Laura Lippman
Butchers Hill
The third book in the Tess Monaghan series, 1998
For Susan Seegar,
who taught me how to read,
encouraged me to write,
and convinced me to cut
all the hair off my Barbie.
I'm glad I was never an only child.
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
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.
W.S. Merwin, 'Another Place'
Prologue
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.
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.
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.
Those damn kids, the ones from over on Fayette. Well,
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
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
