Upside Down

7

New Orleans homicide detective Sergeant Michael Manseur turned onto Camp Street and pulled up behind one of the white prowlers whose doors were appointed with a decal depicting a five-pointed star set in a crescent moon. He switched off his flashing blue light and moved it from the dashboard to the floorboard. The day was warming rapidly, the sun shining, but the weatherman had promised a cold front would be pressing through later that afternoon. Temperatures would drop into the fifties by evening. Manseur had caught the call so he would be the primary on this one, a doubleheader called in by a law student. With luck, this one would be a slam dunk and he could go back to one of the eight active cases on his plate.

Manseur grabbed a new spiral murder book and checked his pocket for the Cross pen before he stepped from the Impala, locked the door, and walked into the old professional building. A uniformed patrolman standing in the lobby pointed him to the elevator and said, “It's on four.”

The detective pressed the button, and as he waited for the cab to descend he sneaked a sideways peek at his image in the gold-veined mirror tiles glued to the wall of the run-down office building. What he saw was a shortish man in a crumpled brown suit who was tapping a spiral notebook impatiently against his leg. He looked at the overworked, overweight, underpaid detective-a sad reflection. Behind his back, people sometimes called him Froggie, not because he was of French ancestry but because his face was wide, his lips thick, and his eyes seemed to bulge more than other people's did. He could see skin between the cables of dishwater-blond hair that he carefully combed over to hide his baldness. For years he had promised himself that one of these days he would invest in a hairpiece, but so far there was always something more important requiring his and his wife's salaries. But he knew that there were four things that were very special about him. The first three were his wife and two daughters, and the fourth was that he was an extremely good detective.

The ride to the fourth floor was slow, the cables supporting the car creaking, the motor laboring. The carpet under his wingtips was stained, the wood-panel walls scarred, the certificate of worthiness made illegible by the scratched plastic lens that protected it. Finally the cab stopped, and Manseur stepped out into a foyer whose floor was comprised of thousands of little white tiles. The border was formed of double black lines of small black tiles, accented at regular intervals with left-facing swastikas. Even though the tiles were laid into place a decade before Hitler adopted the symbol as his logo, forever trashing it, it was unsettling to see it used decoratively.

Manseur turned right and headed for the open door at the end of the dimly lit hallway, where uniformed cops were gathered. He heard the voices and put on his game face as he neared the crime scene.

He entered the reception room and cast his frown on a police sergeant, who was leaning back in an old chair and had his feet on the desk, telling a joke. “The fuckin' son of a bitch said he likes his coffee half full of hot sauce! I swear to-” The sergeant cut off the story and scrambled to his feet when his eyes met Manseur's. The other two patrolmen, who had been laughing, were struck mute. Their faces went red.

“What's the deal here?” Manseur asked the sergeant. His New Orleans accent made the word here sound like heeyah.

The cop opened his notebook. “Two female vics, forty-seven and forty-three. Multiple bullet wounds, probably from a. 38. No brass. One is Kimberly Porter, the forty-seven-year-old. It's her office. The other is Amber Lee, forty-three years.”

“Did anybody touch anything?”

“My people know better. The first officer was sure they were dead and came right out. Porter's law student, Napoleon Ferris, called 911 at 7:10. He's in the kitchen now cooling his heels. The janitor saw him come in, and a minute later he came flying down the fire stairs screaming bloody murder. Ferris swears he came straight here from breakfast at the Camellia Grill.”

“How did you identify the vics?” Manseur was writing everything down in his own brand of chicken scratches and symbols.

“Ferris is last year Tulane law. He knew Porter from being a legal volunteer. Seems students can handle cases in their last year of law school. And I recognized Amber Lee. There's an outstanding warrant out for her-”

“Warrant… for?”

“Embezzlement.”

“And how did you know her?”

“From the River Club. Amber's worked there for years and I think was the manager, sort of. I'da never figured her for a thief, but Mr. Bennett himself filed the charges.”

“You knew her from the River Club,” Manseur repeated, interjecting a fleck of suspicion in his words.

“I did some security work for the club back in the day,” the sergeant said defensively.

Manseur didn't know Jerry Bennett personally, but he knew of him. Bennett was one of those “special friends” of the police department, the mayor, the aldermen and fire departments. That meant he was both rich and generous and carried a gold badge the sheriff gave him that allowed him to carry a firearm and could be used in Orleans Parish to avoid traffic tickets-and he would never have to pay one or appear in court, if he got one.

Like most cops, Manseur had accepted his share of lagniappe from merchants during his eighteen years on the job. As a patrolman he'd turned a deaf ear when a benefactor's car was begging for a parking violation. Sometimes he'd stopped a driver who was going a little too fast, maybe had suspicious breath, and let the guy skate. He had fixed tickets when it didn't matter. But proudly, he had never compromised his oath to protect and serve the citizens of New Orleans.

