“No.”
“It might build slowly, day by day. And while it built, it might be invisible.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what Derek says? He says that we are ‘junglehearts.’ Do you know what he means by that?”
“No.”
“That we react to things, rather than create them,” Miss Castle explained. “Do you think that’s true?”
“Sometimes,” Frank said.
“It would work like this,” Miss Castle added. “A group of cells arrange themselves into a body that is beautiful. That would be Angelica Devereaux. This creature would then create certain reactions in the other creatures it encountered. One reaction might be to adore her, one might be to love her, one might be to hate her, and one might be …”
“To kill her,” Frank said.
“Yes,” Miss Castle said. A single white eyebrow arched upward suddenly. “And now you, Mr. Clemons, are called upon to react to
“And so good-bye, Mr. Clemons,” she said. “Let us part gracefully, one stranger to another.”
She turned briskly and headed back toward the great house. Its immense white facade seemed to stare down at her with a sightless eye.
22
During the long ride back to Atlanta, Frank tried to bring all the details he had discovered into some kind of order. The portrait of Angelica Devereaux had now changed radically, but it was no less confused. The remote, private, obsessively solitary girl who slept in a room full of dolls had become something else entirely, a girl who dressed in different clothes, wandered through seedy art galleries, and, in her own way, tried to attract as much attention as she could.
But even this was too simple, Frank thought, as he continued to consider it. For this was the same girl who’d suddenly approached an old man with what appeared to be genuine affection, the same girl who, a few weeks later, had driven a boy she hardly knew to a littered alleyway and taken him angrily in the cramped space of a red BMW. It was as if she had lived many lives, or wanted to, and that none of them had ever satisfied her.
It was already past nine at night when Frank made it back to headquarters. Most of the detectives had cleared out long ago, with only the sullen graveyard shift to occupy the empty desks of the bullpen. They sat around, staring vacantly at newspapers and magazines or roaming idly from one desk to another as if still searching wearily for the final key to things.
Only Gibbons retained his energy, and as he sat down at his desk, Frank could see him scrambling through the last stack of memos from the FBI. It was a sad, despairing sight, but Frank could not figure out exactly why it struck him that way. It was as if something were missing in Gibbons, missing in the way he hunted down his prey with that relentless, deadly professionalism that had served him so well. His busts were always clean. He lived by the letter of the law, and left its spirit as shallow and untended as an abandoned grave.
“Hello, Frank,” Caleb said as he walked up to the desk. “Eyeing the competition?”
“What?”
“I saw Brickman talking to our friend Gibbons this afternoon,” Caleb said. “Thought they might have shifted the case over to him.”
“Not that I know of.”
“Good,” Caleb said. He pulled a chair over to the desk and sat down. “Score one for our side. “ He leaned back leisurely and pulled out his pipe. “By the way, where you been? Alvin’s been worrying about you.”
“La Grange.”
“For the sights?”
“I got a lead, someone who’s seen Angelica in various places.”
“What places?”
“A few galleries,” Frank told him. “There’s a street of them near Grant Park.”
“Grant Park again,” Caleb said thoughtfully.
“Yeah.”
“You know, Frank, I’ve been thinking she was maybe a hooker.”
“Who was also a virgin?” Frank replied doubtfully.
“That kid might not know the difference, Frank,” Caleb said. “What I was thinking is, you’ve got a bored rich kid who has a taste for slumming. Things get stranger and stranger. She ends up taking a few bucks. The idea appeals to her. She does it a few more times, and then she picks up this john and before she can even think about it, she’s dead.”
Frank shook his head. “I don’t think so, Caleb.”
“It’s happened more than once.”
“Yeah, I know. Tell me, Caleb, how many cases of murdered prostitutes have you handled?”
“More than I can remember.”
“How’d they look after it was over?”
“Like hell.”
“Like Angelica?”
“Bummed up more.”
“Exactly,” Frank said. “If you want to kill a whore, you use a gun or a knife or a hammer.”
Caleb thought about it for a moment. “All right, I could be wrong. But how do you make it, Frank?”
“I don’t know,” Frank said. He stood up. “Want to go for a ride?”
“Where?”
“Around the park.”
Caleb pulled himself wearily to his feet. “You driving?”
They walked down to the garage together, then drove directly through midtown until they reached Cherokee Avenue and the northern end of Grant Park.
“According to the kid,” Frank said, “Angelica took him around the park a few times.” He pulled over to the curb and stared out into the park. The lights had been turned on, and they gave off a silvery haze.
“Like she was looking for somebody,” Caleb said.
“Right.”
“But not a connection.”
“Not if what you found out is true,” Frank said, “that she was off drugs.”
“But what about action, Frank?” Caleb said. “What if she was just out cruising for a little action?”
“With Stanford Doyle, Junior, sitting right next to her?” Frank asked.
“Maybe she wanted to shock him,” Caleb said. “Maybe that was part of the thrill.”
Frank shook his head.
“Why not?” Caleb asked. “The fact is, Frank, we don’t know what was going through that girl’s mind. She was young, real young, and you must remember what that was like.” He smiled knowingly. “Young blood, Frank. It craves action. For God’s sake, you know what I’m talking about.”
For a moment, Frank remembered his own young blood, how it too had craved action, how it still leaped toward something raw and immediate, how, even now, so much of life seemed like a lazy doze compared to what his blood desired.
“I remember it,” Caleb said quietly. “I remember it real well. And you know what? When I saw that girl all laid out in that goddamn lot, I thought to myself
“What do you think her story is, Caleb?” Frank asked very seriously.
Caleb considered it for a moment, as if trying to find the right words. “That she bit down too hard on life. She wouldn’t be the first, you know.” His eyes seemed to withdraw into their sockets. “Sometimes you pay a price,
