person, each time she played the game her hearing and other senses took the place of her sight.
She smiled at her mirror image. At twenty-nine she could still pass for a teenager. If she wore her hair short it would be easier to take care of, but she loved her long hair and so did men, which gave her an edge more important than an ability to disguise herself. She studied her face and how her hazel eyes, heavy black eyebrows, high cheekbones, strong chin, and full lips worked together.
Marta put on a plush robe, wrapped her hair in a towel, and went into the bedroom humming. Hard hands grabbed her from behind. The intruder locked his forearm tight around her middle, and pressed a blade against her throat. His body odor assailed her nostrils, but under that there was a very familiar scent.
Marta grabbed his wrist, pressed her fingers against the back of his hand, and disarmed him. Effortlessly, she now held his trademark switchblade to his throat.
“Poor baby,” she crooned teasingly. “Did the little girl get the better of you?”
“Okay, I give up,” he said.
She kissed him full on the lips, both cheeks, and on his smooth forehead before handing back his knife.
“You have been sweating, Arturo,” she said.
“It was a long morning.”
She stood, pulled him to his feet, and embraced him. “Come and take a shower, Arturo. We can spend a few minutes talking. I've hardly seen you all week.”
Marta led him into the bathroom, and while he took off his clothes she set the water to cascade from the overhead nozzles.
“How did you do that?” he asked, perplexed.
“I read the instructions. They are in the—”
“The contractor should come show me again. I wasn't paying attention to him before.”
“I'll show you,” she told him.
While he stood under the water soaping himself and singing, Marta picked up his soiled clothes and dropped them into the hamper. She would wash and dry them later, as she always did. As he lathered his body she sat on the deep stone counter with her legs crossed and admired him. He was the only man she had ever loved—ever cared about at all. “Are you hungry?”
“No. Just tired.”
“I'll cook you something. I've got some of the wine you like and I picked up some prime steaks.”
“I got a triple this morning,” he said.
She shrugged. “So did I. That prick Cecil Mahoney and two of his little geckos. I just pinched off their teensy little heads.”
“I didn't think that pig was telling the truth, but Bennett did. Mahoney was insane. Anyway, I found Amber and got back the envelope. And I brought your fee. Bennett was pleased by your triple, even if it wasn't the right triple.”
“I'm happy he was pleased,” she said sarcastically.
“He invited me to bring you to his club tonight, but I told him you are a simple girl who doesn't care for noisy places.”
“What I don't care for is bad food, boom-boom music, watered-down drinks, sweaty people, and flashing lights. And I especially don't care for your boss. He should work in a circus.”
“He pays me good money and I have complete protection, which doesn't exactly hurt you.”
“I handle my own protection. And I prefer working for different clients and taking the assignments I want to take. The money is better than working for a single person.”
“Less long-term security,” he argued.
“Nobody who needs our services can offer long-term security.”
“So you don't want the piddling amount Bennett sent to you? Twenty thousand is not bad for killing the wrong people.”
“It was good exercise. I helped only because I love you, Arturo. As always, I will back you up. Not for the money, but because you need me.”
“I'll keep the twenty then.”
“I will take the money and invest it, because you will only waste it on toys you can't be bothered to learn to operate. You are too impatient, Turo. That is a bad thing.”
She stared at the lines of scar tissue scattered over his torso, made by knives, and the four familiar bullet wounds, left from three separate incidents. “You are like an alley cat, Turo. But for your battle scars you would have a perfect body.”
“I think of my scars as a road map of my life.”
His offhand comment filled her with sadness. “It isn't how you learn something, it's how you use the knowledge.”
“Always preaching,” he said curtly. “Church is out. I don't need your advice. I am a man, a professional, so let's drop it.”
He cut off the water and dried himself with the towel she tossed him. After he had combed his hair and wrapped the towel around his waist, she said, “Even with the scars, you are just too pretty. Those long eyelashes, the brows, those big golden eyes, and lips any woman would kill to have for herself.”
He tensed at the reference to femininity, as she knew he would. But it was true.
Arturo took her face between his hands, kissed her hard on her lips, and stared into her eyes. His amber-colored eyes held her soul and he knew it. “You love me.”
“I love you, Turo.”
“Love is a weakness. It will get you killed, Marta. That is my sermon to you.” Arturo turned and left the bathroom.
After they ate the steaks Marta cooked for them, and while she washed the plates, Arturo sat at the table smoking a cigarette.
“I thought you quit,” she said, concerned.
“I quit all the time,” he answered. “I'll quit again tomorrow.”
