Keisha had come to Tess because she had heard something, something about Beale and Destiny and money. It always came back to that for Keisha: My son is dead. What's it worth? But what had she heard? How much did she really know?
Tess grabbed Esskay's leash off its peg by the door and tucked her gun in the outside pocket on her knapsack. It wasn't the safest ten blocks between Butchers Hill and Keisha's rowhouse, but the almost summer-sky was still light and Esskay could look intimidating from a distance. They took off at a semitrot, although the dog kept slowing down to enjoy the strange smells of an unfamiliar route.
Tess could hear Laylah's cries a block away. The baby sounded frantic, but exhausted, as if she had been screaming for hours and no one had come. Great. Keisha was back to her old ways, despite all her promises and assurances.
"She ain't been crying that long," said an old woman sitting on the stoop next door, as Tess charged up Keisha's steps. "It's good for her. Keisha spoils that baby something awful."
Laylah was having trouble catching her breath now, so her cries came out in little stutters, weaker and weaker. Tess pounded on the door, then brought her leg up and kicked it, flat-footed. It buckled slightly, but held, apparently the best-made door in all of East Baltimore.
"You got a warrant?" asked the Dr. Spock of the stoop. Tess ignored her, running around to the alley in back. Keisha's house had a small square of concrete for a backyard, surrounded by a chain-link fence. The gate was fastened with a padlock, but the fence was only waist-high. Tess hooked Esskay's leash to the gate, then climbed over it. The kitchen door was open, the storm door pulled to and locked. Tess glanced through its murky panes, seeing nothing. She thought she could force it by sheer will, but this door also held fast, no matter how she yanked at it or kicked. She ended up using her gun to break the lower pane of glass and reached in to depress the button that held the door in place.
She found Laylah in a small room at the top of the stairs, sitting in a wooden crib from the fifties, the pre-Consumer Safety kind with wooden slats and toxic decoupages of pastel animals with lunatic grins and silky eyelashes. Tentatively, Tess reached for her, thinking a stranger might make the baby more hysterical. But the little girl dug her tiny fingers into her arms, as if Tess were a log floating by in a flash flood.
Still, she kept crying. No wonder. Laylah stank. Tess held the baby at arm's length, looking at her dubiously. She hadn't changed a diaper since her baby-sitting days, almost fifteen years gone. But how hard could it be? She found a fresh diaper and a box of wipes in the bathroom, then looked around for a place to change her. There was the changing table, Keisha must have called Uncle Spike after all. Diaper-changing was easier than Tess remembered. Thank God for disposable diapers with sticky tabs, one of the great technical innovations of the age.
Laylah continued to cry, although the tenor had changed slightly. She wasn't as panicky, now she sounded adamant, demanding. It was the same tone Esskay's whining noises took on when supper was overdue. Tess carried Laylah downstairs-there was a new dining room set, she hadn't noticed it in her mad rush upstairs-and rummaged through the kitchen. A can of formula, which she didn't have a clue how to prepare, a bottle with what she hoped was apple juice sitting in the refrigerator. Laylah sucked, temporarily appeased.
But what to do now? If she called Social Services, Laylah would be in foster care within hours. Surely, that would be preferable to leaving her in Keisha's "care." Still, maybe Keisha had a good excuse. She hadn't been lying about the furniture. Maybe she had left the baby with someone who had wandered off, her careless sister-in-law, or some neighborhood kid. Tess paced the empty dining room, rocking Laylah. Her repertoire of baby-care skills was pretty much depleted. If Keisha didn't show up soon, she'd have to call DSS or the cops.
Laylah's skin seemed cold and clammy. Was the early evening air too cool for a baby? Holding the baby on her hip, Tess headed back upstairs in search of a T-shirt. Nothing in Laylah's room except a pile of dirty clothes in a small hamper. The bathroom held only the diaper pail. Using her foot, she pushed open the final door, figuring it was Keisha's room.
She had not figured on Keisha being in there.
Her amber eyes were open, a little stunned looking, as if she had just enough time to register what was happening to her. The man lying across her-had he tried to shield her, or was he trying to bolt from the bed when the shots came? His gun was on the floor, just inches from his stiffening fingers, his back ripped out by the gunshots, which must have passed through Keisha, too, judging by the blood. Quite a bit of blood, but it wasn't enough apparently. The killer had fired twice more-through the back of the man's head, and then into Keisha's forehead. Just to be sure.
Tess was suddenly aware of Laylah, still balanced on her hip and cooing, reaching her pudgy baby arms toward her dead mother.
Chapter 22
"This is familiar," Martin Tull said. "You, me, a murder scene."
Tess was sitting in Keisha Moore's kitchen, still holding Laylah, who had finally fallen asleep in her arms despite the excitement around her-the police and technicians wandering through the house, the medical examiner loading up her parents' bodies. Looking down, Tess realized she never had found a T-shirt for the baby. She held her a little closer.
"I suppose you think it's Beale," she said.
"I suppose you don't." He was stiff and cool, much less friendly than he would have been if she had been a stranger. She knew, she had been a stranger once. She remembered how kind he had been to her the first time they had met, how empathetic. He hadn't believed a word she had said, but he had listened to her babbling without condescension.
"Are you going to take Luther Beale in again?"
"Someone's headed over there right now." Something in Tull's face seemed to give a little. "But you know what? I don't think this has anything to do with him. Looks like an execution. I'm sure we'll find the boyfriend was involved in the local business."
Not going to be the same fool twice. "Keisha Moore said he wasn't."
"You coming over to my side, now? Ready to talk to me about your client?"
Tess sniffed the top of Laylah's head. It smelled sweet, as if the apple juice she had downed was coming through her pores.
"Well, the death of Donnie Moore's mother is as good an excuse as any to bring Beale in, see if he has anything to say. Or to confess."
"He's tougher than you are."
"Yeah, he is," Tull said, and she looked up from Laylah's head, startled that he would grant Beale any credit, no matter how grudging. "You know how tough you have to be to kill three kids in cold blood? Damn tougher than me, that's for sure."
"He didn't kill three kids."
"How many did he kill, Tess? How many does it have to be before you admit he's everything I told you he was? Is one not enough? Try two. What if it's five? You tell me. Do you really believe he didn't shoot Donnie Moore, or just that he didn't shoot him on purpose? Do you believe he killed Treasure but not Destiny, or vice versa?"
Esskay cried mournfully off in the distance. She had been locked in the back seat of Tull's police car to keep her from wreaking havoc on the crime scene. "Or what's left of the crime scene," one lab tech had muttered, as if Tess should have known she was in a house with two fresh corpses as she changed diapers and scrounged for apple juice.
"Did anyone hear the shots?" she asked Tull.
"Neighbors say now they think they did, but they didn't call it in because they thought it was back in the alley. They don't always call in shots, not around here."