Butchers Hill (30 page)

"She's fine,"
David Edelman said. "She's doing great."

Jackie turned to look at him.
"What would you know about it?"

"I'm her foster
father."

Awkward was inadequate to describe the
silence in the room. Jackie and Edelman eyed each other. Edelman looked
wary and defensive, while something hateful crept into
Jackie's face.

"You look like you're
doing pretty well, in your nice suit and your Bally shoes,"
Jackie said at last. "Why do you have to take kids in for
money?"

"We didn't take Sam in
for the money, we took her in because she needed a home. My wife and I
wanted to adopt her, but we can't. Policy prohibits a white
couple adopting a biracial baby in Baltimore city."

"Policy does not prohibit
it," the SSA director broke in. Robert Draper, according to
the name plate on this desk. So this must be his office, even if he had
given his desk chair to the general counsel. "Each
jurisdiction is allowed to set its own standards on adoptions. In
Baltimore City, the social workers elect to follow the recommendations
of several prominent groups, that believe such placements are harmful
to the child."

Edelman glanced at the SSA director.
"Fine, Robert. So do you want to explain how Samantha King
ended up in permanent limbo in my home, or shall I?"

Draper nodded stiffly, indicating Edelman
should continue.

"Did you ever hear of a lawsuit
called
LJ v. Massinga
?"
the lawyer asked Jackie and Tess. Jackie shook her head. Tess thought
it sounded dimly familiar, or at least the name Massinga did.

"Wasn't she the
secretary of this agency at one point?"

"Yes, more than a decade ago, when
the foster care program was in a crisis state. Workers were juggling
huge caseloads, there was virtually no oversight. It was a catastrophe.
Social advocacy lawyers, working with private attorneys like myself,
brought a class action lawsuit against the state on behalf of seven
children, who had been taken from their own parents only to be placed
in homes that were more abusive. LJ was a boy, the lead
plaintiff."

"Was my daughter one of the
seven?"

Edelman smiled at Jackie. "Sam was
one of the lucky ones, actually. Not long after the suit was filed, I
got a tip that an elderly couple had continued taking in children long
past the point where they could really care for them. They had five
kids in their house, three of them under the age of five. Sam
didn't even have a separate bedroom, she was sleeping in the
living room in a little nest of filthy blankets. It was a Friday night,
and I couldn't find any place to put her for the weekend, so
I took her home. She's been there ever since."

"Does she think of you as her
parents?"

Edelman was a lawyer, but he
wasn't glib. He thought seriously about Jackie's
question, taking it apart in his mind and examining each word.
"We think of her as our daughter. She calls us Mom and Dad.
But she's aware of not being related to us by
blood."

"Has she ever asked about me?
About her mother, I mean?"

Edelman shook his head.
"It's always been assumed her mother was dead.
That's why we find ourselves in this delicate
situation."

"What situation?"

Again, that same nervous exchange of looks
among Edelman and the other two.
You tell. No, you
.
Again, Edelman was stuck with the short straw.

"As Ms. Chu said, the state has
official custody of Sam, but your parental rights were never
terminated. You were thought to be dead and Sam's birth
certificate listed no known father. But you're
alive."

"I knew that when I came in
here," Jackie snapped. "What I don't know
is what you're dancing around here."

The general counsel sighed.
"Samantha King is your daughter. You are within your rights
to petition the Foster Care Review board to return her to you. Given
the circumstances, there is nothing we can do to keep you from taking
the girl from the Edelmans."

Tess could see Jackie was at once attracted
to this idea—and terrified of it.
She
could have her daughter back
.

"What does—"
Apparently she wouldn't allow herself to say her
daughter's name. "What does
she
want? Does she want to stay with you, or would she want to be with
me?"

"I wouldn't presume to
speak for Sam. Her biological mother has always been an abstract idea
to her, just a name, Susan King, nothing more. We tried to find her
death certificate once, but when it didn't show up, we
assumed she must have died somewhere outside of Maryland."

