Thomas Cook - Sacrificial Ground

“What?”

“Your face, my dear man. What happened to your face?”

“Nothing much.”

“Well, I hope you got some medical attention for that,” Dr. Clark said. He moved his hand to touch Frank’s face.

Frank flinched away.

Clark smiled oddly. “She was like you, jumpy.”

“Angelica?”

“Yes,” Dr. Clark said. “Of course, that’s sometimes the case. An examination of this kind involves a certain amount of intimacy. It isn’t unusual for a woman to be a little nervous.”

“But Angelica was more than that?” Frank asked.

“A good deal more,” Dr. Clark said.

“How long did the examination take?” Frank asked bluntly.

Dr. Clark’s face stiffened. “What?”

“How long did it take?” Frank repeated.

Clark hesitated. “About an hour,” he said finally.

“You examined her body for an hour?” Frank asked coldly.

Clark’s whole body tightened. “It was my medical judgment that a routine examination was not enough.”

Frank jotted it down.

“My professional judgment,” Dr. Clark added nervously. “There’s nothing wrong with a more intimate examination if it is in the professional judgment of the examining physician.”

“Why did she need one?”

“I just thought she did.”

“Why?”

Clark’s lips fluttered rapidly. “What is all this? I’m not on trial here.”

“You wanted to see her, didn’t you?”

“What!”

“She was beautiful and you wanted to see her … touch her.”

“How dare you!”

Frank stepped toward him. He could feel the rage of every woman who had ever been stared at by a man.

Clark glared at him fearfully. “Now, look, I don’t have to submit to this.”

Frank realized that he was right, and he drew back and glanced quickly down at his notes.

“I am a professional physician,” Dr. Clark said haughtily. “I do not ‘look’ at women.”

“What did you find out in this ‘examination’?” Frank asked.

Clark took a deep breath, calming himself. “I’m not sure I wish to continue this discussion.”

Frank looked at him lethally. “You said she needed an examination. You gave her one. What did you find out?”

For a moment, Clark did not answer. He seemed to consider his options for a moment. Then he made a decision.

“I discovered that she was a very healthy young woman,” he said finally.

“Anything else?”

“Other than that she was pregnant, no.”

“Did she say she was married?”

“No.”

“What did she tell you, exactly?”

“She said that she’d missed her period, that she had always been very regular, and that she suspected that she was pregnant.”

“Anything else?”

“That she wanted everything to be kept in confidence,” Clark said. “Of course, that really was not in question. I always keep everything confidential.” He hesitated. “You know, it was odd.”

“What was odd?”

Clark looked at him. “I really don’t want to get into this business of the examination again,” he said hesitantly. “I would like to keep our relationship a little less strained.”

“What was odd?”

“Well, she seemed rather like a virgin,” Clark told him. “Inexperienced. Yet she was pregnant.” He smiled. “You know, I actually felt that she’d probably been one of those poor, unfortunate girls who gets pregnant the first time out.”

Frank wrote it down.

“Did she mention anything about an abortion?” he asked.

“No.”

“Did she say anything about what she intended to do about the baby?”

“No.”

“Did you think she was going to have it?”

“I assumed that she was, yes,” Clark said. “And I assumed that I would be in attendance at the birth.” Once again he looked at Frank closely. “You know, you really should get something done about your face.”

Frank gave him his card. “I want you to send me everything in your file on Angelica. Tests, consultation notes, everything.”

Dr. Clark nodded quickly. “Yes, of course.”

“I want them on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

“I will have them there,” Clark assured him. He shifted about nervously. “May I go now? I have an appointment in half an hour.”

Caleb was still leaning against the tree when Frank returned. The heat of midday had already wet the armpits of his light green jacket, and he looked as if he were about to dissolve into the sweltering air.

“It’s rougher on the fatties,” he said. “Skinny people, they don’t ever look hot.” He glanced at the figure of Dr. Clark as he scurried down a small hill. “Who was that peckerwood?”

“A doctor,” Frank said morosely. “Like I said. She had figured out that she might be pregnant. She went to him to make sure.”

Caleb straightened himself. “Well, let’s get back downtown,” he said.

The two of them headed down the hill toward the car. The bright light swept around the gray tombstones, bleaching them to a pure hard white.

“He saw her for the first time on May eleventh,” Frank said. “Then she came back four days later for the results.”

Caleb stopped. “May fifteenth? What time?”

Frank looked at his notes. “Three-thirty in the afternoon.”

“Well, that’s pinpointing it,” Caleb said casually.

“If you were a young girl who’d just found out she was pregnant, who would you call, Caleb?”

“Daddy, I guess.”

Frank nodded. “Have you done a check on her phone yet?”

“No,” Caleb said. “But it would only take a second.”

They hurried back to their car, then headed downtown. Once at his desk, Frank ran the check, detailing Angelica’s calls on the afternoon and evening of May 15.

“She made three calls that day,” he told Caleb, who waited anxiously beside his desk. “They were all to the same number.”

Caleb walked away quickly, then returned with the reverse directory.

Frank read him the number, and Caleb looked it up.

“That number belongs to a Stanford K. Doyle,” Caleb said. “He lives in Ansley Park.”

Frank pulled the program of Angelica’s play from his pocket and opened it. “Stanford Doyle was one of the cast,” he said.

“Daddy,” Caleb whispered vehemently.

A few minutes later, they were in the car, heading down a road that seemed to lead like a single dark thread to the heart of Ansley Park.

16

The Doyle house was located on a small lot in a middle-class section of Atlanta. Ansley Park was a far cry from the shaded boulevards and spacious estates of West Paces Ferry Road. Its modest brick homes seemed to rest exactly between the mansions of the north side of the city and the poverty-ridden hovels to the south.

“Look at that,” Caleb said, as he looked at the single-story brick house with its two-car garage. “I bet they got a Buick station wagon with an old travel map of Yosemite National Park in the glove compartment.”

Frank got out of the car and waited for Caleb to join him. He could feel a strange tension growing in him, as if he were nearing the dark center of the case, the shadows where the animal lurked.

“Be careful,” he said to Caleb.

Caleb looked at him oddly. “Careful? What we got here, Frank—providing we’ve got anything at all—is an average kid who took something too far.” He glanced at the house. “I mean, look at the yard. Somebody mowed it yesterday.” He shook his head. “No, middle-class killers will put out their hands and let you snap the cuffs on. It’s like something’s already missing in them. They don’t know how to fight; they don’t know how to run.” He looked at Frank pointedly. “When you get like that, you’re better off dead.” He started up the walkway, sauntering casually toward the front door, as if nothing odd ever happened, nothing unpredictable, as if no office worker had ever blown away the typing pool.