Sacrificial Ground (34 page)

Of course it would, Frank thought, for there was no other Devereaux. There was only Karen. Angelica was dead, along with her baby. But Karen? He could not see Karen having anything to do with Angelica's death. He could not. There must be something else.

Desperately, he took out his notebook and went over the details of the case yet another time. There were hundreds of them, separate, isolated. Blood or money, he whispered to himself, as he turned one page after another.

Then suddenly he stopped, his eyes staring at a single note. It was blood, yes. And it was money. But they were both arranged in a different configuration. Money might be gained by murder, but it could also be spent for it. And though blood usually meant kinship, it might also mean passion—sudden, fiery, beyond explanation, and yet to all mankind still the one lost clue.

He was surprised that she answered the door herself.

“Good afternoon, Miss Castle,” Frank said.

“Edna has the afternoon off,” she explained.

She looked at him solemnly, then closed the door behind her.

“Let's stay out here, if you don't mind,” she said. “Did you have any more questions, Mr. Clemons?”

“Yes,” Frank said. He took out his notebook. “I suppose you read about the arrest.”

“And the man who murdered Angelica?” Miss Castle asked. “Yes, of course.”

“Did you know him?”

“What?”

“His name is Toffler. Vincent Toffler. Did you know him?”

Miss Castle sighed. “Yes, I know him. The Atlanta art world is small, Mr. Clemons, you can't help running into such people. A disagreeable person, I always thought, and a bad artist.”

Frank glanced down at his notebook. “Yet I've done a little research tonight,” he said. “Toffler hung a lot of his paintings in one of the galleries on Hugo Street. It was the only gallery that hung his works.”

Miss Castle looked at him steadily.

“You own that gallery, Miss Castle.”

Miss Castle said nothing.

Once again, Frank drew his eyes down to his notebook. “I was looking through all my notes,” he said. “All the interviews, that sort of thing. Something struck me.”

Miss Castle turned away slightly, resting her eyes on the distant stream.

“When we went for that walk, you said something about truth,” Frank said. He flipped a page of his notebook. “Right here it is. You said that you were feeling like you were ‘full of things.' Then I asked you ‘what things?' And you said, ‘Truths.'” He looked up at her. “Then you said that even difficult truths could be beautiful.”

“Yes,” Miss Castle said, without looking at him.

“Something else, too,” Frank said. He flipped to another page. “You said that Angelica was trying to inflame people, and that there was a danger in that. You said that a person might get engulfed by the flames.”

Miss Castle nodded quickly. “You are very thorough in your notes, Mr. Clemons.”

Frank closed the notebook and put it in his pocket. “You believed that they were lovers, Angelica and Derek Linton.”

Miss Castle's eyes lowered slightly. “Yes.”

“You were close enough to Toffler to know that he knew Angelica,” Frank added.

Her eyes stayed closed.

“The gallery on Hugo Street,” Frank said. “The one you own. It hung all of Toffler's paintings the morning after Angelica died.”

She looked at him now. “That was the greatest pain, I think, having to hang that dreadful man's work on my walls.” She turned to Frank. “I have loved Derek Linton all my life. I could endure his lifestyle. I could endure that. His men did not betray me.”

“But when you thought it was another woman,” Frank said.

“That was unendurable, “ Miss Castle said. “And I knew that she would destroy him, rob him, in the end, of what little he had left. I couldn't let that happen.” She stepped off the porch and walked a little way out toward the stream. For a moment she stopped, stood very still, then turned back toward Frank. “You don't have to worry about my leaving,” she said quietly. “I'll be there when you come for me. I've spent my whole life waiting.”

It was close to midnight when he pulled up to the house. He'd sent a car for Miss Castle, but had refused to stick around for Brickman's questions. There was one thing left to do, one piece of unfinished business. Standing at Caleb's graveside that day, he had promised he would take care of it, but now, sitting in the car outside the man's house, he wondered if he could go through with it.

And then he thought of Caleb again, of the chisel rising and falling into his neck, his face, of Angelica's abused body lying in its shallow grave, of all the bodies he had seen for so many years and all the faces, battered, bruised, of those not quite dead. And he knew he owed it to them all.

He could see a single light shining in the front room, but he could not see any movement inside. He took a deep breath and, when he thought he'd achieved a certain, vague calm, he got out of the car and walked quickly up to the front door.

It opened just enough from him to see a single, brown eye.

“Yeah?” the man said harshly. “What do you want?”

“Are you Harry Towers?” Frank asked.

“Who wants to know?” the man asked coldly.

“Ollie Quinn,” Frank said. He stepped back slightly, then slammed into the door. “And Caleb Stone.” Towers' body crashed backward and tumbled over a small wooden table. He scrambled to his feet, and reached for the pistol in his belt.

Frank hit him in the stomach, then jerked him up and punched him twice in the face. Towers staggered backward and fell on his back, moaning loudly. He tried to rise, but Frank fell upon him, grabbed his head in his hands, and pounded it twice against the floor.

Towers groaned again, as his eyes closed, then fluttered open.

Frank tossed the pistol across the room, then grabbed his own. For a moment, he wanted to press the barrel into Towers' gaping, toothless mouth and pull the trigger. He wanted to see Towers' head explode beneath him, but he saw Karen in the darkness, the rose still in her hand, and heard her voice over his shoulder, whispering Caleb's words:
Not yet
.

Instead, he put the gun beside Towers' head, the barrel pointing toward the floor, and fired. The house shook with the reverberating roar.

“If I ever come here again,” he said, “you won't hear a thing.”

“You're late,” Karen said, as she walked quickly out of the house.

“Sorry,” Frank said.

“That's all right. We'll make it. There won't be much traffic at this time of night.”

“No,” Frank said. He glanced down at the single suitcase she carried in her hand. “That's all you're bringing?”

“I'm having other things shipped up,” Karen said.

Frank took the suitcase and tossed it into the backseat of the car. “Well, let's go,” he said.

It took a little over a half-hour to reach the airport, and for most of the ride, Frank said nothing. It was as if he had gone to the very brink of what he could feel, and now, there was only heat, night, silence. Perhaps there could be nothing more.

They were already boarding the plane when Frank and Karen reached the gate.

Karen took her suitcase from Frank's hand.

“I'll be back soon,” she said.

Frank nodded silently.

“I really will,” Karen insisted. “I promise.”

“Good-bye, Karen,” Frank said softly. Then he kissed her.

She disappeared into the crowd of passengers more quickly than he could have imagined, and he sat down in one of the bright red chairs and watched the lights of the plane as it waited for clearance beyond the enormous window. In his mind, he could see her as she settled into her seat, fastened on her seat belt, then lifted her eyes toward the front of the plane and thought, he knew, of him. He saw her once again as she had first appeared to him, somber in her artist's smock, her dark eyes full of things that were immense and unsayable, and it struck him that this deep, abiding gravity was the badge she carried with her all the time, and that others possessed it, too, a way of looking into the heart of the general misfortune. He drew out his gold shield and stared at it for a moment. It belonged to Atlanta, but he knew now that he could take it anywhere.

The ticket agent looked up slowly as Frank approached the booth.

“May I help you, sir?”

“Is it too late to get on the flight to New York?”

“No.”

“Then I'd like to go,” Frank said. “One way.”

The agent made out the ticket and handed it to him, glancing curiously at Frank's face. “What happened to you?” he asked.

For once, Frank realized, he had an answer that seemed right.

“A woman,” he said. Then he walked onto the plane.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1988 by Thomas H. Cook

cover design by Jason Gabbert

This edition published in 2011 by
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/Open Road Integrated Media

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