"Then you're inept, as
is the state," Tess broke in. "I found Susan King
in less than three days. A Chicago Title search would have taken you
right to her. You would have found the name change. You're a
lawyer, you should have known that much."

Jackie put out her arm, as if to hold her
back, the same gesture a driver might make when making a sudden stop.
"I was at Penn ten years ago. Even if they had found my name
change, they probably wouldn't have tracked me
there."

"We did file a lien against you,
for child support," the general counsel offered, a little
abashedly. Tess remembered that stray lien against Susan King that
Dorie had picked up, the one she had dismissed as so many unpaid
parking tickets. "We're entitled by law to collect
support retroactively, given your present circumstances. But
we're going to waive that in this case."

"Big of you," Tess
muttered. "Awfully big of you."

She had expected Jackie to be even angrier
than she was, but Jackie was as dazed as a sleepwalker. She opened her
purse, staring into it as if all life's answers might be
resting beside her lipstick, checkbook, and Mont Blanc pen, then
snapped it shut resolutely.

"Do you have a photo of
her?" she asked Edelman.

"What?"

"Do you carry a photo of her, in
your wallet?"

"An old one. She
wouldn't let me buy this year's school picture. She
said it made her look fat." He pulled it out and flipped past
photos of two freckled, red-haired boys to a girl with tawny hair,
brown eyes, and a dark olive complexion. Jackie stared at it a long
time, then handed the wallet back to Edelman.

"I'd like to see
her," she said.

"You just did."

"I'd like to see her in
person. You don't have to tell her who I am, just yet. But I
have to see her before I can decide what I'm going to
do."

"We're the only parents
she's ever known," Edelman said. He sounded as if
he might cry. "She's so happy with us. Our sons
worship her. We wouldn't be a family without Sam."

"I believe you," Jackie
said. "Now when can I see her?"

T
hey
finally agreed on Wednesday, after school. Jackie and Tess would have
tea with Molly Edelman, all very civilized, make polite chit-chat while
Jackie observed her daughter. But Wednesday was also the day of the
crab feast at her mother's, and Tess also had to make a fruit
salad. Not just any fruit salad, either, but Gramma's
favorite, with a particular poppy seed dressing and all sorts of
conditions and regulations involving the fruit. (No kiwi, green grapes
not red, extra strawberries, all melon must be balled.) She was
assembling it in the small kitchen in her office, when Tull knocked.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," she said, holding
up her hands. "I'd shake, but I'm
juicy."

Tull reached into the cookie jar and tossed
Esskay a bone. The dog gulped it down gratefully, then returned to the
kitchen to keep her vigil near the fruit salad. Esskay liked melon,
balled or not.

"The baby—"
Tull began.

"Laylah."

"Yeah, Laylah. She's
been moved to a group home. The sister-in-law took her for a few days,
then decided she couldn't handle it."

"I can't decide if
that's good or bad."

"I did some checking on the place
where they put her. It's pretty nice. Out in the country,
lots of land. Woman usually takes in HIV-positive babies and special
needs cases, but she had a vacancy just now."

"Great. I mean, not great, but
okay, I guess." Although Tess wondered if Laylah, who had no
"special" needs, would get as much attention as the
others. Being an eight-month-old orphan wasn't considered all
that special, not alongside children with disabilities and the AIDS
virus.

Tull continued to stand there, looking
strange and uncomfortable.

"About Luther Beale," he
said.

"What about him?" She
had gone back to her fruit salad.

"Just be careful, okay? The double
homicide—it turns out he doesn't have an alibi.
Home alone, listening to the radio."

"But you said it was probably
drugs. You said you were going to question him just to fuck with his
head."

"Yeah, well, Lavon and Keisha
weren't involved in drugs, as far as we can tell. Sure, she
was ripping off social services, claiming the baby's father
wasn't around. But Lavon was doing painting work on a
cash-only basis. Real reliable, according to his boss. No sign that
either of them used drugs, much less sold 'em."

"So what are you saying?"

