Upside Down

2

New Orleans, Louisiana

Faith Ann Porter yawned and looked over at the venetian blinds for any sign that the sun was rising. Her watch's display read 6:13.

The small reception area always smelled like a place where somebody really old lived. The space was strictly a prop, because there was no receptionist. Usually Faith Ann's mother could hardly afford to pay the office rent, much less hire someone to sit there at the desk to greet the few people who ever came there. Not a single one of her clients had ever been to visit her, and the fact was that the vast majority of her mother's calls were outgoing. Even so, it was absolutely necessary to maintain a professional office.

The upper part of the front door to the five-room suite, which was at the end of the hallway, had a frosted glass panel in it where each tenant's name had been hand-painted backward on the inside since 1927, the year the building had been constructed. At that moment, Faith Ann was lying prone, peering through the brass mail slot, watching the fifty feet of hallway between herself and the elevator lobby. Not that she believed the mysterious woman was going to show up this time either. Most likely she'd been awakened and dragged all the way down here before dawn for nothing.

“Watching won't make her get here one second sooner. If she sees your eyes looking out at her from down there, she'll think we have rats. You shouldn't snoop,” Kimberly Porter said from the door.

“You just told Mrs. Washington that you liked my inquisitive nature. You said my curiosity shows intelligence.”

“You were listening in on the extension while I was talking to your teacher!”

Time to change the subject. “I bet you got me up early for nothing. I'll be sleep-deprived when I get to school… for nothing. I'll bet you a dollar she won't even show up. I'll bet you another dollar if she does she's just some lunatic trying to get money for some old letters she probably scribbled up herself, knowing you'd do anything to save Harry Pond.”

“Horace,” Kimberly corrected automatically. “If she's right, he's really not guilty.”

“You think everybody you represent is innocent.”

“I don't think any such thing. There are lots of other lawyers with investigators who try to prove innocence. When that fails, they call me.”

“To do legal mumbo jumbo. Hocus-pocus high jinks. Pick a card, Your Honor.” Faith Ann plopped onto her back and clapped her hand to her chest. “No sir, that isn't really an ace of hearts, I say it's a two of clubs, your honor. So, since it isn't the ace at all, like you thought, my client is not guilty.”

“You little monkey!” Kimberly said. She leaned down and tickled her daughter's ribs.

“Child abuse!” Faith Ann said, laughing, squirming, and trying to push her mother's hands away.

Kimberly straightened. “What I do is not trickery. Horace Pond might be one in a hundred. This is exactly why there shouldn't be a death penalty. It is preferable to-”

“‘Free a hundred guilty people than punish one innocent one,'” Faith Ann interrupted. “Like freeing a hundred criminals to go out running around doing crimes is going to happen. You know most people don't agree with whatever old jerk it was said that. Uncle Hank, for one.”

“For your information, Miss Know-It-All-that ‘whatever old jerk' was Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren of Brown v. the Board of Education. And I know Hank Trammel does too agree.”

“Then why does Uncle Hank have a sign on his office wall that says LET NO GUILTY MAN ESCAPE? You know who said that?”

“I somehow doubt it was Earl Warren.”

“Old Hanging Judge Parker. He hanged men as quick as his marshals could round them up.”

“I believe that sort of behavior is precisely why Earl Warren said what he did.” Kimberly walked from the reception area.

Just as Faith Ann was about to get up and follow her mother, she heard the elevator door open, so she looked out through the mail slot. Sure enough a woman stepped out. It had to be her because her mother's office was the only one on the fourth floor except for an eyeglass repair shop run by a frowning man who just came to work when he felt like it. People didn't bring their eyeglasses, either. The glasses came by UPS and the mail, from optometrists all over the city. Lots of times, boxes and mailing envelopes containing broken glasses sat in the hall outside his door, waiting for him to show up. Faith Ann made it her business to know what was going on around her at all times.

Faith Ann called out over her shoulder urgently, “Mama!”

“I'm coming,” her mother called back from her office.

The woman, who was rapidly approaching the office on high heels, reminded Faith Ann of a movie star, probably because of the scarf that seemed to be there to keep the balloon of blond hair from rising right off of her scalp. Her cinched-up trench coat accented a narrow waist and substantial breasts. Faith Ann's eyes locked on the rolled-up manila envelope protruding from her shoulder bag, which the woman was gripping like she expected someone to run up and try to snatch it. She removed her sunglasses and shoved them into the pocket of her coat.

