Butchers Hill

'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