Sacrificial Ground fc-1

by Thomas H. Cook

  Karen pointed to a small wooden rocking chair. “Sit down.”

  Frank sat down, and watched as Karen pulled up another chair and took a seat opposite him. She took in a slow breath as if in preparation for more bad news.

  “You remember that I took down the number of Angelica’s phone?” Frank asked.

  “Yes.”

  “She hardly ever used it.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Karen said. “She never seemed to have any friends.”

  “Since April first, she made only three calls,” Frank said. “And all of them were on the fifteenth of May.”

  “May fifteenth,” Karen repeated softly.

  “That’s right,” Frank said. “We found out that Angelica had gone to a doctor on May eleventh, an obstetrician named Herman Clark. Have you ever heard of him?”

  Karen shook her head.

  “She’d suspected that she was pregnant,” Frank said. “She just wanted to make sure.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, Clark confirmed that she was pregnant. He told her on the fifteenth of May.”

  “So the calls were to him?”

  “No,” Frank said. “They were made to a young boy from Northfield Academy. He lives over in Ansley Park. His name is Stanford Doyle, Junior. Have you ever heard of him?”

  “No.”

  “Angelica never mentioned him?”

  “She never mentioned anyone from Northfield,” Karen said flatly. “Why did she call him in particular?”

  “Because he is probably the father of her baby,” Frank said.

  Karen narrowed her eyes. “Did he kill my sister?”

  “I don’t think so,” Frank said. “And according to the boy, they were only together one time. He says they hardly knew each other.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then so do I,” Karen said. She stood up and pressed her back against the bookshelf. “So you’re not any further along than you were at the beginning?”

  “No, I think we’ve made some progress,” Frank said.

  “In what way?”

  “Well, the night they were together, Angelica was acting very oddly.”

  Karen looked at Frank pointedly. “Of course, for Angelica, acting oddly would not be unusual.”

  “Well, she more or less picked him up at random,” Frank explained. “She seemed angry, according to the boy. They went for a drive in her car. She appeared to know where she was taking him.”

  “Where did she take him?”

  “Straight downtown. Not too far from where her body was found a few weeks later.”

  “I see.”

  Frank looked at his notes. “She didn’t talk much that night. She circled Grant Park a few times, then drove down to the Cyclorama and parked.”

  Karen’s eyes shot away from him. “Is that where they made love?”

  “No,” Frank told her. “They only stopped there awhile. The boy doesn’t remember for how long. It seems they didn’t talk much then, either.”

  “Well, she must have said something to him,” Karen said fiercely.

  “Not according to the boy.”

  “Are you telling me that Angelica just picked this boy up and … fucked him?”

  “Yes,” Frank said bluntly.

  “And you believe that, too?”

  “Yes, I do,” Frank said. “But I believe she had some kind of reason for doing it.”

  “What reason?” Karen asked crisply.

  “I don’t know.”

  Karen shook her head despairingly. “I don’t know if I can go on with this.”

  For a moment Frank let her rest in silence. Then, after a moment, he continued.

  “They only parked at the Cyclorama for a few minutes,” he began cautiously. “Then Angelica told the kid that this was his lucky night.”

  “Oh, God,” Karen whispered.

  “They drove around a little more after that,” Frank went on. “The kid doesn’t know exactly for how long. He doesn’t know exactly where they went, either. He doesn’t know the south side of town.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But Angelica did,” Frank said. “That’s the strange thing. She seemed to know exactly where she was and where she was going.”

  Karen looked at him wonderingly. “The area around Grant Park?”

  “Yes.”

  “How would she know that part of town?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She didn’t say anything to this Stanford Doyle about it?”

  “No,” Frank said. “Had she ever mentioned anything about it to you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if she had any friends out that way?”

  “No.”

  “Any reason at all for her to be familiar with that part of the city?”

  “She never mentioned anything about any place,” Karen said firmly. “And she certainly never mentioned anything about Grant Park or the Cyclorama, or anything downtown for that matter.” She shook her head wearily. “As far as I knew, she lived her whole life between this house and Northfield Academy.”

  Frank flipped a page of his notebook. “How about Stanford Doyle? Have you ever heard her mention his name?”

  “No.”

  “People call him Stan.”

  “Nothing.”

  “He said she was very angry that night,” Frank went on. “That was on the night of April first. Can you think of anything that might have made her angry?”

  “No.”

  “Some little argument. Anything.”

  Karen began to pace slowly back and forth across the room. “No,” she said. “Nothing.”

  “A bad grade,” Frank pressed her. “A disappointment of some kind.”

  Karen whirled around. “Nothing, nothing, nothing,” she said loudly. “I didn’t know my sister! Can’t you understand that!”

  Frank stood up. “Something was happening to her, Karen,” he said hotly. “Something very bad.”

  She turned away from him and drew in a long, deep breath. “I know,” she said softly. “I could feel that something was going wrong. But I didn’t know what it was.” Her eyes closed slowly, as if searching for something inside herself. “I would have saved her if I could have.” She looked at Frank. “I knew that something needed to be done, but I didn’t know what it was. All I had was a feeling.”