“It's bad for your wind.”
“It relaxes me. I work hard so I deserve to feel good.”
“Things that feel good aren't always good for you.”
“You know, you should preach on television.” He crushed out the cigarette and turned on the big plasma-screen set. A reporter was standing in front of an old building.
“Look!” he said excitedly. “I made the news!”
“. . . And we understand that police are searching for a twelve-year-old girl, one of the victims' daughter, who my sources inside the police department tell me might have witnessed her mother and another woman being murdered. Authorities are not releasing the names of the two victims yet, but as soon as they notify next of kin I hope to have that for you. If you are wondering how the police can effectively enlist the community's help in the search for a young girl whose name they won't release, so am I. It looks like it's going to be up to the department to resolve t
his. New Orleans detective Michael Manseur is leading the investigation. He should be familiar to New Orleanians as the detective who arrested Terrance Woodhouse last year for the murder of . . .”
“FUCK!” Arturo screamed. “There wasn't no kid! I searched the place. It's a trick.”
The telephone started to ring.
“Fuck!” he yelled. “That's Jerry. What I'm going to do, Marta?”
Arturo stared at the ringing telephone like it was a rattlesnake.
9
Faith Ann removed her clothes and dropped them into the hamper in the hall bathroom. Then she sat on the edge of the tub, swung her legs in, and turned on the water. As she scrubbed her mother's blood away with a washcloth, tears ran down her cheeks.
She mustn't be sad, she told herself. She had to think things through. It was as though her mother was talking to her, because she had always talked to her, advised her. First thing is I can't trust the police. I have to get the evidence to someone who can stop the execution. Okay, Mama said that's Uncle Hank, because he knows the judges and the attorney general. He is coming here this afternoon to see his old friend.
She thought hard about what her mother had said and remembered only that Hank and Millie were staying at a guesthouse. Maybe she could still catch them at home. She needed Uncle Hank to tell her what to do next.
Faith Ann dried off and went to the den, where she picked up the list of telephone numbers her mother kept on the side table. She lifted the receiver and dialed Hank's number. It rang three times and the answering machine picked up. Millie's gentle voice asked for her to leave a message. “Y'all, this is me, Faith Ann. I don't know where you're staying. I need to know because can I see you as soon as you get here because it is really, really important.”
If Aunt Millie and Uncle Hank were on the way they wouldn't get the message. How would she find them? She would have to call guesthouses and ask if the Trammels were staying there. She fought down a sob. She lifted the yellow pages book and opened it.
The doorbell's melodic tones froze her. She stood there in only her panties, phone in hand, afraid to breathe. After a few seconds there was a pounding on the door and a voice calling out, “This is the police, is anybody home?”
A second voice, that of a woman, joined in. “Faith Ann Porter, are you in there?”
Faith Ann backed slowly up and peered down the hallway. Through the sheers, which filtered the light coming in through the glass panel in the front door, she could make out two dark shapes.
More banging.
A barely audible discussion for several seconds.
The doorbell rang again.
The police twisted the knob, and for a panicked second Faith Ann was sure she hadn't locked it. But she had, and turning the knob was a waste of the policeman's energy.
The dark forms seemed to shrink as the two police left the porch.
Heart thundering, Faith Ann tiptoed to the front door and picked up her backpack. By peering around the edge of the curtain she could see a parked police car at the curb. She put the backpack over her shoulder and moved stealthily to her bedroom. She eased open her drawers one by one and removed jeans, a shirt, and a hooded Tulane sweatshirt. Sitting on the braided rug beside her bed, she got dressed as quietly as she could. She finished and looked up to see a policeman standing outside her window. He cupped his hands like blinders, and as he started to press his wide face against the glass Faith Ann ducked.
“Don't see anybody,” a man's voice reported.
Faith Ann waited several seconds. Then she slowly raised her head to look at the window, which was empty. Would they break in? She wasn't sure, but she didn't think they could enter the house without permission unless they had a warrant. She knew that cops had to get warrants from judges, but she had no idea how long that took: on TV shows, it only took a few minutes. She didn't have much time.
Slipping her old cross-trainers on and lacing them up, she grabbed the backpack again and crawled out into the hallway. She sneaked to the front window. The two cops stood at the gate with their backs to her, talking to another policeman in another police car that had pulled up beside the one already at the curb.
Faith Ann moved back down the hall and, remembering the money, stopped long enough to get it from the pocket of her jeans in the hamper. She saw her mother's cell phone charging on the counter beside their computer and pocketed it. She also took the small Mag-Lite her mother kept beside the phone charger in case the electricity went out.
