Marta moved down the hall to the other bathroom door and pushed it open. She turned on the overhead light and surveyed it. Her eyes ran over the counter and to the tub and the open closet door. She noticed that the toilet seat was up. That seemed more obscene of the cops than destroying things. This was a house of women. Good women caught up in something they had no way to prepare for. Marta squatted and picked up the hair clippers from the floor. She remembered seeing them during her search of the bathroom. They had been in their box then, which was now empty on the floor. As she studied the instrument, she thought that there was something different about it, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.
“You should take those. You get tired of preaching to everybody, you can clip rich ladies' froufrou doggies,” Arturo said.
“Let's go,” Marta told him. “She won't come back.”
“You think she's been back since we left?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe we should burn this house down,” Arturo said. “If the tape is hidden here, it will be destroyed.”
“If she has anything, she has it with her. Anyway, the fire department would just put it out and I'm sure someone has seen us. The neighbors must know about the lawyer and her daughter. I doubt Bennett's cops can protect us if there are a lot of questions.”
“How do you know she was here again?”
“I know it here.” Marta put her hand low on her stomach where she believed her instincts were centered. That was where she first perceived warnings-where she first knew when something wasn't right. She believed that, in men, instincts were housed in a lower region. Marta remembered vaguely that she had returned to the shack where her mother had been murdered and had hung around there because it was all she knew.
After they went out the back door, Marta closed and locked it. As they rounded the corner, something caught her eye that she had somehow missed minutes earlier. The bottom of the last of the lattice panels was out of alignment. And in the flower bed, Marta saw impressions-the patterns left by a shoe and a hand-in the damp soil. Leaning down, she could see the sharp tips of the screws sticking through the wood where the panel was hinged to the sill on the inside. The hinges had been attached, for aesthetic reasons, between the panel and the support beam. If the panel hadn't gotten hung up as it closed, it would have been difficult to see that the panel was designed to give people a way to get under the house.
Marta looked at Arturo, who smiled and nodded to her.
She handed Arturo her cap before she slipped under the house.
It was cool under there, and Marta could see all the way to the front; the light coming in through the lattice dimpled hundreds of white diamonds on the soil. She followed the scrapings and shoe prints she knew the child had left. The numerous support columns and the fireplace foundation blocked a complete view, so she crawled toward the front of the narrow house, checking the shadows. She could see Arturo's legs, in diamonds, as he walked slowly along. It was nice having a partner you didn't have to explain everything to-someone who protected your back because he loved you. She never doubted that Arturo loved her as much as she loved him, but the difference was that he depended on her. And she wanted it that way.
She had just about decided that Faith Ann wasn't there when she spotted a dark square, which turned out to be an opening left when the concrete porch had been poured. With growing excitement, she moved over the soft dirt, her senses focused on the opening of what she knew was Faith Ann's hiding place. She crept up to the opening and saw a yellow poncho that was pulled over something three-dimensional. A sleeping child.
“Don't be afraid,” Marta said soothingly. She slipped out her folding knife and slid inside the bunker. “I'm not going to hurt you.”
Marta reached over, took a corner of the poncho, and lifted it. Then she cursed softly. Inside there was only a pillow and a flashlight. She turned it on and, looking around, saw the packaging for a Walkman and a plastic container with two of its original four batteries remaining. She lifted the sweat-damp pillow and put the slip case against her cheek, to her nose. The child had been there very recently. Marta couldn't help but smile. The kid was lucky-or something.
Very soon now. Your luck can't last forever, Faith Ann Porter.
37
Faith Ann had felt secure in her hidden concrete annex. While she was in there she could almost convince herself that she was still in touch with her old life. She decided to remain there until the visitors upstairs left, and she would have done just that had an inner voice not ordered her to flee. Her mother had always told her to listen to her feelings.
So she grabbed her backpack and climbed out of the bunker. She crawled to the rear of the house and pushed out the panel. She remained crouched as she scurried to the back fence. She had to take off her backpack to get under, pulling it after her.
Four neighborhood boys were playing basketball on the city-owned courts. Two of them glanced at her-but a skinny kid squirming under a hurricane fence was a whole lot less interesting than a Saturday-morning game. She put on her Audubon Zoo cap and lingered there near a group of loitering teenagers so she could watch her house.
She saw the killer and the shorter woman from the day before as they came out of her back door. Both glanced at the basketball players; Faith Ann dropped her head hastily so the bill of the cap hid her eyes. Seconds later, she looked up and watched the pair turn the corner of her house. She watched in horror as the woman slipped under and the killer began to walk slowly up the side of her house. She knew the woman would find her hideout, and she knew that she was alive only because she had fled when hiding had seemed safer.
She turned on her heel and strode off down the street toward the tennis club. When she got to the thick privets where she'd hidden her bicycle and helmet, all she found of them was the combination lock, its hasp cut cleanly in half.
Now she was on foot.
38
Winter never judged people by their appearance, and Nicky Green had told him that Detective Manseur, despite his appearance, knew his business.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Winter said, shaking the policeman's clammy hand when he arrived at the hotel.
“I'm sorry about your friends,” Manseur said sympathetically.
“Come and let's us have a sit-down,” Nicky said. “Coffee? Water?”
“No thank you,” Manseur said as he sat on the front edge of the chair across from Winter like he thought he might have to spring up and run. “I'm a little pressed for time. First off, let me say that I hope whatever I tell you remains between us. I'm sticking my neck way out already, and I like my occupation, which supports my family.”
Winter nodded, accepting the detective's terms. “Nicky mentioned that you were taken off the Kimberly Porter case.”
“Yes. In fact I caught the Trammel case later from the man who relieved me of the Porter/Lee homicides. Captain Harvey Suggs.”
“Do you know why?”
“Because I didn't interpret the evidence so that it pointed to the captain's conclusion.”
“Which was?”
“That Faith Ann Porter murdered her mother and Amber Lee. Believe me, it didn't seem to point that way at the time, but it seems to be fitting nicely now. A bit too nicely.”
Winter listened as Manseur went over the evidence that pointed toward Faith Ann's guilt. Manseur told the two men what he knew about Amber's connection to Jerry Bennett and what Bennett's value to the city administration and the police department was.
“This Bennett a crook?” Nicky asked.
“He is a slippery but tough businessman for sure, and a little eccentric-a virtue in New Orleans. I understand that he worked hard for everything he has. He built the Buddy's Fried Chicken franchise from scratch, sold it for a bundle, and he still gets a million dollars a year as a consultant for like twenty years, and he furnishes them the special sauces through another company.”