Tull met her eyes. There was no oneupmanship
in his gaze, no sense of triumph or I-told-you-so, just concern, direct
and simple. "I'm saying someone killed Destiny
Teeter and made, it look like a trick gone bad. Someone bashed in
Treasure Teeter's head and tried to make it look like he
burned himself up. And someone killed Lavon and Keisha in a way that
made us suspect a drug hit. I'm saying I want you to keep
carrying your gun, and I want you to be careful."

"Even if Beale did any of these
things—and I don't think he did—why would
he hurt me?"

"Because this killer is crazy, and
getting crazier. Because this killer is beginning to strike out at
anyone even tangentially related to Donnie Moore. We're
keeping watch on the prosecutor from the case, the judge, the Nelsons
down in D.C. But you're on your own, Tess. I can't
protect you from your own client."

"And Sal?" Tess asked.
"You're watching Sal?"

"Sal's the easiest one
to protect. He's staying at Penfield for the summer session.
They even got him a bodyguard for when he wants to leave the
premises."

Tess bet Sal just loved that. A bodyguard.
Just another reminder that he wasn't anywhere near as tough
as he thought he was.

Tull turned to leave.

"Martin—"
Funny how strange his first name felt in her mouth.

"Yeah?"

"Tell me something about yourself,
something personal. Anything. Something about your marriage, or why it
ended."

He deliberated for a moment. "We
had a cat."

"The marriage ended because you
had a cat?"

"Give me a second. You asked for a
story, then you charge right in, interrupting me. We had a cat. He was
named Stanley, because he had this weird meow, it sounded like he was
yelling ‘Stella.' I kid you not. I loved that cat.
The night my wife left me, she took Stan. She also took everything
else—our bed, the air conditioning units, the major
appliances. I mean, she took the fucking stove, okay? But she left the
litter box. I think she was trying to tell me something."

"And that was?"

"I'm still trying to
figure it out. You got any ideas?"

"My guess is that she was a greedy
head case who wasn't anywhere near good enough for
you."

Tull smiled, walked back to the desk, and
grabbed another biscuit for Esskay, then gave Tess a comradely thump
just above the elbow. "Be careful," he said.
"Please be careful."

Less than four hours later, Tess and Jackie
sat in a gazebo behind a gingerbread Victorian in Mount Washington, a
neighborhood full of gracious old homes. Molly Edelman was serving them
iced tea, homemade cheese straws, and ham sandwiches with the crusts
cut off. Her hands shook as she poured the tea. No one was eating.

"Just think," Jackie
murmured, almost to herself. "When I came to Fresh Fields, I
was practically in her backyard. I might have seen her here. She might
have been over at Starbucks. Or walking through the little business
district, looking at the clothes and jewelry at Something
Else."

The boys came home first, as their grade
school was at the foot of the hill. There were two of them, red-headed
boys, almost close enough in size to be twins.

"Sandwiches. Excellent,"
the older one said, grabbing a handful.

"Remember your manners,
Henry," Molly said. "Henry, Eli, say hello to my
guests, Miss Weir and Miss Monaghan."

"'lo," Henry
said around bites. Eli looked up shyly from luminous green eyes, too
bashful to speak.

"Can we practice, even though
you're having guests?" Henry asked.

"Sure," Molly said.
"Just keep control of it. I don't want a lacrosse
ball coming at us."

The two boys disappeared into the house,
returned with lacrosse sticks scaled to their height, and began
throwing the ball against a netted backdrop, passing it to one another.
As they played, a Volvo station wagon stopped in the alley and a
long-legged girl climbed out. They dropped their sticks and ran to her,
falling to the ground and grabbing her by the ankles.

"Thanks, Ms. Reston. See you at
school tomorrow, Hannah." The girl looked down, an amused
giantess. "Get off me, you spazzes."

She wore the short blue skirt of a local
private school—Bryn Mawr, Tess thought, or Roland Park
County. Her body was hard and slender, the tea-colored legs
crisscrossed with scratches. The honey-colored hair was pulled back
into a plait, but small, tight curls had popped out along the forehead
and at the nape of the neck. The face was a lighter version of
Jackie's—the broad forehead, the expressive mouth,
the deep-set eyes.