John Miller - Upside Down

Styer saw the kid in the overlarge yellow poncho across the street holding up her bicycle. Having her show up like she had had been a shock, and now that he was able to think it over he was certain she was the very same whelp he'd almost run over in front of the guesthouse thirty minutes earlier. He knew from eavesdropping that morning and through the afternoon that Faith Ann Porter was their niece, so this kid had to be the same girl. Styer had no idea why she was on a bicycle flying around alone in the rain, or why her lawyer mother would allow it. He wasn't really worried about her being a factor in his deal, because she couldn't have seen him through the Rover's dark windows.

Styer stood in the crowd under the awning of the bar watching the EMS technicians waste their time and energy trying to save Hank Trammel's life. Now that the Trammels were down and out of play, all he had to do was sit back and wait for his victim to come running into his web.

Detective Manseur had been at home, napping before eating dinner with his wife and daughters, when he got a call ordering him to respond to a vehicular homicide. Vehicular homicides were handled by Traffic, unless Traffic requested a homicide detective or the victim was a cop or a VIP capable of generating a lot of heat. According to Sergeant Suggs, this victim was in the VIP category. Still tired and upset over being pulled off the Porter/Lee homicides, Manseur parked short of the intersection, climbed from his Impala, popped open his umbrella, and surveyed the scene. Fifty feet beyond the intersection, where a corpse had been covered by a raincoat, an EMS unit was working on the other victim. Four patrolmen worked to keep the street cleared, the crowd back. Manseur walked over to the body, leaned down, and lifted the coat to look at the woman underneath it. Her crushed head was almost severed.

The detective looked up the street, trying to spot the point of impact; but due to the pelting rain he couldn't see any debris. He let down the coat and walked up the street to where the second victim, a silver-haired man on a cot, was being fed into the ambulance.

“How is he?” Manseur asked, showing his shield to the EMT.

“Has a very weak pulse,” the tech, busy securing the gurney, answered impatiently. “We'll take him to Charity Trauma Center. Maybe they can perform a miracle.”

Seconds later the ambulance pulled away, siren whooping.

A patrolwoman approached Manseur. “Sir, your eyewitnesses are under the awning over at the steakhouse.” She handed Manseur two driver's licenses, which he read as she talked. “Henry and Mildred Trammel from Charlotte, North Carolina, were crossing the street when a black or dark blue Range Rover traveling at a high rate of speed struck them. All the witnesses agree that the driver didn't apply the brakes, just kept going. The driver never turned on his lights. Probably drunk. We're talking extensive front-end damage. Lots of glass back there.” Manseur turned to look at the glass and orange plastic, much farther back than he had imagined it could be.

“Put a BOLO on the damaged Rover,” he said, referring to a “be on lookout” alert.

“I already have.”

“Good.”

Manseur looked over at the restaurant and scanned the crowd clustered under the awning, then at the bar where another crowd was standing like an assembled audience. His eyes were drawn to a cowboy chewing on a toothpick, standing on the sidewalk, wearing a water-saturated red suit, and staring directly at him. As if he had been waiting for Manseur to see him, the cowboy limped out into the street. Raindrops splashed harmlessly on the stiff brim of his pristine white Stetson. It looked to be an expensive bonnet. Otherwise, the entire outfit looked like a stage costume.

“I'm Nicky Green. I'm a private investigator out of Houston.”

Manseur hoped he was dealing with a trained witness. That would simplify his job considerably. “Detective Manseur, Homicide. You witness this?”

“No. I arrived a couple of minutes afterward. I was supposed to meet them here for drinks and dinner. I had a meeting at the Clarion that ran long, and I had trouble finding a parking space.”

“Where were y'all staying?”

“I'm at the Columns. Hank and Millie are staying… were at the Park View. They're good friends of mine. I've known Hank since I was knee high to a jackrabbit and Millie since '73 or so. Hank was a U.S. marshal until he retired a few months back.”

“That so?”

Manseur saw that either a cell phone or a handgun was pushing Green's jacket out slightly.

Green saw him looking at it. “I've got a carry permit,” he said, opening his coat to expose a Colt. 45 with yellowed stag grips. The right base cover was broken and the blue steel on the butt was scratched.

“Did you drop your piece?” Manseur asked.

“I reckon I did.”

“I suppose it's registered to you?”

“To Hank.”

Manseur knew the gun had been on Trammel when he was hit. It wasn't relevant, and he'd never be able to prove Hank Trammel had been carrying it. For a cop, carrying was a tough habit to break. He doubted it mattered. He noticed for the first time that Green wasn't just bald, as he'd thought. He didn't have any eyebrows or lashes either.

“Detective Manseur, Hank Trammel is a veteran who won a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He served the marshals with distinction for twenty years. You're going to find out that he has a lot of influential friends who'll be watching your investigation.”

“Do you happen to know their next of kin?” Manseur asked, opening his notebook and balancing his umbrella by using his forearm to hold the handle against his ribs.

“Millie's sister lives here. Name's Porter. Let's see… Karen, no-Kimberly, I think it is.”

Manseur looked slowly up from the pad into Nicky Green's shrewd brown eyes. “Does she have a daughter named Faith Ann?”

Concord, North Carolina

Winter Massey sat at the table across from his son and, picking up one card at a time, appraised his hand. A pair of fives, an ace, a jack, and a three. Rush, who wore a ball cap pulled down low to make him look more like a dealer, set aside the deck. He lifted his own cards, fanning them so he could use his fingertip to read the dots located on the upper left-hand corner of the face of each card. He closed his hand and turned his head to his left, where Sean sat arranging her cards.

“Pot's right. Bet's up to you, little lady,” Rush said flatly.

Sean lifted two chips and dropped them one after the other in the center of the table.

“Two to you, old fellow.”

Winter contemplated his odds of drawing another five, then tossed in two chips. “I'll check to the dealer.”

Rush placed his fingers on either side of one of his five tall stacks of chips and lifted up several of them. Without counting them out, he put them down on the felt and said, “Your two, and three more is the raise.” Laying his cards down and lifting the deck, he said, “Cards, lady and elderly gentleman?”

“One,” Sean said.

Rush said, as he handed her a card, “Okay, the little lady has two pairs… or might she be drawing to fill a straight… or maybe she is a card short of a flush.”

“Three,” Winter said.

Rush passed the cards to his father. “Read them and weep. Working on building two pairs or three of a kind, are we?”

“You're fixing to find out,” Winter told him.

“This is my last hand,” Sean said.

“Because I have almost all the chips?” Rush said, arching his brows.

“No, not merely because your father and I are both almost out of chips. Also because it's almost ten.”

“I'll give you more,” Rush told her.