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.
Caleb was already rapping loudly at the door when Frank stepped up beside him. It opened immediately, and a tall, thin, redheaded boy stared at them from behind the screen. He had a light, unblemished complexion, and he was wearing a T-shirt embossed with large white letters: NORTHFIELD ACADEMY.
Caleb glanced at the letters, then at Frank. “Daddy,” he whispered, as the two of them stepped nearer to the door.
Frank pulled out his badge. “Are you Stanford Doyle?”
“Junior,” the boy said weakly, “Stanford Doyle, Junior.”
“Is your daddy home?” Caleb asked.
“No, sir.”
“You alone?” Frank asked.
“Yes, sir,” the boy said. “My father’s on vacation for the next two weeks.”
“Whereabouts?” Caleb asked.
“Florida. Fort Lauderdale.”
“So you’re living by yourself?”
“Yes, I am.”
For a moment, Frank did not know how to begin. Some things were too tender to be approached, and as far as he could tell, the boy seemed to have no idea what had brought him to his door.
“I see you go to Northfield,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You like it there, Stanford?”
“Stan,” the boy said. “People call me Stan.”
“You like it at Northfield?”
“It’s all right.”
Caleb took out his handkerchief and pointedly swabbed his neck. “It’s hot out here. Your place air- conditioned?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Suppose we could cool off a little while we talk?”
“Oh, sure,” the boy said, as if suddenly attentive to good manners. “Come on in.” He swung open the door and Frank and Caleb walked inside.
“Would you like to sit down?”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Caleb said.
