Butchers Hill

by Laura Lippman

  "So I have a half-sibling."

  "Yeah, a sister."

  "I always wanted a sister," Judith said, then smiled. "Well, that was inane."

  "We saw her today. I knew it had upset Jackie, but I guess I didn't know just how freaked out she was."

  Tess was on Northern Parkway now. If she had been in her office, or her apartment, she could have made Roland Park in fifteen minutes. But her parents' house couldn't have been much farther away. If you thought of the Baltimore Beltway as a clock, it was akin to driving from seven o'clock to midnight.

  "Edgevale is on the west side of Roland Park," her mother said. "It runs off Falls Road. But how will we find it without the number?"

  "I know Jackie's car."

  It was dark now, and fireflies flickered on and off as they drove down Edgevale. Whatever Jackie was doing, she couldn't make much noise, for sound would carry easily across these lush, hushed lawns. Unlike Keisha Moore's embattled neighbors, Roland Park residents would never let a gunshot go unreported, assuming they realized it was a gunshot, instead of a car backfiring. Then again, the houses were set just far enough apart to suggest a certain reticence on the part of the owners, a surface neighborliness that didn't go too far beyond mimed "hellos" at the curb. Such places often had an unspoken agreement not to be too nosy. A woman could be beaten here, or a child, and the crime, if discovered, would only prompt the usual banalites. "He was a quiet man." Yet just let a young black man try walking in the neighborhood and the police would be summoned at once.

  Jackie, however, had the right accessories to slip under that radar. Her white Lexus was parked in the driveway of a stucco mansion at the end of the street. It blocked a late-model Toyota Camry with an ACLU bumpersticker, but another car had pulled in behind the Lexus, a black Mercedes with "Save the Bay" plates. Tess pulled in behind the Mercedes. An old car like hers might also excite comment in Roland Park if left on the street.

  "Stay in the car, Mom."

  "Not on your life."

  "There's a woman in that house with a gun, my gun. A hysterical, unpredictable woman who doesn't know you, and might not hestitate to harm you."

  "My point, exactly. So why don't you call the police, and let them handle it?"

  "Because there's a slender hope I can undo what Jackie has done without getting the police involved. If she hasn't hurt anyone yet. I'm counting on Jackie not being as tough as she thinks she is." But she would hurt herself, Tess thought. She might be so hysterical over seeing Samantha that she would kill herself in front of the people who had treated her daughter so cavalierly.

  The front door was unlocked. Tess stopped in the front hallway, listened intently. Judith came in right behind her. No time to argue about it now. She motioned her mother to be quiet, her mother gestured back that she knew what she was doing. God, she was exasperating.

  Now both the women concentrated on the sounds of the house. It was so big, so quiet. It was hard to imagine any child here, running up the stairs so shiny they looked wet, leaving handprints along the expensive-looking wallpaper. There was a murmuring sound from the rear, perhaps a television left on, or even the leaves of the trees rustling together. Tess and her mother moved toward the sound, through the formal living room, into the dining room and through swinging doors into the kitchen, a bright, cold place, all granite and stainless steel.

  "Who are you?" a woman asked, and her voice was too loud, too shaky, even for someone seeing two strangers in her kitchen. Short and fleshy, with the kind of silver-blond curls never found in nature, she was sitting on a severe little metal love seat at one end of the remodeled kitchen, where a family room had been created in what once was an alcove or breakfast nook. A small man in glasses was next to her, frowning.

  Jackie was sitting directly across from them in a matching chair, her briefcase open on her lap. Was the gun in there? Would she use it before Tess could cross the room?

  "Hey," Jackie said languidly, as cool and composed as the day Tess had first gone to her apartment. "I didn't expect to see you here tonight. That your mom? I see the resemblance. You're lucky, girl, if you got that bone structure. You're going to look good twenty, thirty years from now, you ever learn how to dress."

  Judith, who had been staring at Jackie, perhaps still trying to grasp their connection, blushed. "Thank you. I always did think Tesser favored me, although there's some of her father there, too."

