Butchers Hill

'Of course not.' Tess's voice was vehement, for that's exactly what she had thought. Sure, older men had sex and men in wheelchairs had sex, but surely the combination disqualified Tyner. She couldn't be more grossed out if her parents had started talking about their sex lives in detail.

'Tess, tell the truth.'

'Okay, that is what I meant. But I'm drunk. Book me for TWI-talking while intoxicated.' She held up her wrists as if to be handcuffed, and noticed her hands were shaking.

'Meanwhile, there's Kitty,' Tyner said, ignoring her outstretched hands. 'How old is her current boyfriend? Or how young, I guess I should say. Certainly, she's been with men young enough to be her sons.'

'It's not the same. He was in his sixties, she was a girl who worked for him. I don't care if she's not angry with him. I'm angry. I'm furious. There was a person I loved, and now he's not who I thought he was, and I can't love him anymore. I wish Jackie Weir-Susan King-Mary Browne had never walked through my door.'

Her words exploded in the night, as loud and sudden as a car backfire. Someone shouted from a nearby house. 'Keep it down out there. This isn't Hampden, you know.'

'And this isn't Roland Park, although I bet you tell people it is,' Tess called back. She was suddenly sick of Baltimore's little hierarchies, as reflected in the rigid neighborhood system. Roland Park looked down on Tuxedo Park, which felt itself superior to Evergreen, where people fretted they would be mistaken for Hampden-ites, whose feelings were hurt by the suggestion they lived in Remington, where people sneered at Pigtown. On and on, down and down the social ladder. Say you lived near the water tower on Roland Avenue and old-timers asked: Which side? How silly people were, how stupid.

'Well, you're right about at least one thing,' Tyner said, when the night was quiet again.

'Yeah? I must have missed it.'

'You've had too much to drink. You better bed down in the spare room here, lest you add a DWI to your TWI. At least the latter isn't a felony.'

'Why not? It can be just as dangerous.'

The Patapsco looked deceptively inviting the next morning, with only a few oily spots along the surface. Although Tyner had told Tess to stay close in during her workout, she had ignored him and headed down a narrow tributary, where she knew she would be alone. Few other rowers wanted the hassle of passing beneath the low bridges here, which forced you to bring in your oars, duck your head and use the pilings as hand-holds to get to the other side.

She had not slept well. The beers, the strange night, the strange bed, which made her realize how seldom she slept anywhere except her own lumpy mattress. There had been times in her life when Tess slept around, but she had never slept around. She was a homebody.

Yet Jonathan Ross had found her anyway.

Your nightmares always know where to find you, and Tess had been traveling with this particular dream for almost a year now. At first, it was just Jonathan in flight. Lately, though, he had begun to get up, brush himself off and talk to her. He seemed nicer, now that he was dead, and she didn't think it was because she romanticized his memory. She remembered all too clearly what Jonathan had been like alive-arrogant, self-centered, impeccable in his work, duplicitious in his life. Emotional quicksilver. Not that she had absolved herself from responsibility for the unhealthy bond between them. If he were alive, she'd probably still be beating on that sick little triangle of theirs, Jonathan running back and forth between her and his fiancee, trying to stave off being a real grownup for a few more years. Tess, wary of her own adulthood, had been a willing accomplice.

But Jonathan had gotten pious in death. He lectured her, he hectored her. Not that she remembered much of what he said in these dreams. Jonathan's appearances were like hangovers, dull aches that left her feeling she really must behave better next time, even if she didn't quite remember what she had done.

You mustn't be afraid of the truth.

She came to another bridge, but instead of pushing her way through, she held onto the pilings, listening to the humming tires of the cars above her bowed head. Truth. If she had been interested in truth, she would never have gone into journalism, must less the detective business. She was a fact-gatherer, not a truth-teller.

Here was a truth: she loved the little lies she told as a detective, the license it gave her to nudge people along with harmless falsehoods, a practice presumably forbidden in journalism. Assuming there was such a thing as a harmless falsehood. Little white lies. Could you say that now? Or was that non-PC as well, implying as it did that white was better than black.

Little white lies. Big white lies. Poppa Weinstein, kind as Jackie insisted he was, had sent her on her way with cash for an abortion, soothing his own conscience. Now Tess wanted to do the same thing more or less-send Jackie on her way, the balance of her retainer refunded to her. All for her own good, of course. There had to be better detectives, people with more experience who knew how to do these kinds of things.

But Jackie wanted her. She was-did Tess dare say it, say it out loud, whisper it here on the water-family. There would be time enough to deal with how this fact made her feel. For now, the important thing was finding Jackie's daughter. Poppa's daughter. A thirteen-year-old timebomb sitting out there somewhere, ready to detonate with a blast that could destroy her family. Tess had to find her, if only to protect everyone else from the fallout.

Maybe that's what Jonathan Ross was trying to tell her. Maybe he simply wanted her to go ahead and become a real grownup, seeing as he wasn't going to get the chance.

A medium-sized media clot was outside Tess's office when she arrived that morning. Fucking Jackie. She had sold her out, gone public with her daughter's paternity, decided to destroy the whole family.

'Have you spoken to your client today, Miss Monaghan?' asked a breathless young brunette.

'My dealings with clients are confidential,' she snapped, unlocking the door and jerking on Esskay's chain. Although the greyhound had already received more than her share of media attention, she was always eager for additional exposure. She faced the cameras delightedly and opened her mouth as if ready to issue a statement.

'But Luther Beale is your client, isn't he?' a man's voice called after her. The pack stayed on the sidewalk, savvy enough not to trespass.

'Luther Beale?'

'The Butcher of Butchers Hill, now a suspect in the deaths of two twins.'

'Two twins? As opposed to three triplets or four quadruplets?' Tess was smiling, and not just because of the reporter's redundancy. Luther Beale. Thank God. She had forgotten most of the tele- weenies were so new to Baltimore that few of them knew there had ever been a Weinstein's drugstore chain. The only way her grandfather could make news today was if he fathered Madonna's baby.

'Again, that information is confidential,' Tess called back. 'I'm sure you can appreciate that. After all, you wouldn't want me to tell you if the spouse of one of your general managers had hired a private investigator to find out why he's spending so much time cruising prostitutes. Word is, he's been tooling along Patterson Park every night. And it's not even sweeps month.'

'Are you saying-?'

Tess walked back to the door, mindful that she might be able to get some free publicity out of this. 'I'm saying Keyes Investigations is a discreet firm, where all clients are assured of absolute confidentiality. As I'm just an associate here, it's impolitic for me to speak for the firm in any event. I do know Tyner Gray is representing Mr. Beale. As for any questions about the agency, you should probably call the owner, Edward Keyes.'

'How do we get in touch with either of them?'

'Well, as seasoned investigative reporters, you probably have your own methods. Me, I'd try the phone book.' Tess smiled and waved at the cameras, while Esskay poked her nose around the door, wagging her tail in best 'Hi, Ma!' fashion. They probably wouldn't make the news-it would have been a much better shot if Tess had ducked her head and run past them. But if they did use the sound bite, viewers would know that Keyes Investigations was scrupulously tight-lipped, pathologically smart-assed, and equipped with a remarkably friendly watchdog.

Tess tried Jackie's pager number and got the voice mail. 'I'm in,' she told the empty air. 'I don't know how I'm going to help you, but I am going to try. But it's a new deal, a new contract, according to my specifications.' She then dialed her Uncle Donald's number. Another machine. Underemployed as he was, Uncle Donald made it a