Thomas Cook - Sacrificial Ground

“Yes,” Frank said. He opened his notebook to the first blank page.

“Do you take everything down?” Linton asked.

“Most everything.”

“Whatever can be said in words, right?”

“I have a bad memory,” Frank explained. “I don’t always trust it with the facts.”

Linton’s face suddenly stiffened. “Forgive me,” he said, “the pain.”

“Can I get you something?”

“No,” Linton said quickly. “Please, it will pass.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve always been very jealous of my dignity. That’s what makes it so hard now. There’s no dignity in pain. None at all.” He shook his head resolutely. “But I don’t want to get into that. Too much self-pity.” He grabbed his wineglass and squeezed the stem. “Please, let’s go on,” he said in a high, strained voice. “The murder. You were talking about a murder.”

Frank took a picture of Angelica from his coat pocket and handed it to Linton.

“Have you ever seen this girl?”

Linton nodded slowly. “Yes. That’s Diana.”

“Diana?”

Linton looked up from the photograph. “Isn’t that her name?”

“No,” Frank told him. “Her name is Angelica Devereaux and she was murdered a few days ago. Her body was dropped in a vacant lot over on Glenwood. It was in the papers. They published this picture.”

Linton’s eyes fell back toward the photograph. “I didn’t know,” he said with a kind of mild self-rebuke. “It’s this damn disease. It isolates you. It’s all you think about. I’m sorry.”

“But you do recognize her?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Linton said. “I met her about three months ago. I was hanging a painting at this gallery.”

“The Knife Point,” Frank said.

“You’ve been there?”

“Yes,” Frank said. “I talked to the owner.”

“Cartier told you everything, then,” Linton said.

“Not quite.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said she approached you that day,” Frank said. “Can you tell me about that?”

“There’s not much to tell,” Linton said. “Of course, I wouldn’t be interested in a … in Angelica, you said her name was?” He smiled. “But I suppose I have my vanity, and I must admit that to have such a beautiful young girl … it was pleasant.”

“What did she say to you?”

“She said she liked my painting.”

“ Lifeblood .”

“Yes, that one,” Linton told him. He shrugged. “I don’t really think of it as anything special, myself. But this girl, Diana, or I should say, Angelica, kept talking about it.”

“What did she say about it?”

“That it was beautiful,” Linton said, “that she admired it. What else can you say?” He took another sip of wine. “I think she was somewhat drawn to me,” he added after a moment. He looked at Frank questioningly. “Was she an orphan, by any chance?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, so that’s it.”

“What?”

“Father figure, that’s what she was after.”

“Do you think it was that simple?”

“You never know, if you’re an artist, exactly what it is that people see in you, or in your work,” Linton told him. “It could be anything.” He glanced wistfully toward the rickety old easel. “But it’s a wonderful thing, to be an artist, to touch people in such odd and decent ways.” He looked back at Frank. “I believe that this girl was sincere, that she had responded in some way to that painting. Perhaps that’s just my vanity. I don’t know. But I believe that something in that painting moved her.”

Frank wrote it down.

Linton leaned forward slightly. “Why are you writing all this down?”

“Bad memory, like I said.”

Linton shook his head. “No, it isn’t. It has nothing to do with your memory, bad or good.”

“I like to have all the facts at my fingertips,” Frank told him.

Linton stared at him piercingly. “Bullshit, Mr. Clemons. I’ll bet that you have all those notebooks somewhere. I’ll bet you’ve saved them all.”

For a moment, Frank could see them piled in a box in one of his disordered closets, stacks of little green books, one on top of the other. He had kept them all, as if something in them was worth preserving, the accumulated knowledge of his life.

“Was that all you talked about, your painting?” he asked Linton.

“More or less,” Linton said. “Except for what I noticed about her.”

“What was that?”

“That she was different from the way she looked,” Linton said. “Did Cartier tell you about how she looked that day, Mr. Clemons?”

“I have an idea,” Frank said. “Not everybody’s description was the same.”

“Like a cheap little S&M whore,” Linton said bluntly. “That’s what she looked like. I actually thought she was one of those prostitutes who specialize in that sort of thing.” His eyes narrowed. “She wasn’t a prostitute, was she?”

“I don’t know what she was,” Frank said. “That’s what I’m still trying to find out.”

“Perhaps she didn’t know what she was either,” Linton said. “It’s not easy to know, especially in this world.” He took another photograph from the table beside him and handed it to Frank. It showed Linton in infantry uniform, a young man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and an Ml strapped to his shoulder.

“World War Two,” Linton said. “I was at Anzio.”

“So was my father,” Frank said. “Or at least not far from there.”

“On that day, when we hit the beaches, I knew exactly what I was made of,” Linton said. “Since then, it’s been anybody’s guess.” He tugged the photograph from Frank’s hand and placed it back on the table. “When your life is flat, when nothing is ever at risk, you have to create your own identity. Maybe that was Angelica’s problem. She told me she was rich. Was she?”

“Yes.”

“Sheltered?”

“I think so.”

Linton nodded. “Maybe she had no idea who she was, and so she dressed up as something she wasn’t. You know, just decided to be something in particular for a day.” He nodded toward Frank’s pocket. “Show me that photograph again.”

Frank gave it to him.

“Ah yes,” Linton said. “The face is the same, but her hair was different, and her makeup. “ He handed the picture back to Frank. “She did look like that when I saw her the first time. And the second time I saw her, she looked completely different from the first.”

“Cartier said that he thought you saw her at least one more time.”

“He was right.”

“Where did you see her?”

“Here, at my house.”

“She knew where you lived?”

“She could have looked me up in the phone book,” Derek said. “I guess that’s what she did, because I know I didn’t tell her where I lived when we were at the Knife Point. I mean, there was no time for that. She followed me out, and this other car wanted to come in, so I backed out very quickly and made a space.” He smiled. “An artist must always give way to a customer.”

“So she just showed up at your house?” Frank asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“About two days later,” Linton told him. “And as I said, she looked completely different. None of that S&M black. Just the opposite, in fact. She wore a lovely, frilly sort of light blue dress, and her hair fell over her shoulders. She looked very, very beautiful.”

“How long did she stay here?”

“About an hour,” Linton said.

“What did you talk about?”

“I showed her my paintings. She seemed to like them. She had no education in art, no experience in it. But she seemed genuinely interested. She asked to see my studio, and so I took her into the back room and showed it to her.”