Upside Down

by John Ramsey Miller

  “Which also is beside the point. The tape can't prove anything against Bennett.”

  “Is that right? Oh, sometimes I forget you know everything.”

  “Insult me all you like, but I am the one by your side, Turo,” she said. “Bennett is all right because what people say to each other about him isn't proof. Without those negatives to give those statements credibility and provide a motive for him sending you to kill them . . .”

  “Well, if he had told me about the negatives, I would have made that stupid bitch tell me where they were before I killed her.”

  “Unfortunately Bennett won't be concerned with that,” Marta said.

  “But it isn't my fault!” Arturo yelled. “He didn't say a fucking thing about any fucking negatives.”

  “Watch your mouth,” she scolded. “Foul language is the crutch of the ignorant.”

  “I'm sorry,” Arturo said. “Mr. Bennett only said she stole eight pictures. Never once did he mention anything about any negatives. If he had—well, he didn't.”

  “Here is the problem as I see it.” Marta's eyes were on the flames consuming the tapes. “The negatives tie Mr. Bennett to a crime for which he can be prosecuted and perhaps executed.”

  “Executed for sure. Anybody sees what he was doing to those people, he's a dead man.”

  “That is his main concern, which for the moment overrides any others. I don't care about the negatives. It's a consideration, because one of Bennett's alternatives is to think that you have them and that you might use them to blackmail him. Another thought he is going to have is that you can tie him to the hits today and all of the jobs you've done for him in the past. And maybe he is going to worry because you saw his dirty little pictures.

  “He will start thinking about cutting his exposure and punishing others for his mistakes. After this settles down, he's going to feel the need to clean up. I expect his police pals will help him do it. Or he might bring someone in. There's nobody local with the ability.”

  “He was stupid to make the pictures and to keep them. How can he blame me? Stupid . . . whore-painted face . . . potbelly . . . wig head!”

  “Men like him don't ever think anything is their fault,” Marta said. “We have to get the girl, because even if she doesn't have tape or negatives she saw you. And she certainly heard your name.”

  “Nobody saw anything. I didn't see her, and the place was small with nowhere to hide. I looked everywhere in those rooms, and I made sure nobody was there. I always check. The kid wasn't in the bathroom down the hall or anything. There were not any schoolbooks or book bag, which means she came in after. If she saw me from a distance outside the office, so what?”

  Marta exhaled, and like a patient parent she said, “You say that all you like, but that girl knows about Mr. Bennett's crime and about his connections with the authorities. Maybe the negatives were somewhere in the office.”

  “I wasn't looking for any negatives.”

  She nodded. “It doesn't matter anyway. But somehow the girl knows, and if she has the negatives and the tape she is going to figure out someone to give them to pretty soon.”

  Arturo frowned. “She wasn't there. I bet she just came in and then listened to the tape. Maybe on the tape Amber said Bennett owned some cops or something.”

  Marta had to fight to keep from slapping Arturo. “A child who just finds her mother dead will not sit down at a desk to listen to some stupid tape before she calls the cops—before she runs for help. No. If the girl had come in from somewhere else after you left and discovered the body, she would have gone screaming bloody murder for help, or sat there in shock until the bodies were found. She's twelve years old, Turo.” She pointed at her forehead. “Think like a twelve-year-old girl. That shouldn't be too hard for you.”

  “I can't think like a girl,” he snapped. “Before you were twelve, you had killed a man already.”

  “Because the law didn't do its job.”

  “At that age you were screwing—”

  “She is not like me,” Marta cut in, suddenly furious. “Unless she knew that Bennett owned cops, she would have called 911 first. And because no decent mother would tell her child that sort of thing, Amber must have told the lawyer all about it and the kid must have overheard it. If there was a tape, and the girl knew about that, then she took it. If she saw the negatives she certainly has them. She was hiding in a cabinet, behind a curtain, under the desk, or stuck to the ceiling like a fly, or who gives a damn where she was. You missed her! She heard enough to know not to call the cops. That means she will have to tell someone else, and if she has the tape and the negatives she will give them to someone who isn't a cop Bennett can buy off. Maybe it will be another lawyer or a friend of her mother's. We have to find her first, or whoever is hiding her, and make sure that doesn't happen.”

