Butchers Hill

Chapter 7

It was commonly believed that the mayor of Baltimore awoke every morning and turned southward, a huge smile on his face. No matter how poorly his city was run, he could count on Washington, the nation's capital, to be in even worse shape. Higher homicide rate, dumber schools, bigger potholes and a convicted drug user at the helm, until the city finally despaired and turned the whole mess over to a control board. Yes, things could always be worse, the streets of Washington seemed to sing, as Tess's car bumped and jolted its way to the Nelsons' school on Capitol Hill.

The Benjamin Banneker Academy was a former bank, a sandstone building with fortress-thick walls on a not-too-bad block east of the Capitol. Although she knew the area fairly well, Tess could never accustom herself to its checkerboard quality, where a block of restored town-houses suddenly gave way to rowhouse slums. In Baltimore, neighborhoods were good or bad, and it was easy to avoid the trouble spots. On Capitol Hill, you could buy a three-dollar cup of coffee and a dime bag of heroin within five minutes of each other. One wrong turn, and you were suddenly starring in your own private version of Bonfire of the Vanities.

Tess tried the oversize door of the Benjamin Banneker Academy. Locked-unusual for a school, but plain common sense here. The Nelsons were probably hypersensitive about safety, given the circumstances in the death of Donnie Moore. She pressed the buzzer and waited on the stone steps. A round-faced young man poked his head out and said, "No visitors during lessons, ma'am."

"Mr. and Mrs. Nelson are expecting me."

He looked her over, closed the door without comment, then returned several seconds later, opening the door to her. Tess saw now that he wore a dark blue uniform in a military style. His black shoes were mirror shiny, his trousers had a knife-sharp crease. Although his full cheeks gave his face a babyish cast, the rest of him was hard and slender, with the big, defined muscles of a weight-lifter pressing at the seams of his uniform. "I'm sorry, ma'am. But as the monitor, I have strict instructions not to admit anyone, especially reporters."

"I'm not a reporter."

The young man looked puzzled, as if he knew of no other occupation for white women who came to the door of the Banneker Academy. A slight woman in a floral shirtdress came out into the hall, pulling a white cardigan over her narrow shoulders. The woman's posture was even more formidable than the monitor's, so straight and proper that it made Tess's spine ache just to look at her.

"Miss Monaghan?"

"Yes, I'm the one who called to talk about Donnie-"

"Of course." The woman touched the young monitor's elbow. "Drew, you may go back to your post. Mr. Nelson and I will be in the study if you need us."

She led Tess into a small, shadowy room lined with bookshelves, but no books. Apparently the Banneker Academy's endowment was not a lavish one-everything looked used and threadbare. She glanced at the globe standing in the corner. It was enormous, a beautiful world of dark, lush colors, and bright blue oceans. That kind of globe usually cost a fortune new, but this one was at least ten years old, with Europe, Russia, and Africa all hopelessly out of date.

Mr. Nelson, a compact man with a moustache and close-cropped hair, rose from a faded wing chair by a casement window and offered his hand.

"Welcome to Benjamin Banneker Academy," he said, but his voice didn't sound particularly welcoming, and his hand slid quickly through hers, as if he found the contact distasteful.

"Thank you. I'll admit I'm a little confused. Is this a school or an orphanage?"

"Both," Mrs. Nelson said, "although we don't like the term ‘orphanage.' The Banneker Academy is a charter school, a private school that receives monies from the district under a program designed to make the public schools more competitive. At the same time, it's a group home. The boys admitted here as students are placed through the city's foster care program."

"So you're double dipping."

Mr. Nelson frowned. "We're not doing anything illegal if that's what you're suggesting. These are two separate programs under the same roof."

"I didn't mean to imply-"

"I'm sure you didn't," he said stiffly. Great, she had managed to offend him in what was supposed to be the innocuous, buttering-up portion of the conversation. Step aside, Dale Carnegie, let Tess Monaghan show you how it's done.