  Frank thought of Sarah, of all the little hints she’d given, a sudden break in the middle of a sentence, a little gasp of fear when there was nothing threatening around her.

  “I always thought that something was waiting for Angelica,” Karen said. “It was as if some shadow was always gathered around her.” She glanced away for a moment, then her eyes returned to him, very firm and determined. “I want to see where you found her.”

  “It’s a vacant lot,” Frank said. “Weedy. There’s an old car in it, rusting away.”

  “I don’t care what it looks like,” Karen said.

  “There’s nothing to see,” Frank said insistently. “We didn’t even find footprints. The ground was too hard from the drought. A little brush was broken, where he dragged her. That’s all.”

  “I don’t care,” Karen said. “I want to go there.”

  “All right.”

  “When can you take me?”

  “We could go now, if you like,” Frank told her.

  Karen nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I think I would.”

  During the long ride downtown, Karen sat silently beside him. Her face, as he glanced at it from time to time, appeared almost blue in the light, and just beneath it, he could see the same features, muted and less radiant, but clearly visible nonetheless, which others had seen, and probably adored, in her younger sister. And yet, to Frank, Karen’s beauty seemed deeper and more completed. There were faint creases about her eyes, and here and there in the deep black of her hair, he could see a strand or two of gray twining upward like a flower, which gave her a beauty that was beyond the
scope of youth, larger, richer, more to be desired.

  “I went out to the lot myself one night,” Frank said, as he turned the car onto Peachtree.

  She looked at him. “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “To do what?”

  “I don’t know. To take it in, I guess.”

  “Take it in?”

  “To see if I could feel something.”

  She turned back toward the street, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. “But you seem so meticulous. That little notebook. You’re always writing in it.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “So what did you expect to ‘feel’?” Karen asked.

  “Her death. Maybe her life. Something.”

  “And did you feel anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then I probably won’t feel anything either,” Karen told him.

  “No, with you it may be different,” Frank said. “You were her sister. In one way or another, you’ve always been together. Something might be jarred loose. I’ve seen it happen. People suddenly remember some little fact or incident they hadn’t thought of before. It happens all the time.”

  He turned off Peachtree and headed toward Glenwood. The glitter of the city fell behind them and the other world of squat brick buildings swept in around them like a wave.

  “The day Angelica died,” Frank said after a moment, “did you notice any change in her?”

  “No.”

  “A sudden coldness or harshness, anything like that?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  Frank turned the car onto Glenwood and edged it over toward the vacant lot.

  “There it is,” he said. He stopped the car at the edge of the field. The lot rested to the left, its shrubs and weeds utterly motionless in the summer air.

  “Oh, God,” Karen whispered.

  Frank pointed toward the middle of the field. “We found her over there. She was lying on her back.” He looked at Karen. “We have a witness who saw someone carry a large bundle to the same area. Right now, we think it was a carpet, and that Angelica’s body was rolled up in it.”

  Karen bowed her head slightly. “It’s still so hard to believe.”

  “Do you want to get out?”

  “Yes.”

  They got out of the car and walked to the edge of the field. The air was thick with the day’s lingering heat, and in the streetlight, Frank could see a thin line of perspiration as it beaded on Karen’s upper lip.

  “Follow me,” he said. “I’ll show you exactly where I found her.”

  Together they waded slowly out through the thick brush. The surrounding streets were quiet, except for Glenwood, where the night traffic continued in a steady stream.

  Finally, they reached the place where Angelica’s body had been left.

  “Here,” Frank said. “She was on her back. And her hair was spread out around her head. I believe her killer arranged it that way.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because if he’d just laid the body down, her hair would have been beneath her head,” Frank said. He stooped down to the ground and moved his hand in a circular motion. “Instead, it was all spread out around her.”

  “What kind of night was it?” Karen asked.

  “Like this one.”

  “No wind?”

  “No wind.”

  “Then we can find out for sure.”

  “How?”

  “My hair is like Angelica’s,” Karen said, “so all you have to do is lay me down and see how my hair falls.”

  Frank walked over and very slowly lifted her into his arms. Then he bent forward and lowered her softly onto the ground. Her hair fell beneath her head and gathered there like a pillow.

  “Like you thought,” Karen said.

  Frank nodded. “Yes.” He could still feel the weight of her body in his arms, and for an instant he thought it came from his desire, but then, suddenly, it faded, and he could feel the moment of Angelica’s death moving through him like a steady, electric charge. He stiffened.

  “What’s wrong?” Karen asked as she got to her feet.

  “Nothing,” Frank said, “nothing at all. Let’s go.”

  18

  “Sorry to hear about your father, Frank,” Caleb said as Frank returned to the office the next morning.

  Frank nodded quickly and sat down at his desk. He could feel his energy building again, and he wanted to take it at its peak. “Fill me in on everything.”

