“Is that so?”
“He is a married NASCAR driver. He is meeting with an actress whose name is a household word. I just need to know what room he's in so I can see if it is possible to set up a camera to see in the window.”
The bell captain inhaled deeply. Then he turned his sad gray eyes on Nicky. “You want to give me a hundred dollars for the room number of a guest so you can photograph him from a nearby rooftop while he's in bed with an actress?”
“That's about the size of it,” Nicky said, holding the man's gaze. “A tasteful picture of her at the window with him would do.”
“Private investigator?”
“Did I say that?”
“I should ask you to leave the hotel.” He cut his eyes at the front desk, sniffed, put his fingers between Nicky's, and slid the bill out. Sighing, he flipped open a book and at the same time slipped the bill into his pocket. He ran a finger down a list, then snapped the book closed.
“I would be fired if I gave you information on this John Everett Adams. It's against hotel policy. At any rate I cannot help you because, even if I told you he was in room four-sixteen, there is no place from which you could see into that room unless you get on our window-washing platform, which isn't available for that sort of tomfoolery.”
“Damn it!” Nicky frowned like he was disappointed, then turned and walked away. Greed was so predictable. Nicky crossed the lobby to the front doors, passing by a ten-foot-tall grandfather clock as he went.
He got back to the car less than a minute before Adams appeared carrying a small leather satchel.
Nicky pulled down the bill of his cap to make it appear that he had been napping. Adams opened the driver's door and, tossing the case into the backseat, climbed in behind the wheel, cranked the car, and swung it easily into a gap in the traffic.
Nicky lifted the cap. “I see you didn't lose your way.”
“Breadcrumbs,” Adams replied,
49
The lock on Kimberly and Faith Ann's back door was a deadbolt, so it took Winter, not exactly a Houdini, over a minute to pick it and enter the utility room, which was open into the den. He found nothing there but saw where the computer had been, an empty space next to the printer and scanner. As he moved up the hall, Winter was appalled by the senseless mess the cops had made in the master bedroom, that small private bath. What could have been the point of the destructive behavior of the searchers? Faith Ann's bedroom was upside down. There had been both aquarium and Audubon Zoo posters on the bedroom wall, now torn up and scattered over the floor. A shattered boom box, ripped-up stuffed animals, glass shards…
It struck him that the men must have done this so they could say that Faith Ann had done the vandalism herself, the girl running amok while still in a fit of rage after murdering her own mother. It made sense to stack up as many pieces of evidence against her as possible. Framing someone was like painting a canvas-only talented artists knew precisely when to put the brush aside, before one more stroke diminished the painting. Tinnerino and his partner were certainly not artists.
In the hallway bathroom he surveyed the chaos and spotted the dog clippers. There was something else- something very interesting. On the floor beside the counter, on one of the white towels, were several long hairs. He pulled one of them off to inspect it. Smart kid. He folded the hairs into a towel and placed it in the cabinet under the sink. He inspected the plastic gap on the clippers and judged the length of her hair. He wondered if the other searchers had made the same discovery and prayed they hadn't. If he was right, the pictures of Faith Ann would not accurately reflect the child who was now running from them. It was a small thing, but it was an edge-it meant she was thinking like a survivor.
He took a quick look around the kitchen, dining and living rooms but found nothing useful. Winter went back out, locking the deadbolt behind him. Locking it took forty seconds. He wanted to see why the woman had gone under there.
Upon turning the corner, he spotted the movable wood lattice panel because it hadn't fully closed. Winter went the length of the house and found the concrete porch with its square opening. It was pitch-black inside, so he took out a disposable cigarette lighter he always carried in his pocket, thanks to not having one a year before when he had needed a source of light. He flicked it to life and, holding it inside, spotted the yellow poncho. Bracing himself, he slid inside the cool damp enclosure.
In the flickering light he saw there was something under the plastic. His heart fell, thinking Faith Ann's curled-up body might be concealed beneath it. He lifted the edge of the poncho and discovered a pillow. He studied the plastic shell that had contained a Walkman, looked at the shears and the pair of batteries remaining in the packaging. He thought about the empty cassette recorder in Kimberly Porter's office Manseur had mentioned to him. There was a tape… and Faith Ann has it.
He put the pillow to his face, caught the distinctive odor of stale perspiration, and thought he detected moisture. She had been there since Nicky saw her the night before, and he was sure she had cut her hair and flushed the toilet during the night and taken the pillow then. The woman who'd been under there hadn't found Faith Ann, because Clara Hughes would have noticed her being taken away. He didn't think Faith Ann would come back here. It saddened him to imagine the frightened child lying in the dark space listening to the tape recording of her mother's murder. Reliving it, because if Manseur was right she had witnessed it. He felt a heightened sense of urgency in finding her.
He was behind the other searchers-hundreds of cops and perhaps the killer, or killers. Perhaps one of those cops was also the killer. He was afraid that if the cops got to her before he did, she wouldn't be alive long enough for him to save her. Shaking something loose by the selective use of a heavy hand was his only hope to get ahead of the others, cutting down the timeline. He would talk to Jerry Bennett. If the cops learned that he was on their tails, maybe they'd make a mistake, and just maybe they'd think twice before harming Faith Ann. He didn't know what else he could do.
Only once before in his professional career had he been looking for someone in order to save her-Sean. He had succeeded, and against insurmountable odds. And the odds of success had certainly been a lot slimmer then. I will find Faith Ann, he vowed. And God help the bastard that harms one hair on her head.
50
Marta and Arturo sat in Jerry Bennett's office, waiting for him to join them. She wondered what the idiot thought he was accomplishing by making them wait-wasting their time when they were all that stood between him and a death sentence. He acted like it was just a day like any other. Marta didn't know whether he was in some fog of denial or just couldn't alter his normal patterns for fear that he would trigger some avalanche that would bury him. She was thinking about something she'd seen in a movie. She thought she would enjoy cutting him into small pieces, starting with his toes. She'd feed them to hungry pigs while he watched-his stupid eyes lit with fear and pain.
Marta studied Arturo's profile as he chewed his fingernails. She felt the familiar desire, the need to protect him-to cradle him to her breast and comfort him. She knew him as well as she knew herself, knew that he depended on her, perhaps even loved her as she loved him. Men were a different sort of creature-another species entirely.
She had taught him English. She had taught him her trade, but he didn't understand the nuances that would elevate him beyond being a plain-Jane killer. Arturo liked killing-almost too much, which wasn't the same thing as using it as a tool, a means to an end. She didn't know how she could teach him judgment, patience, or any of the thousand things that he needed to understand and be able to call upon to rise to the level she was on. He was loyal and as fierce as a jaguar, but he lacked the necessary instincts and the ability to see a much larger picture. He
