Butchers Hill (28 page)

"It's all part of the
experience."

"It just reminds me to start a
retirement fund so I'm not waiting tables at
ninety-seven."

"You haven't done that
yet? Girl, you really need to get with it. I hate to be the one to tell
you, but this is your life. You may be waiting for something to happen,
but it already has. Your life is here."

They fell silent, Jackie fiddling with her
tomato aspic, Tess eating a Charlotte Russe, because it was what she
really wanted and she didn't see the need of faking her way
through a BLT or a tuna salad for the privilege of dessert. She was a
big girl now, she could eat what she wanted, when she wanted.

"You sure you don't
still have an eating disorder?" Jackie asked.

"This is proof positive that
I'm cured."

Another awkward silence. She and Jackie had
just been getting to the point where they could almost speak, instead
of fencing clumsily with one another. But since Jackie's
revelation—was it really just four nights ago?—Tess
could barely make eye contact with the other woman. Long disdainful of
the modern mania for apologies, she now saw some sense in it. She
wanted to apologize to Jackie for everything—for her
grandfather, for being born poor and black, which had led to her job at
Weinstein's Drugs and her treatment at the hands of Samuel
Weinstein. That Jackie didn't see herself as a victim was
further proof she was, to Tess's way of thinking. Like
someone with Stockholm Syndrome, she had fallen in love with her
oppressor. Well, not in love, but something like it. A form of bondage
she had confused with love.

"I always forget,"
Jackie said, putting down her fork. "The Women's
Industrial Exchange is famous for its tomato aspic, so I order it. But
I don't actually like tomato aspic."

Tess picked at her Charlotte Russe. Either
it wasn't as good as she remembered, or else everything was
beginning to taste like sawdust.

At least the media circus had finally
decamped outside Tess's office. With no charges immediately
forthcoming against Luther Beale, the television reporters had decided
to pursue other scenarios, all tricked out with libel-proof question
marks. Is there a serial killer in East Baltimore? Tess had heard that
rhetorical question posed just this morning, as she dressed for work.
The answer, of course, was no, unless one wanted to change the
definition of serial killer, but no one actually cared about answers in
the case of Luther Beale.

It was a relief to sit quietly at her desk
in the twilight, to be free for a few minutes of the endless visitors
who had paraded through here over the past two weeks. Beale, Jackie,
Detective Tull, Keisha Moore, Sal Hawkings. So many people desiring her
help, so few willing to pay for it. At least Beale and Jackie had given
her money.

But they hadn't been much more
honest than anyone else. Beale and Jackie had revealed their true
motives only when necessary. Sal had wanted to find Eldon, but she
still didn't understand why that involved coming in through
her bathroom window. Well, he wouldn't be visiting again any
time soon. The bathroom window had a spanking brand-new deadbolt and
was now nailed in place. Tess believed in overkill.

Now Keisha Moore, she had been
straightforward. She had wanted money. For a new dining room set. She
had even been precise about the amount, $119. But then, lies were
always precise. That was one of the secrets of "the women who
walked," piling on the details until you were dizzy, or just
bored enough to pay them to leave you alone. They really wanted cash,
and not for the things they claimed to need. Maybe Keisha had been so
angry at Tess's bait-and-switch with the furniture because
there was no dining room set, no down payment coming due. Maybe it had
been another ploy to get cash, quick. But why? She had been dressed up,
and the oversized purse she had carried was big enough to be an
overnight bag.

Keisha had come to Tess because she had
heard something, something about Beale and Destiny and money. It always
came back to that for Keisha: My son is dead. What's it
worth? But what had she heard? How much did she really know?

Tess grabbed Esskay's leash off
its peg by the door and tucked her gun in the outside pocket on her
knapsack. It wasn't the safest ten blocks between Butchers
Hill and Keisha's rowhouse, but the almost summer-sky was
still light and Esskay could look intimidating from a distance. They
took off at a semitrot, although the dog kept slowing down to enjoy the
strange smells of an unfamiliar route.

