Laura Lippman: Butchers Hill

The third book in the Tess Monaghan series, 1998

I am indebted to the usual suspects: John Roll and Joan Jacobson, my first readers; Mike James, Peter Hermann, Kate Shatzkin, and many more colleagues at the Baltimore Sun shared their advice or support along the way; Holly Selby and Connie Knox deserved to be thanked long ago, but they know me well enough to tolerate my tardiness.

I am grateful to Lee Anderson, the most resourceful searcher I know, and Patti White who introduced us.

I also want to thank every worker and volunteer who ever fielded a question from me about homelessness, poverty, child care, foster care, adoption, or welfare. You make Baltimore -and the world-a better place.

Five years ago …

He was deep in his favorite dream, the one about Annie, when he thought he heard the scratchy sound of pebbles on his window pane. Snick, snick, snick . No, he had been the one who had thrown the pebbles against Annie's window, so many years ago, back on Castle Street. Then he would sing, when he saw her pull back the curtain: " Buffalo girl, won't you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight." And she did.

What a skinny, long-legged girl she had been, creeping down the fire escape in her bare feet, high-heeled shoes stuck in the pockets of her dress, bright red birds sticking out their long necks. "Patch pockets," she had said when he had marveled at them. He marveled at everything about her-the white rickrack she sewed along the hem and neckline of her dress to give it what she called pizzazz, her heart-shaped face, the hollow at the base of her throat, where he hung a heart-shaped locket.

No matter how many times she crawled down that fire escape to meet him, she always hesitated on that final step, about a half-story above the ground, as if she were scared of falling. But he knew she was a little scared of him, of loving him, of what it meant for a young, high-spirited girl to love a man so serious and solemn. She would hang, the toes of her bare feet curling in fear as she swung above the street, and he would laugh, he couldn't help himself, at that skinny long-legged girl swinging above Castle Street. His Annie. "The prince is supposed to take a girl to a castle, but you already live on one," he used to tell her. "Where am I going to take you, Princess?" He promised to take her to Europe, to Jamaica, to New York City. In the end he had taken her the five blocks to Fairmount Avenue, with a week at Virginia Beach every August.

Snick, snick, snick .

But that was forty years ago and Annie was dead, almost ten years now, and he was alone in their bed. The little burst of noise at his window must be a tree branch, or sleet on the pane. But there were precious few trees on Fairmount Avenue and it was early June, June third. Even half-asleep he knew the calendar to the day, knew which numbers had come in, because he always wrote them on that day's date. 467 on the Pick Three, 4526 on the Pick Four, which he had straight for $350. His lucky day. But that was yesterday. He had already collected on the ticket down at the Korean's. He would have to check his dream book in the morning, see what the number was for a lost love, for a heart, for the color red.

Snick, snick, snick . Then a thicker sound, one he recognized immediately, the now all too familiar sound of breaking glass. Window glass, straight below him-no, a windshield this time. The sound shattered what was left of his sleep, his dream, his Annie.

Those damn kids, the ones from over on Fayette. Well, no more , he resolved, then said it out loud. "No more."

He kept his gun in his bottom bureau drawer, in a nest of single socks he held on to, because their mates might show up one day. They made for good cleaning rags, too, slip one over your hand and dust the woodwork. The bullets were with his never-worn cufflinks, in the tiny drawers on either side of the old-fashioned chifforobe. He loaded the gun with care, not rushing. After all, they weren't rushing. When those kids got started, they took their sweet time, knowing no one would call the police, and it wouldn't matter if they did. Everyone in the neighborhood, so scared of those little kids, and the cops so indifferent it could make you cry. "It's just property," they said, every time he called. Not their property, though. Just his car, his radio, his windows, his front door. His, his, his.

He moved slowly down the staircase in the dark, huffing a little. Lord, he was getting fat, he'd have to start putting skim milk on his cereal. Nasty stuff, skim milk, not much more than white water. But a man had to do what a man had to do. John Wayne had said that, he was pretty sure. Saw that movie with Annie in the old Hippodrome theater, or maybe the Mayfair. One of those. It was hard to hold on to your memories with any exactitude the way the city kept tearing things down. And the things the city didn't tear down just fell down all by themselves. He and Annie had gone dancing afterward, he was sure of that, over on Pennsylvania Avenue.

When he came out on the stoop, the children were too engrossed in their nightly game of destruction to pay him any heed. They dragged sticks along the sides of the parked cars, methodically kicked in the headlamps and banged the fenders with rocks. Eventually, he knew, they would break all the windows, then steal the radios, if the radios were worth stealing. Those who didn't have a good sound system in their cars were rewarded with ripped upholstery, garbage on the floor, dog shit on the seats.

The marble steps were cool and slick beneath his bare feet. He missed the bottom one, falling to the sidewalk with an embarrassing dull, heavy sound, a too-ripe apple dropping to the ground. Startled, the children looked up from their work. When they saw it was him, they laughed.

"You go inside, old man," said the skinny one, the one who always did all the talking. "You need your sleep so you'll be ready for all that napping you have to do tomorrow."

The short, chubby one laughed at this great wit, and the others joined in. There were five of them, all foster kids living with that young Christian couple. Nice as could be, well intentioned but they couldn't do a damn thing with these kids. Couldn't even keep them in nice clothes. Just kept taking kids in and watching helplessly as they ran wild. The skinny one, the chubby one, the boy-and-girl twins, and the new one, the scrawny one who always needed someone to tell him to wipe his nose. Yeah, that was the one thing these anticrime streetlights were good for, letting you get a good look at the criminals as they went about their work.

"This is gonna stop," he said. "It's gonna stop right now."

They laughed even harder at this, at this pitiful old man sitting on the ground, telling them what to do. Then they unloaded everything they had in their hands, pitching rocks, sticks, and soda cans at him. He didn't try to cover his face or head, just sat there and let their trash shower down on him. When all the rocks and sticks had been flung, when they had shouted the last crude thing they could think of-it was then, only then, that he showed them the gun.