Faith Ann put her mouth on her mother's and blew in, trying to make her all right. That made more bubbles, and Faith Ann was crying so hard she couldn't see. She tried to wipe away the tears, but she wiped blood across her face, tasting it.
She screamed.
Faith Ann reached up to the desk and found the box of tissue there, pulled several out and wiped her eyes and face.
No lifesaving effort would matter. After she had wiped her eyes, Faith Ann studied Kimberly's face. It was slack, her mouth open the way it did when she slept on her back, her eyes partly open, the irises rolled back.
Faith Ann knew her mother wasn't ever going to say anything-never again tell Faith Ann that she loved her, or scold her for goofing off. Faith Ann ignored the hole in her mother's forehead and, closing her own eyes, kissed her warm cheek, inhaling the familiar, comforting scent of her. She could almost pretend that her mother was sleeping. Faith Ann understood that she was now suddenly all alone, and she didn't care if the man came back and killed her too while she was kneeling there.
When she became aware of a wet warmth and saw to her horror that she was kneeling in a growing pool of her mother's blood, Faith Ann shrieked and jumped back. And she knew that she really did not want to die.
Tell me what to do, Mama.
She alone knew why the man had killed her mother and Amber. Kimberly's client, Horace Pond, was being executed at ten P.M. on Saturday night for two murders the man in the pictures did.
Today is Friday. Tell me what to do, Mama. Please.
Faith Ann felt herself growing lighter, the fog in her mind clearing. It was almost seven o'clock. Later, Napo, the law student from Tulane who was helping her mother on the Pond case, would come.
Faith Ann's mind locked on something else. The killer took those pictures! He stole the Pond evidence!
The negatives! Faith Ann straightened and hurried into the conference room. She looked at the corkboard, meeting the basset hound eyes of Horace Pond, an aging, narrow-shouldered man who actually was that one innocent man in a hundred. She pulled a chair over to stand on, opened the corkboard door, and rolled the numbered dial. Three times around to thirty-one. Left to sixteen and right passing ten once and stopping at it next time.
She heard the snap as she twisted the lever and eased the heavy door open. She opened the cigar box, gathered up the remaining currency, and stuffed the wad into her jeans pocket before closing the door and replacing the corkboard. She reached to her hiding place, pulled her backpack up onto the table, took out the textbooks, and slipped the sealed envelope into it. The plastic bag containing her mother's rain poncho was in there, as was the lunch her mother had made her and a bottle of water. Then Faith Ann went to the bathroom.
She screamed at the sight in the mirror of her blood-smeared face. She used a bar of soap to scrub her hands and face. As she washed, the water running to the drain turned red. Faith Ann started crying, and she slumped over the sink and let the grief enclose her. Only when the tears stopped flowing did she dry her hands and blow her nose into a paper towel.
I can't call the police.
Jerry owns the police.
Tell me what to do, Mama.
Faith Ann went into the conference room, grabbed her backpack from the table, and went out into the hallway. She paused at the door to her mother's office to take one last look. When she did, she noticed a faint reflection from a steadily blinking red light. She hurried to the desk and moved the loose papers covering her mother's cassette recorder, which was still running.
The killer missed it! When she recorded interviews, Kimberly liked to cover the machine up so people would forget it was sitting there. That way they'd be less self-conscious, she'd told Faith Ann.
Faith Ann couldn't believe her luck. She pressed the Stop button once, then pressed it down again to eject the tape, which she put inside her backpack next to the sealed envelope containing the photocopies and the negatives. Everything her mother and Amber had said was on that tape.
Faith Ann leaned over and touched her mother gently on the cheek. “I love you, Mama.”
That said, Faith Ann went straight out through the front door and was gone.
3
Charlotte, North Carolina
Often when Winter Massey sat still for a period of time, his right foot would grow numb and tingle. In order to restore the feeling to it he had to get up and walk. The lingering nerve damage was the only thing left over from being shot a year earlier. The entrance and exit scars were islands of white scar tissue on the front and back of his right thigh. He had been on crutches for six weeks after he was shot and had used a cane for another three. The injury made sitting at a desk to fill out reports, and stakeouts conducted while sitting in cramped spaces, rather unpleasant. Few things blew a surveillance more effectively than for a watcher to get out of a parked vehicle every thirty minutes or so to walk around in circles before getting back in. He still participated in his favorite activity, fugitive recovery, but no matter how many fugitives he apprehended, Winter Massey would always be best known for his ability with a handgun.
Over a year had passed since Winter had been wounded. At that time his reputation had been such that he could have chosen to head up any marshals office in the country or have any position near the top of the United States Marshals Service organizational chart he wanted. The name Winter Massey had been golden, but now he was burned out on playing cops and robbers.
Doctors said the dead spots in his leg and foot would regain sensation and his circulation would vastly improve in time. At thirty-seven, he could still run ten miles without breaking a sweat, but he would never again compete in an Ironman contest. Considering all he had been through in his career as a deputy U.S. marshal, just being alive put him among the luckiest people on earth.
He had left I-85 and was on I-77 negotiating the sweeping left-hand turn when his cellular rang. As he straightened the Explorer's path, and with the Charlotte, North Carolina, skyline looming before him, he looked down at the displayed name and number.
“Hey, old man,” he said, after opening the phone.
“Just a courtesy call to remind you about lunch,” Hank said.
“Sean said she'd be finished at her doctor's in the BB amp;T building by eleven,” Winter replied. “I'm about six minutes out on I-77.”
As he hung up, his cellular phone rang again. He didn't check the caller I.D. “Yeah?”
“ Yeah what, Massey?”
Winter smiled at the sound of his wife's voice.
“So, what did Dr. Wanda say?” he asked. Sean hadn't been feeling well for a couple of weeks, and Winter had finally convinced her to visit his doctor, a youthful blonde with an enthusiasm, an infectious smile, and a talent for making everybody feel like they were her only patient.
“Dr. Wanda said, ‘Get dressed, you perfectly healthy young lady,' and she wrote me a prescription to head over to the cafe for lunch with my favorite man.”
“What about the-?”
“Jesus, Massey. I'm fine. Okay? Did you finish the letter?”
“I did.” He glanced at the console to the letter addressed to the director of the United States Marshals Service-a letter he had spent a week drafting to make sure the tone was perfectly pitched, respectful, and that the resignation it announced was clearly stated. Everybody understood his decision and there were no hard feelings or regrets. The letter was a formality, because he had already told the director, Richard Shapiro, that he was going to accept the offer from Guardian International Security. The company had offered him an enormous salary, yearly stock options, and about a hundred attractive perquisites they figured were necessary to close the deal. Winter would have been insane not to take the executive position that would allow him to lock his carry weapon away in his gun safe. Sean, who knew how dangerous his job had become, had been deliriously happy when he made the decision.
