John Miller - Upside Down

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.

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.”