John Miller - Upside Down

“No, Faith Ann. My daddy won't let them. You know him.”

“Will you call me right back?”

“Sure. But I'll call Daddy and tell him where you are. Where are you exactly?”

“I'm at the aquarium.”

“Where is that?”

“Right by the Mississippi River.”

“I'll tell him. You just sit tight and wait. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Why did the police kill your mother?”

“Because of Horace Pond.”

“Just wait there, Faith Ann.”

“Okay, I will.”

“It's going to be okay, Faith Ann.”

“Thanks, Rush.”

“Good-bye, Faith Ann.”

“Good-bye, Rush.”

“And, Faith Ann?”

“Yeah.”

“We love you.”

“I love you too.”

Rush took a deep breath, pressed down the button, and dialed his father's cell number. There was no answer, just his voice mail. “Dang it.”

Rush tried again, same result.

He dialed Sean, and she picked up.

Marta and Arturo approached the aquarium from the rear. “Remember, Arturo. No guns. She's seen you, so we let Tinnerino and Doyle get her, and they'll hand her over.”

“What if people see them take her? How can they hand her to us after that?”

“They'll do what they're told to do.”

“We don't know for sure that she saw me,” he said sourly.

“You don't know that she didn't. So we aren't taking any chances. There are a lot of people around. We can't afford to do anything stupid. Remember that we have to get the tape.”

“And the negatives.”

“And those too. If we can.”

“Maybe the two cops will get the negatives and the tape and try to keep them. Bennett would pay a lot more for them than he'll pay if they just hand her over to us. I don't trust them.”

“If they try something like that, we'll handle them. We'll have to anyway, eventually. But we should plan everything so we get them all before they know what we're doing.”

“That's cool. But when I take them out, I want them to know I'm doing them.”

Winter had turned off his phone at the club, so he turned it on and called Detective Manseur to fill him in on the conversation with Bennett in his office. He described the couple: “Short woman in leather with long hair and a young dark-haired man in a black Lincoln Town Car. They were in Bennett's office just before we got there.”

“They aren't with Homicide, Vice, or Narcotics,” Manseur told him. “They could be uniforms on special assignment, but if they were working with the detective bureau, I'd know about them.”

“I don't think Bennett had anything to do with the Trammels' hit-and-run,” Winter told him. “He was easy to read because we came out of the blue and rattled him good. I don't think he ever expected to be connected to anything, because he didn't have a straight story and he mentioned his close friendship with Suggs. By the time we left he was almost under control, but I'm sure he's never heard of Hank.”

“But it has to be connected to Kimberly Porter,” Manseur said.

“Oh, Bennett's tangled up in that. Proving it is going to be a different matter. He'll lawyer up.”

Adams, overhearing the conversation, nodded, agreeing with Winter's assessment. “He's a narcissistic jerk. He thinks he's bulletproof and smarter than everybody else. He'll get more pissed if you criticize his lousy office decor than if you accuse him of a crime,” Adams said.

Winter said, “Amber didn't take any money from him, but she might have taken something worth killing her for. That charade probably allowed him to get the cops to locate her. I'd bet Suggs helped him with that. Maybe Bennett found her, he went postal, and Suggs is trying to cover for Bennett.”

Manseur said, “I don't think Bennett confronted Amber in Porter's office and there was an argument that escalated. The choice of the weapon says that whoever did it was there to kill Amber all along.”

“If Faith Ann saw Bennett do it, and Bennett ran to Suggs-his pal-that could explain why Suggs immediately started stacking the deck against her.”

“It's worth considering, but I can't imagine Suggs risking everything to cover up a murder for Bennett. Kimberly Porter wasn't exactly popular with our department.”

Winter had an incoming call, so he asked Manseur to hang on while he took it. “Yeah?”

“Daddy,” Rush said.

“I can't talk now, Rush. I'll call you back.”

“But it's super-important.” Rush sounded frantic.

“Okay, hang on and I'll be right back.”

“But-”

He returned to Manseur. “I gotta take this other call,” Winter told him.

“Keep me posted,” Manseur said.

“We're going to meet Nicky Green. I'll call you back as soon as we get there.”

“No problem,” Manseur said. “Suggs knows you are coming this morning. I told him I was going to talk to you. So we've talked. You didn't tell me about Kimberly Porter, right?”

“No, I didn't tell you squat.”

Winter switched back to Rush. “What's up, Rush?”

“I've been trying to call you, but I kept getting the voice message.”

“I had it off for a meeting.”

“Faith Ann called. I told her you'd-”

“When?”

“I don't know for sure. Maybe about fifteen or twenty minutes ago-”

“From where?” Winter interrupted. “Rush, where did she call from?”

“The aquarium. It's near-”

“I know where the aquarium is,” Winter said.

“I told her Hank was alive. She didn't know. Daddy, she's real scared. She said a policeman killed her mother. She says the cops are trying to kill her too.”

“I'm not far from there. If she calls back, tell her I'm on the way.”

“I'll call her back.”

“You know her number?”

“She has her mother's cell phone. You want the number?”

Faith Ann turned off the telephone and slipped it into her pocket.

Rush's father is looking for me! He's coming here!

Uncle Hank is alive!

I'm safe.

Standing at the top of the steps leading up to the aquarium's plaza, she held on to those thoughts. Like a sign, she used them to cover the memory of her mother's body, of Millie and Hank lying in the rain-soaked street. Hadn't Rush said Hank was going to be all right? She replayed the conversation, but she couldn't remember if he had said so. Mr. Massey would know. He could use the negatives to save Horace Pond. And the tape held the proof of who shot her mother and the other woman. What was her name? Ms. Lee. Amber.

She wondered how long it would take Mr. Massey to get there. Of course he wouldn't recognize her with short hair, but she'd know him on sight. She'd run right up to him and throw her arms around him. She knew how happy he would be, how relieved. And after he straightened everything out, the cops would be in big trouble, and the man who killed her mother would be where Horace Pond was now, in prison. Her mother had always told her that justice, while it didn't always work fast, averaged everything out in the end-like the scales the blindfolded woman was holding. Faith Ann supposed that the sword she held in her other hand was for people who didn't want justice to win. She was the sort of a no-nonsense angel Faith Ann imagined when she had prayed for one to help her. Winter Massey was probably some kind of an angel.

Faith Ann was watching the streets when she spotted a big car drive up and pull over on the access road beside the walled-in power station and the wall that ran beside the aquarium. As the driver stepped out, her feeling of safety, of being rescued, evaporated. A wave of terror filled her and washed away everything else. The driver of the sedan was the larger of the first two cops who had come to her house. Faith Ann moved across the mall and joined the line of people who were entering the aquarium.