Tess could hear Laylah's cries a
block away. The baby sounded frantic, but exhausted, as if she had been
screaming for hours and no one had come. Great. Keisha was back to her
old ways, despite all her promises and assurances.

"She ain't been crying
that long," said an old woman sitting on the stoop next door,
as Tess charged up Keisha's steps. "It's
good for her. Keisha spoils that baby something awful."

Laylah was having trouble catching her
breath now, so her cries came out in little stutters, weaker and
weaker. Tess pounded on the door, then brought her leg up and kicked
it, flat-footed. It buckled slightly, but held, apparently the
best-made door in all of East Baltimore.

"You got a warrant?"
asked the Dr. Spock of the stoop. Tess ignored her, running around to
the alley in back. Keisha's house had a small square of
concrete for a backyard, surrounded by a chain-link fence. The gate was
fastened with a padlock, but the fence was only waist-high. Tess hooked
Esskay's leash to the gate, then climbed over it. The kitchen
door was open, the storm door pulled to and locked. Tess glanced
through its murky panes, seeing nothing. She thought she could force it
by sheer will, but this door also held fast, no matter how she yanked
at it or kicked. She ended up using her gun to break the lower pane of
glass and reached in to depress the button that held the door in place.

She found Laylah in a small room at the top
of the stairs, sitting in a wooden crib from the fifties, the
pre-Consumer Safety kind with wooden slats and toxic decoupages of
pastel animals with lunatic grins and silky eyelashes. Tentatively,
Tess reached for her, thinking a stranger might make the baby more
hysterical. But the little girl dug her tiny fingers into her arms, as
if Tess were a log floating by in a flash flood.

Still, she kept crying. No wonder. Laylah
stank. Tess held the baby at arm's length, looking at her
dubiously. She hadn't changed a diaper since her baby-sitting
days, almost fifteen years gone. But how hard could it be? She found a
fresh diaper and a box of wipes in the bathroom, then looked around for
a place to change her. There was the changing table, Keisha must have
called Uncle Spike after all. Diaper-changing was easier than Tess
remembered. Thank God for disposable diapers with sticky tabs, one of
the great technical innovations of the age.

Laylah continued to cry, although the tenor
had changed slightly. She wasn't as panicky, now she sounded
adamant, demanding. It was the same tone Esskay's whining
noises took on when supper was overdue. Tess carried Laylah
downstairs—there
was
a new dining room set, she hadn't noticed it in her mad rush
upstairs—and rummaged through the kitchen. A can of formula,
which she didn't have a clue how to prepare, a bottle with
what she hoped was apple juice sitting in the refrigerator. Laylah
sucked, temporarily appeased.

But what to do now? If she called Social
Services, Laylah would be in foster care within hours. Surely, that
would be preferable to leaving her in Keisha's
"care." Still, maybe Keisha had a good excuse. She
hadn't been lying about the furniture. Maybe she had left the
baby with someone who had wandered off, her careless sister-in-law, or
some neighborhood kid. Tess paced the empty dining room, rocking
Laylah. Her repertoire of baby-care skills was pretty much depleted. If
Keisha didn't show up soon, she'd have to call DSS
or the cops.

Laylah's skin seemed cold and
clammy. Was the early evening air too cool for a baby? Holding the baby
on her hip, Tess headed back upstairs in search of a T-shirt. Nothing
in Laylah's room except a pile of dirty clothes in a small
hamper. The bathroom held only the diaper pail. Using her foot, she
pushed open the final door, figuring it was Keisha's room.

She had not figured on Keisha being in there.

Her amber eyes were open, a little stunned
looking, as if she had just enough time to register what was happening
to her. The man lying across her—had he tried to shield her,
or was he trying to bolt from the bed when the shots came? His gun was
on the floor, just inches from his stiffening fingers, his back ripped
out by the gunshots, which must have passed through Keisha, too,
judging by the blood. Quite a bit of blood, but it wasn't
enough apparently. The killer had fired twice more—through
the back of the man's head, and then into Keisha's
forehead. Just to be sure.

