Thomas Cook - Sacrificial Ground

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?”