Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

The voice, instantly familiar to Tess, came from somewhere in the middle of the pack. It was a woman’s voice, clear and sweet, with the kind of nonaccent that came from working hard to eradicate a stubborn one. Yet it wasn’t a newscaster’s voice. It had a slight excited quaver, and it was rapid, too rapid for broadcast. Tess craned her neck to see the speaker, but all she caught was a glimpse of short dark hair and a long delicate neck.

Rainer appeared to recognize the woman, however. His face flushed, he wagged a furious finger at his questioner. “This is for press, not agitators. You got no standing, no standing here at all.”

“Fine. Then I’ll let the reporter from the Alternative repeat my question, which you’ve refused to answer despite his repeated requests.”

A husky male voice obligingly shouted out, “Have you been told your son may have been the victim of a hate crime?”

“You don’t have to answer that,” Rainer barked at the Hilliards, scaring them so that they backed away from the microphones. “It’s not true, anyway.”

The media types began to buzz and stir, although Herman Peters simply looked impatient. He was ahead of everyone else on this story, Tess realized; he had already investigated-and rejected, or at least tabled- this strange and tantalizing tangent. The Hilliards were more confused than ever, glancing between Rainer and the roomful of reporters they wanted to appease.

“Hate crime,” Mrs. Hilliard said at last. “I’m not so sure what that is. I mean, if someone kills you on purpose, they pretty much hate you, right?”

They don’t know, Tess realized, as an awkward silence fell. Reporters understood the significance because the questioner was from the Alternative, a local paper for the gay community, but Bobby Hilliard’s parents were completely in the dark.

“Good point,” Rainer said, clasping Mrs. Hilliard’s shoulder. “Good point.” He was really only 99.9 percent an asshole. Unfortunately for Tess, she was never going to benefit from that 0.1 percent of niceness. She wondered if he would try to bring her in for questioning, after seeing her here.

The woman’s voice rose up again; Tess was close to placing it, but the speaker’s identity still eluded her. It was familiar, but only as a memory.

“For those members of the media who are interested in the story that’s not being told here, local activists will be available later today on Monument Street at Mount Vernon Square, west of Charles.”

“You got a permit?” Rainer challenged.

“We don’t need a permit to hold a press conference,” the girlish voice replied evenly. “Do you have a permit?”

Undone by her curiosity, past caring if she came into Rainer’s sights again, Tess worked her way through the throng of reporters, finally catching a glimpse of the speaker’s profile.

Yes, she knew the woman who had spoken, although not as well as she once thought she would.

Cecilia. Cecilia Cesnik.“ Tess had hoped to catch up with her casually, to create the illusion their paths had crossed accidentally. But Cecilia had barreled out of the roped-off press area in such a rush that Tess had practically chased her down Fayette and onto President Street, overtaking her outside the garish facade of Port Discovery.

Cecilia Cesnik had always been in a rush.

She stopped and turned at the sound of her name, smiling warily. The wariness did not fade when she recognized who had called after her.

“Tess Monaghan,” she said, after a beat. It was not a pause to grope for a name, but a moment of reflection, as if she weren’t sure what to say or if she wanted to say anything at all. “What can I do for you?”

That was the assumption in the world Cecilia had chosen: Everyone always had an agenda. After all, she did.

In looks, she was remarkably unchanged from the young law student Tess had met two years ago, when they were both rearranging their assumptions about what their lives might be. Her face was, if anything, more delicate, her dark hair still a short feathery cap that enhanced her birdlike appearance. Cecilia had been Cece then, a scared but determined East Baltimore girl who had decided she wanted more from life than a neighborhood boy and a march down the aisle in a twenty-pound white dress, followed by a reception in her father’s tavern and sixty years of not much else.

But Cece had been more tentative, too, her assertive-ness waxing and waning. This diffident manner had been dropped, along with the nickname.

“You haven’t changed much,” Tess observed, referring to the surface details.

Cecilia bristled. Tess had a feeling she would have taken equal offense if the opposite opinion had been offered. “You’re one to talk. Don’t you ever get a yearning to cut off all that hair?”

“I get a trim every six months, or when the tip of my braid passes my bra strap. Whichever comes first. It’s kind of like Jiffy Lube, three months or three thousand miles. I should have one of those little stickers on my mirror.”

“I’d hate to be a slave to my hair.”

“Long hair is as easy as short, when you wear it like this.”

“Huh.”

Cecilia was an extremist about hair. Getting rid of what she had called her Highlandtown hair-a cascading fountain of teased dyed curls-had been the beginning of her transformation. The Baltimore accent had not been shed so easily, but it came off too, eventually.

The final step had been going home one night and telling her widowed father there would be no son-in-law, but how did he feel about daughters-in-law? Mr. Cesnik had rallied admirably. The last time Tess had seen Cecilia, she had been clerking for Tyner Gray between her second and third years of law school, and Tess had been diving into Dumpsters throughout Highlandtown, trying to confirm Mr. Cesnik’s suspicions that his competitors in the tavern trade were serving frozen pierogies and passing them off as fresh.

But that had been the summer before last. Cecilia must have graduated by now, assuming she hadn’t been so consumed by her various causes that she had stopped going to classes.

“So, you’re a lawyer?”

Cecilia nodded. “Passed the bar on my first try. I’m working for a small firm that does mostly civil work. This is strictly extracurricular.”

“And this is-”

“I work with a local advocacy group for gays and lesbians. It’s pretty ad hoc, not as organized as ACT UP. We meet on Sundays in a little office down at the Medical Arts building, swinging into action when we have something specific we want to address: bills before the City Council or the General Assembly. Or a threat to our community, such as this.”

“I’m sorry,” Tess said, shaking her head, feeling dense. Cecilia had always had that effect on her. She was one of those people who could never remember that others didn’t have access to her every thought, who sped ahead, impatient with those who didn’t keep up with lightning-quick logic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Okay, a hate crime. And Bobby Hilliard was the victim? Someone stalked him, following him to Poe’s grave and killing him because he was gay?”

Nothing made Cecilia more impatient than a question she couldn’t answer. She flapped a hand, as if to wave off an approaching panhandler.

“We don’t know everything just yet. We do have a tip that police are looking into this crime in conjunction with the attack on Shawn Hayes in his Mount Vernon home, right around New Year’s. Do you know him? He sits on a lot of the artsy boards. He was beaten so badly he’s in intensive care. He’ll probably die the moment his family takes him off life support.”

Cecilia’s voice was flat, almost emotionless. Her passion was for the big picture, not puny individuals.