  "Tesser? You have been holding out on me."

  The whole scene felt surreal to Tess. Here they were, in this $100,000 kitchen with the couple who had turned away Samantha because her mother was black, chatting as if they had run into each other in the dairy section of the SuperFresh. The couple on the love seat looked nervous and edgy. Was Jackie holding the gun behind her briefcase? Had she warned them not to speak? But she had to know Tess wouldn't leave without her, that Tess would never let her destroy her life this way.

  The man, Dr. Becker, spoke as if he were impatient with Tess. "We are having a, uh, confidential discussion. Could you and Miss Weir transact your business later, when we're finished."

  Jackie leaned forward and patted the doctor's hands. They were small hands, knitted tightly together on the table top. Something—his hands, his knees, his wife's legs—were shaking hard enough to make the teacups before them vibrate ever so slightly. Teacups, Tess thought. What kind of murder-suicide is this?

  "It's okay, Dr. Becker. Tess and I don't really have any secrets at this point. Although Mrs. Monaghan—" She looked back at Judith, who nodded shyly. "Well, it looks like she's cool, too. What do you know?" To Tess: "You told her?"

  "I had to, when Willa Mott crashed the crab feast."

  Did Tess just imagine it, or did the Beckers shift uncomfortably at the mention of Willa Mott?

  "So that's how you found me. Well, we're almost done here, aren't we? There's just the little matter of the check. Not so little, really. I mean, a quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money, but it's all for a good cause, isn't it? Seed money for foster care group homes. You know, the places where kids go when no one wants them. Can you imagine such a thing? Not wanting a child?"

  "I told you what happened," the doctor said. "I requested the child's medical records. The hospital goofed and sent them to me directly, instead of to the agency, and I saw the girl was biracial. We had been told we were receiving a white child. We decided if the agency would lie about something so fundamental, it couldn't be trusted to tell the truth about anything. The adoption hadn't been finalized yet, so we were within our legal rights to void it."

  "It's not as if we're prejudiced," Mrs. Becker broke in. "We give money to all sorts of black causes."

  Jackie nodded, smiling, as if pleased by this recitation. "Yes, I understand. You sent an eleven-month-old baby back like she was some sweater from J. Crew that happened to be the wrong color. ‘Uh-huh, I didn't order me no taupe sweater, I wanted something in a peachy white.'"

  "We assumed they would find another home for her," the doctor said.

  "What if they didn't? Do you know what happened to her? Do you know where my daughter is today, what kind of life she has?"

  The doctor and his wife said nothing. Puzzled, Tess started to interrupt, to remind Jackie of the wonderful life that Sam had with the Edelmans, but then she realized how deliberate this was. The money wasn't enough for Jackie. She wanted to plant dark images in the Beckers' minds, see if she could give them a few sleepless nights as well. Good luck, Tess thought. If the Beckers ever thought about what they had done, it would be because of the check Dr. Becker was now filling out with Jackie's Mont Blanc pen.

  "They have a name for this," he said, even as he handed the check to Jackie. "Extortion. Blackmail. Don't think I won't report this to the police."

  "They have names for you, too," Jackie said, examining the check carefully. "Bigot. Racist. Peckerwood. Don't you see, money has to change hands here. Because this whole thing is about economics. If I had kept my baby, the government would have give
n me, say, about $225 a month and some food stamps to raise her. You paid $10,000 for her, but the agency got that, not me. I do hope you got a refund. And when she went into foster care, that family got twice as much as I would have for keeping her. The Edelmans, who aren't hurting by a long shot, collect maybe $500 a month they don't need to raise the baby I would have gotten $225 to raise. Now could someone explain that to me?"

  Mrs. Becker actually began to say something, as if Jackie expected an answer, but she was silenced by one stern look from her husband. Tess couldn't help thinking that the voided adoption was one of the best things that ever happened to Samantha King. Dr. Becker would have managed to snuff out that exuberant girl's soul long ago, while his silly wife just looked on.