Mrs. Nelson interceded, trying to smooth things over. "We convinced the district to allow us to open a private school for the boys who have become our wards. We are the faculty, we are the parents. If George and I have learned anything from our…missteps over the years, it's that it's no use rearing children right, only to send them into schools where our teaching is undone."

So now it was the Baltimore school system's fault that the Nelsons' wards had been running wild in the streets. Was anyone to blame for what happened on Fairmount Avenue five years ago?

"Our boys have consistency now, and they flourish," Mrs. Nelson continued, her voice quiet but impassioned. "I grant you, we can't teach them advanced calculus, or physics, but if we have a boy who wishes to study those subjects, we can obtain the services of a tutor from the district. One day, we'll have our own gifted-and-talented program, and teachers will be fighting to work here."

"One day," said Mr. Nelson, who seemed less starry-eyed than his wife. "We have a ways to go."

"You said you learned from your missteps. I assume you mean Donnie Moore."

The Nelsons looked at each other. Tess saw him nod, ever so slightly, as if giving her permission to speak of what had been so long forbidden.

"Donald," Mrs. Nelson said. "Yes, I was referring to Donald."

"I'm trying to find the other children who lived with you when Donald was killed." Tess had never heard anyone employ this more formal version of his name-not his mother, not Detective Tull, not even the newspaper accounts of the time-but she was willing to appropriate the usage if it helped her gain some small rapport with the Nelsons.

"Why?"

Tess was ready for this question, more ready than she had been with Keisha Moore.

"A local victims' rights group is interested in helping the children."

"Now? Doesn't it seem a bit late? They've probably just begun to heal, and you-your victims' group-wants to remind them of the horror they saw." Mrs. Nelson pulled her sweater over her shoulders, as if just thinking about Butchers Hill gave her a chill. "I don't see much love in that kind of philanthropy, Miss Monaghan."

"No one's asking that they relive what they've been through. I thought if you ever heard from them, if you knew where they are-"

"No," Mr. Nelson said sharply. "We never hear from them. They don't even know where we are, and we don't know where they are. That's how foster care works, you know. We took them, we cared for them, we loved them, but we had no rights. They were our children, as surely as if they had been born to us. But when Donald died, they took them from us that very night. That evil old man might as well have killed all of them, so thoroughly did he destroy our home and the work we were doing."

Mrs. Nelson was crying now, silent tears running down her face. Mr. Nelson took Tess by the shoulders and turned her to the casement window behind the wing chair. "Look there," he said, gripping Tess's shoulders, as if she might try to wrest away from him. She saw ten young men in formation, running drills in the courtyard, marching and turning to a leader's shouted commands. It was a hot morning and sweat ran from their faces, but they worked in grim determination, their movements crisp and sharp.

"These young men love discipline," he said. "They yearn for it. They've waited their entire lives for someone to say, you are good enough to meet the highest standards. Donald and the others lived in a world where people said, You're nothing, you'll never do anything, just show up, go through the motions, that's all you can do. And then, just in case those poor children didn't get the point, didn't know how little their lives were worth, a judge gave a man less time for killing Donald than some people get for killing a dog."

The young men marched in place now, shouting in cadence. Although Tess couldn't hear the words they were chanting, she could sense the joy in their movements as their answered their drill instructor's calls.

"Leave our children alone, Miss Monaghan," Mr. Nelson urged her. "Let them forget. Forgetting is their only salvation now."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

"Do you really believe that?"

Tess shrugged. The Santayana chestnut had been worth a try. "Sometimes."

Her candor seemed to thaw Mrs. Nelson by a few degrees at least. "If it's any consolation, I couldn't help you even if I wanted to. Those children are lost to us, too. I suppose that's our punishment, for not taking better care of them."

"But you'll save these bo-young men." It was more of a question, a hope, than a statement of fact.

Mr. Nelson shook his head. "I wish I could promise them that. I can only promise them safety here, on this little patch of land, for as long as they're with us. Eventually, they'll go forth in the world, and then there's only so much we can do. But no, there will never be another Donald Moore, not on our watch."

