John Miller - Upside Down

“She's gone,” Adams told Nicky. “The two detectives from that Crown Vic over there and that couple are after her on foot.

“You know,” he said, “we can track her too. You have the cell phone number. I make a request of my intelligence people and we can get fed the coordinates when she makes a call or takes one. In real time.”

“Damn!” Winter said when it hit him. “The cops have her cell phone number! That's how they found her. The minute she called Rush, they had her.”

“If they have the phone number, they'll know pretty quick who she's called. I think Suggs and his men will know about the connection to you pretty soon.”

“Then we can stop playing games,” Winter said. “They haven't had time to get far. They went toward Canal Street after her. Adams and I will go on foot. Nicky, you take our car. Where's yours?”

“Back there around the corner.” He handed Winter the key.

“Run a grid and look for them. You see them, radio us your position.”

Winter and Adams took off toward Canal Street. As the two men turned the corner where the power station wall ended, the city seemed to come alive with the sound of sirens. Blue strobe lights poured onto Canal Street as scores of patrol cars converged on their location.

“Good Lord,” Adams muttered. “Seems excessive to send in an army to deal with one scared little girl.”

There were hundreds of parked vehicles on several levels in the enormous lot: it would have taken hours for Marta to physically look under every car in the place. If she couldn't flush the kid, she'd be forced to let the cops' K-9 locate her. She didn't know how the detectives would explain her being there to the other cops. They wouldn't have to explain Arturo, because he was hooked up in the NOPD computers with official clearance.

Marta, unlike Arturo, did her best to remain in as few computers and as far off official radar as possible. She was a United States citizen. Her papers claimed she had been born on the right side of the border, in Brownsville, Texas. It was a lie, her name stolen. She owned her house and the twenty-nine creek-front acres it was located on. She had both wholesale and retail tax licenses and a retail antiques business on Magazine Street through which she laundered her earnings. She allowed a knowledgeable dealer, whose wife Marta had “accidented” so the unfaithful homosexual husband could inherit her estate before she could divorce him, to act as her partner and use her shop to warehouse his overflow stock. The real sales were his-he took the money off the books-and she got the paperwork on the sales for her purposes.

Marta heard the sirens of the approaching cruisers. She was totally relaxed, almost casual, as she strolled up the ramp to the first parking level, hunting for the child.

Maybe she would find the little rabbit herself in the next few minutes, but, if not, Faith Ann would be captured, because unless she could sprout wings and fly like a bird across the river, she couldn't escape. Before the day was out, she or Bennett would have the girl's evidence in hand. And Marta would have the opportunity to make sure she never made an identification of Arturo or herself.

Marta's attention was captured by a bulky object sitting by a stairway door. She approached it and lifted what appeared to be the girl's backpack. She squatted, opened it, and examined the contents. Among the items she found was a wadded-up red sweatshirt and a two-tone Audubon Zoo cap. She put the shirt to her nose and imagined that she could detect fear-induced perspiration in the material. Of course, Marta didn't have the tracking ability of a bloodhound, but her sense of smell was every bit as remarkable as that of a wine connoisseur or a perfume-scent tester. She was tuned in to her prey and knew her target didn't behave under pressure the way a normal twelve-year-old should. Marta's own similar behavior at that age had been influenced by years of survival in a hostile, unforgiving environment-a place filled with predators of all kinds. A place where the bodies of children were often collected from the gutters with the other garbage.

Setting aside the sweatshirt to look farther down in the backpack, Marta found the girl's Walkman with a cassette still inside it. She popped it open to retrieve the tape, which she slipped into her jacket pocket. The earphones for the device weren't there. After wiping prints from the Walkman, she replaced it and set the pack back where she'd found it. Marta had to hand it to the kid. The girl was smart enough to imagine that by abandoning the tape, her pursuers might break off the hunt. The trouble was that the child was that smart. She knew Arturo had killed her mother and that Marta was connected to him. She would still talk to someone, she would testify, and she might be believed, which simply wasn't acceptable.

Let Suggs find out if she had Bennett's negatives. Maybe Amber had separated them from the prints before she went to the lawyer's office-holding back that ace.

She dialed Tinnerino. “She went into the stairwell. Give me a few minutes without interruption and I'll track her down. You'll find her backpack outside the stairwell door on level three. It would be a good place for you to start searching.”

“I'd say five is the best I can do,” he told her, sounding odd.

Marta cracked open the door and, stepping into the stairwell, took a knife from her jacket pocket. She closed the door, opened the phone with her other hand and dialed the kid's phone. She closed her eyes, tuned her ears to listen, and heard the phone ringing in the stairwell not far above her.

Marta almost started up, but something didn't feel right. Leaning over the rail, she looked up and then down. Her heart soared as she caught the sight of a small left hand, three floors below, sliding along on the surface of the painted steel banister as Faith Ann descended, noiselessly as only a child can manage.

Marta went down after her.

Faith Ann ran down the stairs from the top level, backtracking. She was several floors down when she heard a door above her creak open. Close to the railing, she peeked up and saw a sliver of black leather. It was the woman cop who'd chased her from the aquarium.

Marta hit the ground level and would have run into a woman pushing a stroller containing a sleeping infant if she hadn't leaped over it.

“What the hell are you doing?” the mother screamed.

Marta bolted through the glass doors and into the atrium of Canal Place. She caught a glimpse of a figure wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and a red cap moving around a group of pedestrians then turning right into a shop called Georgiou. Okay, little bitch, now I have you.

Marta made herself slow down, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself than necessary. She stopped at the edge of the showroom window and peered in. At the rear of the store, the kid stopped at a display table, flipped through a stack of sweaters, selected one, and went back toward the dressing rooms.

Marta waited to enter until after Faith Ann was out of sight. She walked between the racks, focusing on the rear of the store.

“Can I help you find something today?” an Asian salesgirl who was hanging up blouses asked.

“I'm just looking,” Marta said, smiling.

“Let me know if I can be of assistance.”

“If I find something, I won't hesitate to let you know,” Marta said.

Marta stopped at the table and picked up a pair of slacks. She went back into the dressing room and spotted her target in one of the cubicles, whose doors allowed her a view of the inhabitant's lower legs-tennis shoes and dark jeans. She saw a sleeve of the hooded sweatshirt when the occupant laid the garment on the chair. Marta slipped out her folding knife, opened the blade silently, and slipped her hand holding the weapon beneath the folded pants.