Butchers Hill

Chapter 18

The Butcher of Butchers Hill was back. With a vengeance, one might say. Certainly, that was what every single television reporter in Baltimore felt obligated to say, as if they were all working from the same handbook of tasteless clichés.

Tess and Kitty watched the six o'clock news together that night in Kitty's kitchen, clicking from channel to channel in order to see the same five-year-old footage unspool again and again. As Tyner had predicted, the police didn't have enough evidence to charge Luther Beale. As Tess had suspected, that didn't keep the media from going hog-wild with the story. On each of Baltimore's four early evening newscasts, another solemn face beneath another fluffy head of hair recounted the same scant details: Beale questioned in murders of teenage twins who had testified against him. No charges filed. At least one resourceful reporter then resorted to the time-honored punt of journalists everywhere: the man on the street, live and uncensored.

"I think we need more people like Luther Beale," said a balding white man identified as Joe of Remington, a scrappy, lower-middle class neighborhood. "I mean, who did he kill? Three punks. A delinquent, a whore, and a druggie. This city could use a few more Luther Beales."

Words to warm Martin Tull's heart, Tess thought. He wasn't the primary on the case, thank God, but she knew he wouldn't give up on trying to get her to talk to the police. Tull had a zealot's conviction when it came to Luther Beale, and the case seemed to become more personal for him every day.

On camera, Joe kept speaking, his features pinched in an uglier and uglier rage, but with voice-over narration from the anchor substituting for his other thoughts on the case. You didn't have to be a particularly good lip-reader to make out the non-FCC sanctioned words flying from Joe's mouth, along with a few choice racial epithets. Another drawback of doing man-on-the-street interviews. Sometimes, the man said what he really thought.

"Now what's the point of giving air time to someone like that?" Kitty asked, genuinely puzzled.

"Don't you know, that's their version of providing ‘both' sides of the story," Tess said. "On the one hand, killing is wrong. On the other hand, what if you kill the right people? Jesus Christ. Have you noticed no one is entertaining the notion Beale didn't do it? At least Tyner was smart enough to keep Beale away from reporters. If it gets out he doesn't think he killed Donnie Moore, he's going to look like a lunatic."

"How can you work for him if you don't believe him?"

"I believe he didn't kill the Teeter twins. I believe he saw a car and heard something the night Donnie was killed. Did someone else shoot Donnie Moore? I don't know and it's not important. For what it's worth, I believe he believes in his innocence, but Luther Beale is a man who likes to be right. Over the past five years, he may have gone over and over that night in his mind until he's found a way to clear himself. It doesn't matter. They're not going to try him again for the death of Donnie Moore."

"It seems to me everyone is overlooking one possibility in this," Kitty said, switching the television to a cooking show on one of the cable channels. Kitty didn't like to cook any more than Tess did, but she liked to watch. "This could be a coincidence. A hideous, totally random event."

"What do you mean?"

"Destiny had a habit of getting into strange men's cars, right? Treasure just had a habit. They lived high-risk lives. If you have a sister who hang-glides and a brother who sky-dives, would it be so unusual if each died within a few weeks of each other? It would be strange and stunning, worth a story in a newspaper, but it wouldn't be unheard of. You read about leukemia clusters, strange concentrations of cancer cases in certain places, like the one up in Massachusetts, but they can never quite prove the link. I think there are sorrow clusters, too, unexplained critical masses of tragedy."

Tess considered this. Kitty's logic was screwy yet appealing. But she didn't buy it, even if a Baltimore jury might.

"I think the two deaths are connected. Treasure said Destiny had gone somewhere, and when she came back, they were going to be rich. He said she had gone to Burma. Maybe that's some new street term for selling drugs."

"I think Burma's called Myanmar now."

"Do you expect some kind of geographic exactness in the local drug trade? Look, Keisha Moore told me today about being a ‘mule,' an unwitting deliverywoman for some dealer. I wonder if Destiny got caught up in something like that, and someone killed Treasure, thinking his drug-addled brain could hold onto enough details to be dangerous."

"I like my theory," Kitty said stubbornly. "Sorrow clusters."

"So it does," Tess said. "Shit, look at the time. If I'm late for my second night of telemarketing, the boss will have my head. I thought having my own business meant not answering to anyone. But clients expect far more than my bosses ever did."

"It helped," Kitty said, "that you worked for me and Uncle Donald."

Tess provided dinner for that night's round of calls, carry-out from a storefront more notable for its ambitions than its accomplishments. Butchers Hill Hot Food Hot served pizza, Italian entrees, subs and burgers-"American sandwiches" in the parlance of its menu-along with passable Indian food. It was the latter Tess had chosen, ordering an array of samosas, nan, and a double portion of rogan josh. She also had asked the delivery boy to tuck four bottles of Kingfisher Beer in with the order.

"Look, I need a beer tonight, okay?" she said, when she caught Jackie's disapproving look.

"I didn't say anything," Jackie said, examining the foil containers, the plastic lids fogged over from steam. "From Fresh Fields to the Grease Pits in twenty-four hours. For all you know that's greyhound meat in that so-called lamb dish."

Esskay whimpered, not because she understood Jackie's slur, but because she adored rogan josh and seldom got more than a smear of sauce and a few grains of rice.

"It's better than that fish-and-tofu abomination you brought in here last night. Do you really like that food? Or do you just think you should like it?"

"You know, I think I'll have one of those beers after all. But whatever you do, don't eat or drink while you're on a call. It's too tacky."