  "You know, I know people," the doctor said. "Important people. You might find your job a lot harder to do in the future if you cash that check."

  For the first time, Jackie looked hesitant, unsure. Her career was the kind built by word of mouth, Tess realized, and it could be destroyed by it as well.

  "You people think you run the city now." Dr. Becker had found his advantage and was pressing forward, cruel and heedless. "Well you don't. It's the people with money who are in control, white or black. That check may be the last anyone ever writes you. Think about that."

  As Jackie just sat, studying the check, Tess reached out and grabbed the doctor's hand. "Where are my manners? Tess Monaghan, I should have introduced myself when I came in. I'm a private investigator, but I used to be a reporter in town and I still have a lot of reporter friends. I think they would love to hear about the prominent Doctor Becker—ACLU member, friend of the Chesapeake Bay—who reneged on an adoption because the child wasn't white. Throw in the Willa Mott angle and it's a national story, don't you think?"

  "We told you, it was because the agency lied," Becker said, almost sputtering in his rage. "You keep making it sound as if we were racists."

  "No, I think it was your use of ‘you people' that made you sound like a racist. Anyway, that's how it will end up, unless you leave Jackie alone. Trust me. The top editor of the Beacon-Light owes me a favor or two, and I'm willing to call the chit in for this."

  "And I work at the NSA," Judith put in suddenly. "You don't even want to contemplate what I can do to you."

  Tess doubted that her mother could do much more than instruct the clerk-typists under her supervision to write a really scary letter, but it was the National Security Agency. Who knew what powers her mother really had?

  The doctor nodded sullenly, but Tess didn't trust him. There was nothing to keep him from calling the police as soon as they left, or setting in motion his grapevine scheme to undercut Jackie's business.

  "Now we're going to leave here and I'm going to make sure any paper work linking you to Samantha King is destroyed, although Jackie will keep a copy. That will keep you quiet?"

  Another tight little nod from Herr Doktor.

  "He's not going to let it go," Jackie said. "He's going to find a way to get back at me, if only because he's humiliated."

  "No, he's not," Judith said emphatically. "After all, you have an alibi. You were never here."

  "Oh yeah? Where was I?"

  "Across town, at a crab feast with twenty other people."

  Tess looked at her mother. She had always thought her ability to lie, to think on her feet, must come down on Patrick's side, but maybe it was a Weinstein trait as well.

  "I don't get it," Jackie said. "Who would do that for me?"

  "Your daughter's family," Tess said.

  Judith drove Tess's car back to the Monaghans', while Tess piloted Jackie in her white Lexus for the second time that day.

  "You shouldn't have stolen my gun," she chided, once they were alone.

  "Next time, don't leave it untended," Jackie said, not at all repentant.

  "You scared me to death. I thought you were going to kill yourself, or them."

  "Why would I destroy my life like that after all the work I put into recreating it? I wanted to hurt them, and money was the way to do that. Probably the only way with people like them." Jackie laughed, pleased with herself. For the next mile or two, they didn't say anything, but it was a comfortable silence. The kind of silence that friends can endure.

  When Jackie spoke again, her voice was soft and tentative. "I was hurt and I wanted to hurt someone else. You know, I started off by wanting to hurt you."

  "Hurt me?"

  "Why do you think I hired you in the first place? I wanted to get back at you for being the girl on the other side of the soda fountain, the one who had the real childhood, while I had to work my way through high school, then college."

  "Poppa meant to pay for your tuition. Gramma was the one who wouldn't let him."

  "She knew?"

  "So it seems."

  "Poor woman."

  "Poor woman? She forced Poppa to renege on his promise to you."

  "Well, how would you like to be the woman whose husband comes home and says, ‘Remember that eighteen-year-old girl I knocked up? I think we should send her to college.'"

  Jackie had a point. For all her anger, she could always see the big picture, see things outside herself. Tess should learn to do the same. She smiled. Truth be told, it cracked her up, the image of Jackie sitting across from the Beckers at her little extortion tea party, reeling off her facts and figures about the welfare system. Only Jackie would make a revenge scheme so didactic.