What was left to say after such a speech? Luther Beale's compensation plan, his desire for retribution, seemed trite and puny in the face of the Nelsons' commitment to their wards.

"Go in peace, Miss Monaghan," Mrs. Nelson called after her, her voice still a little shaky from her quiet tears.

The same monitor showed Tess out. Impressed by his perfect posture, Tess found herself standing a little straighter, throwing her shoulders back and sucking her stomach in.

"Do you like it here?" she asked him as he unlocked the front door.

"Oh yes, ma'am."

"What do they-in the curriculum-I mean, what do they teach you here?"

"Survival."

"What do you mean?"

The young man gave her a smile at once sweet and superior. "They're teaching us how to live in our world-and how to live in yours. Now be careful going to your car, ma'am. We've got some real bad people in these parts."

Tess was heading north on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway when her knapsack started ringing. Startled, she almost swerved out of her lane, then remembered the cell phone she kept in the litter of pens and crumpled ATM slips at the bottom of her old leather book bag. Past experiences had convinced her that she couldn't afford to be without a portable phone, but the balances on all those ATM slips indicated she couldn't afford to use it, either.

"It's Dorie. God, I hate cell phones."

"Not as much as I hate this always-under-construction road. I'm crawling along down here."

"You going slowly enough to take some notes? Or you want to pull off at the next exit and call me back? I've got the Susan King info you wanted."

"I'm pulling into a rest stop even as we speak. I'll call you on the Blight's 800 number."

Tess pulled her Toyota into a lane banked by a row of public telephones. It must have seemed so cutting edge once, a highway rest stop built so you could make a call without leaving your car. How quaint, how adorably low-tech. But it was a cheaper, better connection than the cell phone provided.

"Okay, I've got my notebook out. Shoot me what you have on Susan King."

"First of all, she's not Susan King anymore-she's Jacqueline Weir. Changed her name legally when she was eighteen. Probably thought that was good enough to keep her relatives from finding her."

"It would have been, if her relatives didn't now have access to Dorie's magic fingers." A little stroking was all part of the package with Dorie. "Why do you assume she changed her name in order to hide? The way her sister explained it, they just lost touch after she had a falling-out with their mother."

"Jacqueline Weir has the best reason of all to hide from her relatives-money. For someone who's only thirty-two, she's done pretty well for herself. She has her own business. A consulting firm, according to the file, but that could be anything. She must be doing well, because she has a huge line of credit. She also has a mortgage of sixty-five thousand dollars on a Columbia condo."

"That's not such a big deal," Tess objected, even as she wrote down the address Dorie rattled off.

"No, but the loan is secured by her own stocks, and not many thirty-two-year-olds have a portfolio like that. Approximately two hundred thousand dollars at market close yesterday. How much do you have in savings?"

"Don't tell me you pulled her credit report, Dorie. I thought we agreed you weren't going to do that unless it was absolutely necessary."

"Okay, I didn't pull her credit report. Let's just say my sixth sense tells me it's excellent. What else? Oh yeah, she leases a brand-new Lexus, only through her company, so it's a tax thing. Very crafty, this Susan King-Jacqueline Weir. I did find some sort of legal action filed on a Susan King when I ran the Chicago Title search, but it's after she changed her name, so I'm thinking it's not the same Susan King, or else it's no big deal. If someone had been really serious about collecting, they would have gone to the trouble of finding her. Probably parking tickets, some penny-ante shit like that."

"If she's so wealthy, wouldn't she pay her parking tickets?"

"Look, I'm not saying she's rich, but she's obviously got enough money on hand so relatives who aren't so well off would feel comfortable yelling for hand-outs."

Tess thought of Mary Browne in her expensive yellow suit, which matched the shoes, which matched the ribbon on her straw hat. Tess's mother dressed that way and it didn't come cheap, that matchy-matchy look. The shoe bills alone were staggering. "Her sister didn't look as if she was hurting."

