Upside Down (10 page)

18

A single image had fueled Faith Ann's frantic dash to the restaurant. All the way over she pictured the Trammels sitting at a table in the restaurant, and she knew that, as soon as she saw them, she would finally be safe. She had almost burst into tears when the hostess told her that the Trammels weren't there, that their reservation wasn't until eight. With twenty minutes to kill, Faith Ann went outside intending to lock her bike and wait for her relatives to show. Then she spotted Hank and Millie across the street, waving at her and looking worried. Millie was leaning on Hank and walking funny. Barely able to contain herself, Faith Ann started over to meet them halfway but stopped abruptly when she heard the roar of an onrushing car. Hank froze in the middle of the street. Faith Ann glanced at the car, then back at Hank.

Unbelievably, the SUV didn't veer or brake. It just hit them. She heard the impact, saw her uncle and aunt launched up into the air, and stared after the dark vehicle, which sped off down the street.

For what felt like forever, Faith Ann stood frozen in the driving rain, stunned. Others ran into the street. Several people yelled, “Call 911!”

911. The police are 911.

Approaching cars skidded to a halt. People kept pouring out from the restaurant and the bar across the street, moving like a gathering mob toward the broken figures lying in the street.

Faith Ann reached Hank. A man wearing a jacket and tie was kneeling down beside him with his hand against Hank's neck. The man shook his head sadly, then went to kneel down beside Millie. Faith Ann looked down and saw that her uncle's left eye was open and rain was filling the socket. His face was sliced open and rosy water ran off it in sheets.

Feeling like she was being pressed under a great weight, Faith Ann left Hank and walked over to where her aunt was lying in the intersection, illuminated by the streetlight. The same man who had checked on Hank hardly touched Millie before he stood up, shaking his head. Faith Ann wondered if he was a doctor, because he didn't look all that affected by what he was doing.

Faith Ann stared down. Millie's features looked like they had been mixed up in a red batter and poured onto her head. Her limbs were at impossible angles. Faith Ann realized that she was turning away—no, that someone was holding her by her shoulders, turning her around. The kneeling man wearing the tie was looking into her eyes and talking, but Faith Ann couldn't focus on the words. “Are you all right?” he said.

Faith Ann nodded.

“Darling, did you see the accident?”

She nodded again.

“Are you with those people?”

“I'm fine,” she managed to say.

“Where do you live? Do you live near here?”

“Where are your parents?” a woman asked. She was holding an umbrella over the man in the tie, who was already soaked.

Faith Ann pointed back toward the restaurant where her bike was. It wasn't anything she thought about before she did it. She just didn't want to talk to the man any longer.

“She lives in the neighborhood,” the woman told the man. “She'll be fine.”

“Go on home,” he told Faith Ann calmly. “This isn't anything for you to see.”

She took a few steps, then looked back to where cars had stopped and people were getting out of them. Through the rain, she saw the strangest-looking man limping toward the intersection. He wore a long raincoat, a white cowboy hat, and matching boots, and he was using a walking cane for balance.

The man in the white cowboy hat removed his coat to expose a bright red suit with white accents. His belt was also bright white. He spread the coat over the body in the wet street as gently as a mother might cover her sleeping child, then went to Hank and knelt beside him.

A siren was wailing in the distance. Faith Ann turned back to the restaurant and joined the crowd on the sidewalk beneath the awning. She moved to her bike and put a hand on the crossbar. She tucked her wet hair behind her ears and snugged her hood.

She saw the blue lights approaching, but she remained standing there because she had absolutely no notion of what else to do.

19

Paulus Styer hadn't planned to run down the Trammels with the Rover. He despised the sloppiness of it. He liked precision, especially in his wet work.

He had the stolen taxicab waiting nearby with his driver, the second man. Up until the kid showed up out of nowhere, again, and screwed everything, the plan had been to see that Nicky Green never got to the restaurant. Then, when Green didn't show up, the Trammels would have called a cab, and Styer's taxi would have picked them up. He'd have met the cab a few blocks away and clipped them while they were still in the backseat. His stocky accomplice in the Lexus, two blocks away, was the plan's wild card—ready to do whatever Styer needed him to do. When Styer saw the Trammels come out of the bar and spot that kid, he knew instantly the plan was dead, so he'd pulled out of his parking space and mowed them down.

He was glad the child hadn't run out to meet them, because he would have had no choice but to hit all three.

After hitting the Trammels, Styer sped off, stopping only after he was far enough away to safely hand off the vehicle to his second accomplice for disposal. He had climbed out of the Rover and walked briskly on a parallel street back to the accident scene. Once there, he took a few seconds to admire his handiwork. The Trammel woman was obviously dead. Hank wasn't yet, but he would soon be.

