Butchers Hill (17 page)

"So where do I start?"
Jackie demanded. "If I can't begin with them, where
do I begin?"

"With your own
memories," Jeff said. "Agencies often give a little
information to mothers, to ease their minds. They've even
been known to send out paperwork that reveals information
they're not supposed to have. One of our clients got her
birth mother's surname on a form the hospital routed to her
by mistake."

"They told me my baby's
adopted father was a doctor," Jackie began hopefully.

"Shit." Adele shook her
head sorrowfully. "I'm sorry, honey, but they tell
almost every girl that. It's one of the clichés of
the trade."

Jackie looked as if she might cry. Tess dug
her nail a little harder into her leg, signaling her to gain control,
to have a little faith in the person she was paying.

"This agency," Tess
said. "When it went down, did it end with a bang or a
whimper?"

"What are you to her?"
Adele asked. Not hostile, just a little curious. Tess wondered if she
assumed they were lovers.

"A friend," Jackie said,
before Tess could reply. It was as good a cover story as any.

"There were a few newspaper and
television stories, nothing huge," Jeff said. "I
think I've got a file on them back in my office. But there
aren't any names that I recall. The clients were protected,
the owners of the agency disappeared, along with all their
files."

"But I bet there was a little
flurry of action down in Annapolis, right? Probably some attempt to
draft legislation to prevent this from happening again. Some tearful
testimony—distraught clients, maybe a repentant employee or
two?"

Jeff looked at Tess as if she were a
psychic. "Yeah, that's exactly what happened, only
the bill never made it out of committee. How could you know
that?"

"Because if some politician
can't make a little hay out of someone else's
tragedy, what's the point of being a politician?"
Tess turned to Jackie. "They keep files on bill testimony,
and who testifies, even if the bill goes nowhere. By tomorrow,
we'll have a list of names to play with."

"This is more than a scavenger
hunt, you know," Adele said earnestly. "This
isn't just about finding something and shouting
‘Eureka!' You're setting some up some
mighty big dominoes, and you don't know how they're
going to fall. You really should keep working with us."

Jackie reached into her purse, took out her
checkbook and a pen—a Mont Blanc, of course—and
wrote Maryland Adoption Rights a check for $250. "Thank you
for your assistance," she said. "I'll
worry about those dominoes after they fall.
Meanwhile—"

Adele looked at her hopefully.

"Could I get a receipt for that,
for my tax records?"

I
t
was just after nine Tuesday morning when Tess left the highway and
began working her way north on a narrow country road. The thirty-minute
drive to Penfield School had passed quickly, thanks to the woman on the
radio explaining a vast government conspiracy, in which all new cars
were equipped with computer chips that would allow the federal
government to shut them down anywhere, any time. Tess tried to figure
out how this would work exactly. If the government disabled her car
right now, for example, what would they do with it, or her?

Talk radio, the more paranoid the better,
was Tess's entertainment of choice as of late. The cacophony
of voices was pretty good company. Unfortunately, the shows where the
hosts really seethed were becoming harder to find, replaced by
garden-variety blustering conservatives and apologetic liberals who hit
the same notes over and over. At the other end of the dial, as well as
the spectrum, earnest NPR was the high-fiber cereal of radio: Tess
would start liking it, remember it was so good for her, and recoil.

Now a caller was wondering if these new,
smaller satellite dishes were really part of a government surveillance
program. "Of course they are," the host assured
him, going on to explain how pay-per-view events allowed the White
House to bug your home. Tess was so engrossed in the details of this
elaborate scheme that she almost missed the turnoff to the Penfield
School.

It was a balancing act, working for two
clients. Jackie had assumed she would head straight to Annapolis this
morning, but she had promised Beale to interview Salamon Hawkings. To
arrange the meeting, she had called Penfield yesterday, telling the
headmaster careful not-quite lies: She was an alumna from Washington
College (absolutely true), she was interested in helping the school
recruit a more diverse student body (true, not that she'd
actually do anything about it), and she had heard Salamon Hawkings was
a promising young student, an award-winning public speaker (true). The
headmaster had hemmed and hawed, but finally agreed she could meet with
Salamon this morning, during his study period.

