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."

"Whose fault is that?"

"Theirs for shooting at each other all the time. See, I can play ugly cop as good as anyone, Tess. Is that what you want? Is that what you think of me?"

"It's the way you've been acting for some time now."

"It's the way I've been acting since you got mixed up with Luther Beale. And I was right about that, wasn't I, Tess? Look at it this way. If you hadn't taken Luther Beale's case, you wouldn't have ever talked to Keisha Moore and you wouldn't be here right now. Wouldn't you like to have been spared that, at least? I mean, bad enough to have the death of Treasure Teeter on your conscience-"

"Are we done here?"

"Not quite."

A policewoman came in and held her arms out to Tess. For a moment, she wasn't sure what she wanted. When she realized it was Laylah, she held the baby tighter.

"Don't worry," the policewoman said. She was startlingly young, even by Tess's standards. She couldn't be more than twenty-one or twenty-two. "The baby's going to be fine."

The policewoman had a large diaper bag, packed and ready to go. Apparently she had been able to find the clothes that had eluded Tess. But Tess still wasn't ready to admit she could be more competent than she.

"What are you going to do with her?"

"We'll put her in a temporary placement tonight, then figure out if one of her family members can take her in."

Tess thought of what she knew of Keisha's family-the addict Tonya, the never-seen sister-in-law who had dumped her children on Keisha as the mood struck her.

"And if they can't?"

"She'll stay in foster care. Don't worry, we know how to do this."

"Jesus, it's like there's a procedure or something."

"There is, Tess." Tull's voice sounded like the old Tull, the one who was her friend. "You think this little girl is the first baby in Baltimore to have her parents murdered?"

"No, I guess not." With that, Tess reluctantly passed the baby to the policewoman. Laylah slept through the exchange, never opened her eyes through what might be the most momentous event in her young life. Everything that would happen to her would come back to this night, to the decisions made here. What would she think, when she woke up in a strange place, with strange faces all around? How much did babies know, what did they remember? Would she wait one day for her mother to come find her? Was Jackie's daughter waiting for her, did she have some primal memory imprinted upon her that could never be erased? Tess tried to imagine her life without Judith. Infuriating, maddening, critical, wonderful Judith, the eternal martyr. And there was no Judith without Gramma Weinstein.