Upside Down

12

Faith Ann felt safe in the cool hide. It was easy to understand why a sick animal would come in there to die.

Soon after moving into the shotgun house on Danneel Street, Faith Ann had explored underneath it, and she had discovered a tin toy car and a few odds and ends abandoned in the dirt. In the cavity that had been formed when the concrete porch and front steps were poured, she'd found the mummified corpse of a small dog. She and Kimberly had dug a hole in the backyard and had given the animal a funeral, which included a hand-lettered wooden sign Faith Ann made that read

HERE LIES A DOG, WHOSE NAME IS KNOWN ONLY TO GOD.

The under-porch was in effect a steel-reinforced bunker, with a cement ceiling and walls. Unless someone with a flashlight came inside the space, they wouldn't find her. Faith Ann sat with her back pressed against a cool wall. What she had seen in her mother's office came into her mind. She pulled up her knees and rested her head on her arms. And she cried, as softly as she could manage.

Faith Ann jerked upright when she heard a car pull up out front and two doors slam. Her watch said she had been hiding for two hours. Curious, she slipped out of the bunker and peered through the wood lattice, painted on one side the same dark gray as the house. Two men in suits strolled up to the gate, opened it, and came into the yard. The male patrolman came around from the side of the house where the small porch and the garage were.

“No sign of anybody, Detectives,” she heard the patrolman say.

“I didn't think she'd come here,” one of the men said. Faith Ann decided he was a detective.

“Maybe she's at a friend's house. Take your partner and go on,” the other detective told the policeman. “We'll make the call if we need help. We have her keys and the warrant. We're going to search inside.”

Faith Ann's heartbeat quickened. They had her mother's key ring. The idea of these people going through their things frightened her-but it made her mad too.

The patrolwoman came around, and the uniforms left through the gate. The detectives opened the door but didn't go inside. After several minutes, a new car, big and black, arrived and parked across the street. Faith Ann watched as the driver's door opened and a woman with long dark hair climbed out. Faith Ann was studying her when another figure came into view. Terror seized her because this man was the same man who had killed her mother. As he approached the gate, he combed his dark oily hair back. One of the detectives opened the front door as the pair approached the steps.

“She hasn't come back,” a detective said.

“Where else is she going to go?” the other detective said. “Any adult she turns to is going to call the authorities.”

“That's what we're going to find out,” the killer said in his familiar Spanish accent. “To discover everything we can about her.”

Faith Ann crept to the back of the house, fighting panic. Her chest was heaving, her stomach lurching. Above her, four sets of shoes battered the hardwood as they too moved toward the rear of the house. When she was near the grids covering the floor furnaces, Faith Ann could make out the voices, but she couldn't hear what they were saying. The killer knew she had his negatives and he was looking for them… and for her. And he was a cop.

She had to get away.

Faith Ann slipped out from under the house. Crouching low, she scooted into the open garage. Her and her mother's bikes were connected to a galvanized eyelet by a plastic-coated steel cable. Her fingers trembled as she turned the four numbered cylinders so the right combination showed. Faith Ann removed the cable and looped it around her bike's crossbar before snapping the lock in the loops to secure it. After putting on her helmet, she closed the kickstand and rolled the ten-speed slowly out through the side door, which opened directly into the backyard next door. She went around that house and, after pausing to tuck her long hair inside the sweatshirt and raising the hood over the helmet, she jumped on board and pumped the pedals furiously.

At the corner of Marengo Street, she turned left toward St. Charles Avenue. The cool wind blew into her face. Her skin stung a little because she'd cried so much. The backpack felt as light as a feather. School would be letting out soon, she decided. The sidewalks, buses, and streetcars would be filled with kids for the cops to check out.

When she passed a patrol car stopped at the intersection with St. Charles, she cut her eyes. The cop inside hardly even glanced at her. She guessed nobody had thought that she might be riding a boy's ten-speed.