“Where's Detective Bond?” the sergeant asked. Larry Bond was Manseur's partner.

“Larry's in Baton Rouge. His father-in-law died. Be back Monday afternoon. Can we get back to this?”

“Sure thing.” The sergeant nodded. “Janitor saw Porter come in around six with her daughter. Lee came in fifteen to twenty minutes later.”

“Where's the kid?”

The cop shrugged. “Janitor didn't see her leave, but she wasn't here when this happened.”

“And you know that, how?”

“She didn't call 911 or run to find help. He says she sometimes catches the bus to school from the corner. Her name is Faith Ann. There's a picture of her on the mother's desk.”

Manseur finished making his notes and underlined the child's name. Beside it, he wrote two question marks. One represented discovering where the girl was when this happened, the second was to remind him to find out all he could about her. He would assume for the present that the schoolgirl wasn't here when this took place.

Then he went to the first door down the hallway and looked into the office. He could see both bodies from the doorway. Porter was to his right, the body lying limp behind the desk. Amber Lee's corpse lay to his left, facedown in front of the desk. Another ten feet behind Ms. Lee's corpse, a second door stood open. Before he entered the office, Manseur took a pair of shoe covers and a pair of surgical gloves from his jacket pocket and put them on.

When a seasoned homicide detective looked over a crime scene, it would start to come alive. As he gleaned more information, the film that was the crime came into increasingly sharper focus, edited so that all of the collected elements defined the drama.

Was Lee in this office to get help with the embezzlement charge?

He noted how she'd fallen and studied the pattern made by bits of blood and tissue on the floor and desk. He formed an image of Ms. Lee sitting in the chair and the lawyer sitting behind the desk. Since he couldn't yet make a determination of the perp's size or sex, he visualized a featureless silhouette standing beside and behind Amber Lee, aiming a gun at her head. He noted the position of the purse, that the flap was closed and latched.

He squatted beside Ms. Lee and, using the bare end of his Cross ballpoint, parted her teased hair to examine the entrance wound located above and behind her left ear. The stippling and burned hair around the small round wound told him that the muzzle had been very close to her head. The exiting bullet had made a silver-dollar-size hole.

Could be a. 38, a. 32 revolver. If someone picked up their cases it might be a. 380 or even a nine millimeter. That was something the medical examiner could tell him. For whatever reason, you weren't looking at the killer when he fired. He leaned down and noted the tracks on her left cheek made from tear-melted eyeliner. Were you aware of the perp standing there? Were you crying because you were afraid? Or were you upset and didn't see him-or her?

Carefully, Manseur looked at both of her hands and under the nails. Nothing. Done with Amber for the time being, he stood and went around the desk and looked down at Kimberly Porter. The dead lawyer's name, but not her face, seemed familiar to him, he wasn't sure why. He was fairly sure that he had never faced her in a courtroom.

There were two holes in Porter's blouse, located so close together they almost formed a figure eight. There was a third hole in her forehead-a safety shot. It made him wonder if maybe she was the main target, had been shot first. No, he was reasonably certain based on the splatter pattern that Amber hadn't been cowering in the chair but sitting upright, her face pointed at the desk. He saw the phone beside the lawyer, and in his film he imagined her holding it-perhaps trying to make a call, before or maybe even after Amber was shot.

He saw blood on the wall behind the desk and judged that Kimberly Porter was standing when she was shot in the chest. Her missing loafer was several feet away, resting against the baseboard. Did you kick at your killer? No, it came off while you were rushing around the desk. You made it to the phone and picked it up before the killer fired. You went down, pulled the phone off the desk, and then he came around the desk and shot you again to make sure. Two that close together, fired from six, seven feet away, means he was a marksman and he was also a calm one. Two in the ticker, one in the head. A professional? Some client you didn't get results for? Someone who needed to keep one of you from doing or saying something?

Manseur was in the zone. The film was running in his mind and everything else was a million miles away. He was visualizing paths of travel, bullet channels that when charted would define angles, distances, and even put a nearly exact height to the perpetrator.

He studied the desk. A framed photo of a smiling girl-a young face that reflected equal measures of cheer, confidence, and intelligence. Faith Ann Porter was maybe ten, eleven years old in the picture, had long strawberry-blond hair tucked behind her ears, big blue eyes. Also on that desk sat a Sony cassette recorder whose door stood open, revealing an empty tape chamber. There were several unopened cassettes stacked on the credenza and an open package for one on top of the desk. He looked in the trash can. The cellophane wrapper for it lay alone in the bottom. He made a mental note to search for a tape, but he was certain it had been removed by the killer.

