really one open space with a brick fireplace open around both sides. Then came the kitchen, also open, and past that was the hallway to the bedrooms and the hall bathroom.
Marta left the den, approached the mother's bedroom door, and eased it open. She scanned the disaster made by the detectives after she and Arturo had left. Hadn't she told them to be careful in their search-not to make a mess-in case the kid returned? Marta figured they'd done it because they resented her telling them how to do their jobs. Too late to worry about that now.
The master bath was also a wreck, but no sign of the kid. Marta came out and shook her head at Arturo, who had positioned himself in the kitchen.
Faith Ann's room was in the worst condition of all. The bed was overturned, the contents of the drawers and the closet strewn everywhere. The bastards had even shattered the mirror and broken the framed photographs.
Marta, who had caught herself feeling jealous of the girl the day before-perhaps because her mother had taken such good care of her-felt a pang of pity for a motherless child who was friendless and frightened as she herself had once been. This changed things. If there was any way possible when the time came, Marta would end the poor child's life with as little physical pain as possible-providing the girl willingly handed over what she had.
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.