Styer saw the kid in the overlarge yellow poncho across the street holding up her bicycle. Having her show up like she had had been a shock, and now that he was able to think it over he was certain she was the very same whelp he'd almost run over in front of the guesthouse thirty minutes earlier. He knew from eavesdropping that morning and through the afternoon that Faith Ann Porter was their niece, so this kid had to be the same girl. Styer had no idea why she was on a bicycle flying around alone in the rain, or why her lawyer mother would allow it. He wasn't really worried about her being a factor in his deal, because she couldn't have seen him through the Rover's dark windows.

Styer stood in the crowd under the awning of the bar watching the EMS technicians waste their time and energy trying to save Hank Trammel's life. Now that the Trammels were down and out of play, all he had to do was sit back and wait for his victim to come running into his web.

20

Detective Manseur had been at home, napping before eating dinner with his wife and daughters, when he got a call ordering him to respond to a vehicular homicide. Vehicular homicides were handled by Traffic, unless Traffic requested a homicide detective or the victim was a cop or a VIP capable of generating a lot of heat. According to Sergeant Suggs, this victim was in the VIP category. Still tired and upset over being pulled off the Porter/Lee homicides, Manseur parked short of the intersection, climbed from his Impala, popped open his umbrella, and surveyed the scene. Fifty feet beyond the intersection, where a corpse had been covered by a raincoat, an EMS unit was working on the other victim. Four patrolmen worked to keep the street cleared, the crowd back. Manseur walked over to the body, leaned down, and lifted the coat to look at the woman underneath it. Her crushed head was almost severed.

The detective looked up the street, trying to spot the point of impact; but due to the pelting rain he couldn't see any debris. He let down the coat and walked up the street to where the second victim, a silver-haired man on a cot, was being fed into the ambulance.

“How is he?” Manseur asked, showing his shield to the EMT.

“Has a very weak pulse,” the tech, busy securing the gurney, answered impatiently. “We'll take him to Charity Trauma Center. Maybe they can perform a miracle.”

Seconds later the ambulance pulled away, siren whooping.

A patrolwoman approached Manseur. “Sir, your eyewitnesses are under the awning over at the steakhouse.” She handed Manseur two driver's licenses, which he read as she talked. “Henry and Mildred Trammel from Charlotte, North Carolina, were crossing the street when a black or dark blue Range Rover traveling at a high rate of speed struck them. All the witnesses agree that the driver didn't apply the brakes, just kept going. The driver never turned on his lights. Probably drunk. We're talking extensive front-end damage. Lots of glass back there.” Manseur turned to look at the glass and orange plastic, much farther back than he had imagined it could be.

“Put a BOLO on the damaged Rover,” he said, referring to a “be on lookout” alert.

“I already have.”

“Good.”

Manseur looked over at the restaurant and scanned the crowd clustered under the awning, then at the bar where another crowd was standing like an assembled audience. His eyes were drawn to a cowboy chewing on a toothpick, standing on the sidewalk, wearing a water-saturated red suit, and staring directly at him. As if he had been waiting for Manseur to see him, the cowboy limped out into the street. Raindrops splashed harmlessly on the stiff brim of his pristine white Stetson. It looked to be an expensive bonnet. Otherwise, the entire outfit looked like a stage costume.

“I'm Nicky Green. I'm a private investigator out of Houston.”

Manseur hoped he was dealing with a trained witness. That would simplify his job considerably. “Detective Manseur, Homicide. You witness this?”

“No. I arrived a couple of minutes afterward. I was supposed to meet them here for drinks and dinner. I had a meeting at the Clarion that ran long, and I had trouble finding a parking space.”

“Where were y'all staying?”

“I'm at the Columns. Hank and Millie are staying . . .
were
at the Park View. They're good friends of mine. I've known Hank since I was knee high to a jackrabbit and Millie since '73 or so. Hank was a U.S. marshal until he retired a few months back.”

“That so?”

Manseur saw that either a cell phone or a handgun was pushing Green's jacket out slightly.

Green saw him looking at it. “I've got a carry permit,” he said, opening his coat to expose a Colt .45 with yellowed stag grips. The right base cover was broken and the blue steel on the butt was scratched.

“Did you drop your piece?” Manseur asked.

“I reckon I did.”

“I suppose it's registered to you?”

“To Hank.”

Manseur knew the gun had been on Trammel when he was hit. It wasn't relevant, and he'd never be able to prove Hank Trammel had been carrying it. For a cop, carrying was a tough habit to break. He doubted it mattered. He noticed for the first time that Green wasn't just bald, as he'd thought. He didn't have any eyebrows or lashes either.

“Detective Manseur, Hank Trammel is a veteran who won a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He served the marshals with distinction for twenty years. You're going to find out that he has a lot of influential friends who'll be watching your investigation.”

“Do you happen to know their next of kin?” Manseur asked, opening his notebook and balancing his umbrella by using his forearm to hold the handle against his ribs.

“Millie's sister lives here. Name's Porter. Let's see . . . Karen, no—Kimberly, I think it is.”

Manseur looked slowly up from the pad into Nicky Green's shrewd brown eyes. “Does she have a daughter named Faith Ann?”