Upside Down

100

Manseur and Winter erupted from the elevator into the hallway where the governor's suite and his staff's rooms were located. Badges out, they met the uniformed highway patrolmen, who had been alerted that the pair were on the way up. The patrolmen pointed them to a set of double doors set in an ornate facade at the end of the carpeted corridor.

As they approached, Parker Hurt opened the right-side door, allowing Winter and Manseur into the foyer. The governor's executive assistant were a red V-neck sweater over a starched white shirt, stiffly pressed khakis, and shiny black loafers with tassels. He looked like a college fraternity rush chairman.

“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” he asked.

“Why does the press think the Pond execution is still on?” Manseur blurted out.

“Why do you think it wouldn't be?” Hurt replied easily.

“Because you said the governor would call it off,” Manseur snapped. “Hours ago.”

“I said I'd tell the governor what you told me to tell him,” Hurt replied. “I never said he would do what you wanted. Did I? That was before I spoke to Captain Suggs, your superior.”

“You talked to-”

“And he told me all about your-”

Winter seized Parker Hurt by his cashmere sweater, ending the need for Manseur's words and erasing Hurt's smirk. He had stood around far too long already talking to someone who wasn't the governor.

“We'll talk to the governor now,” Winter snarled as he shoved the governor's executive assistant backward, throwing open the door into the suite using Hurt's narrow back as a battering ram. Four men in their shirtsleeves sat around a felt-covered table playing poker.

One of the men, a bodyguard, reached to his shoulder holster, but Governor Lucas Morton grabbed his arm to stop him.

A reporter, who had the illuminated ferry in the background, was showing on the large-screen TV on the wall.

“What in God's name is the meaning of this, Detective?” the governor asked, setting his cards facedown on the felt before standing. He waved his hand in the air, signaling the other three men to remain seated.

“Governor, my name is Winter Massey. I'm a United States Deputy Marshal. You know who Faith Ann Porter is?”

“Of course I do.”

Quickly, Winter told the governor about Pond's frame, about what had happened over the past two days. He was careful to hit all of the important points. Manseur nodded, didn't interrupt. When Winter finished, Morton stared at him for long seconds, thinking.

Finally he spoke. “Let me see if I have all this. Jerry Bennett, who is a respected businessman and a friend and political supporter of mine, killed Judge and Beth Williams? Harvey Suggs, a decorated member of NOPD, fabricated Pond's case out of whole cloth? That alone is the most preposterous thing I've ever heard.

“And you say Jerry Bennett then sent a professional killer to murder Attorney Porter and this Lee woman-his mistress? Because she had in her possession photographic evidence that he murdered the Williamses. The child had the negatives and that tape, but not the pictures.”

“The killer got those back. Faith Ann said he didn't ask about negatives. He probably didn't even know she had them.”

“And tonight Commander Suggs sent two detectives to kill Detective Manseur here and two professional killers to the ferry to kill you and the Porter child. And both of those killers are dead, the detectives under arrest.”

“Yes,” Winter said.

“There are warrants out now for Bennett and Suggs,” Manseur said.

“The ferry incident, all that gunplay, that was you two?”

“You have to stop the execution,” Winter said. The time on the screen was now ten minutes to go.

“Bennett sent the killer to Kimberly Porter's office, which is on your audiotape,” Morton said. “Marshal, if you had the pictures Faith Ann claimed to have, I would stop the execution this minute. That phone is connected directly to the death house.” He looked the screen. “I've got just enough time.”

“I only have the tape,” Winter said, holding it out. “Faith Ann had the pictures and the negatives on her when she went in the river.”

“So you said.”

Winter said, “You can check me out by calling the A.G.”

“Marshal, I don't have to call anybody to know who you are. Your reputation for leaving a veritable rooster tail of death and havoc in your wake is well-enough known hereabouts. Even if there are voices on that audiotape saying that Jerry Bennett sent a hired killer to Kimberly Porter's office, it doesn't prove who killed Judge Williams and his wife, unless Bennett himself confessed to it on the tape. You say Bennett's hired killers are dead. So who can prove the voice on this tape is this dead hit man? Or that he isn't lying when he says Jerry Bennett sent him? Or is it Ms. Lee or Ms. Porter who says that?”

“Faith Ann saw him commit the murders,” Manseur insisted. “She was hiding under a table.”

“She can't testify from the grave,” Hurt said.

“I was a prosecutor for twenty-two years,” the governor told them. “Emotion and hearsay aside-you have nothing but a wild tale.”