They had started with a sense of excitement, but the hours dragged slowly this time, each call putting them further away from the possibility of an answer. Twenty-four hours ago, victory had seemed so imminient. Even skeptical Tess had become convinced that Jackie's systematic approach would lead them to her daughter. But tonight's calls yielded no new clues. Not a single Caitlin. Not even a thirteen-year-old Kate or Katie. With the end so tantalizingly close, the work became dull and frustrating. Tess raced too quickly through her rehearsed lines, only to repeat them for bewildered listeners. Jackie become impatient and imperious, bullying her Johnsons as if she suspected them of lying about their children's names.

At 9:55, when Tess punched in the number for Wyler Johnston and heard the quavering voice on the end of the line, she simply hung up.

"That's it," she said. "She's not out there."

"You didn't even ask that household any of the questions," Jackie protested, reaching for Tess's sheet of numbers.

Tess grabbed the paper back from her, tearing it, not caring that she was tearing it: "He sounded as if he was ninety-five. According to the criss-cross, he's lived at that address for forty-five years. Do you really think he's your daughter's adoptive father?"

"He could be her grandfather. And there are still people we haven't made contact with." Jackie began shuffling through her papers. "Maybe we should broaden our search to the whole metro area, canvass anyone with a name close to Johnson and Johnston. Or it could be Jones. Willa Mott's memory isn't perfect, you know, you said so yourself. No one remembers everything just right."

"Jackie-"

Jackie put her hands over her eyes, although Tess suspected it was her ears she really wanted to cover, like a child who chants over words she can't bear to hear.

"Maybe someone else can help you." She tried to sound kind and caring, instead of just tired and frustrated. "I don't know. But I feel like I'm taking your money under false pretenses at this point. We're not getting anywhere here, and I don't know where else to go. Sure, there was a chance that Willa Mott remembered the name right, that the family who took your daughter in was right where they always were, and that they named her Caitlin. But it was always a long-shot. People don't stay in the same place for thirteen years anymore. Maybe the people at the Adoption Rights group have some ideas, but I'm fresh out."

"They don't, you know they don't. The agency was the only lead we have."

"Then you need a private investigator who knows more about this kind of work than I do. The truth is, the other case I'm working on is going to take more and more time. There might be criminal charges, and I'm in pretty deep. You'd be better off working with someone else, someone who can give you first priority."

"No. I want you to help me."

They had saved two of the Kingfishers, planning to drink them in a triumphant toast. Tess opened both now and began to pour one in Jackie's glass, but Jackie took the bottle from her and drank straight from it, just as Tess always did.

"Look, it's great that you wanted to give a break to a new businesswoman. But there's got to be some other female private investigator starting out on her own. Go to her."

Jackie had already downed more than a third of her beer. She stared into the bottle as if her daughter might be at the bottom. Tess was remembering how adamant Jackie had been that first day, how sure of herself. Why did you choose Keyes Investigations? You were in the paper, weren't you? Something about shooting someone or someone shooting you? Yes, she had been in the paper quite a bit, but not for being a private detective. The announcement of the agency's opening, a paragraph in the Baltimore Business Journal, had been a brief item, using the more formal version of her name, Theresa Esther Monaghan. You had to be paying close attention to link the two articles, to know that Tess the near-shooting victim was now the near-entrepreneur.

And you had to be paying really close attention to know of Tess's fondness for chocolate malts, a detail Jackie had known before Tess mentioned it. How can you know what kind of dark smear a kid has on her face in a black-and-white photo? You can know it's chocolate, perhaps, but you can't know it's malt. Yet Jackie had always known.

"It wasn't just a woman you wanted, was it? It's me. It had to be me. Why Jackie?"

Jackie Weir raised her eyes from the bottle and looked at Tess helplessly, as if she could no longer speak. Then she shifted her gaze to the wall, to that photo. The crying girl on the flying rabbit.

"I knew you," she said at last. "When we were younger."

"Were we at Western together?" Jackie could have been a senior when she was a freshman.

"No, at the drugstore," she said, pointing her beer bottle at the photo. "Not that one, the big one, the one on Bond Street."

"The Weinstein flagship on Bond and Shakespeare? That's my Aunt Kitty's bookstore."

"It wasn't then. Not when I was eighteen. Not when you were fifteen. Not when you used to come in after school and drink chocolate malteds, and talk to your grandfather about your day. Your hair was usually in a long, shiny plait down your back and you were so thin, then, almost scrawny. That must have been when you were running all the time."

"It was. But I don't-" She stopped, embarrassed.

"Don't remember me? There's no reason you would. I was just the girl in the back, flipping burgers. I wore an apron, and a hairnet, and those big glasses. But I could hear you. You told your grandfather about the good grades you were getting and the parties you were going to and what this boy or that boy had said to you. It was like watching a rerun of those old Patty Duke shows, listening to your life."

"Funny, my adolescence seemed more like a sitcom based on Kafka to me."

Jackie heard her, but she wasn't having any of it, any more than she had let Tess see herself as some poor frail female about to plunge through the tattered safety net. "Then last March, I read about you in the paper. Your picture was there, with that dog. Like I said, you look just the same. Later, when I saw you had opened up a private detective agency, I knew I had to hire you. I knew when it became difficult, or rough, you couldn't drop me, like the first detective did, or spend my money without getting results, like the second one did. You had to help me. You had to."

"Just because you once worked for my grandfather, because I was out front sipping sodas while you were in the back, making burgers?"

Jackie looked frightened, as if the words she were about to utter were so forbidden, so long unspoken, that she wasn't quite sure what they might do once let loose in the world.

"You have to help me because Samuel Weinstein was my baby's father."