Sacrificial Ground (12 page)

The two of them laughed conspiratorially, then the man looked up at Frank.

“May I help you?” he asked.

Frank pulled out his badge. “Frank Clemons,” he said.

The man's face whitened. “Oh, yes, so sad,” he said. “Please come in.” He hustled Frank into an adjoining office and quickly closed the door. “The other detective said you'd be coming by. I can't tell you how sorry we all are about Angelica.”

Frank took out his notebook. “Of course,” he said.

“There's some talk of a memorial gift, actually,” the man said.

“You're Albert Morrison, right?” Frank asked. “The headmaster?”

“That's correct,” Morrison told him. “And as I was saying, a memorial gift has been discussed. Arthur Cummings has expressed an interest.”

Frank looked up. “You know Cummings?”

“Of course. He's one of the trustees of the Academy.”

Frank wrote it down.

“And of course,” Morrison went on, “he's very interested that the school be protected.”

“Protected? From what?”

“Well, to use an old Victorian word, scandal,” Morrison said. “I mean, she had been a student here. As you know, she was a member of the senior class. She only graduated a few weeks ago.” He smiled thinly. “One other thing, I want you to know that Northfield will cooperate fully with your investigation. After all, we consider every student, whether past or present, to be a member of our extended family.”

“When did Angelica graduate?”

“June first.”

Frank wrote it down.

“On the grounds of the Academy,” Morrison added. “That's been our tradition.”

“How old is the school?”

“Fifteen years old,” Morrison said. “Angelica was a good student here. Her death is a tragic loss for the entire community of Northfield. I do think a memorial gift would be appropriate. I was thinking of a flagstaff, or, if the donations warrant it, perhaps even a new addition to the theater.”

“How many students were in her graduating class?” Frank asked.

“Twenty-five,” Morrison said. “It was a beautiful ceremony. We had a string ensemble. They played Mozart.”

Frank nodded dully. To celebrate his own graduation, he and a few of his classmates had bought an old car and pushed it off a cliff. It seemed now to have fallen as quickly and resoundingly as their own ambitions.

“How well did you know Angelica?” he asked.

“I try to know all the students here. And I mean more than just their names.”

“How well did you know Angelica?”

Morrison seemed lost in thought. “She was very beautiful.”

“How well did you know her, Mr. Morrison?” Frank asked, this time with a slight edge in his voice.

“Well, less than most,” Morrison admitted. “Less than any, if you want to know the truth. She was not a terribly approachable human being.”

“Did she have many friends at the school?”

“I really don't know.”

“Well, did you ever see her with other students?”

“Rarely.”

“But sometimes?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Who were they?”

Morrison hesitated. “You mean, the names?”

“Yes.”

“What would you do with them?”

“I'd look them up in your little student directory,” Frank told him coolly, “and then I'd go talk to them.”

“That could be embarrassing.”

“One of their friends is dead,” Frank reminded him. He waited for this to sink in. Then he fired again. “She was pregnant, did you know that?”

Morrison winced. “Yes.”

“How?”

“Arthur told me,” Morrison said. “He felt Northfield should be warned.”

“About six weeks pregnant,” Frank said, “which would mean that she was pregnant at her graduation.”

Morrison's eyes lowered mournfully. “Yes, of course.”

Frank leaned forward slightly. “Do you have any idea who the father might have been?”

“None at all,” Morrison said. He shook his head worriedly. “One incident like this can have a terrible effect upon a school like Northfield.” His lips curled downward. “All you need is one rotten apple.”

“Is that how you thought of Angelica?”

Morrison looked like a child who'd been caught using bad language. “Well, no,” he sputtered, “of course not. I mean, she was very—”

“Beautiful, yes,” Frank interrupted. “What else?”

“Odd, that's all.”

“In what way?”

“She didn't participate in school activities very much,” Morrison said. “We stress community life at Northfield. We like joiners.”

“And Angelica wasn't one?”

“Hardly,” Morrison said with barely concealed disapproval. “She was very much to herself most of the time. I don't think she ever attended a school dance, or any other school function for that matter.” He thought a moment, and something caught in his mind. “Except one.”

“Which was?”

“The senior play,” Morrison said. “She was in the senior play.”

“When was that?”

“You'd have to ask Mr. Jameson; he directed it.”

“Where could I find him?”

“He's probably in the theater right now,” Morrison said. “We do have a summer theater program.”

Frank wrote it all down.

“She was quite good, actually,” Morrison added. “Everyone was impressed.” He shook his head. “I do wish we could have helped her more.”

“In what?”

“In life,” Morrison said. “When you teach children, you realize how unprepared they are for life.” He smiled gently. “We send them into a wilderness, Mister …”

“Clemons.”

“Mr. Clemons, yes. We do the best we can, but it's not always enough.”

“Would you say that Angelica was withdrawn, moody, anything like that?” Frank asked.

“From the life of this campus,” Morrison said. “She was very withdrawn from that. Perhaps she had something else. Other people who were pulling her away from us.”

“Toward the Southside?” Frank asked.

“Well, that's where she was found, after all.”

“How did you know that?”

“It was in the paper,” Morrison said. He took a folded newspaper from the table behind his desk and handed it to Frank. “See?”

Frank opened the paper. Angelica's Northfield photograph stared up at him from the front page.

“She should have been in the paper,” Morrison said, “but not like this. As an actress, perhaps, or something else equally meaningful.” He shook his head. “But not this.”

Frank handed the newspaper back to him.

Morrison glanced at it again, then allowed his eyes to drift toward one of the Civil War portraits that hung on the opposite wall. It seemed to calm him, as if he had discovered something sweet and beautiful within it which the hectic world of upper-class education could not give him.