Faith Ann stood and pulled open the door for the woman just before she reached for the knob, which startled her. Faith Ann was instantly assaulted by a wave of sickeningly sweet perfume.

“You look rather young to be a lawyer,” the woman said, trying to make a joke. Her brown eyes hardly rested on Faith Ann at all as they darted around the room.

“My mother is the attorney.”

“You're what, sixteen, seventeen?”

“Twelve.” Faith Ann didn't let on that she knew the woman was being all hokey with her, trying to make friends or something. “You can hang your coat up,” Faith Ann offered, pointing to the standing coatrack.

“I'll just keep it on.” Faith Ann was disappointed that she wouldn't get to see what kind of outfit was under it. The woman's eyelashes looked like spider legs, and her brows were arched lines that had been carefully drawn on her forehead, maybe with a sharp-pointed laundry marker. Faith Ann just couldn't help but stare at her.

The woman looked relieved when Kimberly appeared in the doorway. “I'm Kimberly Porter, Ms. Lee. I see you've met my daughter, Faith Ann.”

“She's just cute as a bug. I'm sorry,” Ms. Lee said, “could you lock the door?”

“Nobody ever comes here this early,” Faith Ann said.

“Of course I can,” Kimberly answered.

Faith Ann turned the deadbolt herself. She was amazed at how calm and professional her mother was acting. Faith Ann knew that what her mother really wanted was to jerk that rolled-up envelope out of Ms. Lee's purse and rip it open to see if it really was “explosive eleventh-hour evidence.”

“Call me Amber,” the woman said and put her hand on the envelope like she'd caught Faith Ann thinking about it. “I'm sorry I've been so vague about things, but you'll see I have good reason. Do you have the thing we discussed?”

She means money, Faith Ann thought.

Kimberly nodded. “Come into my office,” she said, leading the woman into the hall and into the first door on the right. Faith Ann started to follow, but her mother's raised brow stopped her. “Faith Ann, you go do your homework in the kitchen while I meet with Ms. Lee.”

“I already did it all.”

“Well, then paint me a picture I can frame.”

“I don't have my art stuff here.”

“Well, then draw something with a pencil.” She raised her brow and through clenched teeth said, “ Please, Faith Ann.”

As soon as Kimberly closed the door, leaving Faith Ann in the hallway, she scooted down the hall and turned into the next doorway, which opened into the conference room. She stopped in her tracks when she saw that her mother was closing the other door in her office, which connected the two rooms. The conference room held a large table with eight wooden office chairs around it that the building's owner had robbed from other vacant offices as an added incentive to get her mother to move into his building. The shelves were loaded with her mother's law books, most of which were full of cases you couldn't be a lawyer without knowing. Stealthily, Faith Ann slithered down on the floor, placing her ear as close to the crack at the bottom of the adjoining door as possible. It was a heavy wooden one and might as well have been a vault door for the sound it allowed through-or so her mother believed. Being an adult, Kimberly had never bothered to lie down and put her ear to the crack to make sure nobody could listen in.

“I'd like to record this,” Kimberly's professional voice said, “if you have no objections. It'll help me later, and it will simplify things down the road when I am in front of the Governor.”

“If you want to, but I wouldn't trust the Governor,” Amber's voice said. “I mean, I've personally seen him in the club. Jerry owns half the cops-all the ones that run things. He could never have pulled off doing what he did to Judge and Mrs. Williams and framing your client without the police being involved. Nobody in this state can be trusted-especially not in law enforcement. After he found out I had this, the police put out a warrant for my arrest, for embezzling of all things. Jerry did that easy as snapping his fingers. If the cops get me, I'll be fish food.”

“Don't worry, my uncle is a U.S. marshal. He'll be in town late this afternoon. He is on a first-name basis with the Attorney General of the United States. I doubt your Jerry owns him. ”

“I guess he'd be all right…”

“Let's start by having a look at your evidence.”

Faith Ann heard the contents being removed from the envelope, followed by the familiar muttering that signaled her mother was giving her undivided attention to something that she believed was very important.

“Who is this Jerry?” Kimberly asked, sounding like she did after a long run.

“You're obviously not from around here. Anybody around here would know who he is.”

“Is he a gangster of some sort?”

“Well, yes, but not so's you'd know it by the papers…”

“Dear God!” Kimberly blurted out. “Is this him in the picture? This is sick.”

Faith Ann realized that she was holding her breath and exhaled slowly. This was great! Of all the neat conversations she'd ever spied on, this one was better than all the others put together.

