Laura Lippman - Butchers Hill

"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."

"Jesus, it's like there's a procedure or something."

"There is, Tess." Tull's voice sounded like the old Tull, the one who was her friend. "You think this little girl is the first baby in Baltimore to have her parents murdered?"

"No, I guess not." With that, Tess reluctantly passed the baby to the policewoman. Laylah slept through the exchange, never opened her eyes through what might be the most momentous event in her young life. Everything that would happen to her would come back to this night, to the decisions made here. What would she think, when she woke up in a strange place, with strange faces all around? How much did babies know, what did they remember? Would she wait one day for her mother to come find her? Was Jackie's daughter waiting for her, did she have some primal memory imprinted upon her that could never be erased? Tess tried to imagine her life without Judith. Infuriating, maddening, critical, wonderful Judith, the eternal martyr. And there was no Judith without Gramma Weinstein.

"Let me give you and your dog a ride home," Tull urged. "It's dark now, I don't like to think of you walking back to Butchers Hill by yourself."

"Esskay looks scary. No one will bother us." Tess felt as inept as Tull, incapable of allowing him to show her any kindness. If he hadn't made that crack about Treasure Teeter, she might have been inclined to take the ride, to make a move toward making up. But he was the one who had asked if she was ready to come over to his side, the clear implication being that his side was right, and hers was wrong.

"Well-call my pager when you get there."

"Okay," she said, softening a little. "Is there any way I can check up on Laylah?"

"Laylah?"

"The baby."

"I'll keep tabs for you, follow up with Social Services, how about that?"

"Okay, I guess. But what if she has to go into foster care? What will happen to her then?"

"I don't know, Tess. I just don't know."

"Yeah."

"I hate to tell you how many guys would have killed the baby, too, just for the hell of it. These guys were pros at least. That little girl is lucky."

"Sure. She's poor, she's an orphan, and she's about to go into the same system where her brother died. How lucky can you get?"

Two blocks from Keisha Moore's house, Tess began to regret turning down Tull's offer to drive her home. It was past nine now, and Fayette was emptier than she had thought. She picked up the pace, and Esskay trotted happily beside her, always glad for an outing. Tess listened to their footsteps-the dog's light clatter, like castanets, the slightly heavier tone of her nubuck loafers. She thought she heard another set of footsteps in just the same cadence, but one tone deeper, suggesting bigger, heavier shoes.

She stopped. Nothing. Probably just the echo of her own steps.

She started again, stopped again. The noise stopped with her. If someone was following her, the person was swallowed up in the shadows behind her, perhaps crouching behind a stoop right now, and or in the alley she had just passed.

"I have a gun," she announced to the night air, to the seemingly empty street.

Good for you , the night and the street seemed to respond. But no one else had anything to say.

Had someone watched Keisha Moore walk this same route last week? She would have been hard to miss, in her red and green outfit and strappy red heels, not quite the same color as her blouse, but close enough. And the bright yellow bag, so awful it was fabulous. What had she carried in that big pocketbook? Obviously not money, and probably not something worth much money, if she was trying to shake Tess down for $119. What had Keisha Moore known? What did she have in common with Treasure Teeter, other than the fact she had talked to Tess?

Sometimes your own mind manages to give you a quick goose. Other than the fact that she had talked to Tess . She had talked to three people in connection with Luther Beale's case, and two of them were dead. At least two of them.