Laura Lippman - Baltimore Blues

She stared at his boots and thought about her unfinished life, wondered if she would get an obituary proper along with a news story. Maybe not. It pissed her off, thinking about how her death would be treated. Another little death, not even good enough to make what the obit writers called the mort du jour . She deserved better. But if she wanted better she'd have to live a little longer and die a little differently.

Still low, she took aim and cracked the oar across the man's shins as hard as she could, just above the rubber boots, then rose with a terrible noise, unlike any sound she had ever made or would ever make again. With her second swing, the flat end of the oar caught him smack in the face, throwing her forward with its motion. Talk about a power piece. Talk about a burst. If she had been able to muster this much adrenaline in a race, Washington College would have had the best women's eight in the country. She swung again, knocking him backward. This time he held on to the gun with both hands as he fell. Good-he didn't have a hand free to grab her.

She leapt over him and headed for the door straight ahead, yanking its cord just enough to raise it twelve inches, allowing her to roll under it. Her attacker was broader; if he wanted to follow, he'd have to stop and raise it farther. Now outside, she looked up the hill to Waterview Avenue, empty at this time of day. Her car keys were back in the locker room. The garage door groaned as it opened wider, its cord tugged by rough, impatient hands. How fast could he run? How well could he shoot? How far could a bullet go?

The phrase "between the devil and the deep blue sea" popped into Tess's head and she looked toward the not-so-deep, not-so-blue Patapsco. Her worse nightmare, once upon a time. It had just been supplanted. She ran at top speed across the pavement, down the ramp and across the splintery dock, flinging herself into the dreaded water. Mouth shut tight, she swam beneath the surface until her skin was burning and her lungs bursting.

She came up about thirty yards from the dock. Was it far enough? She knew nothing of guns or how they worked. She heard two shots and submerged again, turning west, toward the marina and the glass factory, gliding under the water, then coming up for air every twenty yards. Two more shots sounded, but she was almost to the marina now. She stopped at the first boat, a Boston whaler, and grabbed its side. Peering around it, she looked back to the boat house, coughing up the filthy water.

The man was standing on the pier, looking around him. Behind him the boat house was coming to life. Lights were on in the storage room, cars pulling into the lot. A solitary sculler walked toward the water with his oars. The man looked back to the boat house and out to the water one more time, raised the gun to his head, and fired. Even as he pulled the trigger, the sculler had dropped his oars and was running toward him, shouting as if to stop him.

Tess continued to hold on to the Boston whaler. It had a name painted on the stern, one of those whimsical names so many boat owners prefer. Paddy's Wagon , it proclaimed in merry green letters. She was holding on to the boat and still staring at those letters when someone from the shore finally spotted her and sent out a launch. It was Rock. Without saying a word he pried her fingers from the Boston whaler, lifted her into the small motorboat, and took her back.

He tried to lead her away from the body, but Tess wanted to look. It was a surprisingly neat suicide. There was a small black hole at his right temple and a little blood pooling beneath his head. She could smell burned wool where the powder had made contact with the ski mask. Ignoring Rock, shaking off his arm as if he were some frail old man, Tess dropped to her knees by the body and pulled the mask up.

The mouth was slightly open, exposing perfect white teeth. The cheeks were cherubically round, the belly full beneath the windbreaker. It was, even in death, even after attempted murder, still an appealing face. The body still had the jolly girth that made one think of a beardless Santa Claus.

"You are conscientious, Miss Monaghan," Frank Miles had told her more than once. She had thought he meant it as a compliment.

After a tetanus shot and a visit from two homicide cops who wanted to review the morning's events, Tess took to bed-actually, Kitty's bed-with a bad case of paranoia. Twice she bolted to Kitty's turquoise tiled bathroom to vomit up small portions of the Patapsco. Her muscles and joints were stiff and sore, the way they can be with a fever. Exhausted, she tried to sleep. But whenever she started to doze off, she jerked awake, terrified.

Frank Miles was O'Neal's hit man. She had not told the police that; she had not told them anything but the morning's barest facts, for fear she would be transported to Spring Grove and wake up in a ward full of poor William O'Neals whose mothers could not afford alternative justice systems. Miles had killed Abramowitz and probably killed Jonathan. Unquestionably he had wanted to kill her. She would bet anything it was Macauley's gun he was brandishing this morning, stolen from Abramowitz's office. Perhaps he had originally planned to implicate the old man, then Rock had given him a better opportunity.

No, it didn't wash, not even in her weary, confused mind. A professional wouldn't have been lurking in the Lambrecht Building as a custodian, biding his time. He wouldn't have to steal someone's gun. And he certainly wouldn't kill himself when trapped. Of all the deaths and near-deaths, only Jonathan's had been competently handled. Miles had been an amateur. Like her. His only link to Seamon O'Neal was his compulsive neatness. A generous man, he had credited her with solving Abramowitz's murder when she had never been further away. There were probably reams of physical evidence to link him to Abramowitz's murder, but no one had paid attention. After all, he was the custodian, the man who had found the body, the man who scrubbed the bloodstains from the carpet.

Finally she slept, her body surrendering to sleep as it had surrendered to the river. She didn't want to go, but she had to. It was almost six when she woke, and the room was dim. Through the filmy curtains that shrouded Kitty's four-poster, she saw someone waiting for her.

"Kitty?" Her voice came out thick and rusty. She had already taken two showers today, but there were parts of her that would not come clean. The river seemed to coat the insides of her ears, her mouth, and her throat. It clung to her hair, thick and stiff. "Crow?"

Little Cecilia approached the bed, a rolled-up newspaper under one arm, looking impatient as always. She pushed the curtains aside.

"Your aunt said I could wait here for you to wake up, but she'd toss a dictionary at my head if I didn't let you sleep. I've been here almost an hour."

Tess slid down under the covers, pulling them up to her chin. "I'm sorry, Cecilia, I'm not in the mood to help you investigate anything today. Can't you come back later?"

"Who said I need your help? Didn't it ever occur to you I could help you?"

Cecilia unfolded the newspaper. It was the final evening edition, but Tess had not made the front page. In fact she was on the back of the state section, next to the weather map. Maybe if she had died she would have gotten better play.

"A sixty-two-year-old former middle school vice principal shot himself outside the Baltimore Water Resource Center after attacking a woman there," Cecilia read slowly.

A vice principal? She thought Miles was a custodian with the city schools. But that had been her assumption because of his current job. Miles had said only: "I used to be with the school system."

Cecilia continued, picking up speed, a random Baltimore "O" occasionally creeping into her speech. Otherwise her voice was almost accentless, a trick of transformation that had taken far greater effort than cutting her hair and letting it return to its natural color. "Police are now investigating whether Frank Miles may be linked to the recent hit-and-run death of Jonathan Ross, witnessed by the same woman, Theresa Esther Monaghan of Bond Street. Mr. Miles met Ms. Monaghan, who works for lawyer Tyner Gray, when she conducted a routine interview in connection with the Michael Abramowitz murder case." She tossed the paper on the bed.