Laura Lippman Read Online Free PDF Page A

Tess.” Her named sounded strange, coming from those plump, coral-flecked lips, although Tess couldn’t have said why. “My brother Henry killed a girl last year. It was an accident—they were sniffing glue in my backyard. He panicked when she tried to get into our house. He thought she was going to try and take some stuff, I guess. Anyway, she fell, cracking her head open on the pavement. But he admitted it, he took responsibility for what he did. Right from the very beginning, he didn’t try to make any excuses.”
    She paused, green eyes wide and solemn, as if waiting for Tess to acknowledge the remarkable moral fiber of her brother, this veritable modern-day George Washington. I cannot tell a lie, I cracked her head open while fighting over some airplane glue.
    “Uh-huh,” Tess said, nodding and smiling. As long as you nodded and smiled, she had learned, it didn’t matter what you were saying.
    “He went to trial, got ten years, and was sent to Hagerstown this past summer. It wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened.”
    “No, not at all.” It was, for example, better than having your brains oozing out of your head on some concrete patio in Locust Point.
    “It was his last chance to clean up, you see. Prison, I mean. They have a Narcotics Anonymous group there. It was his chance to get clean for once. I hope you don’t think I sound cold, but in some ways it was the happiest day in my life when I saw Henry go off to Hagerstown. Nothing else had worked. No matter what I did, he always went back to huffing.”
    “I hear that literally destroys brain cells,” Tess offered, then felt fatuous. Ruthie was probably an unwilling expert on the topic.
    “It’s a stupid high,” Ruthie said, inhaling fiercely on her cigarette. “Look, I’m no angel. I like to drink. If I have a gentleman friend, I drink with him. If I’m alone, I might drink a beer or two. When I was working two jobs and going to community college, I took speed to get through exams. But sniffing glue and spray paint, sneaking up on gas pumps—I can’t imagine anything dumber. I kicked Henry out three times in the last two years.”
    Tess dropped the smile, which now seemed inappropriate, but continued to nod.
    “I also took him back three times. He was my baby brother, I practically raised him after our mother died.”
    “Was there a big age difference?”
    “Eighteen years. He was a change-of-life baby. Mother died of lung cancer before he was two.” Ruthie sucked on her cigarette as if to taunt whatever gods she believed in. “She was forty-seven. Dad made it to fifty-five before he went. Brain tumor.”
    In another city, or another neighborhood, perhaps this double dose of tragedy would have been shocking. But cancer was one area where Maryland stayed competitive, year in and year out, thanks to families like the Dembrows. Bad habits, bad diets, bad workplaces.
    Tess realized Ruthie had spoken of her brother in the past tense.
    “Henry didn’t make it, did he?”
    Ruthie shook her head. “He was stabbed to death his first month in Hagerstown. His first month. There was a fight, and the guards all went running to one part, Henry was left where he was, nobody around. But when it wasover, Henry was the one who was dead. I thought Hagerstown was going to save him, but it ended up being the death of him.”
    Fairly classic prison shanking scenario, but Tess didn’t think this assessment would comfort Ruthie Dembrow. It was a sad story, too, and one Ruthie carried with not a little guilt. Maybe her eyes, and her mouth and her hair had not always been so hard.
    Still, Tess couldn’t see where a private investigator came into play. She wondered if Ruthie was going to try and sue the state, claim the guards were negligent in her brother’s death. If so, she wanted no part of it. Tess was probably Ruthie’s last resort, the only person left after being turned down by every ambulance chaser in the city. There was just no money to be