When he looked back down at Porter again, he saw something else. There on the far side of and beside the body, barely visible in the puddle of coagulating blood, were two distinct circular impressions. Knees. Manseur imagined the killer kneeling there, but knew that a killer wouldn't get his or her knees drenched accidentally. No way a pro would do that, and I'm dealing with a pro. On the hardwood, just beyond the threadbare carpet, he saw something both interesting and alarming. There were circular, patterned tracks where someone had tracked blood away. The partial prints looked to have been made by a small sneaker. Faith Ann Porter must have seen her mother's body, and it would have been the girl who'd knelt beside her mother, her knees planted there when the blood was still running out from under the corpse.

Manseur had a daughter who was about Faith Ann's age. His mind raced as he tried to re-edit the film using new information. Was the young girl the motive for the killings? She may have seen it happen or not. The thought struck him that the child might have been abducted by the killer. Maybe she was wandering the streets in shock. Maybe she was fleeing from the killer. Maybe he took her somewhere else to silence her and she was already dead. But why not just kill her here? He had to find out all about Faith Ann Porter and do it very soon.

“Sergeant!” he called out.

“Yes sir?” the policeman answered from the hallway.

“Search the building. Top to bottom. Roof to basement. Have units sweep the neighborhood. Get a description of what the Porter girl was wearing. Issue an APB on her. Find out what school she goes to, see if she showed up there. Send a unit by the Porter house to see if she's there. I need to get a search warrant for the residence. You know the drill.” He was barely aware of the sergeant parroting his orders into the radio.

Manseur followed the bloodied tracks. They led to a corkboard and appeared in the seat of a chair resting under it. Pinned on the board was a photograph of someone Manseur did recognize. Anger filled his hollow stomach. Horace Pond. A two-bit sack of crap who had murdered two people who caught him rifling their house.

Now he knew why Kimberly Porter's name was familiar. She was the conniving bitch who had been trying to keep that perverted piece of murdering shit alive. Horace Pond was going to die Saturday night, and no magic this lawyer could have performed could change it.

Manseur couldn't help but smile inside at the thought of that little low-life weasel taking the needle in thirty-eight hours, but he wished the powers that be had grandfathered in a nice long ride on a lightning bolt straight to hell. He was staring into the eyes of a dead man when the sergeant interrupted.

“Janitor said that there's a wall safe behind that corkboard. He says Porter had the combination changed when she moved in. And the crime scene unit is downstairs.”

“Tell them to hold off for a few minutes.”

Manseur used his pen to open the corkboard. Peering closely at the brass lever, he could see loops and swirls stamped there in dried blood. On the floor at the end of the table, someone had dumped out three textbooks and a composition notebook from Holy Cross School for Girls. “Sergeant, she attends Holy Cross uptown. Let's get this safe cracked open.”

Manseur walked out and turned right. In the kitchen, a bored patrolman leaned against the counter watching over an ashen-faced and delicate-looking young man who sat slumped at a small table. He stared down at his clasped hands, the thin fingers of which were tipped by immaculate fingernails. Manseur sat down across from the young man, and when the kid looked up Manseur studied his eyes and knew the kid wasn't his killer.

“How well did you know Ms. Porter, Napoleon?”

“I've been helping her with two of her capital cases. I knew her sort of well. We weren't friends or anything like that.”

“You weren't friends?”

“She was sort of all business.”

“Husband? Boyfriend?”

“I only know they lived alone.”

“What can you tell me about her daughter?”

“Faith Ann? She's smart as a whip. Doesn't talk much. I've only been around her up here a few times. She's kind of quiet. Shy, I guess.”

“She and her mother get along all right?”

“They were super close. Kimberly always treated Faith Ann like an adult. She's way beyond kids her age in lots of ways. She can talk to you about most subjects.”

“Did you know the other woman,” Manseur asked, “Amber Lee? Could she have been a client?”

Napoleon shook his head. “Kimberly only does-did appeals on capital cases, so she wasn't a client. I guess she was either related to an inmate, or…”

“Or?” Manseur saw something change in the boy's eyes.

“She could have been the one who has been calling the office.”

“Calling about?”

“A woman has been calling to talk to Kimberly. Wouldn't give her name. Kimberly mentioned she claimed she had evidence that one of the inmates on The Row was innocent and that she had conclusive proof of who was guilty. Kimberly said she thought the woman wanted money for whatever she had. Nuts come out of the woodwork any time a case is in the news or an execution date is coming up. Far as I know, her last call was Wednesday. I left early yesterday, so she might have called back.”

“I didn't see a computer in the office.” Manseur made a note to request a list of the dead lawyer's incoming and outgoing calls for the past thirty days.

“Kimberly had a laptop. She carried it back and forth from home. There's a printer both places. She was sort of frugal-minded. Drove an old car, wore the same clothes. But she was the best. She saw things that are invisible to most lawyers. She could have made big bucks. But Kimberly believed in justice, not money. You know what I'm saying?”

“Yes,” Manseur said, closing his murder book. “I am intimately familiar with the syndrome.”