Sacrificial Ground fc-1

by Thomas H. Cook

  The phone rang as Frank stood up to walk his brother to the door. He answered it immediately. It was Pitman at headquarters, making a last call before leaving duty.

  “You fit for a tour?” Pitman asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ve got a body off Glenwood. Feel like checking it out?”

  “Okay,” Frank said. He reached for the small pad beside the phone and copied down the address as Pitman gave it to him.

  “Sure you’re up for it, Frank?” Pitman asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Frank said, trying to bring some lightness into his voice. “Just a little tussle.”

  He hung up and glanced at Alvin, who was poised, waiting, at the door.

  “What is it?” Alvin asked.

  “A body.”

  Alvin smiled wearily. “Oh,” he said, “one of those.”

  Caleb Stone was already at the scene when Frank arrived. He was the old man of the division, full of what appeared almost ancient wisdom about the ways of men and murder. He’d been born into a tenant farmer family in south Georgia, and his early years had been spent picking a rich man’s cotton from dawn to dusk. He’d moved to Atlanta at the age of twenty, brought there by his mother, who worked in the huge brick textile mill which still stood at the border of Cabbagetown, and which, in a sense, served as its monument, towering over the unpainted wooden tenements in which its workers lived.

  Caleb lumbered over to meet Frank and squinted hard. “Heard you had a little trouble,” he said, “but I didn’t figure you for this kind of whupping.”

  “Three of them,” Frank explained.

  They were standing at the edge of a large deserted lot. The surrounding buildings were squat, brick constructions, an evangelical storefront church stood at one corner of the lot, a small auto parts store at the other.

  “Nice neighborhood,” Caleb said with a slight grin. “Ask God what the trouble with the Ford is, then march right over and buy the part.”

  “What have we got here, Caleb?” Frank asked.

  “What we got, Frank,” Caleb says, “is something that gives new meaning to the phrase ‘shallow grave.’”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning we got a body dumped in a hole and sort of covered over with dirt and grass and garbage, whatever was around that could be thrown on her.”

  “Her?”

  “A woman. From the look of it, more like a girl.”

  “I see,” Frank said.

  “Young girl. Pretty,” Caleb said. “That sort of puts the cherry on top.”

  “How’d she die?” Frank asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” Caleb said. “Photo car didn’t get here yet, and we can’t move a thing till after the pictures.” He turned and pointed toward the center of the lot. A few patrolmen could be seen erecting crime-scene barriers and roping off the entire area. Knots of people, all of them black, stood staring at them from across the adjoining streets.

  Caleb lit his pipe and eyed the crowd. “People do love to stare, don’t they?” He smiled. “I remember back in the forties, Frank, why, hell, a few cops would take off through a neighborhood like this at full steam, siren louder’n hell, just shooting their pistols into the air.” He laughed. “Hiyo Silver, away.” He chuckled. “No more of that.”

  “You didn’t ever do that, did you, Caleb?” Frank asked.

  Caleb turned from the crowd to look at Frank. “Once or twice,” he said softly, “but I stopped before I lost my soul. There’s not a black in this division don’t come to me for help now.” He turned back toward the vacant lot. “Funny thing is, the girl, she’s white.” He looked back at Frank. “It’s little things like that, Frank, that make life interesting.”

  Frank did not answer. He looked away from Caleb and over to the vacant lot. It was high with summer weeds, dandelions and goldenrods. Kudzu twined about the rusty hulk of an old car at the far rear of the lot, and two patrolmen were already slogging through the thick growth of ragweed and briar to search it.

  Caleb pulled a red handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his balding head. “Going to be a hot one, looks like.”

  “They all are, this time of year,” Frank said indifferently. “Well, I’ll go take a look.”

  It was only about twenty yards from the sidewalk to the body, but it was heavy going all the way. The ground was pitted as if it had been under mortar fire, and the surrounding weeds grew more and more thickly as Frank neared the small patch of barren ground where the body lay.

  “Morning, Lieutenant,” one of the uniformed officers said as Frank trudged forward.

