Butchers Hill (24 page)

Keisha's mouth was a round little
O of rage, although no sound came out. If she hadn't been
wearing her Sunday best, she might have flown across the desk at Tess.
Instead, she snapped her purse shut, stamped her feet, stamped her feet
some more. Tess ignored her dramatics, scrawling a set of numbers on a
piece of paper.

"There's a man named
Spike Orrick," she said, passing the paper to Keisha.
"Call him at this number, and say Tesser sent you.
It's important that you refer to me as Tesser,
that's how he'll know I gave you this number.
He'll get you the furniture you need by nightfall and some
food, too. He may even throw in a new television set, or a stereo, if
he has one handy."

Keisha looked at the piece of paper
skeptically. "We talking new furniture, or some secondhand
shit?"

"It will be as nice as whatever
you picked out, probably nicer," Tess assured her.
"And Keisha?"

"Yeah?"

"Why don't you have
Spike throw in a changing table? On me."

T
he
Butcher of Butchers Hill was back. With a vengeance, one might say.
Certainly, that was what every single television reporter in Baltimore
felt obligated to say, as if they were all working from the same
handbook of tasteless clichés.

Tess and Kitty watched the six
o'clock news together that night in Kitty's
kitchen, clicking from channel to channel in order to see the same
five-year-old footage unspool again and again. As Tyner had predicted,
the police didn't have enough evidence to charge Luther
Beale. As Tess had suspected, that didn't keep the media from
going hog-wild with the story. On each of Baltimore's four
early evening newscasts, another solemn face beneath another fluffy
head of hair recounted the same scant details: Beale questioned in
murders of teenage twins who had testified against him. No charges
filed. At least one resourceful reporter then resorted to the
time-honored punt of journalists everywhere: the man on the street,
live and uncensored.

"I think we need more people like
Luther Beale," said a balding white man identified as Joe of
Remington, a scrappy, lower-middle class neighborhood. "I
mean, who did he kill? Three punks. A delinquent, a whore, and a
druggie. This city could use a few more Luther Beales."

Words to warm Martin Tull's heart,
Tess thought. He wasn't the primary on the case, thank God,
but she knew he wouldn't give up on trying to get her to talk
to the police. Tull had a zealot's conviction when it came to
Luther Beale, and the case seemed to become more personal for him every
day.

On camera, Joe kept speaking, his features
pinched in an uglier and uglier rage, but with voice-over narration
from the anchor substituting for his other thoughts on the case. You
didn't have to be a particularly good lip-reader to make out
the non-FCC sanctioned words flying from Joe's mouth, along
with a few choice racial epithets. Another drawback of doing
man-on-the-street interviews. Sometimes, the man said what he really
thought.

"Now what's the point of
giving air time to someone like that?" Kitty asked, genuinely
puzzled.

"Don't you know,
that's their version of providing ‘both'
sides of the story," Tess said. "On the one hand,
killing is wrong. On the other hand, what if you kill the right people?
Jesus Christ. Have you noticed no one is entertaining the notion Beale
didn't do it? At least Tyner was smart enough to keep Beale
away from reporters. If it gets out he doesn't think he
killed Donnie Moore, he's going to look like a
lunatic."

"How can you work for him if you
don't believe him?"

"I believe he didn't
kill the Teeter twins. I believe he saw a car and heard something the
night Donnie was killed. Did someone else shoot Donnie Moore? I
don't know and it's not important. For what
it's worth, I believe he believes in his innocence, but
Luther Beale is a man who likes to be right. Over the past five years,
he may have gone over and over that night in his mind until
he's found a way to clear himself. It doesn't
matter. They're not going to try him again for the death of
Donnie Moore."

"It seems to me everyone is
overlooking one possibility in this," Kitty said, switching
the television to a cooking show on one of the cable channels. Kitty
didn't like to cook any more than Tess did, but she liked to
watch. "This could be a coincidence. A hideous, totally
random event."

"What do you mean?"

