Butchers Hill Read Free Page B

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a web page, www.tellyourtroubles.com.
    "Mr. Beale, is there anything I
can help you with today?"
    "Retribution."
    The word, pronounced with great care in
Luther Beale's deep, growly voice, seemed to hang and shimmer
in the air. Tess envisioned it in black plastic letters on the marquee
outside one of those hellfire churches on the Eastern Shore, the little
cinderblock buildings that stood in the middle of vast cornfields. Today's
sermon: Retribution. Don't forget Guild Ladies annual
scrapple breakfast .
    "Retribution," he
repeated. "A beautiful word, don't you
think?"
    She thought not. "Vengeance is an
ugly business. You may have a legitimate grudge against the system, but
if that's what you're after, Mr. Beale, you better
find someone else to help you with it."
    "You're an educated
woman, Miss Monaghan? A college graduate?"
    "Yes, Washington College, over in
Chestertown."
    "I would hope such a fine school
might have taught you the meaning of such a common word. I read a lot
in prison—the Bible, history. But I also read the dictionary,
which is one of the best books we have. No lies in the dictionary, just
words, beautiful words, waiting for you to make something of them. The
heart of retribution is tribute. From the Latin, to pay back. It can
mean to reward as well as to punish."
    Beale was enjoying his little vocabulary
lesson. Tess wasn't. Several replies of varying degrees of
heat and wit occurred to her. But her aunt and her former employer had
repeatedly impressed upon her that running one's own business
meant eating several healthy doses of crap every day.
    "Okay, so to whom do you wish to
make tribute?"
    Beale twisted his hat, kneading the brim
with fingers as plump and long as the Esskay Ballpark Franks that had
given the greyhound her name. Hot dog fingers and
ham hands , Tess thought, then wondered why she
had pork products on the brain. Apparently her usual morning bagels
weren't going to hold her until lunch today.
    "As I told you, I worked at the
Procter and Gamble on Locust Point. It was a good place to
work—decent pay, good benefits. The company shut it down
while I was…gone."
    Prison, you were in
prison. For killing a little boy .
    "That was hard on folks, but the
stock went up, up, up. That was my retirement fund and I
couldn't touch it for almost five years, so it went up even
more. I'm a rich man by my standards, richer for not working
than I ever would have been working. I couldn't spend all
this money if I tried. And I've got no wife, no kids, no
family at all, no one to leave it to."
    Tess nodded, although she still
wasn't sure what he was getting at.
    "Now there was a television show,
before your time, ‘The Millionaire.' A guy named
Michael Anthony used to show up, tell folks they were going to get some
money. My wife and I always liked that show. I got to
thinking—maybe I could have my own Michael Anthony, someone
who could find the children, then help them out. Not with
millions—I'm not doing that well—but with
a thousand here or there."
    "The children?" He had
lost her completely.
    "The ones who were there that
night. The ones who saw what…happened."
    Tess tried to remember the news stories
about the Butcher of Butchers Hill. There had been much about his
victim—Donnie Moore, it was coming back to her in bits and
pieces. The media had worked hard to find something of interest to say
about an eleven-year-old who wasn't particularly nice or
bright, yet didn't deserve to be shot in the back for an act
of vandalism. The best they could come up with was that Donnie was a
work in progress. The other children, the witnesses, had been virtually
anonymous figures by law and custom. As foster children, their names
were confidential and the local media kept them that way during the
trial. The court artists hadn't even sketched the children on
the stand, if memory served.
    "Why would you do this? Those kids
taunted and tormented you."
    "And one of them was killed.
That's not God's justice. I