“Here is the problem as I see it.” Marta's eyes were on the flames consuming the tapes. “The negatives tie Mr. Bennett to a crime for which he can be prosecuted and perhaps executed.”
“Executed for sure. Anybody sees what he was doing to those people, he's a dead man.”
“That is his main concern, which for the moment overrides any others. I don't care about the negatives. It's a consideration, because one of Bennett's alternatives is to think that you have them and that you might use them to blackmail him. Another thought he is going to have is that you can tie him to the hits today and all of the jobs you've done for him in the past. And maybe he is going to worry because you saw his dirty little pictures.
“He will start thinking about cutting his exposure and punishing others for his mistakes. After this settles down, he's going to feel the need to clean up. I expect his police pals will help him do it. Or he might bring someone in. There's nobody local with the ability.”
“He was stupid to make the pictures and to keep them. How can he blame me? Stupid… whore-painted face… potbelly… wig head!”
“Men like him don't ever think anything is their fault,” Marta said. “We have to get the girl, because even if she doesn't have tape or negatives she saw you. And she certainly heard your name.”
“Nobody saw anything. I didn't see her, and the place was small with nowhere to hide. I looked everywhere in those rooms, and I made sure nobody was there. I always check. The kid wasn't in the bathroom down the hall or anything. There were not any schoolbooks or book bag, which means she came in after. If she saw me from a distance outside the office, so what?”
Marta exhaled, and like a patient parent she said, “You say that all you like, but that girl knows about Mr. Bennett's crime and about his connections with the authorities. Maybe the negatives were somewhere in the office.”
“I wasn't looking for any negatives.”
She nodded. “It doesn't matter anyway. But somehow the girl knows, and if she has the negatives and the tape she is going to figure out someone to give them to pretty soon.”
Arturo frowned. “She wasn't there. I bet she just came in and then listened to the tape. Maybe on the tape Amber said Bennett owned some cops or something.”
Marta had to fight to keep from slapping Arturo. “A child who just finds her mother dead will not sit down at a desk to listen to some stupid tape before she calls the cops-before she runs for help. No. If the girl had come in from somewhere else after you left and discovered the body, she would have gone screaming bloody murder for help, or sat there in shock until the bodies were found. She's twelve years old, Turo.” She pointed at her forehead. “Think like a twelve-year-old girl. That shouldn't be too hard for you.”
“I can't think like a girl,” he snapped. “Before you were twelve, you had killed a man already.”
“Because the law didn't do its job.”
“At that age you were screwing-”
“She is not like me,” Marta cut in, suddenly furious. “Unless she knew that Bennett owned cops, she would have called 911 first. And because no decent mother would tell her child that sort of thing, Amber must have told the lawyer all about it and the kid must have overheard it. If there was a tape, and the girl knew about that, then she took it. If she saw the negatives she certainly has them. She was hiding in a cabinet, behind a curtain, under the desk, or stuck to the ceiling like a fly, or who gives a damn where she was. You missed her! She heard enough to know not to call the cops. That means she will have to tell someone else, and if she has the tape and the negatives she will give them to someone who isn't a cop Bennett can buy off. Maybe it will be another lawyer or a friend of her mother's. We have to find her first, or whoever is hiding her, and make sure that doesn't happen.”
Arturo smiled and nodded. “Absolutely. Once we get everything and close the door on this, Mr. Bennett will trust me again.”
“Comb your hair.”
Arturo produced a comb and calmly put his hair in perfect order.
Marta watched Arturo, his pretty face painted by the dying firelight. She would find the girl and kill her. Then she would kill Mr. Bennett before he could have Arturo killed.
Whatever else happened, nobody was going to harm her Arturo.
23
Faith Ann slowed her bike, looked around, and realized that she had no idea where she was, or how she'd gotten there. After the police came she'd fled, just rode away as fast as she could go, paying no attention to where she was going. It had stopped raining, and her leg muscles ached. She quit pedaling, rolled to a stop, put her foot on the curb to prop herself up, and looked around at the houses. She read the street signs at the intersection, but the names didn't mean anything to her.
It occurred to her that she was tired, thirsty, and hadn't eaten anything all day but a zoo hot dog. She got off her bike and walked it across the sidewalk into the closest yard. Next to the concrete steps, she located a faucet and a coiled garden hose connected to it. She turned the faucet on, found the end of the hose, and drank for a long time. Her mother had never allowed her to drink tap water, said it was bad enough having to bathe in stuff that chemical companies up the river infused with all manner of foul wastes. But the cool liquid quenched her thirst and, for the moment, her hunger.
She had never imagined the world without her mother in it. Her Aunt Millie and Uncle Hank were old people, and she had known they would die. Later on. Now, in less than fourteen hours, she was utterly alone, an orphan with no home to go to. The legal paper her mother had drawn up giving her to Millie and Hank in case she died was meaningless now. There were other distant relatives somewhere, but her mother had never talked about them, so best Faith Ann could tell, Kimberly hadn't thought much of any of them.
Faith Ann felt more tired than ever before, and, under the poncho, she was soaked through from sweating.
She laid down the bike so it was out of sight of the street. Kneeling between two rose bushes, she pulled off the poncho and shook the water from it. She slipped off her backpack to get out the poncho's pouch and discovered the bottles of water, the ham sandwich, and the chips that were supposed to have been her school lunch. She removed the sandwich and chips, each in separate baggies. She felt the Walkman and the card containing four batteries that she had bought at the Rite Aid so Hank could listen to the tape as soon as she gave it to him.
The envelope containing the negatives and photocopies was dry, but the tape was unprotected in the pack. She wanted to listen to the tape to make sure everything was there but knew she couldn't open the thick plastic packaging that the new Walkman was sealed up in without scissors or at least a knife. She didn't have scissors or a knife. She might need a knife in case…
She had to protect the tape. She opened the chips and ate them slowly, savoring the familiar, dry taste. After emptying the baggie, she dropped in the cassette tape and sealed it. Then, unable to resist her pleading stomach, she opened the other baggie and ate the sandwich.
Light washed over her. Startled, she looked up: someone had switched on the lights in the house next door. A man in his underwear sat down on a couch in his den, turned on his big television set, and started flipping through the channels. He hesitated on the news, and Faith Ann glimpsed a picture on the screen of her mother's building. Police cars were parked outside it. Then a man talked into a microphone and a picture of her mother came on the screen. Faith Ann had to put her hand up to her mouth to keep from crying out. Lastly, the television showed one of her own school pictures. That one stayed on for a long time, and she thought there was a phone number under it. When the story changed, Faith Ann sat back down and had to wipe the tears from her eyes so she could see.
Sitting in the bushes, she thought about what to do. She wondered if the police were gone from her home yet. She needed to get some dry clothes, rest some, if she could, and figure out what she was going to do next.
She had to find someone she could trust who would also know how to take the tape and the picture copies to the right person and free Horace Pond, and it had to be somebody the Spanish cop wouldn't just kill. She was sure that after she did that, God would make everything work out somehow. She looked at her watch. Twenty-four hours, she thought. I have to save Horace Pond. Help me, Mama.
Faith Ann got back on her bike.