"Destiny had a habit of getting
into strange men's cars, right? Treasure just had a habit.
They lived high-risk lives. If you have a sister who hang-glides and a
brother who sky-dives, would it be so unusual if each died within a few
weeks of each other? It would be strange and stunning, worth a story in
a newspaper, but it wouldn't be unheard of. You read about
leukemia clusters, strange concentrations of cancer cases in certain
places, like the one up in Massachusetts, but they can never quite
prove the link. I think there are sorrow clusters, too, unexplained
critical masses of tragedy."

Tess considered this. Kitty's
logic was screwy yet appealing. But she didn't buy it, even
if a Baltimore jury might.

"I think the two deaths
are
connected. Treasure said Destiny had gone somewhere, and when she came
back, they were going to be rich. He said she had gone to Burma. Maybe
that's some new street term for selling drugs."

"I think Burma's called
Myanmar now."

"Do you expect some kind of
geographic exactness in the local drug trade? Look, Keisha Moore told
me today about being a ‘mule,' an unwitting
deliverywoman for some dealer. I wonder if Destiny got caught up in
something like that, and someone killed Treasure, thinking his
drug-addled brain could hold onto enough details to be
dangerous."

"I like my theory,"
Kitty said stubbornly. "Sorrow clusters."

"So it does," Tess said.
"Shit, look at the time. If I'm late for my second
night of telemarketing, the boss will have my head. I thought having my
own business meant not answering to anyone. But clients expect far more
than my bosses ever did."

"It helped," Kitty said,
"that you worked for me and Uncle Donald."

Tess provided dinner for that
night's round of calls, carry-out from a storefront more
notable for its ambitions than its accomplishments. Butchers Hill Hot
Food Hot served pizza, Italian entrees, subs and
burgers—"American sandwiches" in the
parlance of its menu—along with passable Indian food. It was
the latter Tess had chosen, ordering an array of samosas, nan, and a
double portion of rogan josh. She also had asked the delivery boy to
tuck four bottles of Kingfisher Beer in with the order.

"Look, I need a beer tonight,
okay?" she said, when she caught Jackie's
disapproving look.

"I didn't say
anything," Jackie said, examining the foil containers, the
plastic lids fogged over from steam. "From Fresh Fields to
the Grease Pits in twenty-four hours. For all you know that's
greyhound meat in that so-called lamb dish."

Esskay whimpered, not because she understood
Jackie's slur, but because she adored rogan josh and seldom
got more than a smear of sauce and a few grains of rice.

"It's better than that
fish-and-tofu abomination you brought in here last night. Do you really
like that food? Or do you just think you should like it?"

"You know, I think I'll
have one of those beers after all. But whatever you do, don't
eat or drink while you're on a call. It's too
tacky."

They had started with a sense of excitement,
but the hours dragged slowly this time, each call putting them further
away from the possibility of an answer. Twenty-four hours ago, victory
had seemed so imminient. Even skeptical Tess had become convinced that
Jackie's systematic approach would lead them to her daughter.
But tonight's calls yielded no new clues. Not a single
Caitlin. Not even a thirteen-year-old Kate or Katie. With the end so
tantalizingly close, the work became dull and frustrating. Tess raced
too quickly through her rehearsed lines, only to repeat them for
bewildered listeners. Jackie become impatient and imperious, bullying
her Johnsons as if she suspected them of lying about their
children's names.

At 9:55, when Tess punched in the number for
Wyler Johnston and heard the quavering voice on the end of the line,
she simply hung up.

"That's it,"
she said. "She's not out there."

"You didn't even ask
that household any of the questions," Jackie protested,
reaching for Tess's sheet of numbers.

Tess grabbed the paper back from her,
tearing it, not caring that she was tearing it: "He sounded
as if he was ninety-five. According to the criss-cross, he's
lived at that address for forty-five years. Do you really think
he's your daughter's adoptive father?"

"He could be her grandfather. And
there are still people we haven't made contact
with." Jackie began shuffling through her papers.
"Maybe we should broaden our search to the whole metro area,
canvass anyone with a name close to Johnson and Johnston. Or it could
be Jones. Willa Mott's memory isn't perfect, you
know, you said so yourself. No one remembers everything just
right."