  "Hey, that stuff you said about the economics of the system. Was that made up, or was it true?"

  "Oh, I may have been off on the actual numbers, and everything's different since welfare reform. But the proportions were right. People pay thousands to adopt babies, welfare mothers get pennies to keep them."

  "And the foster parents receive bigger stipends than the mothers?"

  "Oh yeah. But they also have to meet higher standards than the welfare mothers—separate bedrooms, stuff like that. Remember, that's why they took Sam away from those folks. Why are you suddenly so interested?"

  "Just doing some math in my head."

  Chapter 27

  Chase Pearson's office in Annapolis was far grander than Tess would have expected. His was an insignificant job, after all, an appointed position that would evaporate like the dew once the current governor was gone. The special secretary for children and youth. But how foolish of her, how naive. There were no insignificant jobs in the state capital. No small parts, no small actors.

  And no small crimes.

  "Miss Monaghan," Pearson said. She didn't even rate a flash of his bad teeth at this point in their relationship. Whatever his future plans, he had apparently decided he could get by without her vote. "I thought I had made it clear that I did not wish to hear from you again."

  "You made it clear I'd be arrested if I tried to go to Penfield, so I came to see you here. That's okay. You can answer far more of my questions than Sal ever could."

  Pearson leaned back in his chair. "Speak," he said, in a tone suitable for addressing a dog, or a trained seal. Seeing as Tess was neither, she roamed his office, inspecting the plaques that lined the wall, checking out Pearson's view. It wasn't very good, just some Annapolis rooftops, not even a sliver of the Chesapeake Bay.

  "‘To Chase Pearson,'" she read from one of the largest mounted certificates. "‘In honor of his work for Maryland's children.' Now was this award for your current do-nothing job, or the one before, the do-nothing task force on young men and violence?"

  "I don't consider saving the next generation a matter of insignificance."

  "Neither do I, neither do I," Tess assured him. "But don't you think you accomplished more as a front-line social worker?"

  "Beg pardon?"

  "A social worker. That is how you started, isn't it? I had a friend pull your resume this morning from the Beacon-Light's files, and there it was. Eighteen whole months in the trenches. Very noble, in the Pearson tradition of community service, but your generation really couldn't afford to be so civic-mi
nded, I gather. About five years ago, just before the mayor appointed you to that task force. What was it that you did for DSS, exactly?"

  "I was in the Social Services Administration."

  "Right, the division that oversees foster care." Tess smiled at Pearson's discomfort. "As it happens, I've recently had a crash course in the various divisions at the state Department of Human Resources. I know all the acronyms now. DHR, SSA, DSS, CAP, AFDC. This morning, I even learned the wiggly words you guys use for abuse and neglect investigations. ‘Indicated' and ‘Unsubstantiated.' I have to say, those are the best CYA words I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot in my time."

  "CYA?"

  "Cover Your Ass. The worker can't be faulted either way, you see. Indicated or unsubstantiated. If the child turns up dead, the worker isn't held accountable."

  Given that Pearson always looked vaguely disdainful, it was hard to say that his expression was responding to anything specific Tess had said. But a corner of his upper lip seemed to lift slightly. "Such half-baked cynicism often tries to pass as sophisticated policy analysis. Did you go to Baltimore City schools, Miss Monaghan?"

  "Yes, but I can still do math in my head and pounce on the occasional dangling modifier. Or, in your case, the dangling fact."

  "Dangling fact?"

  "Donnie Moore's mother, Keisha, she would have been ‘indicated' for neglect, right?"

  "I wouldn't know."

  "That's funny, because you knew exactly what I was talking about the night Keisha Moore was killed. ‘She always did keep bad company.' That was never part of the public record, how Keisha lost Donnie. But Donnie's social worker would know all about the company Keisha kept."

  Pearson's chin moved. It wasn't even a nod really, just a slight tilt of his chin, a sign that he was still listening.