“This isn't a hoax,” Kimberly stammered, sounding confused. “Forgive me for ever doubting your claims, but in cases like this people often say they have evidence exonerating a death row inmate-especially at the eleventh hour. They almost always turn out to be… less than helpful. No, I've seen the crime scene pictures and this is the same room and those are the same people. But they are both alive in all but two of these.”

“The negatives are in there. I don't know much about photography, but I don't think you can fake those. So, is it worth a grand so I can get out of town until he's in prison?”

“Why did he make these? Why did he keep them? This is insanity.”

“You're right. No person in their right mind would have.” Amber continued, “I can't hardly sleep a wink without seeing those pictures in my head.”

“And he knows you have these?”

“Yes, he does. It's a long story.”

“I've got time.”

Faith Ann was so fascinated by everything she heard during the next couple of minutes that she was still lying on the hardwood floor absorbing the information when Kimberly suddenly opened the door. After having to step over her daughter, she pulled the door closed and lifted Faith Ann up off the floor with the hand that wasn't holding the fat envelope full of evidence. “I guess you heard all that, Miss Nosey-Britches?” she said in a low voice.

“I dropped something.”

“It's a clear violation of professional etiquette to eavesdrop.”

“Why did you tell her that fib- Uncle Hank was coming tonight?” Faith Ann asked accusatorily.

“Because it's true.”

“No, it isn't. Today is Friday. They're going to be here tomorrow-Saturday.”

“They're coming in tonight. They're staying at a guesthouse and having dinner with some old friend of Hank's. Then they're coming to see us tomorrow.”

“Can I see the pictures she brought?” She knew asking was a waste of breath. Her mother had already commented on how horrific they were. Faith Ann had heard tales of mayhem and murder since she was old enough to understand the adult conversations going on around her. Every capital case her mother took on came with lots of boxes, most of them containing crime scene pictures taken by the cops. Faith Ann looked through those whenever she got a chance, despite her mother's best efforts to hide the graphic files. “Pretty please?”

“Absolutely not!” Kimberly went over to the copier and, one after the other, put each of the eight original photographs facedown on the glass, then pressed the button to make copies of the pictures. Faith Ann couldn't see any of the images, which was infuriating. No dead judge and his wife, no rich killer named Jerry doing something truly horrible to anybody. Of course Faith Ann didn't want to see anything like that, but as a lawyer in training, she needed to study all of the legal evidence she could.

Kimberly gathered the photocopies from the bin. At the table, she slid the copies into an envelope, added a glassine sleeve containing dark strips of negatives, and sealed it by licking the glue strip and pressing it closed. Faith Ann's heart sank. Kimberly put the curved original photographs back in their envelope. She swung away the corkboard adorned with pictures of her clients to expose a wall safe that some doctor had used once upon a time to store his drugs. Kimberly opened the safe and took out a stack of bills, which she put in her pocket.

“I want your word of honor that you will not attempt to open that envelope,” she scolded. “I want your absolute word of honor.”

“I give you my mile-high word of honor,” Faith Ann said, knowing that the envelope was sealed, which placed snooping inside it outside her tampering abilities. She made the appropriate X motion with her trigger finger. “I cross my heart and hope to die and stick a needle in my eye. I will never look at those pictures unless you tell me to.”

“There are times to be curious and times, like now, to refrain from snooping. Tell you what. I'll fill you in on all of this after Horace Pond is free. Word of honor. And, Faith Ann, I am so very proud of your intelligence and…”

The two distinctive voices originating from the office changed Kimberly's expression to a look of terror. The voices weren't coming under the door into Kimberly's office, so they had to be carrying down the hallway, meaning that Kimberly's office door was open like the conference room door.

“Hide!” Kimberly whispered, pushing her down under the table.

Faith Ann obeyed instantly, climbing up into the hard seats of the chairs parked under it. This was a place she had hidden before to annoy her mother-make her think she wasn't in the office. Faith Ann knew that as long as she was quiet, and nobody pulled the chairs out or got down on all fours, it was the safest place available. She got in there just in time. Her mother had just shoved her backpack under the table, when a man jerked the adjoining door wide open. From her hiding spot, Faith Ann saw him from the waist down. Beyond him Amber sat in the chair in front of the desk, her face ashen with blind terror.

“Who are you?” Kimberly demanded. “How dare you come in here like this? Put that gun away before there's an accident.”

Gun? Faith Ann thought. Why does he have a gun?