At the back door, Faith Ann looked out into the backyard, which connected to a city-owned basketball court. As she opened the door and stepped out, she heard the cops coming up the gravel driveway and saw a patrol car on the next street. Quickly, she pressed the locking button, eased the door closed, heard it snap, and slipped off the back steps. Then she pulled out the hinged lattice panel that allowed access to the space underneath the house but kept animals out. She crawled inside, then froze. Two pairs of uniform pant legs stopped inches from the crosshatched lattice panel.
“Watch this door until the detectives arrive. I'll get the car out of sight and take the front and side from around there.”
Faith Ann crawled slowly and carefully toward the front of the house, the deep dirt absorbing the sound.
10
The patrolmen had searched the building and the streets for ten blocks around and there was no sign of Faith Ann Porter.
Manseur sat at the conference room table. The women's corpses had been processed in situ by Manseur and CSI, then rolled and examined again before being carted out by the medical examiner's staff. CSI was still processing the scene for fingerprints and other trace evidence.
Ten minutes before, a locksmith had popped open the safe and Manseur had gone through the contents.
As he mentally reviewed what he had learned, trying to finish building a clear picture of what had taken place around six-thirty that morning, he looked up to see Captain Harvey Suggs, the commander of Homicide, peering in at him from the hallway—leering was the most accurate description of the captain's expression.
Captain Suggs was heavyset in the way of powerfully built men whose steely bulk had shifted with age into thickly padded sinew. His wide neck supported a square head—hard features covered in red skin. The white flattop and bushy eyebrows added to the overall effect, which was that of a battle-scarred old Marine spoiling for a barroom brawl. His suit looked like it had been applied to him with a brush, and the buttoned collar and narrow tie looked in danger of choking him. On a daily, sometimes hourly basis, Suggs's facial expressions ran the spectrum from distracted to nuclear-powered raging. His rare smiles had nothing to do with any sense of humor or internal pleasure. If he laughed it was only because a superior officer told a joke.
“So, Mike,” Suggs said, entering. “Give it to me in big spoonfuls.”
Manseur hated being called Mike. His name was Michael. His parents called him Michael. His brothers called him Michael. His wife called him Michael. His partner called him Michael. Everyone else called him either Detective or Mr. Manseur.
The big spoonfuls took only a couple of minutes to lay out. Suggs listened intently and asked very few questions. Manseur went over what he had discovered in general terms. For ten minutes after that, he gave his boss the details, ran the film he had pieced together for an audience of one. He told Suggs that he was convinced that Faith Ann Porter had witnessed the aftermath of the killings, maybe even seen them happen, and might know who had done it.
Suggs had asked for the specifics leading to that conclusion, and Manseur went over that in detail.
“I see,” Suggs said.
“Amber Lee had a warrant out for her arrest,” Manseur said.
“And you know this how?”
“The sergeant told me. She embezzled from Jerry Bennett.”
Suggs exhaled noisily. “Mike, I see how you got where you got to, but I have to say that I think it is far more likely that the kid is the perpetrator.”
�
��I'm sorry?”
“She was here, and she didn't call 911. Her prints are on the safe in blood.”
“They might not be her prints at all, sir. That has yet to be established.”
Suggs leaned back in his chair. “I'm betting Amber Lee was there about the child. Maybe the girl was in trouble for something, and when Amber brought it to her mother's attention the girl snapped. Shot them and scrammed. She's out there armed and dangerous. I'm sure we'll find out she's unbalanced. You can't tell me that's not a distinct possibility. You postulate there was a professional killer who did this, but there's no proof. He was a good shot, you say. Or lucky. At this point it's just theory, and the theory you select now is going to affect the whole investigation.”
“It's preliminary. Investigations change focus as facts come to light. I'm basing this on what I think is most likely at this moment.”
“I know that Horace Pond was Porter's client, but there's nothing to tie that case to this. Some vague conversation that someone had evidence that would free some convicted murderer. That client isn't Pond, Mike. He's going to die tomorrow night. I was the primary on the Williams case. Everything was done by the book. We never laid a glove on Pond. The evidence was one hundred percent incontrovertible. I know Arnold and Beth Williams were your friends.”
“I never imagined that client could be Horace Pond,” Manseur said. He felt like laughing, but he couldn't definitely say that Suggs was wrong. Not yet, but he felt it wasn't at all probable that the girl had killed her mother and Amber Lee.
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