  “Well, the department didn’t exactly let things go stale while you were gone.”

  “I didn’t expect them to.”

  “And Gibbons, he was hot to trot the whole time. I figure that if you hadn’t got back today, they’d of turned it all over to him.”

  “What did they do?” Frank asked.

  “Well, the first thing they wanted to do was arrest Stan,” Caleb said.

  “Based on what?”

  “They’d blood-typed the fetus Angelica was carrying,” Caleb said, “and it was the same as Stan’s. Gibbons was hot to move on that.”

  “What happened?”

  “Brickman wouldn’t buy it,” Caleb said. “Too circumstantial. Gibbons said they could use it to break a confession out of the kid. But Brickman said no.”

  “Good for him.”

  “Brickman thinks the daddy theory is all wrong,” Caleb said. “He thinks it’s a drug thing. Maybe a burn that went real bad.”

  “Any evidence of that come up?”

  “No.”

  “What about Davon Little?”

  “Nothing to connect him but that car.”

  “Anything in that?”

  “Not a hair. Lab said they’d never seen a car that clean. Little did everything but vacuum the exhaust pipe. After the lab boys got back to me, I asked Little if he’d scrubbed the car. He said yes.”

  “So there was nothing in it at all?” Frank asked unbelievingly.

  “Frank, if all we had to go on was what we found in that car, we’d have to swear that nobody but Davon Little had ever been in it.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I checked out the kid.”

  “Clean?”

  “As a whistle,” Caleb said. “Good grades, fair athlete, all-around nice boy.”

  “So we’re back at square one.”

  “Not exactly,” Caleb said. “Because that kid did give us a little something to go on.”

  “What?”

  “The fact that Angelica seemed to know the Southside.”

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “I talked to Karen about that.”

  “Karen?”

  “Karen Devereaux.”

  “When did you talk to her?”

  “Last night,” Frank said, as matter-of-factly as he could.

  Caleb smiled slightly. “Oh.” He cleared his throat softly. “And what did … uh, Miss Devereaux have to say?”

  “She had no idea that Angelica knew about any part of town other than around West Paces Ferry.”

  “Which makes it not one bit less odd that she did, right, Frank?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would Angelica know her way around Grant Park?”

  “Caleb, if we knew that, I think we’d know a lot more.”

  “Me, too,” Caleb said. “And the only thing I can figure is maybe drugs.”

  “And where would you go with that?”

  “I already took it a little ways,” Caleb said. “While you were back home, I went over to Northfield and talked to a few of the kids around there. They were a little jumpy at first, but after a while they started talking. Pot came up, then other things, like cocaine.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “Well, practically everybody does a little pot,” Caleb said, “and a few do more than that.”

  “And Angelica?”

  “What I hear is that she was clean, at least at the time she died,” Caleb said. “That’s the funny part.”

  “What is?”

  “Well, Ang
elica was like a lot of these kids at Northfield. She had the money and she had the cravings. Put those two together and it means she got the stuff.”

  “Pot?”

  “And coke, a little.”

  Frank took out his notebook. “Go on.”

  “Well, at first I figured I was close to something,” Caleb said. “I had it all mapped out. Angelica was a junkie, and that meant she had to have a connection. I mean, she wasn’t muling it in with that BMW, you know?”

  Frank nodded.

  “So I figured her connection was in Grant Park, and that’s why she knew the area.”

  “Sounds good,” Frank said.

  “To me, too,” Caleb said, “but as the talk kept going, things fell apart.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there’s no doubt that Angelica had done a few drugs in her time,” Caleb told him. “About three months before she died, this one kid spots her at one of these fast-food drive-ins. He goes over to her, and smoke just about keels him over.”

  “Three months ago?”

  “That’s right, and that’s about the last time anybody saw Angelica with drugs.”

  “She just stopped?”

  “Dead in the road, Frank,” Caleb said. “Went totally off everything, as far as they know. Everybody agrees on that one.”

  Frank wrote it down.

  “And that’s not all,” Caleb added. “She cleaned up her diet, too.” He pulled a chair over to Frank’s desk and sat down.

  “Diet?”

  “Angelica was a junk-food freak, the kids say. Always with the Fat Freddies and potato chips.”

  “She stopped that, too?”

  “Dead in the water,” Caleb said.

  “And at the same time?”

  “On the button. And this was before she found out she was pregnant.”

  Frank leaned forward slightly. “What was happening to her, Caleb?”

  “She acts like somebody who all of a sudden got religion.”

  “So what was it? A change of heart?”

  Caleb looked at Frank doubtfully. “When have you ever seen a case of that?”

  Frank smiled.

  “No, you were right the first time,” Caleb said. “Something was happening to her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s the Grant Park stuff I can’t figure,” Caleb said after a moment. “I mean, everything is backwards. She should have met Grant Park on the way down. But it’s like she met it on the way up. You know what I mean, Frank? She met it when she was going off drugs, not when she was going on them.”