"Jackie—"

Jackie put her hands over her eyes, although
Tess suspected it was her ears she really wanted to cover, like a child
who chants over words she can't bear to hear.

"Maybe someone else can help
you." She tried to sound kind and caring, instead of just
tired and frustrated. "I don't know. But I feel
like I'm taking your money under false pretenses at this
point. We're not getting anywhere here, and I don't
know where else to go. Sure, there was a chance that Willa Mott
remembered the name right, that the family who took your daughter in
was right where they always were, and that they named her Caitlin. But
it was always a long-shot. People don't stay in the same
place for thirteen years anymore. Maybe the people at the Adoption
Rights group have some ideas, but I'm fresh out."

"They don't, you know
they don't. The agency was the only lead we have."

"Then you need a private
investigator who knows more about this kind of work than I do. The
truth is, the other case I'm working on is going to take more
and more time. There might be criminal charges, and I'm in
pretty deep. You'd be better off working with someone else,
someone who can give you first priority."

"No. I want
you
to help me."

They had saved two of the Kingfishers,
planning to drink them in a triumphant toast. Tess opened both now and
began to pour one in Jackie's glass, but Jackie took the
bottle from her and drank straight from it, just as Tess always did.

"Look, it's great that
you wanted to give a break to a new businesswoman. But
there's got to be some other female private investigator
starting out on her own. Go to her."

Jackie had already downed more than a third
of her beer. She stared into the bottle as if her daughter might be at
the bottom. Tess was remembering how adamant Jackie had been that first
day, how sure of herself.
Why did you choose
Keyes Investigations? You were in the paper, weren't you?
Something about shooting someone or someone shooting you?
Yes, she had been in the paper quite a bit, but not for being a private
detective. The announcement of the agency's opening, a
paragraph in the Baltimore Business Journal, had been a brief item,
using the more formal version of her name, Theresa Esther Monaghan. You
had to be paying close attention to link the two articles, to know that
Tess the near-shooting victim was now the near-entrepreneur.

And you had to be paying really close
attention to know of Tess's fondness for chocolate malts, a
detail Jackie had known before Tess mentioned it. How can you know what
kind of dark smear a kid has on her face in a black-and-white photo?
You can know it's chocolate, perhaps, but you can't
know it's malt. Yet Jackie had always known.

"It wasn't just a woman
you wanted, was it? It's me. It had to be me. Why
Jackie?"

Jackie Weir raised her eyes from the bottle
and looked at Tess helplessly, as if she could no longer speak. Then
she shifted her gaze to the wall, to that photo. The crying girl on the
flying rabbit.

"I knew you," she said
at last. "When we were younger."

"Were we at Western
together?" Jackie could have been a senior when she was a
freshman.

"No, at the drugstore,"
she said, pointing her beer bottle at the photo. "Not that
one, the big one, the one on Bond Street."

"The Weinstein flagship on Bond
and Shakespeare? That's my Aunt Kitty's
bookstore."

"It wasn't then. Not
when I was eighteen. Not when you were fifteen. Not when you used to
come in after school and drink chocolate malteds, and talk to your
grandfather about your day. Your hair was usually in a long, shiny
plait down your back and you were so thin, then, almost scrawny. That
must have been when you were running all the time."

"It was. But I
don't—" She stopped, embarrassed.

"Don't remember me?
There's no reason you would. I was just the girl in the back,
flipping burgers. I wore an apron, and a hairnet, and those big
glasses. But I could hear you. You told your grandfather about the good
grades you were getting and the parties you were going to and what this
boy or that boy had said to you. It was like watching a rerun of those
old Patty Duke shows, listening to your life."

"Funny, my adolescence seemed more
like a sitcom based on Kafka to me."

Jackie heard her, but she wasn't
having any of it, any more than she had let Tess see herself as some
poor frail female about to plunge through the tattered safety net.
"Then last March, I read about you in the paper. Your picture
was there, with that dog. Like I said, you look just the same. Later,
when I saw you had opened up a private detective agency, I knew I had
to hire you. I knew when it became difficult, or rough, you
couldn't drop me, like the first detective did, or spend my
money without getting results, like the second one did. You had to help
me. You had to."