Ear-Witness by Mary Ann Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

soft laugh. “That was Brianna, not me,” she whispered.
    â€œShh, listen,” I said, “I hear something. Someone’s knocking at the back door. Maybe it’s Tammi.”
    The three apartments, one on top of each other, are almost identical. Shot-gun apartments, Mom calls them, because if you fired a bullet from one end to the other, it would pass through all the rooms. There are doors, with windows in them, leading from the back bedrooms out onto porches. Wooden stairs connect the porches together, running from the top floor where Mom and I live, to Tammi’s in the middle, past the Orellanas’ on the ground floor, down to the back yard.
    â€œWhy would Tammi come up the back way?” Flavia asked.
    â€œIf she forgot her key...”
    â€œShe could buzz us.”
    â€œNot when there’s no power,” I said. “But it’s too early, she wouldn’t be back yet.”
    â€œI know,” Flavia said. “It is Carlos. Our mother has sent him to rescue us. I will go.” She handed Brianna over. “Here, her head is here. She is asleep.”
    I snuggled the baby’s soft sweetness and wondered why Carlos would come up the back way, but I couldn’t think of a reason. Flavia’s footsteps moved quickly down the hall, as if she knew exactly where she was going.
    The crashing sound, bones against wood, was the same noise I heard the night Ray was killed, exactly the same. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to call out to Flavia, to ask if she was OK. But if I did that, I’d wake Brianna, who was crabby enough in the light. So I clutched her into my shoulder and shuffle-walked across the living room towards the entrance to the hall. I stood there, listening. It took me a minute to figure out what had happened. The three apartments have one major difference. The top two, ours and Tammi’s, have steps leading down into the back bedroom. Flavia wouldn’t know this, because the ground floor, theirs, is all on one level.
    I moved slowly down the hall, counting doorways and listening for sounds. When I reached Brianna’s room, I felt my way along the wall to the crib, gently lowered her into it, and pulled up the railing. Out in the hall again, I called Flavia. “Where are you? Are you hurt?” I said. I stepped carefully down the three steps into the bedroom. When she put her hand on my arm, I jumped. “Ah!” I said.
    â€œShush,” she whispered.
    â€œI thought you were dead!” I said.
    â€œI almost broke my bottom. There are stairs! But look. Someone is there, at the window in the door. Who is it?”
    A head was silhouetted against the light of the city. As we watched, a hand tapped on the glass, one finger at a time.
    â€œIt’s not Tammi,” I said. “It’s too big for her. Who do we know who wears a ball cap?”
    â€œIt is not Carlos either. He is shorter than I am. What should we do?”
    My heart pounded noisily, and my mouth was so dry I could hardly speak. “Maybe it’s the murderer, come back to get Tammi,” I said.
    The head disappeared, then something hard whacked against the glass, which cracked, but stayed in the window. We watched, hypnotized, as the hand, now wrapped in something bulky, pushed its way through. Pieces of glass clattered and tinkled to the bedroom floor. The hand, followed by an arm, inched slowly through the opening towards the bolt on the door.
    My body had turned to stone; Flavia had to pull and push me up the steps. “Move!” she hissed. “We have to leave! Fast!”
    We stumbled down the hall to the front door, where I stopped dead. “The baby!” I said. “I can’t leave! My mother would kill me!”
    Flavia shoved me aside. “Then hide,” she said. “I will bring Carlos.”
    A four-month-old baby, asleep, isn’t much company when you’re terrified. When the screen door in the back bedroom