  Arturo smiled and nodded. “Absolutely. Once we get everything and close the door on this, Mr. Bennett will trust me again.”

  “Comb your hair.”

  Arturo produced a comb and calmly put his hair in perfect order.

  Marta watched Arturo, his pretty face painted by the dying firelight. She would find the girl and kill her. Then she would kill Mr. Bennett before he could have Arturo killed.

  Whatever else happened, nobody was going to harm her Arturo.

  23

  Faith Ann slowed her bike, looked around, and realized that she had no idea where she was, or how she'd gotten there. After the police came she'd fled, just rode away as fast as she could go, paying no attention to where she was going. It had stopped raining, and her leg muscles ached. She quit pedaling, rolled to a stop, put her foot on the curb to prop herself up, and looked around at the houses. She read the street signs at the intersection, but the names didn't mean anything to her.

  It occurred to her that she was tired, thirsty, and hadn't eaten anything all day but a zoo hot dog. She got off her bike and walked it across the sidewalk into the closest yard. Next to the concrete steps, she located a faucet and a coiled garden hose connected to it. She turned the faucet on, found the end of the hose, and drank for a long time. Her mother had never allowed her to drink tap water, said it was bad enough having to bathe in stuff that chemical companies up the river infused with all manner of foul wastes. But the cool liquid quenched her thirst and, for the moment, her hunger.

  She had never imagined the world without her mother in it. Her Aunt Millie and Uncle Hank were old people, and she had known they would die. Later on. Now, in less than fourteen hours, she was utterly alone, an orphan with no home to go to. The legal paper her mother had drawn up giving her to Millie and Hank in case she died was meaningless now. There were other distant relatives somewhere, but her mother had never talked about them, so best Faith Ann could tell, Kimberly hadn't thought much of any of them.

  Faith Ann felt more tired than ever before, and, under the poncho, she was soaked through from sweating.

  She laid down the bike so it was out of sight of the street. Kneeling between two rose bushes, she pulled off the poncho and shook the water from it. She slipped off her backpack to get out the poncho's pouch and discovered the bottles of water, the ham sandwich, and the chips that were supposed to have been her school lunch. She removed the sandwich and chips, each in separate baggies. She felt the Walkman and the card containing four batteries that she had bought at the Rite Aid so Hank could listen to the tape as soon as she gave it to him.

  The envelope containing the negatives and photocopies was dry, but the tape was unprotected in the pack. She wanted to listen to the tape to make sure everything was there but knew she couldn't open the thick plastic packaging that the new Walkman was sealed up in without scissors or at least a knife. She didn't have scissors or a knife. She might need a knife in case . . .

  She had to protect the tape. She opened the chips and ate them slowly, savoring the familiar, dry taste. After emptying the baggie, she dropped in the cassette tape and sealed it. Then, unable to resist her pleading stomach, she opened the
other baggie and ate the sandwich.

  Light washed over her. Startled, she looked up: someone had switched on the lights in the house next door. A man in his underwear sat down on a couch in his den, turned on his big television set, and started flipping through the channels. He hesitated on the news, and Faith Ann glimpsed a picture on the screen of her mother's building. Police cars were parked outside it. Then a man talked into a microphone and a picture of her mother came on the screen. Faith Ann had to put her hand up to her mouth to keep from crying out. Lastly, the television showed one of her own school pictures. That one stayed on for a long time, and she thought there was a phone number under it. When the story changed, Faith Ann sat back down and had to wipe the tears from her eyes so she could see.

  Sitting in the bushes, she thought about what to do. She wondered if the police were gone from her home yet. She needed to get some dry clothes, rest some, if she could, and figure out what she was going to do next.

