Laura Lippman - The Last Place

“He told me he takes cash jobs, off the books. You can’t get blood from a turnip, and you can’t get money from a man who doesn’t seem to have any. Can’t attach his income tax refund when he has no reportable income. Can’t take his car or his house when he doesn’t have either one of those.”

“We can get his license suspended,” Banana Yogurt said.

“A guy like Troy Plunkett will drive without one. Look, you can’t even threaten to reduce his visitation, because he doesn’t want any. The guy’s snake-mean. Tiffani’s family just gave up after a while.”

“Still”-Miriam looked thoughtful-“the case fits our purposes. He beat her when they were together. She ended up dead.”

“She was shot,” Tess said, “in a robbery. How are you going to obscure that piece of information?”

“Let us worry about how we present our case. Just bring back reports on the next two homicides. If those prove as futile as the first three, we’ll find more for you to examine. We’re pursuing a worthwhile goal. The facts will fit. We’ll make them fit.”

Something in Miriam’s argument didn’t sit right with Tess. Lord knows, she was against domestic violence. Who wasn’t? But she believed in other things, too. Being truthful, for example, and not bending the truth toward any ideological end or purpose.

“You know, I did a little reading after I signed on with this board,” she began. Everyone looked surprised. The private detective can read. Whitney’s eyebrow was jumping so violently it looked like a facial tic. “And I found an interesting article, based on Justice Department statistics. The number of homicides that are classified as domestic violence haven’t gone down, not significantly, in twenty years.”

“So?” Miriam said. “Doesn’t that prove our point? This is a preventable crime, yet the numbers are not going down.”

“It would prove your point if nothing had been done in the last twenty years. But a lot has been done. Shelters have been built, laws changed. Yet for all this effort, the number of women killed by their partners has held remarkably steady. Why?”

Miriam’s good-humored tolerance of Tess had vanished. “Because we need more laws, more funding. I am tired of reading newspaper stories about men who kill women because they love them too much. That’s not love.”

She actually pounded the table as she spoke, and her husky voice grew shrill. Tess had a quick insight into the consortium’s political problems. If Miriam spoke this way to legislators, she’d never get what she wanted.

“Agreed,” Tess said. “I’ve always said when a brokenhearted man contemplates murder-suicide, he should do the suicide part first. We really are on the same side here. So let me ask you again: How did you get these names?”

Everyone stared at her blankly. That is, the women stared blankly, while Neal Ames gave the impression of someone trying to fake blankness.

“Did the people on this list seek help from you, or from any of your sister organizations, before they died? Is that how you got their names?”

A long silence, broken by Miriam Greenhouse. “Such things are confidential.”

“But you would know,” Tess pointed out. “You would have access.”

“The names were chosen at random,” Neal Ames said, “from online resources-newspaper databases, things like that.”

“So you said before. By an unpaid volunteer. But how does a volunteer end up including Julie Carter on the list? Right name, right age, right address, just no fatal bullet wound to the head. How does that mistake get made?”

“Some people are fallible, Miss Monaghan,” Ames said, his voice nasal with sarcasm. “You, for example, miscalculated your mileage. The going IRS rate is thirty-two and a half cents per mile.”

“Where did you get these names?” Tess repeated. “I can always ask the volunteer directly if you don’t know.”

“No, you may not,” Ames snapped. “You’d only harangue and harass her, and no one deserves that for the simple sin of trying to be helpful. May I remind you there are two more cases on your list? Why don’t you concentrate on those-do the work you’re actually paid for doing? You may yet find out something useful. I’m just sorry there’s no luxury hotel for you to visit up in Cecil County.”

Miriam Greenhouse shot Tess a look that was at once sympathetic but cautionary: He’s an asshole, her face seemed to say, but please don’t pick this fight.

“I’ll let you know what I find out,” she said, crumpling up the white waxy bag from the carry-out sub shop. “And I’ll try to get my mileage right next time.”

Two years ago, a little more actually, Tess had written a letter to herself and mailed it to her Aunt Kitty.

Tess being Tess, the envelope had carried this slightly melodramatic notation: To be opened only in the event of my death.

Kitty being Kitty, she had never opened it or even thought to inquire about it. Nor did she seem particularly curious when Tess stopped by the bookstore after her lunch and asked to check the safe, to see if her letter was still there. Kitty was preoccupied, getting a tutorial from Crow on her own computer system.

“Inventory,” Kitty said absently, running her fingers through her hair until the red curls stood up in strange little shapes all over her head. But Kitty made even bad hair days look good, just as she gave shape and elegance to the baggy, vaguely ethnic outfits she favored. “It’s gotten harder since Tyner computerized the system, although he swears it will be easier once I get used to it. By the way, he said to ask if you were fulfilling the terms of your probation.”

“To the letter.”

Kitty was too distracted to catch the surly tone in Tess’s voice, but Crow wasn’t. Tess refused to meet his questioning gaze. It unnerved her, sometimes, how attuned he was to her every nuance.

“Combination still the same?”

“Sure, sure,” Kitty said. “Now, why is this computer saying I have two hundred and forty copies of Valley of the Dolls? That can’t be right.”

Kitty’s bookstore was in an old drugstore, her living quarters above. Tess took the envelope from the safe and used the elevator, put in just for Tyner, to go to the second-floor kitchen and dining room. She found a beer in the refrigerator and helped herself. Then she helped herself to a wedge of Roquefort, several crackers, and some grapes. The envelope sat on the table, propped against the vintage salt-and-pepper shakers, slender and innocent. She didn’t need to break the seal. She remembered its contents all too well.

The letter told the story of how Luisa O’Neal had made a deal with the devil, or the closest thing to the devil to ever roam the state of Maryland: Tucker Fauquier, a notorious serial killer. O’Neal, working through intermediaries, had persuaded Fauquier to add one more body to his résumé, that of a child killed by her own son. Fauquier had twelve bodies on his ledger and was already facing the death penalty. What was another corpse between friends? Especially when the friend was promising expert legal help and a financial stipend to Tucker’s mother back in western Maryland. Luisa O’Neal had then placed her troubled son in a maximum security psychiatric hospital, where she had promised Tess he would stay until he died. In Luisa O’Neal’s mind, this had been a form of justice.

And perhaps Tess could have seen her point of view if Jonathan Ross hadn’t been killed when he came too close to figuring it all out.

“Hey.”

Crow’s voice so startled her that she jumped, banging her knee on the underside of the table.

“Shit, Crow. Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“Sneak up on you? If you didn’t hear the elevator whining up and down, you’re in another world.” He took a seat next to her. “So, the letter. Still here, after all this time.”