Butchers Hill Read Free

confinement. Petty cash would be housed there, too, as soon
as she had some.
    A hand rapped at the door, with such force
it sounded as if it might crash through the glass pane at its center.
Eager-beaver Beale, ten minutes early by the neon
"It's Time for a Haircut" barbershop
clock that hung on the wall, another contribution from her aunt.
"Come in," Tess shouted over her shoulder, looking
around quickly to see if there was anything else she could hang over
the safe. The doorknob rattled impatiently, reminding her that she kept
it locked, a sad but necessary precaution in Butchers Hill.
    "Right there," she said,
placing the picture back on the wall. She could find something more
appropriate later. Poker-playing dogs were always nice.
    "Miss Monaghan?"
    The man she let into her office was
barrel-chested with skinny legs that seemed ridiculously spindly
beneath such a large bulk. He stepped around Tess, as if encased in an
invisible force field that required him to keep great distances between
himself and others, then settled slowly into the chair opposite her
desk. His joints creaked audibly, the Tin Man after a long, hard rain.
No it was another Oz character he reminded her of, the lesser-known
Gnome King from the later books in the series. He had the same rotund
girth atop skinny legs. What else? The Gnome King had been deathly
afraid of eggs.
    "So this is Keyes,
Inc.," her visitor said. "Would you be
Keyes?"
    "I'm his partner, Tess
Monaghan. Mr. Keyes is, uh, semi-retired."
    "I'm retired
myself," the man said, eyes fixed on his own lap. For all
Tess's last-minute worrying, nothing in the surroundings seem
to register with him—not the furnishings, not the photograph,
not even Esskay, who had opened her eyes and was doing her adorable
bit, just in case the visitor wanted to toss her one of the biscuits
that Tess kept in a cookie jar on her desk.
    "I guess you know who I
am." His voice was meek, but his chest, already so large,
seem to swell with self-importance.
    She didn't. Should she? He was an
elderly black man, which in his case meant he had skin the color of a
stale Hershey bar—dark brown, with a chalky undercast. He
wore a brown suit two shades lighter than his face, and although it was
clean and neat, it wasn't quite right. Too tight in the
shoulders, slightly baggy in the legs and paired with a rose-pink shirt
and magenta tie. He held a once-white Panama hat, now yellow as a
tortilla chip. No woman had watched him dress this morning, Tess
decided.
    "I'm afraid I
don't," she admitted.
    "Luther Beale," he said,
as if his full name would be enough. It wasn't. She did hear
in his voice the same ponderous, overenunciated quality that had led
her to think he was drunk on the phone.
    "Luther Beale?"
    "Luther Beale," he
repeated solemnly.
    "I'm afraid I
don't…"
    "You might know me as the Butcher
of Butchers Hill," he said stiffly, and Tess was embarrassed
at the little noise she made, halfway between a squeal and a gasp. The
nickname had done the trick. In fact, her former employer, the defunct Baltimore
Star , had bestowed it on him. The Star had been good at bestowing nicknames, while the surviving paper, the
stodgy Beacon-Light , was
good only at attracting them. The Blight ,
most called it, although Blite was beginning to gain currency, thanks to a new media column in the
city's alternative weekly.
    Luther "the Butcher"
Beale. The Butcher of Butchers Hill. For a few weeks, he had been
famous, the leading man in a national morality play. Luther Beale, evil
vigilante or besieged old man, depending on one's point of
view. Luther Beale. His name had been invoked more often on talk radio
than Hillary Clinton's. Hadn't "60
Minutes" done a piece on him? No, that had been Roman
Welzant, the Snowball Killer, acquitted almost two decades ago in the
shooting death of a teenager tossing snowballs at his home outside the
city limits a decade earlier. Beale had killed a much younger boy for
breaking one of his windows. Or was it