Butchers Hill

'You are! You are!'

'I guess I better go check on my little ones,' Willa Mott said. 'Nice to meet you both. If I remember anything else, I promise I'll call you first thing. I've got your card right here.'

With that, Willa Mott waded into the melee in the next room, picking up the offending Cal by the collar of his T-shirt the way a mother cat might grab her kitten by the scruff of the neck, then turning off the video with the toe of her navy blue Ked.

'No more Hunchback, until everyone in this room starts behaving,' she proclaimed. 'This means all of you-Cal, Brady, Bobby, Chrissie, and, yes you, Raffi.'

Tess suppressed a laugh.

'What's so funny?' Jackie asked. She seemed angry that Tess could find anything to laugh at.

'Maybe it's a coincidence, but every kid in the Apple Orchard Daycare Center is named for someone in the Orioles' starting lineup from the year Cal broke Lou Gehrig's record. Cal Ripken, Chris Hoiles, Rafael Palmiero, Brady Anderson. It's got to be-that would have been just about the time they would have been conceived.'

'White folks are crazy,' Jackie said with a snort.

They were almost back in Butchers Hill before Jackie spoke again.

'You paid her too much.'

'Excuse me?'

'That wasn't worth fifty dollars, what she told us. You paid her too much and she thinks we're suckers now. I bet she knows more than she's telling.'

'First you tell me to pay her, then you say I paid her too much. But she did remember what you looked like. That seemed genuine enough. I saw the photo, remember. You were a…big girl. What was that stuff about the baby's father, anyway?'

'Nothing.' Jackie was gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles looked like they might pop out of her hands.

'No secrets, Jackie, and no lies. That was our deal, remember?'

'Okay.' Small sigh. 'My baby's father was white.' Then, before Tess could react in any way, 'Don't look so surprised.'

'I'm not looking anything. But you told me he was a boy from the neighborhood.'

'There were white boys in my neighborhood.'

'I know. I know Pigtown.' Tess liked seeing Jackie squirm at the mention of her inelegantly named old neighborhood. 'I wonder why Willa thought that particular detail was so memorable, though. The agency she worked for definitely did biracial adoptions. I know that much from listening to the taped testimony.'

'What do you expect from some Carroll County cracker? Forget about her. Where do we go from here?'

'Got me. Looking for someone named Caitlin Johnson-Johnston in metropolitan Baltimore is definitely needle- in-the-haystack time.'

'Well, I have an idea. Can you work tonight?'

'Sure.'

'Meet me at your office at seven tonight, and I'll show you how to do what I do for a living. I'll even bring dinner.'

'What are we going to do?'

'I'll tell you when we get to your office. You have one phone line, right? We can use my cell phone, I guess. Not the cheapest way to go, but it will take too long without it.'

When they pulled up in front of Tess's office, Martin Tull was waiting in his unmarked car.

'Gotta talk to you,' he said without preamble, then looked at Jackie behind the wheel of her white Lexus. 'Privately.'

'Now?'

'Right now.'

'That's okay,' Jackie said, looking from Tull to Tess. 'I'll see you here at seven. It won't take more than fifteen minutes to explain my idea to you.'

Esskay jumped down from the sofa, stretching as if bowing toward Mecca, then began her ritualistic treat dance. Tull usually asked if he could give Esskay her bone, but today he barely seemed to notice her. Tess found a biscuit in the cookie jar, one of the homemade ones from a South Baltimore bakery, threw it to the dog, and put her gun back in the wall safe.

'I thought you didn't like to carry your weapon.'

'Tyner felt I should, because of the break-in.'

'That's right, you had a break-in over the weekend. Police report said nothing was taken, though.'

Tess decided not to ask why a homicide detective knew about her little burglary. She hadn't filed a police report, but the landlord might have. She hoped Tull wasn't getting protective on her. That was all she needed, yet another person fretting over her safety and well-being. 'You want a Coke? It's got caffeine at least.'

'Lots of bad things happening on Butchers Hill these days. There was a fire in the neighborhood yesterday afternoon,' he said, ignoring her offer. 'Right around the corner from here.'

'Uh-huh. The radio said it was a vacant rowhouse on Fayette.' She got herself a Coke, wandered back to her desk, checked the counter on her answering machine. No calls. Keyes Investigations, always in demand.

'The radio was wrong on two counts. The fire backed up traffic on Fayette, but the house was on Chester. And it was vacant, but it wasn't unoccupied.' Tull tossed an envelope on her desk. 'They found a body in the basement. Guy looked like he was smoking a crack pipe and he dropped it.'

Tull seemed to expect her to reach for the envelope. When she didn't, he took it back and opened it, extracting a pair of Polaroids.

'That happens, of course. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. These pipeheads take over abandoned buildings, use them to smoke or shoot up. Accidents will happen. But according to the medical examiner, this guy was dead before the fire started. Someone bashed his head in and set the place on fire. We might not have been able to identify the guy, except he had dental records from when he was in foster care. State makes all the kids in its custody get at least one medical checkup.'

'Awfully decent of the state.' Tess's stomach clenched. She capped the bottle of Coke, put it down next to her computer.

'Kid's name was Treasure Teeter.' Tull flicked a Polaroid at her, like a playing card. Tess let it skim past her shoulder and fall to the floor, but she couldn't help seeing the charred human shape at the center as the image flew by.

'You heard of him, right? You were looking for him, as I hear it. Looking for his sister, too. Destiny? I'm guessing you never found her, though. Big break for you-I did.'

He flipped the second photo on the desk. Tess saw the yellow crime scene tape at the edges, the body lying on the bright green grass, the gash in the throat, a ghoulish echo of the mouth above. Except it was impossible to see the mouth, impossible to make out any features in a face that had been battered to the bone.

'Meet Destiny Teeter,' Tull said. 'You may know her better as the prostitute at the pagoda.'

Chapter 15

Luther Beale was scrubbing his marble steps, a cherished visual cliche in Baltimore. Even if he hadn't been out front of his house, Tess would have known instantly where he lived. In a block where the other brick rowhouses looked wilted and unloved, Beale's home was painted a soft yellow with white trim. A tub of yellow daisies sat next to the marble stoop. The paint job appeared fresh to Tess's eyes, which admittedly were not expert in matters of home improvement. At any rate, it did not look like Luther Beale had been planning to leave this house any time soon.

Plans change.

'Pretty flowers,' said Tess. Sometimes, being furious made her absolutely banal.