had been staring at it most of his life. Caleb stood beside him, pointing out various details, the lack of bloodstains in the parched ground which surrounded her, the lack of cuts or bruises, except on her feet and ankles (which were probably made by the body’s being dragged through the briar of the lot), the fact that the wrists were not lacerated, nor the throat. Caleb ticked off the meaning of these things methodically.
“So, from the look of it,” he concluded, “I’d say the lab boys will have to put a label on this one. Wasn’t shot, stabbed or strangled. Surely wasn’t beaten up.” He took a draw on his pipe. “What do you think, Frank? Poison?” He tapped his shoe against the ground. “Too hard for footprints.”
Frank allowed his eyes to peruse the body head to foot. Summer winds had blown away most of the dust and debris with which someone had hastily covered it. He could make out the facial features quite easily. Her hair was blonde, her eyes blue, her skin pale, almost chalky. She had a full mouth with rather thick lips, and Frank could even make out that her teeth, at least the lower set, were perfectly even. She wore a light blue, shortsleeve blouse and a dark blue skirt with a white belt and gold buckle. There was a leather sandal strapped loosely to one foot, but the other was bare. She was of medium build and medium height. Frank guessed her at about five-four and one hundred ten pounds.
“What do you think, around sixteen?” Caleb asked.
“About that,” Frank said.
The photo crew were all around him now, taking shots from all directions. Frank and Caleb stepped back slightly to give them the angles they demanded.
Caleb tapped the pipe against the heel of his shoe, spilling the rest of the tobacco onto the ground.
“They’ll find that damn tobacco and bag it as evidence, Caleb,” Frank said.
“Naw, they won’t,” Caleb said, with an old-pro smile, “because I’ll tell them it’s Prince Albert from my own bowl.” He glanced about, taking in the few structures which stood in the vicinity. “No bedroom window for some sleepless bastard to be standing at last night when the body was dropped.” He placed the pipe in his jacket pocket. “They’ll canvass their asses off, but it won’t do any good. Just for looks, that’s why they’ll do it.” He smiled. “ ’Cause we fucked up that child-murders thing.” He looked at Frank. “Everything by the book from now on. But it won’t make a goddamn bit of difference, and it’ll waste a hell of a lot of time.” He lifted his head slightly and called to one of the patrolmen. “Hey, tell the boys from the lab crew that this tobacco down here belongs to Caleb Stone.”
The patrolman nodded, then gave him the thumbs-up sign.
Caleb turned back to Frank. “That ought to cover my ass.” He slapped his behind. “And this old ass needs a lot of covering.”
He ambled away then, tramping through the waist-high brush until he had made it back to his car.
Frank watched him as he drove away. Caleb was one of the few men in the department whom he either liked or respected. He wasn’t very bright, but he was full of a kind of noble doggedness. He did his job well, and kept his troubles to himself. He had never asked about Sarah or the divorce, never pried into Frank’s private life or opened up about his own. Even after years in the city, he had held to that backwoods silence in which Frank himself had been reared, and which he still admired, almost as a lovely artifact; it was a rare individual in modern, bustling Atlanta who still possessed it.
“We’ll be through in a moment, Lieutenant,” Charlie Morton, the police photographer, said.
“Take your time,” Frank said casually. “Do it right.”
Charlie stepped to his side and took a shot. “Looks like she just laid down and died,” he said. He stepped around to the other side of the body, bent forward and snapped another picture. “Just walked out here and found herself a little spot of ground and laid right down,” Charlie repeated.
“With just one sandal?” Frank asked.
Charlie looked up quickly and smiled. “I guess that’s why I just take the pictures, right?” He snapped another picture. “Pretty much caught her from every angle now, Frank.” He looked at the body. “Well, maybe one more.” He took a final photograph, waved that he was finished and hurried away to the photo car.
Frank motioned to a stretcher team which stood by. “All right, you can take her out.”
The two men moved in and slowly lifted the body onto the stretcher. Frank walked over and gently checked the girl’s clothes for identification. There wasn’t any. Only a class ring on her finger, which he removed and placed in a plastic bag. He lifted the bag, twisting it right and left. The ring was from Northfield Academy, Class of 1987. He handed the bag to one of the patrolmen who stood near him.
“Take it to the lab,” he told him, “then radio headquarters to send a car over and pick up a copy of their latest yearbook. We’ll need to ID her right away.”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” the patrolman said as he hurried away.
Frank looked down at the body once again. The bearers had lifted the stretcher from the ground and were standing motionless in the growing heat, waiting for the signal to take it to the morgue. They had waited in the same rigid way after they’d picked up Sarah’s body, and he could not help but remember the silence that had gathered around him at that moment. It was as if the world had gone suddenly mute. The bearers had said nothing. Alvin had said nothing. And two hours later when he broke the news to his wife, she had simply sunk down on the sofa, stared vacantly at the empty fireplace and said absolutely nothing. Now, as he nodded quickly and the bearers moved forward through the bramble, it struck him that that first, terrible silence had not yet been broken, that he was still locked in it, as his wife was and Alvin was and as Sarah must have been for many years before she died. He could remember her alone in her room, in the front yard, by the living room window, always distant, unreachable, born to that deep, brooding silence which he’d feared in his father and then in himself and which had been passed down to Sarah like a poison in the blood.
He watched as the bearers pushed the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. One of the girl’s arms had dropped over the side and now dangled loosely toward the ground, palm out, fingers open, as if silently begging him for help.
3
It was only an hour later when Caleb lumbered into headquarters and dropped a single slender volume on Frank’s desk. It was ice blue with gold lettering: Northfield Academy.
“Page eighty-seven,” Caleb said.
Frank opened the book and flipped through it until he reached the right page.
“Third column down, fourth one over.”
Frank’s eyes followed the line of photographs until he reached the picture of a young girl whose smile beamed back at him from an open, innocent face.
“Right pretty,” Caleb said, “before the devil took her.”
She was considerably more than pretty, and as Frank continued to gaze at the photograph, he was struck by how much death had slackened her flesh and dulled her eyes until all her former beauty had been drained away.
Caleb’s eyes held sadly to the photograph, then shifted to the one of the girl as she lay on her back in the dust. He seemed to sink into the picture, or soak it up. Then he shook his head wearily. “Dead folks always look like they been left out in the rain,” he said.
Frank glanced at the column of names which bordered the left side of the page.
“Laura Angelica Devereaux,” he said softly.
“Most folks called her Angelica,” Caleb told him.
Frank glanced up from the book. “Who says?”
“Principal over at Northfield,” Caleb said. “Fancy school. They call them headmasters over there.” He shrugged. “Guess they don’t have principals at rich-kid schools.”
“What’s his name?”
“Albert Morrison.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“Well, a few things,” Caleb said. He pulled a chair over from another desk and sat down. The early morning light that beamed in from the large windows swept over him, casting one side of his face in deep shadow. “Her parents are dead,” he added casually, “but she’s got some family. A sister, named Karen. Age approximately twenty-seven; the sister, I mean. Lives at Two-fifty-five West Paces Ferry Road.” He smiled. “Ever been out that way?”