“I believe in tradition, Mr. Clemons,” he said, finally. “I don't believe I should have to apologize for that.” He looked back toward Frank. “When I think of Angelica, I think of someone who was drifting, who had no traditions to stand on.”

“Maybe she didn't like them,” Frank said.

“Of course, that's possible.”

“Why did she go to this school?”

“It was not her choice.”

“Whose was it?”

“Arthur Cummings chose the school.”

“He made her go here?”

“He administered her trust fund,” Morrison said. “Part of it was allocated for Angelica's education. Arthur elected to spend that money at Northfield.”

Frank wrote it down.

“And may I add that I think Arthur made a wise choice?” Morrison said. “He was trying to help Angelica. But some people simply cannot be helped.”

From the tone of his voice, Frank would have thought that he was talking about the kind of girl who ended up on her back, waiting for the next trick.

“What did Cummings want her to be?” he asked.

“Responsible,” Morrison replied. “A credit to her family. A woman of some standing in the community.” He looked at Frank sadly. “Isn't that what everyone wants for his children?”

Frank said nothing, but in his mind he suddenly asked himself what he had wanted for his own daughter. It struck him that he'd wanted only for her to live through all the stages of life, and, at the end, to have had some sense that it had been worthwhile.

“If she'd just allowed herself to join in with the other people at Northfield, she'd have been all right,” Morrison said confidently.

For a moment, Frank actually tried to see the world as Morrison did, but he found that he could not comprehend his vision of a clearly divided world where a human being remained safe in one place and was imperiled by another. Instead he saw it as a constantly melding landscape, one in which there were no isolated lands, no insurmountable walls, no places so high that the tide could not rush in and sweep everything away.

“I'll need copies of the student and faculty directory,” he said.

“I hope you'll use them discreetly,” Mr. Morrison told him.

“And could you tell me where the theater is? I need to talk to this Mr. Jameson.”

“The building just behind this one,” Morrison said. He walked Frank out of the office and stood with him a moment in the corridor. “I am sorry about Angelica,” he said. “I hope you understand that.”

Frank nodded. There seemed nothing left to say.

11

A
s he entered the theater, Frank could see a tall, lean man who stood quietly on stage. He adjusted a microphone, then glanced up toward the back of the theater.

“All right, hit the spot,” he called loudly.

Instantly a shaft of bright light cut through the dark interior of the theater. It enveloped the man on the stage, and threw a dark shadow almost to the rear wall of the stage. The man looked at the shadow, studying it closely, as if it were a dark pool of water which had just risen from beneath the boards.

“I like that,” the man said. “Orchestra won't notice, but it'll be a nice effect for the people in the balcony.”

Once again he looked up toward the back of the theater.

“Okay, drop it,” he called, and the light flashed off immediately.

It was only then that he caught Frank in his eye. He leaned forward and squinted. “Can I help you with something?”

Frank walked down the center aisle and flashed his badge.

“I'm here about Angelica Devereaux,” he said. “Are you Mr. Jameson?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, I guess you've—”

“Just a minute, please,” Jameson said hastily. He looked up toward the balcony again. “Okay, Douglas, you can finish up later. Just leave the spot in position and go on to your class.”

Jameson waited until the boy had left, then he made the small leap from the stage to the floor. “The whole faculty had a private meeting about it this morning,” he said. He smiled slightly. “All that matters is that Angelica not be associated with Northfield.”

“Does everyone feel that way?”

“The board feels that way,” Jameson said. “That's all that matters. As for the teachers, they're a bunch of cowards, afraid for their jobs.” He shrugged. “Of course, Morrison has a point. Angelica had already graduated; she really wasn't a part of the school anymore.”

“She was in a play, I understand,” Frank said.

“That's right.”

“Which you directed?”

Jameson laughed. “Does that make me a suspect?”

“We're not sure how she died.”

“Well, what does that make me then?”

“Just someone who had contact with her,” Frank said. He let his eyes drift down slightly. Jameson was dressed in a plain sweatshirt, spattered jeans and worn, unwashed sneakers. It was the sort of outfit that singled him out as a good deal less straitlaced than Northfield appeared to be.

“You did know her, didn't you?” he asked.

“Yes, a little. Like you said, I was her director.”

“Did you know she was pregnant?”

“I heard she was.”

“From whom?”

“Morrison,” Jameson said. “That's got them more uptight than her being dead.”

“Do you know who the father might be?”

Jameson shifted lightly on his feet. “Not me, if that's what you're thinking.”

It wasn't beyond imagining, and Frank had already considered it. Jameson was young, perhaps thirty-five. He was handsome in a rough-and-tumble, scraggly-clothed sort of way, and he seemed to have a definite energy in his body and his eyes, the sort that might draw a young girl to it.

Jameson smiled slowly, and as he did so, Frank caught the un-evenness of his teeth. It gave him an odd, predatory look.

“Do you really think I might be the father?” Jameson asked.

“I don't know,” Frank told him. “Are you?”

“Isn't there some sort of test you can do if you really want to find out?”

Frank said nothing.

“Well, Mister …”

“Clemons.”

“Clemons. You can test me until the cows come home, but I didn't fuck Angelica.” He waited for Frank to answer, peering intently at his face. “By the way,” he said, after a moment, “what happened to you?” He smiled. “You look like a mine blew up in your face.”

“When was this play?” Frank asked.

“Two months ago.”

“And rehearsals before that?” Frank asked.

“Yes.”

Frank took out his notebook. “For how long?”

“Six weeks.”

“Were they during the day or at night?”

“Both,” Jameson said. “When it got close to opening night, we had more evening rehearsals.”

“Did she come to most of them?”

“Yes, she did,” Jameson said, “and that surprised me. Kids sometimes burn out. I thought she would be one of the first. You know how it is, kids have different priorities than adults.”