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paramedics, a deputy, and Leanne English have just gone down.
    Side by side, we wait in front of the door, where we see reflected in its metal surface a black man in a charcoal suit and a blond woman in a pale summer dress. Our glances meet in the metal, but quickly slide away from each other.
    The elevator thumps to a stop on our floor.
    When the door finally slides open again, and we see what's inside, I start to scream. The same sheriff's deputy who rode down is now slumped inside of the elevator. He's a young man, can't be more than thirty, but now he's wild-eyed and there's blood pouring from a terrible wound in his face, and he's crying.

 
    The Little Mermaid By Marie Lightfoot
    CHAPTER TWO
     
    Once upon a time, Susan and Tony McCullen felt blessed.
    They were young, still in love, the parents of a beautiful daughter and sweet twin boys. They got along well with their families. Tony had a decent job with a good future. To top it off, they lived in one of the nicest houses in Bahia Beach. Tony thought it was the deal of a lifetime, because they hadn't had to pay a cent for it.
    "My boss owns it," Tony explained to anybody who was blunt enough to inquire how an auto parts salesman and a grocery store cashier could afford a home in one of the ritziest neighborhoods in Bahia Beach. "He comes down here a lot, but his wife can't. It's hard for her to get away. They have a lot of kids in schools all over the world, so she likes to stay in one place, so their kids know where to call home."
    So here was this beautiful, four-bedroom, Florida-style ranch, complete with a three-car garage and a swimming pool, on one of the high-dollar canals in Bahia, just off the Intracoastal. It was an elegant neighborhood, where royal palm trees marched in even, towering rows down both sides of the street and where homes sold in the high six figures, and more. Tony's boss didn't want to sell it, but he didn't want to rent it to strangers, either. So he approached his salesman Anthony McCullen and said to him one amazing day, "Tony, would you like to move your family into my house?"
    For free.
    Or, almost free. The McCullens paid for the utilities, and by doing completely without air-conditioning and using the ceiling fans, they cut those bills back to practically nothing. Their boss picked up every other expense: lawn service, pool service, even house cleaning once a month. He didn't even mind that they had three young children and a couple of cats.
    "What if we break something?" Tony asked him.
    "Accidents happen," his boss agreed. "But I know you and Susan, and I can't think of any people I'd trust more. Something breaks, that's what insurance is for. Don't worry about it."
    "Don't you want to sell it?"
    "Hell, no, we designed the damn thing to retire in, and that's not so far away. I like that house. My wife loves it. We'll live in it someday, but it seems a shame to waste it, when a family like yours could be using it."
    And so the McCullens moved in.
    At the time, Tony and Susan were both twenty-seven years old. Natty Mae was four, and the boys, Todd and Troy, were eighteen months. Susan cried for joy when she heard about the boss's offer, she cried the first time she walked into the house, and she cried the day they moved in. It meant a lot more than a free place to live. Now they wouldn't have to pay rent on their apartment, or day care for their kids. She could stay home without feeling guilty because she wasn't bringing home any money. A lot of pressure lifted from Tony's broad shoulders, too.
    But Susan is a natural-born worrier, and their new and astonishing living arrangement didn't ease her mind entirely.
    'This is way above our heads," she fretted to Tony. "How are we ever going to afford the electricity on a place like this? Our kids don't know how to swim yet. What if one of them falls in the pool, or into the canal out back?"
    He said they could live without air conditioning, if they had to, and he'd teach the kids to swim,