at all.
Frank drew his eyes from the portrait and down toward the oriental rug at his feet. He saw Angelica Devereaux’s pale, dangling arm as if it were lying among the swirls of red and blue, distinct, yet indistinct, part of an indecipherable intricacy. “Farther along we’ll know more about it,” he heard his father sing madly at the altar of his mind. “Farther along, we’ll understand why.”
4
Karen Devereaux looked quite different when she reappeared a few minutes later. The soiled artist’s smock had been replaced by a long black skirt and dark red blouse. She had unpinned her hair, and it now hung loosely at her shoulders. She looked somewhat younger because of that, but the emotions Frank had seen rising into her face now seemed even more forcefully contained.
“I’m ready to go now,” she said, almost stiffly, and with an air of quiet command.
Frank stepped to the door immediately. “We’ll take my car,” he told her.
“Yes, all right,” Karen replied, “I’d really prefer not to drive right now.”
For a time, Frank kept quiet as he drove back toward the city. The wide, shaded lanes no longer seemed as imposing as they had earlier. It was as if something of their invulnerability had been taken from them. The armor of wealth had not been able to protect one of their youngest and most beautiful, and the failure reduced their grandeur, brought them down to human scale once again.
“It is beautiful out here,” he said quietly.
Karen said nothing.
“Never seems as hot as it is in the city.”
“We have our days,” Karen said crisply.
Sitting beside him, her large dark eyes fixed on the road ahead, she seemed extraordinarily composed, considering the news he’d just brought her. She kept her shoulders lifted slightly and her hands folded gracefully in her lap, and as he looked at her, Frank thought that perhaps in a continually shifting and uncertain world, she had learned that only her dignity could be kept in place, that it was the only thing in her life over which she truly had full and personal control.
“There’ll be questions, of course,” he said.
Karen continued to stare straight ahead. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“And it’s important to move quickly in something like this,” Frank added.
“Yes.”
“I’m sure you have a few questions, too,” Frank said, still hoping to draw her out, but without coming on too fast.
“You said you didn’t notice that she didn’t come home last night,” he said, finally.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Is that unusual?”
“That she didn’t come home, or that I didn’t notice it?” Karen asked.
“Both.”
“She had her own room,” Karen said stiffly.
“And her own life?”
“Yes, that too.”
“What did you know about it?”
“That she kept it to herself.”
“What about friends?”
“I don’t know if she had any.”
Frank looked at her doubtfully.
“I mean, if she had friends, I don’t know who they were,” Karen explained.
“Other kids, maybe. Didn’t anyone ever come by to see her?”
“Not that I know of,” Karen said. “I have a studio in the back of the house. I spend a lot of time there. People could come and go; I wouldn’t see them.” She shrugged. “But as far as I know, Angelica was very isolated.”
“It sounds like you are too,” Frank said, before he could stop himself.
Karen looked at him sharply. “Maybe I am. So what?”
“Look, I know how people can lose touch,” Frank said quickly. “In families, I mean. They can lose touch. My own daughter. It’s just that it was only the two of you in the house. That’s right, isn’t it? Only the two of you?”
“Yes.”
“So you had to have some contact,” Frank said. “No matter how little, there had to be some.”
Karen said nothing. She turned back toward the street and stared straight ahead.
“When a doorbell rings,” Frank went on, “someone has to answer it. Was there ever someone there who was looking for Angelica?”
“No,” Karen said crisply.
“Never?”
“Not when I was there, no,” Karen repeated firmly. “Maybe somewhere else, she had friends.”
“On the Southside?” Frank asked pointedly.
Karen did not reply.
“Do you know what Glenwood Avenue looks like?” Frank asked.
“Vaguely,” Karen said, almost in a whisper.
“Then you know it’s not exactly West Paces Ferry.”
“I’m aware of that, yes.”
“We don’t know exactly what happened to your sister,” Frank said, “but she ended up a long way from home.”
Karen said nothing. She kept her eyes on the road ahead.
As he glanced at her from time to time, Frank tried to come up with some idea of what she had felt for her sister. He’d had enough experience to know that it was hard to tell where love began or ended in a family. His own mother had appeared to love his father, and yet on one raw afternoon she had simply disappeared, left him with two boys on the brink of manhood and not so much as a note to tell them why.
“I know how it is sometimes,” Frank said tentatively. “Sometimes, people just don’t get along. Blood’s not everything. I know that, believe me. But you did live in the same house as your sister.”
She turned toward him. Her eyes widened somewhat, as if she were seeing him for the first time.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
For an instant he thought she meant his life, what had happened to his life, but then he realized that she was asking about his face, the scars and bruises. He touched his left eye and winced slightly.
“I had some trouble,” he said.
“In the line of duty?”
“No.”
She turned away from him very quickly, almost fearfully, as if she’d found something terribly disturbing in his answer.
They reached the morgue a few minutes later. It was very clean. The tile floors shone brightly and the walls were sleek and white. There was no clutter, no mess, much less any signs of blood or tissue. It was as if the staff was determined to stand up against the terrible disorder which swept up and down its corridors, in and out of its dissecting rooms; murdered wives and husbands, children suffocated in their tiny closets. The broken bodies were little more than the physical remains of something already broken long before, and which the gleaming hallways could not hide.
“How you doing, Frank?” Jesse said as he moved down the long corridor to where Frank and Karen stood beside a small wooden desk.
“Hello, Jesse.”
Jesse sauntered up to the desk and took a seat. “Got a problem?”
“We’re here to see Angelica Devereaux,” Frank told him.
“Got a number?”