The plain wooden sign for the school was so
small and discreet that she overshot the driveway and had to do a
U-turn. The Penfield School, established 1888. It had been a church-run
school then, intended for poor, young orphans. In terms of class and
background, Salamon Hawkings was actually closer to
Penfield's origins than most of the young men enrolled here
today.

The headmaster, Robert Freehley, met her in
the hallway.
Hello, Mr. Chips
:
Tall, thin, prematurely gray, tweedy, he might have come straight from
Central Casting. The June mornings were cooler here in the country,
Tess thought, but not so cool as to warrant a tweed jacket. With
leather elbow patches yet.

"They're waiting for you
in the library," he said, leading her through corridors that
didn't really look any different than most school buildings,
yet Tess could still sense how much richer Penfield was than, say,
Gwynn's Falls Middle School. Not to mention the Benjamin
Banneker Academy. The differences were small, but telling: The display
case, which ran heavily to lacrosse and soccer trophies, was made of
oak and the items inside were obviously dusted on a regular basis.
Furniture was well-worn, but in that thrifty WASP kind of way. And the
building was cool, not just because it had central air conditioning,
but because it was made of thick stone that held in the night air. Only
the odors were the same from school to school, the smell of chalk dust
and adolescent boys being pretty standard everywhere.

Salamon Hawkings sat at the end of a long
library table, his head bent over a book. The tables here actually had
green-shaded lamps at each place, although the morning sun spilling
through the wooden Venetian blinds made them unnecessary just now. A
man in a seersucker suit sat next to him. A teacher? The librarian? He
was vaguely familiar to Tess, a bland-faced man of thirty-five or so.

"I'll leave you to your
business," the headmaster said. He seemed a little nervous to
Tess. Perhaps the man at the table was one of his trustees, or a rich
alum.

"Miss Monaghan?" The man
stood, while Salamon never looked up, just kept reading.
"I'm Chase Pearson."

Tess reached for his hand, then realized he
hadn't offered it. "Of course. You're in
the governor's cabinet. The task force on children and youth,
right?" And thinking of a run for lieutenant governor,
depending on how the ticket shook out, according to her Uncle
Donald's gossip. The Pearson family was rich in connections
and blood, if not much else. His first name, Chase, was probably
intended to remind people he was distantly related to
Maryland's signer of the Declaration of Independence. Very
distantly related.

"I'm the special
secretary for Adolescents and Children," he said, a little
stuffily. Well, it must be disappointing for a politically ambitious
man to find out someone didn't know his current title and
couldn't recognize his face. "Before that, I headed
the task force on young men and violence in Baltimore City, by special
appointment of the mayor. People often confuse the two. But
I'm here today as a Penfield alum—and as Sal
Hawkings's guardian."

The young man kept reading, as if they
weren't even there. He probably had much practice in tuning
out the world around him, Tess thought, a preternatural ability to
concentrate. That was the talent that had gotten him here, as much as
his oratorical skills.

"Did the headmaster tell you about
Washington College's interest in Salamon?"

"Sal," he corrected,
turning a page, still not looking up. "I go by Sal
now."

Chase Pearson smiled. Tess saw another
problem facing the would-be candidate. His teeth were uneven and
yellow, stained with nicotine and brown at the gum line. Good enough
for lieutenant governor, but nothing better.

"The headmaster told me what you
had told him," Pearson said. "Yet when I called
Chestertown yesterday, no one in admissions at Washington College had
any idea what I was talking about."

Damn. She knew she should have scheduled
this meeting closer to her initial phone call. Even the best lies had a
pretty short shelf life. "This recruitment program is through
the Alumni Society. The college wouldn't necessarily know
about it."