"Yeah, well that's part of the trick of getting money, isn't it? Not looking like you need it. By the way, I ran Mary Browne with the birth date you gave me."

"And?"

"Even limiting the search to Maryland, I found about a hundred. With e's, without e's, but at least a hundred who could be her. Yet not a single one with that particular DOB."

"I knew she was lying about her age."

"Maybe." Dorie didn't sound convinced. "Or maybe she's not using her right name, either. Or maybe she's not from where she says she's from. Maybe she's not this woman's sister, and maybe you don't really know why she's looking for Susan King, who's trying to make a new life for herself as Jacqueline Weir."

Tess looked at her watch. "Look, I'm not far from the turn-off to Columbia. Tell you what-I'll buzz by her place and if Jacqueline Weir is home, I'll try to figure out her story without letting on who hired me. Will that make you happy?"

"Not as happy as the check you owe me for this."

Tess hung up the phone and, not without some effort, wedged her way back into traffic. Idling along, she couldn't help thinking about what Dorie might find on Theresa Esther Monaghan in her electronic data bases. A twelve-year-old Toyota. No mortgage, although she had a loan for the business, co-signed by Kitty and Tyner. No other record of the business-after all, it was in the name of Edgar Keyes, although Tess's name showed up on the incorporation papers as vice president. It made her feel safe and smug, knowing how few electronic tracks she had left. It also made her feel like something of a failure. Surely important people couldn't move so anonymously through life.

She was so busy thinking about her electronic profile that she almost missed the turn-off for Columbia. She caught Highway 175 at the last possible moment and headed west, into the heart of Maryland's last fling with Utopia.

The planned community of Columbia, brought forth during the giddy optimism of the sixties, was to have revolutionized the suburbs with its "villages" and mandated proportions of green space. A new town, as it had been called, a different way to live. But Columbia's only real legacy was its strangely named cul de sacs-Proud Foot Place, Open Window Way, Sea Change. Utopia was just another suburb, a bedroom community for Baltimore and D.C. The late developer James Rouse was better known for his much imitated "festival marketplaces," from Boston's Faneuil Hall to Baltimore's Harborplace, than he was for his new city. He had wanted to change the way people lived and ended up changing the way tourists shopped. So much for life as a visionary, Tess thought. At least he had walked the walk, living in his own creation, and using his retirement years to build housing for the inner-city poor.

Jacqueline Weir's condo was in a development known as the Cove, which at thirty-years-plus was Columbia's equivalent of Colonial Williamsburg. Tess wandered through the cluster of stucco and brick buildings for almost fifteen minutes before she found the address. It was a two-story apartment that backed up to a small canal along the man-made Wilde Lake, stagnant and bright green with algae at this time of year.

Dorie's misgivings had gotten to her. What if Jacqueline Weir didn't want to be found? What if she had a legitimate reason not to see her sister again? What if Mary Browne wasn't her sister? Tess couldn't show up on the woman's doorstep and say "Heigh-ho, I was hired to find you, any reason I shouldn't?" However, armed with nothing more than a clipboard and one of her plain, tell-nothing business cards, she could transform herself into a pollster and ask all sorts of personal questions that might give her the information she needed. Or she could pretend to be from one of those new computer services that offered to reunite people with lost loved ones, then gauge Jacqueline Weir's reaction to this one-time free offer. She rapped briskly at the door, full of purpose.

No answer, no sound of movement came from within the apartment. Dorie had said Jacqueline/Susan worked from home, but who knew where a consultant might be at midday? She rapped again, and this time heard high heels moving across hardwood floors. Perfect. She stood a little straighter, thinking again of the Banneker monitor and the ramrod spine of Mrs. Nelson. She smoothed her hair with her free hand. Lies crowded her tongue, ready to be told.

They all vanished, every word vanished, when the door opened.

"I'd thought you'd get here a little faster than this," said the woman Tess knew as Mary Browne. "But I guess you did okay, all things considered."