Tess was suddenly aware of Laylah, still
balanced on her hip and cooing, reaching her pudgy baby arms toward her
dead mother.

"T
his
is familiar," Martin Tull said. "You, me, a murder
scene."

Tess was sitting in Keisha Moore's
kitchen, still holding Laylah, who had finally fallen asleep in her
arms despite the excitement around her—the police and
technicians wandering through the house, the medical examiner loading
up her parents' bodies. Looking down, Tess realized she never
had found a T-shirt for the baby. She held her a little closer.

"I suppose you think
it's Beale," she said.

"I suppose you
don't." He was stiff and cool, much less friendly
than he would have been if she had been a stranger. She knew, she had
been a stranger once. She remembered how kind he had been to her the
first time they had met, how empathetic. He hadn't believed a
word she had said, but he had listened to her babbling without
condescension.

"Are you going to take Luther
Beale in again?"

"Someone's headed over
there right now." Something in Tull's face seemed
to give a little. "But you know what? I don't think
this has anything to do with him. Looks like an execution.
I'm sure we'll find the boyfriend was involved in
the local business."

Not going to be the
same fool twice
. "Keisha Moore said he
wasn't."

"You coming over to my side, now?
Ready to talk to me about your client?"

Tess sniffed the top of Laylah's
head. It smelled sweet, as if the apple juice she had downed was coming
through her pores.

"Well, the death of Donnie
Moore's mother is as good an excuse as any to bring Beale in,
see if he has anything to say. Or to confess."

"He's tougher than you
are."

"Yeah, he is," Tull
said, and she looked up from Laylah's head, startled that he
would grant Beale any credit, no matter how grudging. "You
know how tough you have to be to kill three kids in cold blood? Damn
tougher than me, that's for sure."

"He didn't kill three
kids."

"How many did he kill, Tess? How
many does it have to be before you admit he's everything I
told you he was? Is one not enough? Try two. What if it's
five? You tell me. Do you really believe he didn't shoot
Donnie Moore, or just that he didn't shoot him on purpose? Do
you believe he killed Treasure but not Destiny, or vice
versa?"

Esskay cried mournfully off in the distance.
She had been locked in the back seat of Tull's police car to
keep her from wreaking havoc on the crime scene. "Or
what's left of the crime scene," one lab tech had
muttered, as if Tess should have known she was in a house with two
fresh corpses as she changed diapers and scrounged for apple juice.

"Did anyone hear the
shots?" she asked Tull.

"Neighbors say now they think they
did, but they didn't call it in because they thought it was
back in the alley. They don't always call in shots, not
around here."

"Whose fault is that?"

"Theirs for shooting at each other
all the time. See, I can play ugly cop as good as anyone, Tess. Is that
what you want? Is that what you think of me?"

"It's the way
you've been acting for some time now."

"It's the way
I've been acting since you got mixed up with Luther Beale.
And I was right about that, wasn't I, Tess? Look at it this
way. If you hadn't taken Luther Beale's case, you
wouldn't have ever talked to Keisha Moore and you
wouldn't be here right now. Wouldn't you like to
have been spared that, at least? I mean, bad enough to have the death
of Treasure Teeter on your conscience—"

"Are we done here?"

"Not quite."

A policewoman came in and held her arms out
to Tess. For a moment, she wasn't sure what she wanted. When
she realized it was Laylah, she held the baby tighter.

"Don't worry,"
the policewoman said. She was startlingly young, even by
Tess's standards. She couldn't be more than
twenty-one or twenty-two. "The baby's going to be
fine."

The policewoman had a large diaper bag,
packed and ready to go. Apparently she had been able to find the
clothes that had eluded Tess. But Tess still wasn't ready to
admit she could be more competent than she.

"What are you going to do with
her?"

"We'll put her in a
temporary placement tonight, then figure out if one of her family
members can take her in."

Tess thought of what she knew of
Keisha's family—the addict Tonya, the never-seen
sister-in-law who had dumped her children on Keisha as the mood struck
her.

"And if they
can't?"

"She'll stay in foster
care. Don't worry, we know how to do this."