  She had to find someone she could trust who would also know how to take the tape and the picture copies to the right person and free Horace Pond, and it had to be somebody the Spanish cop wouldn't just kill. She was sure that after she did that, God would make everything work out somehow. She looked at her watch. Twenty-four hours, she thought. I have to save Horace Pond. Help me, Mama.

  Faith Ann got back on her bike.

  24

  It was nearly noon when Manseur parked and went into the Park View Guest House. The clerk was reading a novel, which he set aside when the detective approached.

  “You have a Henry Trammel registered?” Manseur flashed his badge and let the young man read it. He showed the clerk a room key.

  “Sure. The Trammels are staying there.”

  “There was an accident. I'd like to have a look at their room.”

  “I don't know . . . You have a warrant or something?”

  “I'm just looking for next-of-kin information. I can have a warrant here in an hour.”

  “I don't know . . . I should call my boss. . . .”

  The call took only a few seconds. The clerk came around the desk and accompanied Manseur to the room. Manseur gave the key to the clerk, who opened the door. “He said I should watch you,” the young man said. “To list anything you take away.”

  “Watch and list away,” Manseur said.

  Manseur looked around the room. The room was tidy, the suitcases beside the bed. The bathroom had used towels hanging on the shower bar, male and female toilet articles on the counter. There were some prescription bottles, an open dop kit, some makeup, a hairbrush, razor and lather, two damp toothbrushes bristles up.

  He looked at the clothes hanging in the closet, then set the suitcases on the bed and opened them. The only thing he found of interest was a leather holster for a Colt and a partially full box of .45 +P ammunition in Hank's suitcase. There was an address book and a cell phone in Millie Trammel's suitcase along with eight hundred dollars' worth of American Express traveler's checks.

  “I want you to leave things as they are for a day or two in case I need to come back.”

  “This room is booked through Tuesday. I don't guess there's a problem there. We're like half full.”

  Manseur handed the clerk his card. “If anybody comes looking for them, or calls to speak to them, you'll call me?”

  “Sure. There was a little girl here earlier.”

  “What little girl?”

  The clerk shrugged. “She asked after the Trammels.”

  “She give her name?”

  “No, I don't think she did. She was only here for a minute. Just after they left.”

  “Describe her.”

  “Tall, skinny kid. She was soaked. I told her they had gone out to eat. She ran out of here.”

  “Was she wearing a yellow poncho?”

  “Yeah. You already know about her?”

  “If she comes back, you call me,” Manseur said, but he didn't think she would.

  25

  Concord, North Carolina

  The Masseys' home was a California Mission Revival, a yellow brick house with a red barrel-tile roof and arches defining the covered front porch. It sat in a line of other homes all built when F.D.R. was president. For the past hour, Winter Massey had sat out on the porch swing alone, looking out through the arch, but Sean, who had been taking periodic peeks out the window at him, knew he wasn't looking at anything that anyone else could see.

  She had never seen her husband grieve, but she knew him well enough to know that he didn't require her company, hadn't invited it. Knowing that she was helpless to comfort him was painful to her. She had been fond of both Hank and Millie, but she had been closer to Hank because he had taken a bullet in his and Winter's effort to save her life.

  Not being a relative made getting any information on Hank's condition impossible. Sean called a lawyer she had been using in New Orleans. She told him to tell the chief administrator at Charity Hospital that the Trammels had no relatives, just close friends named Massey, and that for certain considerations she was prepared to make a six-figure donation in the Trammels' name to the ICU. Twenty minutes after hanging up, a Dr. Russell, the chief of medicine, called her back. He told Winter that Hank Trammel had only a slight chance of living through the night. The physician said that if he made it through the first twenty-four hours, Hank's chances would greatly improve, although he would probably never be the same. Winter told Dr. Russell that he would be at the hospital in the morning.

  Sean went back to Rush's bedroom, opened the door, and saw that the boy was sound asleep. Her stepson had been every bit as upset as his father and was also upset by the fact that Faith Ann Porter's mother had been murdered and Faith Ann was missing. It appeared that Faith Ann may have been there when it happened.