  Frank instantly recognized him as one of the men who’d pulled him up from the gutter only a few hours before. “You’ve had a busy morning, I guess,” he said.

  The officer smiled sheepishly. “Yes, sir, I guess I have.”

  Caleb came slogging through the brush, still mopping his face and neck. “Goddamn,” he blurted, “nothing but briar bushes and huckleberries in this whole damn lot.” He stopped, and nodded toward a group of patrolmen who stood at some distance talking quietly and glancing toward the ground.

  “Right yonder, Frank,” Caleb said, pointing to a break in the undergrowth. “We found her fast, so it’s not too bad.”

  Together, they walked slowly over to a dusty area of ground and looked down.

  Caleb pocketed his handkerchief, his eyes fixed, almost lovingly, on the body which lay sprawled before him. “I don’t care what they say, you don’t ever get used to it,” he said. He glanced at Frank. “That’s what makes us good, Frank, we don’t ever get used to it.”

  The body lay face up in a shallow gully, and by the time the police photographers arrived, Frank felt as if he had been staring at it most of his life. Caleb stood beside him, pointing out various details, the lack of bloodstains in the parched ground which surrounded her, the lack of cuts or bruises, except on her feet and ankles (which were probably made by the body’s being dragged through the briar of the lot), the fact that the wrists were not lacerated, nor the throat. Caleb ticked off the meaning of these things methodically.

  “So, from the look of it,” he concluded, “I’d say the lab boys will have to put a label on this one. Wasn’t shot, stabbed or strangled. Surely wasn’t beaten up.” He took a draw on his pipe. “What do you think, Frank? Poison?” He tapped his shoe against the ground. “Too hard for footprints.”

  Frank allowed his eyes to peruse the body head to foot. Summer winds had blown away most of the dust and debris with which someone had hastily covered it. He could make out the facial features quite easily. Her hair was blonde, her eyes blue, her skin pale, almost chalky. She had a full mouth with rather thick lips, and Frank could even make out that her teeth, at least the lower set, were perfectly even. She wore a light blue, shortsleeve blouse and a dark blue skirt with a white belt and gold buckle. There was a leather sandal strapped loosely to one foot, but the other was bare. She was of medium build and medium height. Frank guessed her at about five-four and one hundred ten pounds.

  “What do you think, around sixteen?” Caleb asked.

  “About that,” Frank said.

  The photo crew were all around him now, taking shots from all directions. Frank and Caleb stepped back slightly to give them the angles they demanded.

  Caleb tapped the pipe against the heel of his shoe, spilling the rest of the tobacco onto the ground.

  “They’ll find that damn tobacco and bag it as evidence, Caleb,” Frank said.

  “Naw, they won’t,” Caleb said, with an old-pro smile, “because I’ll tell them it’s Prince Albert from my own bowl.” He glanced about, taking in the few structures which stood in the vicinity. “No bedroom window for some sleepless bastard to be standing at last night when the body was dropped.” He placed the pipe in his jacket pocket. “They’ll canvass their asses off, but it won’t do any good. Just for looks, that’s why they’ll do it.” He smiled. “ ’Cause we fucked up that child-murders thing.” He looked at Frank. “Ever
ything by the book from now on. But it won’t make a goddamn bit of difference, and it’ll waste a hell of a lot of time.” He lifted his head slightly and called to one of the patrolmen. “Hey, tell the boys from the lab crew that this tobacco down here belongs to Caleb Stone.”

  The patrolman nodded, then gave him the thumbs-up sign.

  Caleb turned back to Frank. “That ought to cover my ass.” He slapped his behind. “And this old ass needs a lot of covering.”

  He ambled away then, tramping through the waist-high brush until he had made it back to his car.

  Frank watched him as he drove away. Caleb was one of the few men in the department whom he either liked or respected. He wasn’t very bright, but he was full of a kind of noble doggedness. He did his job well, and kept his troubles to himself. He had never asked about Sarah or the divorce, never pried into Frank’s private life or opened up about his own. Even after years in the city, he had held to that backwoods silence in which Frank himself had been reared, and which he still admired, almost as a lovely artifact; it was a rare individual in modern, bustling Atlanta who still possessed it.

