Chapter 1

On the last night of August, Tess Monaghan went to the drugstore and bought a composition book—one with a black-and-white marble cover. She had done this every fall since she was six and saw no reason to change, despite the differences wrought by twenty-three years. Never mind that she had a computer with a memory capable of keeping anything she might want to record. Never mind that she had to go to Rite Aid because Weinstein's Drugs had long ago been run into the ground by her grandfather. Never mind that she was no longer a student, no longer had a job, and summer's end held little relevance for her. Tess believed in routines and rituals. So she bought a composition book for $1.69, took it home, and opened it to the first page, where she wrote:

Goals for Autumn:

1. Bench press 120 pounds.

2. Run a 7-minute mile.

3. Read Don Quixote.

4. Find a job, etc.

She sat at her desk and looked at what she had written. The first two items were within reach, although it would take work: She could do up to ten reps at a hundred pounds and run four miles in thirty minutes. Don Quixote had defeated her before, but she felt ready for it this fall.

Number 4 was more problematic. For one thing it would require figuring out what kind of job she wanted, a dilemma that had been perplexing her for two years, ever since Baltimore's penultimate newspaper, the Star, had folded, and its ultimate paper, the Beacon-Light, had not hired her.

Tess slapped the notebook closed, filed it on a shelf with twenty-two others—all blank except for the first page—set her alarm, and was asleep in five minutes. It was the eve of the first day of school, time for the city to throw off its August doldrums and move briskly toward fall. Maybe it could carry Tess with it.

The alarm went off seven hours later, at 5:15 A.M. She dressed quickly and ran to her car, sniffing the breeze to see if fall might be early this year. The air was depressingly thick and syrupy, indifferent to Tess's expectations. Her eleven-year-old Toyota, the most dependable thing in her life, turned over instantly. "Thank you, precious," she said, patting the dashboard, then heading off through downtown's deserted streets.

On the other side of the harbor, the boat house was dark. It often was at 5:30, for the attendant did not find minimum wage incentive enough to leave his bed and arrive in Cherry Hill before first light. The neighborhood, a grim place at any time of day, had long ago been stripped of its fruit trees. And though its gentle slopes offered a sweeping view of Baltimore's harbor and skyline, no one came to Cherry Hill for the views.

Fortunately Tess had her own boat house key, as did most of the diehard rowers. She let herself in, stashed her key ring in a locker in the ladies' dressing room, then ran downstairs and grabbed her oars, anxious to be on the water before the college students arrived. She didn't like being lumped in with what she thought of as the J. Crew crews, callow youths with hoarse chatter of tests they had aced and kegs they had tapped. But she also felt out of place among the Baltimore Rowing Club's efficient grown-ups, professionals who rushed from morning practice to jobs, real ones, at hospitals and research labs, law firms and brokerage houses.

"Watch my line, girlie," a crabber called out, his voice thick in the humid morning air.

"I see it," she said, balancing an Alden Ocean Shell above her head as she threaded her way down the dock and the crabbers' gauntlet of string, chicken necks, and bushel baskets. The crabbers, Cherry Hill residents supplementing their government checks with the Patapsco's bounty, were having a good morning, even if much of their catch was illegal—pregnant females, crabs less than five inches across. Tess wouldn't tell. She didn't care. She didn't eat anything from the local waters.

At least the city-owned Alden was easy to launch. The sun was still lurking just beyond the Francis Scott Key Bridge when Tess pushed off in the choppy water and started for Fort McHenry. Almost reflexively, she hummed "The Star-Spangled Banner." Oh say can you see? She would catch herself, stop, then unconsciously start again; after all, she was rowing toward the anthem's birthplace. And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air…

The water was rough this morning, making Tess nervous. It was difficult to tip an Alden, but not impossible, and she didn't want to be immersed in the Patapsco's murky middle branch under any circumstances. Once she had gotten a little of the river in a cut on her hand, and the cut hadn't healed for three months. Better to take it easy, warm up, let her morning-tight muscles relax and expand. On the way back she would push herself, rowing as if in a race.

This was Tess's routine, her only routine since the Star had been shuttered. Six days a week she rowed in the morning and ran in the evening. Three times a week she lifted weights in an old-fashioned boxing gym in East Baltimore. On the seventh day, she rested, soaking her long frame in a hot tub and fantasizing about a man who could rub her feet and neck simultaneously.

In college Tess had been a mediocre sweep rower, recruited by a mediocre team because she was strong, with muscular legs and a swimmer's broad shoulders. Switching to two oars had not enhanced her style. Tess knew, or imagined she knew, how ugly she looked moving across the water. Like a beetle caught in the toilet bowl, all twitches and spasms. Even on the easy trip out, she scowled and chewed her tongue, so fierce was her concentration. No, there was nothing natural about Tess's rowing. She didn't do it well. She didn't do it in order to compete. Yet she seldom missed a day. Her friends often said Tess had never met a rut she didn't like. She took no offense. It was true. And her fondness for routine had helped her weather the jobless months.

But this morning, as she tried to feather her oars in air thick as particleboard, everything suddenly seemed futile. The first day of September should be cool, she thought, or at least cooler. She should be good at this by now, or at least better. Abruptly, she pulling her oars out of the water and let the boat drift. She scanned the skies for rain, hoping for an excuse to quit. A thick haze hung over the skyline, but no clouds. From this vantage point Baltimore simply looked dirty and discouraged.

"Welcome to Charm City," she said to a seagull that was diving for dead fish. "Welcome to Baltimore, hon."

Neither Tess nor her hometown were having a good year. She was out of work and out of unemployment benefits. Baltimore was on pace to set an unprecedented murder rate, breaking the once-thought-unbreakable record of 1993, which had broken some previously impossible record. Every day there was a little death, the kind of murder that rated no more than four paragraphs deep inside the Beacon-Light. Yet no one seemed to notice or care—except those playing the homicide tally in the Pick 3. the mayor still called it the City That Reads, but others had long ago twisted that civic motto.

"The city that bleeds, hon," Tess called out to the unimpressed seagull. The city that breeds. the city that grieves, the city that seethes. The city one leaves. Only Tess never could, any more than she could have swum from the bottom of Chesapeake Bay with an anchor around her neck.

As she stared off into the distance, another sculler emerged from the shadows under the Hanover Street Bridge, moving easily and swiftly toward her as if the water were greased glass. His technique was perfect, his back broad, his white T-shirt already gray with sweat. His image seemed to pop out, the way things did at a 3-D movie. In seconds he was almost on top of Tess, coming right at her.

"Behind you," she called, confident such an assured rower would have no problem changing course. Her voice carried across the silent morning, but the rower paid no heed.

Copyright © 2006 by Laura Lippman.