  Neither Winter nor Sean could imagine why Faith Ann hadn't gone to the police or remained on the scene after Hank and Millie were hit. They agreed that Faith Ann was probably in danger, that the odds against the two deadly incidents being unrelated were astronomical. Winter reasoned that whoever murdered Kimberly Porter must have run down the Trammels and was probably still after Kimberly's daughter.

  Sean was in their bedroom when she heard the front door close, followed by Winter's slow footsteps coming down the hallway.

  Winter entered the room, sat on the bed, put his arm around Sean, and pulled her close.

  “You know, I'm really happy about the baby. I haven't seen Rush so excited in a very long time.”

  “I know,” she said, hugging him. From the highest high to the lowest low in a matter of seconds. “Hank will be all right.”

  “And so will Faith Ann,” Winter said.

  “I want to go with you,” she said, knowing exactly what his response would be.

  “It isn't a good idea,” he said. “Nicky is going to stay close to watch over Hank and be there in case Faith Ann shows up. I'm going to be busy from the second I hit the ground. I don't want to have to worry about you.”

  “I can take care of myself, Massey. Or have you forgotten?”

  “I know that. But Faith Ann may call here. If she calls Rush you need to tell her to call me at the Pontchartrain Hotel. Or better yet, tell her to sit tight and you call me on my cell and Nicky Green or I will go to her.”

  “I just wish I could do more.”

  As he rubbed her shoulder gently, Sean looked over at Winter's packed duffel parked on the floor beside the dresser. Winter's cordovan shoulder rig—the straps spooled around the holster containing his SIG Sauer 220—resting on top of the bag reminded her of a sleeping serpent.

  “You need to get some sleep,” she said.

  Winter stood, and Sean watched as her husband undressed. She pulled the covers back and he climbed into bed beside her, and without saying anything they held each other until sleep took her.

  When Sean awoke before dawn, Winter was gone. She thought about how adept he was at moving around without making noise. She lay there thinking about him and his mission. She kn
ew that he wouldn't have left her a note.

  There was nothing he could say to her that she didn't already know.

  26

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  At daybreak, Detective Michael Manseur returned to the scene of the vehicular homicide and got out to walk it to look for things he might have missed. Only after the physical evidence had been gathered, photographs made, measurements collected, and witness statements taken had the street been reopened. Manseur wanted to take one more look in the light to make sure he had everything that was there to get.

  On his scene schematic, Manseur had marked the point of impact to where the Trammels landed and the relative distances where incident-related objects had been found. Hank Trammel's Seiko, one of his boots, a twisted umbrella, a cell phone, a purse.

  The broken turn-signal lens and paint chips were from a 2001 deep blue Range Rover, which had been traveling at approximately fifty miles per hour at impact. A matching Rover had been reported missing from long-term parking an hour before the hit-and-run. Its owner was a respected sixty-two-year-old heart surgeon with Oschner Clinic. Were it not for the Porter connection, Manseur would have figured it was most likely some joyriders, or a drunk had hit them and kept going to avoid the unpleasantness associated with bouncing people off the grille after having had a “couple of drinks.”

  A physician who had been in the restaurant described a child in a yellow poncho who had witnessed the accident, and the restaurant hostess said a child of the same description had asked for the Trammels seconds before they were run over. Manseur was certain the child was Faith Ann Porter, but he didn't make a note of that in his book, deciding to keep her listed as: kid in yellow slicker—witness?

  The presence of the murdered lawyer's daughter on the scene, and the fact that the Trammels were relatives of hers, made this anything but a coincidental event. While he hadn't informed Captain Suggs of the connection, he would have to do that very soon or risk serious consequences for violating protocols. Under normal circumstances, since there was such an obvious probability of a connection, Manseur would have been involved in both cases. But there was something very abnormal about the Porter/Lee case, and if told the connection Suggs would probably hand this one over to Tinnerino and Doyle. Manseur suspected that Jerry Bennett's connection to the crime might explain the abnormalities.