The crowd applauded.
Winter recognized the skinny, short-haired boy with a bruised cheek who walked briskly toward him from the back corner of the santuary. Faith Ann grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard. Outside the front door Faith Ann looked up at him, her lower lip quivering.
“It's going to be all right,” Winter said, putting his arms around her. “I'm here, Faith Ann. Everything is going to be fine.”
He felt the sobs wrack her thin body. He understood that it would be a while before she'd be able to speak. He knew what sort of relief she was feeling, because he shared it. It was almost over.
86
When his cell phone rang, Harvey Suggs was walking away from the Verdict, a restaurant located around the corner from police headquarters, where he had explained to Tinnerino and Doyle what he expected from them. The captain's seriously shaken confidence had returned to normal. He had thought every angle through to its most likely conclusion. Everybody knew exactly what to do.
Peace of mind was going to cost Suggs a promotion each for Tinnerino and Doyle, and he'd toss the Spics a few thousand dollars. Tinnerino and Doyle would make sure that Manseur ended in such a way that he was discredited, so that whatever he had might have shared with the FBI agent and the private investigator could be more effectively denied. The Latinos were capable of the more difficult task of making the evidence vanish. They'd take care of the meddlesome Massey and the Porter kid. Without the evidence, no matter how loudly anybody howled, it would all fade away.
“Hello,” Suggs said, not recognizing the number spelled out on the caller I.D. He strode toward his car, parked a half block away. Tinnerino and Doyle sped by in separate cars, Tinnerino nodding once in greeting.
“Harold?” the somehow familiar voice said. “This is Parker Hurt.”
“Parker Hurt?”
“Governor Morton's assistant.”
“Sure, Parker. I knew your voice was familiar. It's been a while.” Hurt had been an assistant under Lucas Morton when he was the Orleans Parish district attorney.
“It has been a while.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Well, I just had an interesting call, and before I talk to the governor, I thought I should talk to you.”
Suggs's trouble antennae were fully erect. He stopped short of his car and fingered his keys. “Sure thing,” he said cordially, although his blood had turned to ice in his veins.
“I got a call from a Michael Manseur a few minutes ago. I believe he's one of your homicide detectives.”
“Well, he's presently one of my homicide investigators,” Suggs replied, his mind aflame with the implications. “Can you tell me why my detective called you?”
“Manseur wanted me to tell the governor that he was about to come into possession of evidence proving that Horace Pond is innocent.”
“So he wants to stop the execution.” Suggs added a tinge of sadness to his words. “You know…”
Suggs knew he had one chance to find the exact words that would nip this in the bud-and cover his own ass. And he realized that given the close gubernatorial race and Manseur's recent behavior, it was going to be a breeze.
Harvey Suggs finished his conversation with Parker Hurt, climbed into his car, and allowed himself a few moments to savor his masterful manipulation of the political animal Mr. Hurt.
If the evidence ever somehow found its way to the police or the press, Hurt wouldn't ever dare mention he took the call from a discredited, deceased cop-and failed to mention it to his boss.
As long as the evidence didn't surface, and Suggs knew it never would, Pond would just be another state-sponsored corpse. There would be nothing to connect Suggs to anything that happened, and everybody still living would resume life as usual. In two years, Suggs would retire and live out his life with his twin pensions. He'd also have the money Jerry Bennett had paid him over the years as filler for those little things a man appreciated. If by some miracle the Bennett negatives ever did surface, Suggs could blame his own dead partner-say Billy Putnam had gotten the location of the murder weapon from Pond when Suggs was out of the interrogation room. Ten years after the fact, who could prove differently? The fact that Billy had committed suicide would further support that the man had a guilty conscience.
And it wasn't like Bennett would be around to dispute anything. Suggs was meeting Bennett at the businessman's boathouse, supposedly to fill him in on the status and discuss future plans.
Suggs just hoped Bennett's cigarette racer had a nice heavy anchor on board.
87
Faith Ann sat in Mr. Massey's car, feeling dazed, staring out through the windshield at the church van. Mr. Massey had called a detective and told him they were on their way to get her envelope on the Canal Street ferry. After he hung up on the cop, Mr. Massey made another call, telling someone named Adams that he had “the package” and was “rolling.” As soon as that was done, he called Rush's mother and told her he had Faith Ann in his car and said he'd call back when things were settled. Before he hung up, he asked, “You want to tell Rush anything, Faith Ann?”
She shook her head. Not because she didn't want to talk to Rush, but she wasn't in a talking mood at that particular moment. How could Mr. Massey trust the police after what she'd told him about what they did to her mother? She'd made a terrible mistake in trusting him. “Can I talk to Rush later?”
“Sure.”
When Mr. Massey hung up, he pocketed the phone and drove out of the parking lot.
“You were talking to a policeman,” she said.
“I was.”
“You can't trust the police, Mr. Massey. The police killed Mama.”
Mr. Massey took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her, flipping on a map light so she could see it. Faith Ann's hands trembled as she looked at the image of a driver's license that portrayed a smirking man with swept-back hair and eyes that burned with pure evil. The picture belonged to the man who'd shot her mother.
“Is that him?”
“Yes.” The name on the license was Arturo Estrada. “He's the policeman who killed…”
“He isn't a policeman, Faith Ann.”
“He is too! He was at my house with the lady who chased me this morning at the aquarium. With those other two policemen.”
“I know he was at your house. Those two policemen are crooked, but Detective Manseur isn't one of them. He's going to help us get your mother's evidence to the governor.”
“No! Please. She said we can't even trust the governor,” Faith Ann blurted out, her level of fear growing. He still didn't understand.
“Who said you couldn't trust the governor?”
“Amber Lee told Mama that. It's on the tape in the envelope. Governor Morton is a friend of Jerry's, Amber Lee said so. Arturo said Jerry sent him to get the pictures she had. I'm sure of it!”
“Ms. Lee was mistaken. You can trust Detective Manseur. And you can trust the other men helping me; Nicky Green and Agent John Adams. And you have to trust Governor Morton, since he is the only person who can stop the execution at this late hour. He'll do the right thing here because he has no choice.”
“Why are you so sure he will?” Faith Ann hated the wobble she heard in her voice, but she couldn't help it.
“Because Detective Manseur called him and told him the evidence that proves Horace Pond is innocent is coming to him in a little while. If he let an innocent man die, he'd have the devil to pay. That's politics.”
Faith Ann was sure Mr. Massey believed what he was saying, but she wasn't nearly as sure of his judgment in this instance as he seemed to be.
“Did he run over…” She couldn't get “Uncle Hank” and “Aunt Millie” to come out.
“There's no evidence of it. None.”
“You don't think he was looking for me and…”
“No,” he said, firmly. “I really don't think he did it.”