“Stop the execution,” Winter urged, feeling more desperate by the second. “Pond is innocent. Suggs will talk, and when he does, he'll implicate Bennett in the Williams murders. So will Tinnerino and Doyle.”

Manseur said, “I'll get Bennett and Suggs.”

Morton studied Winter's face. Then he said, “I prosecuted Horace Pond, and I know the evidence better than anybody. You haven't given me a scrap of proof that Pond is innocent. If Jerry sent a killer to Porter's office, it will take more than a recording of questionable authenticity to make me short-circuit a lawful execution. Only the child could have testified that the tape was authentic. Even if she was here with this tape now and I knew she had maintained the chain of custody, anybody who watches Judge Judy could keep it from ever seeing a courtroom. What is the sound quality? Who says what? How are the people identified?”

“We'd have to listen to it,” Winter said.

“You haven't heard the tape?”

“Listen to it after-”

Lucas Morton laughed out loud. “Does the term pig in a poke mean anything to you? I'm sorry. If there is this picture proof and it turns up at some point, I'll eat crow, but what the jury and appellate courts decided on this matter is going to go forward. My stand on Horace Pond's execution is a matter of very public record.”

“What could it hurt to put it off a couple of days?” Winter pleaded.

“Faith Ann Porter had the picture evidence on her,” Manseur added. “With any luck those pictures will still be with the body when it is recovered and they might survive a dip in the river.”

“ May be, could be, might surface…” Morton was a political animal, so he was considering, measuring the probabilities, possibilities, and weighing his options. Winter saw his resolve swaying. For a long ten seconds, Lucas Morton stared over at the telephone, three steps and three words from saving an innocent man from being murdered. Winter was sure he had convinced him to at least postpone the execution and avoid any criticism should Winter be right about Pond's guilt. Morton took the three steps.

Then Parker Hurt spoke. “Sir, the election is being decided now, at this very moment. These men don't have one scrap of evidence. Stopping the execution will give your enemies ammunition that will pull undecided voters. Sir, you're within the two-point margin of error according to our own polls. You are playing with fire. You don't have to do anything.”

Winter saw Morton's eyes change focus and, with his heart sinking, he knew the governor wasn't going to stop the execution. “The tape is useless,” Morton told him bluntly. “Since you don't have those pictures in your possession, it is as if they do not exist. I will not override the judicial system on a maybe.”

Manseur pleaded, “Call the chief. Check out what I've told you.”

“No,” Morton said finally, looking at his watch. “It's too late.”

“You are making a big mistake,” Winter said. “When Pond is proved innocent, when people know what happened on the ferry tonight, when they know you were told, when they know that a little girl died trying to save Pond and you turned your back on that, your career will be over. You will live the rest of your life with people pointing at you and whispering. That will be your legacy.”

“Aw, hell, Deputy Massey. In a few days the election will be over. Who's going to worry about this last-minute maneuvering? Eighty-five percent of the people in this state want Pond dead. Go on back to wherever you came here from and make trouble there. We don't need your kind screwing things up around here like you did last year,” Morton said.

Morton dismissed them by sitting down at the table, and picking up his cards. “This sounds to everybody here like a tall tale spun by a deluded detective who makes wild accusations against a quality citizen, and a deputy who shoots up the world. Who in their right mind is going to blame me for not accepting your words?”

Winter was done, and he knew it. He started to turn to leave. Then he saw something that almost stopped his heart. He pointed and said, “Well, I bet they'll believe her.”

Manseur looked where Winter was pointing and cursed softly in admiration. “You're damned right, they will! Governor, look behind you. Your two-point margin of error just became the landslide that's going to bury you.”

Lucas Morton whirled in his seat to face the television. Filling the screen, illuminated by floodlights, stood a very small, shivering figure wrapped in a blanket. The illuminated ferry was in the background, the angle telling Winter that the camera focused on Faith Ann Porter was set up on the plaza outside the aquarium.

“She's alive!” Manseur exclaimed. “Faith Ann's alive!”

The men at the table gaped at the screen. Since the sound was muted, they all missed the words, but Winter recognized the envelope she was opening up, and before the camera panned away from the soggy copy paper, they all clearly saw the photocopied images of murder she held in her hands.

“She has the negatives!” Winter yelled, picking up the phone's receiver and thrusting it at Lucas Morton. “You saw the pictures! Everybody in Louisiana saw the pictures. You keep watching because in ten minutes you'll see Manseur and me on that same screen explaining why you didn't stop the execution. Now make the call.”