  “We’ll be through in a moment, Lieutenant,” Charlie Morton, the police photographer, said.

  “Take your time,” Frank said casually. “Do it right.”

  Charlie stepped to his side and took a shot. “Looks like she just laid down and died,” he said. He stepped around to the other side of the body, bent forward and snapped another picture. “Just walked out here and found herself a little spot of ground and laid right down,” Charlie repeated.

  “With just one sandal?” Frank asked.

  Charlie looked up quickly and smiled. “I guess that’s why I just take the pictures, right?” He snapped another picture. “Pretty much caught her from every angle now, Frank.” He looked at the body. “Well, maybe one more.” He took a final photograph, waved that he was finished and hurried away to the photo car.

  Frank motioned to a stretcher team which stood by. “All right, you can take her out.”

  The two men moved in and slowly lifted the body onto the stretcher. Frank walked over and gently checked the girl’s clothes for identification. There wasn’t any. Only a class ring on her finger, which he removed and placed in a plastic bag. He lifted the bag, twisting it right and left. The ring was from Northfield Academy, Class of 1987. He handed the bag to one of the patrolmen who stood near him.

  “Take it to the lab,” he told him, “then radio headquarters to send a car over and pick up a copy of their latest yearbook. We’ll need to ID her right away.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” the patrolman said as he hurried away.

  Frank looked down at the body once again. The bearers had lifted the stretcher from the ground and were standing motionless in the growing heat, waiting for the signal to take it to the morgue. They had waited in the same rigid way after they’d picked up Sarah’s body, and he could not help but remember the silence that had gathered around him at that moment. It was as if the world had gone suddenly mute. The bearers had said nothing. Alvin had said nothing. And two hours later when he broke the news to his wife, she had simply sunk down on the sofa, stared vacantly at the empty fireplace and said absolutely nothing. Now, as he nodded quickly and the bearers moved forward through the bramble, it struck him that that first, terrible silence had not yet been broken, that he was still locked in it, as his wife was and Alvin was and as Sarah must have been for many years before she died. He could remember her alone in her room, in the front yard, by the living room window, always distant, unreachable, born to that deep, brooding silence which he’d feared in his father and then in himself and which had been passed down to Sarah like a poison in the blood.

  He watched as the bearers pushed the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. One of the girl’s arms had dropped over the side and now dangled loosely toward the ground, palm out, fingers open, as if silently begging him for help.

  3

  It was only an hour later when Caleb lumbered into headquarters and dropped a single slender volume on Frank’s desk. It was ice blue with gold lettering: Northfield Academy.

  “Page eighty-seven,” Caleb said.

  Frank opened the book and flipped through it until he reached the right page.

  “Third column down, fourth one over.”

  Frank’s eyes followed the line of photographs until he reached the picture of a young girl whose smile beamed back at him from an open, innocent face.

  “Right pretty,” Caleb said, “before the devil took her.”

  She was considerably more than pretty, and as Frank continued to gaze at the photograph, he was struck by how much death had slackened her flesh and dulled her eyes until all her former beauty had been drained away.

  Caleb’s eyes held sadly to the photograph, then shifted to the one of the girl as she lay on her back in the dust. He seemed to sink into the picture, or soak it up. Then he shook his head wearily. “Dead folks always look like they been left out in the rain,” he said.

  Frank glanced at the column of names which bordered the left side of the page.

  “Laura Angelica Devereaux,” he said softly.

  “Most folks called her Angelica,” Caleb told him.

  Frank glanced up from the book. “Who says?”

  “Principal over at Northfield,” Caleb said. “Fancy school. They call them headmasters over there.” He shrugged. “Guess they don’t have principals at rich-kid schools.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Albert Morrison.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “Well, a few things,” Caleb said. He pulled a chair over from another desk and sat down. The early morning light that beamed in from the large windows swept over him, casting one side of his face in deep shadow. “Her parents are dead,” he added casually, “but she’s got some family. A sister, named Karen. Age approximately twenty-seven; the sister, I mean. Lives at Two-fifty-five West Paces Ferry Road.” He smiled. “Ever been out that way?”