"I don't think
so," Pearson said, then picked up a single piece of paper
from the library table. "Theresa Esther Monaghan,
twenty-nine. Lives on Bond Street in Fells Point, in a building owned
by her aunt, Katherine Helen Monaghan. Owns a twelve-year-old Toyota
which failed the state emissions test last year and has two outstanding
parking tickets, one in Baltimore City, the other in Towson. Former
employee of the
Star
newspaper. Now a licensed private investigator for Keyes
Investigations. Owns a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson, for which she has
a permit to carry."

Tess had wondered what the world's
databases had on her, and now she knew. Pearson must have used his
government sources to pull this dossier together so quickly. Dorie
could have gotten much more, but Pearson had done okay. For an amateur.

He slid the piece of paper toward
Salamon—Sal—who never lifted his eyes from his
book. "By the way, Washington College was glad to have your
new address, as they had lost track of you quite some time ago. You can
look forward to a fund-raising solicitation quite soon. Although I have
a sense you don't have a lot of discretionary income, not
even for your beloved alma mater."

"If Washington College wanted me
to donate money, they should have steered me away from majoring in
English," Tess said. "Okay, so I lied. Sort of. I
represent someone who is familiar with the circumstances of the death
of Sal's friend, Donnie Moore. This person, who prefers to
remain anonymous, would like to help Sal and the others who witnessed
his death."

"You represent Luther
Beale."

Tess thought of her office door, loose and
swinging in the summer breeze. But she couldn't imagine
someone like Chase Pearson going to such extreme measures. He
wouldn't have to. Maybe the state police had Beale under
surveillance. Maybe another Penfield alum sat on the board of her bank,
and knew whose checks she had deposited. Baltimore boards were lousy
with Penfield grads.

"There's no database in
the world with that information. You have no way of knowing who I
represent," she said, curious to see if he would contradict
her.

"Whom," Sal said,
looking up for the first time. He was a handsome young man, or would
have been if he smiled. He had deep-set eyes and strong features, made
more prominent by his short, short hair, shaved down until it was
little more than peach fuzz on his scalp. "
Whom
you represent."

"Look, someone wants to help you
pay for your college education, or take a trip to Europe, if
that's what you want. What's the downside to that?
Why does it matter who your benefactor is?"

Tess had spoken directly to Sal, but he had
turned back to his book, indifferent to the appeal. Apparently, only
the rules of grammar and his nickname preference warranted his
attention.

"Sal is a straight-A student, with
SAT scores above 1300. Almost any college in the country will offer him
a full scholarship," Pearson said. "He
doesn't need anyone's money. In particular, he does
not need anyone's
blood
money."

"Funny, I thought one of your big
issues was restitution to victims. Here's someone trying to
make restitution, and you want no part of it."

"Luther Beale may have killed one
child, but he came close to destroying every child who saw what he did
on Butchers Hill that night. I don't want him anywhere near
Sal. I don't care how much remorse he claims to feel. The
tiger doesn't change his stripes."

"The
leopard
doesn't change his
spots
,"
Sal amended.

"Don't interrupt,
Sal," Pearson said.

"Says so right here,"
Sal said. "That story is in this book I'm reading
right
now
, man."
He turned another page, and Tess glimpsed a vivid color plate, a
crocodile's jaws clamped on an elephant's nose.
Kipling's
Just-So Stories
,
how the elephant got his trunk. Not a bad cautionary tale for Tess,
with her own insatiable curiosity. But why was a high school junior at
an elite school flipping through such a childish book?

"Is Sal so well fixed that
there's nothing he needs? Even with scholarships, I would
think he could use help with college. Perhaps he needs a car, or a new
computer. My client would be glad to help him with that."

At the mention of a car, Sal looked a little
pleadingly at Pearson, as if to say,
What's
the harm
. Pearson shook his head.

"Easy for you," Sal
muttered. "You have a Porsche."