“Get in here,” he ordered, like he hadn't heard her. “Amber has been a very, very bad girl,” he chided. “Jerry would like to have back the private property she stole from him.” His calm voice had a Spanish accent. He didn't sound at all like somebody who would break into the place and be holding a gun.

“It's in her hand,” Amber told him, pointing at the manila envelope containing the real pictures.

Kimberly held it out to him. “Take it and get out.” She didn't sound afraid at all to Faith Ann.

“Is anybody else here?” he asked, taking the envelope from her.

“No,” Kimberly said. “But my paralegal volunteers will be here any minute. I suggest you take that and go. Up to this moment you haven't committed any crimes we can't forget about.”

“Amber, you show this to anybody else? Make copies?”

“No! No, I haven't,” Amber stammered. “Please?”

“There a back door?”

“No,” Kimberly told him truthfully.

Amber blurted, “She can't say anything on account of attorney-client privilege. You've got the pictures. It's over.”

“Lawyer lady, did you make any copies?”

“I intended to, but I didn't have time,” Kimberly told him, her voice full of false regret.

Faith Ann, terrified he would see them on the table, reached up, felt for the envelope, and pulled it to her.

“He threw me out,” Amber whined. “I only wanted him to take me back. Just tell him I'm-”

Amber's words ended with a dull pop followed by her chair turning over. Kimberly screamed out. Faith Ann pressed her hand over her own mouth so she wouldn't. Faith Ann saw her mother dart around the desk and grab the phone, but the man moved and blocked her view of what happened next. Faith Ann heard two of the pops and the sound of two things hitting the wooden floor-her mother and the telephone. When the man bent down to pick up the three empty casings, Faith Ann stared at his profile. All he had to do was turn his head and he'd be looking straight at her-no more than fifteen feet away. The manila envelope seemed to be glowing, surely he would see it!

Frozen in place, Faith Ann fought back the terror that had seized her, trying to remember what her mother had drilled into her. In an emergency, stay calm. Never panic. Fear freezes you and it can kill you, Faith Ann. Always follow your instincts.

After snagging the shells, the man straightened. He went around the desk, aimed the gun down, and to Faith Ann's horror fired one more time. As he bent down to collect the final casing, she glimpsed the manila envelope curled up in his coat pocket. He came into the conference room and stopped at the edge of the table-opening and slamming the top of the copy machine. Faith Ann focused on the hem of his long coat, on his gray pants with sharp creases and cuffs and his shiny two-tone shoes. He went through the things on the table above her; scattered papers fluttered to the floor.

Faith Ann pushed away the thought of what his gun might have done.

You can't find me.

I'm not here.

Go away.

Don't look for me.

I'm invisible.

As if commanded by her thoughts, the man left the room.

She listened to his footsteps as he checked the other rooms down the hall. After he looked in both the vacant office and the kitchen, he hurried back up the hall and left through the front door.

Faith Ann lay there trembling in silence for a very long while, afraid his closing the door was a trick designed to flush her out. Then she slipped down onto the floor and came out from under the table on all fours. “Mama?” she said, testing the sound of her voice.

The only sound inside the office was the steady beeping of the telephone, off its hook behind the desk. The smell of cordite, which reminded her of shooting cans with Uncle Hank, mixed with Amber's gardenia perfume.

Faith Ann could hardly see through her tears. She had never seen a real dead person before, and it was terrifying. Amber was sprawled out on the threadbare Oriental carpet where the chair had dumped her. Her face was bloody, but Faith Ann didn't focus on that-didn't want to look at the person who had brought this horror to the Porters.

Slowly Faith Ann rounded the desk and stared down at the ruined woman she loved more than anyone on earth. The terrible reality of it slammed into her, giving her the sensation of being hollowed out and filled with superheated air. Scared she would faint, Faith Ann inhaled sharply, fighting to remain conscious.

Cold-blooded murder. This is how it comes-all of a sudden, out of the blue. Nobody warns you. A door opens and there it is. Mama, this is exactly what your death row men did-those friendly-looking men on the corkboard who can smile at your camera like saints, even though one day they did something just like this to people just like you. Faith Ann knew she shouldn't be hysterical.

The large red stain on her mother's white blouse was so bright and wet it seemed to glitter. The pearl, run through with a thin gold chain-a Mother's Day gift from Faith Ann-rested in the hollow of Kimberly's throat.

Faith Ann dropped to her knees, placed her hands on her mother's chest, and pressed down hard. Air hissed, and bubbles rose from her chest. Her face was so pale…

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.