  Frank glanced down at Caleb’s large, beefy hands.

  “Don’t you carry a notebook?” he asked.

  Caleb shook his head, then tapped one side of it with his index finger. “Keep everything up here, Frank. Know why? ’Cause if you do, it means nobody else can get at it.” His eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. “Where was I? Oh, yeah. Two-fifty-five West Paces Ferry Road. Ever been out that way?”

  “For a Sunday drive,” Frank said indifferently. He glanced back down at the photographs on his desk, and suddenly Laura Angelica Devereaux came back into his mind, walked into it like a beautiful woman into an empty room, and he saw the flash of her eyes, felt, very softly, the touch of her young breath.

  “Heard anything from the lab?” Caleb asked.

  “No.”

  “Doing a quadrant search?”

  Frank nodded. “They’re stringing the wire now.”

  Caleb looked away and called to a passing patrolman. “Hey, Teddy, put a star in your crown and bring me a Coke, will you?” He turned back to Frank. “What are you planning to do about those guys that bummed you up?”

  Frank continued to stare at the photograph. For an instant he thought he saw her lips curl down in a thin, frightened line, and he glanced up quickly at her dead eyes, as if he might find some image of her killer still lingering like a phantom on the tightly closed lids.

  “You going to get even with them, Frank?”

  “I’m just going to file a report, Caleb,” Frank told him.

  Caleb laughed.

  “No, I mean it,” Frank said. “I’m just going to file a report and let it go. Hell, they’re probably in Mexico by now.”

  Caleb shrugged. “Could be, Frank, could be. But it’s been my experience that you make them pay real early for something like this. ‘Cause if you don’t, it just gets worse. They start off with something small like whipping the shit out of a cop; then, before long, they’re running out on their rent, or not paying the power bill.” He laugh
ed again. “You just can’t trust people. That’s a true fact, unrecorded, Frank.” He shook his head. “If I was God, I’d keep one free hand on everybody’s balls.”

  The patrolman appeared with Caleb’s drink.

  “Thank you, son,” Caleb said. He took a long, slow pull on the bottle, then wiped his mouth with his fist, “I can drink whiskey like this, too.”

  Frank drew his eyes from the photographs, then squinted slightly in the hard summer light. “Did Morrison say anything else?”

  “I didn’t press him much,” Caleb said. “He was a nervous little shit. The type that likes to keep his job, you know?” He took another swig of Coke. “Anyway, I told him you’d be dropping by one day soon.” He smiled. “I’ll let you handle this one, Frank. Your record could use a good collar.”

  “If l can get it.”

  “Well, if he’s a drifter, forget it,” Caleb said. “But if he’s got a little house somewhere, and a car payment, a whole lot of little shitty things he’s got to keep track of …”

  “Then we’ve got him,” Frank said.

  “If he’s like us, only just a little different,” Caleb added, “then the hook’s already in his mouth.” He drained the last of the Coke, then set the bottle down on Frank’s desk. “It’s your case, Frank, but if you get something solid, let me know. I’ll help you work it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Unless you’d rather share the pie with Alvin?”

  “Fuck Alvin.”

  Caleb smiled. “Lord, I’d hate to be the one that does.” He grabbed the edge of Frank’s desk and hauled himself to his feet. He groaned loudly, then stood quietly for a moment, as if trying to secure his balance. “Little top-heavy,” he said, patting his stomach. Then his eyes drifted slowly over to the photograph of Angelica’s body as it lay sprawled in the lot. He shook his head despairingly. “Brotherly love,” he said. “Ever see any of that, Frank?”

  Frank looked up at him. “Yes, I have.”

  Caleb smiled knowingly. “Good for you. It’s only the bullshitters that say no.” He turned slowly and walked away, his great frame crashing through the shaft of light as if it were a pane of glass.