Sacrificial Ground

“No,” Frank shouted, but his voice died in the low, gurgling moan that came from Caleb’s mouth as he slumped backward and the chisel fell through the air and slashed his face. Frank could see his own bloody fingers as they grasped desperately for the chisel, but it fell again, this time into Caleb’s one open, staring eye, and the groan rose to a high, animal wail, then died away in slow degrees while Frank wrapped his arm around Toffler’s neck and squeezed until his arm went numb. The only thing he could feel was Toffler’s life flowing out of his body, and he squeezed harder, squeezing it out and out, until someone pulled him backward, and he saw the badge on the patrolman’s coat, then the steel blue barrel of the pistol as he pressed it into Toffler’s bright, blonde hair, and he could feel his breath again, and hear the rain, but the only voice that came to him was Caleb’s, half a moan, half a whisper, You’re safe, Frank, his last words.

27

Caleb was buried on a bright, sun-drenched day. The heat settled into the small gray stones of the crowded municipal cemetery, and as Frank stood silently beside the open grave, he could feel the thick, stifling air like a pillow pushed down upon his face.

Karen stood beside him, her eyes on the plain brown coffin, her lips tightly sealed. She remained in that same motionless position until the police honor guard had fired its salute, and the last of the mourners had made their way out of the cemetery.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Frank,” she said finally.

Frank looked at her. “He deserved better than this.”

“Yes.”

“When something this wrong happens, you ought to be able to appeal it somehow, take it to a higher court.”

Karen curled her hand around his and gently tugged him away from the grave.

“I’m leaving tonight,” she said.

“I thought so.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. A look.”

“I’ll come back for the trial,” Karen said. “I promise you that.”

Frank shook his head wearily. “That’s between you and the district attorney.”

Karen stopped cold and stared at him piercingly. “No, it’s between us.”

“You know how I feel about that.”

“I can’t stay here, Frank,” Karen told him. “There’s just no way I could endure it.”

“I know,” Frank said with a slight smile. “Believe me, I understand.” He started to drape his arm over her shoulder, but suddenly Toffler’s face rose in his mind, and for an instant he was back in the interrogation room, the two of them facing each other over a splintered brown table.

“Frank?”

“Do you know what Toffler said, Karen?” he asked her. “He said that if we found dirt in her mouth, it was because she was dirt.” He shook his head wonderingly. “He is alive to say a thing like that.”

Karen pulled herself under his arm. “Don’t, Frank. It’s over. Everything is over.”

But it seemed to Frank that just the opposite was true, that nothing was over. He could still see Toffler’s face in his mind, his long hair nearly white under the lamp, his translucent blue eyes, at times languid, at times blazing, but always open, terrible and sleepless, staring out forever.

“They’ll get him off on insanity,” Frank said, almost to himself. “He’ll end up in a state hospital. But he isn’t insane. He’s just rotten at the very core of himself.” He looked at Karen. “The air is always cold around him. He has no appetites. He doesn’t care about food or sex, or anything like that. He says he never touched Angelica, never wanted to. I believe him.”

“No more, Frank,” Karen said pleadingly. “Please, enough of this.”

Frank looked at her pointedly. “A person is lost, isn’t he, Karen, when he no longer cares about anything pleasurable?”

Karen stepped away from him. “I won’t talk about him anymore, Frank,” she said firmly. She walked quickly over to her car and got in. “I wanted you to take me to the airport tonight,” she said. “But now, I’m not so sure.

“ Frank tried to smile. “When’s your flight?”

“Two in the morning. Everything else was booked up.”

“I’ll pick you up at home,” Frank told her. “Be ready at midnight.”

But first he had some more questions to ask.

“You must be drawn to me,” Toffler said quietly, as he took his seat across the table.

Frank peered into his eyes. “Why do you say that?”

Toffler shrugged. “Second day in a row you’ve come to see me.” He folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. “What do you see when you look at me like that?”

“I don’t know.”

Toffler smiled confidently. “And you never will.”

Frank took out his notebook and flipped to the last pages. “It must have taken her a long time to die. Did you enjoy that?”

“I didn’t enjoy it. I wasn’t there to enjoy it. A thing lives. A thing dies. No one has to be there.”

“Thing? Angelica?”

“Whatever she was.”

“You never felt anything for her?” Frank asked.

“Felt?” He laughed. “You mean love?”

“I mean anything.”

Toffler sat back slightly, and the blue of his eyes suddenly deepened to the shade of the gray prison uniform he was wearing. “She could be used. That’s what a thing is for. “ He nodded toward Frank’s notebook. “Like that thing there, that little notebook, and that little yellow pencil. Used. Like that.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t jealous. She could have fucked that old queer until he died, and I wouldn’t have cared.” His eyes drew together into two small slits. “But she had lost her use. And when you can’t use something anymore, then you throw it away.”

“And so you just threw her away?” Frank asked.

Toffler shook his head despairingly. “This girl, she means everything to you.” He smiled. “She liked old men, though. Sick old men. He’s probably the only guy she ever fucked.”

“You mean Linton?”

“Him, yes.”

“They weren’t lovers,” Frank told him.

Toffler looked at him. “Of course they were.”

“You think Derek Linton was the father of Angelica’s baby?” Frank asked.

“Who else could it have been?”

“It was a boy she knew. We blood-typed the fetus.”

Toffler’s eyes drew in, and his lips parted slowly. “So she was wrong,” he murmured.

Frank leaned forward. “Angelica?”

Toffler’s face stiffened. Nothing Frank could do would get him to say another word.

For two hours after he left Toffler, Frank sat alone in one of the remote corners of Piedmont Park. Something was missing. He had missed something. He could see Toffler’s lips as they parted in surprise. So she was wrong.

Who? Who was wrong? Angelica was wrong about who the father was? But she’d called Doyle three times on May 15. No, she knew who’d gotten her pregnant. Then what?

He remembered what he’d always been told about a murder. Follow blood or follow money.

He saw the old man in the portrait which hung from the white walls of Karen’s foyer. Blood. There was so little left for the Devereauxs. Both parents gone, and after that, Angelica. Devereaux blood had been reduced to a