Thomas Cook - Sacrificial Ground

No answer.

He waited a moment, then knocked again.

No one came to the door, and no sounds came from inside the house.

“I think he’s gone,” Caleb said.

“Yeah.”

They walked down the stairs together, then split up, Frank heading around the left side of the house, Caleb around the right. The foundation was low, and as he moved along the side of the house, Frank could easily look through the windows as he passed. The front room was sparsely furnished, but everything was arranged with an eye to neatness, order, a sense of well-used space. There was a plain blue sofa and matching chair, a knotted rug, and a slender wooden rocking chair. Through the dark air of the interior, Frank could see Caleb’s large face as it stared into the same room from the other side of the house. He smiled quickly, then pointed to the rear, and the two of them made their way toward the back of the house.

The next window was much smaller and the shade was drawn halfway. It was the bathroom, and Frank moved past it quickly and on to the third window. It was a bit higher from the ground, but he had no trouble seeing over the ledge. It was a neatly arranged kitchen, larger than he had expected, with shelves along the front wall, facing a polished white stove and refrigerator. Again, he could see Caleb’s face as it stared at him from the other side of the room. For a moment it seemed to fade slowly, then break apart like a piece of crumbling statuary, and Frank squinted hard to bring it back together.

“Nothing strange around here,” Caleb said, as the two rejoined each other in the back yard.

“No,” Frank said. “Nothing at all.”

“Bedroom’s on the other side of the bathroom,” Caleb added. “Just a bed, all made up, and a closet with the door open.”

“Anything in it?”

“Only what you’d expect. A bunch of clothes.”

“So he probably still lives here,” Frank said.

“Yeah. That’s the one good thing about it.”

Frank glanced around the back yard. There was a small building near the back fence. It looked as if it had once been a garage.

“Let’s check that out,” he said.

It was a small wooden structure and one side had been peeled of its paint, as if someone were stripping it for a new paint job. Shades had been drawn down over the two small windows along either side.

“Shades are open at the house,” Caleb said quietly. “Why not here?”

Frank stepped over to the door. He looked at Caleb. “What do you want to do?”

“Step back, Frank,” Caleb said without hesitation. Then he raised his leg and slammed it against the door. The whole building shook as the door banged open and slammed against the inner wall.

It was utterly dark inside, and for an instant Frank hesitated to go in. He could feel death like a thick smoke in the air around him, and as he finally stepped into the interior darkness, he felt as if life itself were cracking like dry earth beneath his feet, dissolving into dust.

“Find the light,” Caleb said.

Frank moved quickly to one of the small windows and threw open the shade. A shaft of silver light swept into the room.

Caleb opened a second shade, and the air brightened around them, revealing a neatly ordered artist’s studio. Several large canvases leaned against the far wall. A sculptor’s bench stood in the center of the room, and a plaster model of a naked woman rose from it like a small, half-finished monument. And to the right, blocking one window, but showered with light from another, was an enormous painting. It was of a young woman dressed in a willowy veil. Her sleek white legs were vaguely visible through her clothes, and as Frank’s eyes slowly rose, he could see her pale white thighs, then her small rounded breasts, and up along the tapered neck to a face rendered so beautifully that he suddenly realized that he had never seen its true radiance before.

“Angelica,” he said wonderingly.

Caleb turned toward the painting. His lips parted softly, but he said nothing.

“She was here,” Frank said, almost to himself. “She came here many times.”

“Yes,” Caleb said.

Frank drew his eyes from the painting. There was a tall wooden armoire next to it. He walked to it and pulled open its double doors. It was full of clothes, the frilly lace and soft velvet, the red satin blouse and the black leather skirt. He could smell the fragrance of Angelica’s body on the cloth. It was a soft, subtle musk that struck him as the last sad remnant of her life on earth. He felt his hand reach out to caress the cloth tenderly, then stopped himself and turned to Caleb.

“I’m going to wait for him,” he said. “I don’t care how long it takes.”

“Me, too,” Caleb said. He shrugged. “I ain’t going no place but the grave.”

They walked out of the shed and carefully closed the door behind them. Then they returned to the car and drove it a few yards away, turned around and headed back up the street. There was a narrow alleyway not too far from the house, and they backed just far enough into it so that they could watch the house without being seen.

The bright light of midday slowly turned to gray as the afternoon deepened into night. Far in the distance, they could see a band of storm clouds moving slowly toward the city.

“Going to be another toad-stringer,” Caleb said. He looked at his watch. “Been here five hours.”

“You can go home if you want to,” Frank said.

Caleb shook his head. “Nah, not yet.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s my ass that’s complaining,” he said with a smile, “not my old bulldog heart.”

An hour later the first sounds of thunder rolled over the city. Jagged streaks of lightning blazed out of the darkness, and a few minutes after that, the rain swept down upon them in thick, windblown sheets.

Caleb leaned toward the dashboard and peered toward the house. “Well, we still won’t have no trouble seeing him.”

“No, we won’t.”

Caleb leaned back in his seat, and released a long slow sigh. “Retiring next year, Frank, did you know that?”

“No.”

“Life’s funny. You get too much of one thing, and not enough of something else. Now this stakeout shit, that’s something I’ve had too much of.”

Frank’s eyes drifted over to the house. “I sometimes think of quitting.”

Caleb looked surprised. “You do? How come?”

“Just tired, I guess.”

“Of too much blood?”

Frank shook his head. “No, not that. But just that people should live better than they do, Caleb. “ He looked at his partner. “I don’t know what keeps them from it. I’d like to find that out, sometime. I’d like to really know .”

Suddenly two shafts of yellow light swept down from the small hill at the end of the street. They moved slowly down Mercer, two bars of glowing light that finally came to rest and then flashed off in front of Toffler’s house.

Frank pulled out the photograph Curtis had given him and looked at it. Then he handed it to Caleb. “Check it out again, let’s don’t roust the wrong guy.”

Caleb glanced at the picture then back up toward the car. “Get out of the fucking car,” he whispered.

Frank pressed his eyes near the windshield and stared out toward the house. The car stood motionlessly in front of it. Then the door opened on the driver’s side, and as it did so a flash of bright lightning broke over the street.

“That’s him,” Frank said.

The man was now standing by the car, the door still open. He looked behind him, then toward the dark house.

Caleb squinted hard. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said.

The man quickly strode into the front yard, then veered to the left and headed behind the house. For a moment, he disappeared into the covering darkness. Then a light flashed on in the shed out back.