The Sacrifice (27 page)

When the Reverend called back, precisely ten minutes later, Ednetta was skimming the front page of the
Pascayne Journal
anxiously.

Her eyes! Seemed like, these past few weeks, her eyesight was dimming.

And her left ear, where Anis had cuffed her—her hearing was fuzzy and diminished.

Cheryl had sent her kids out of the kitchen so Ednetta could hear the Reverend on the phone. Still, the place was noisy: damn TV on loud.

And where was Sybilla? (Ednetta dreaded the girl slipping out as she’d done a few nights ago, with Martine to pretend that Sybilla had “gone to bed, early.”)

Reverend Mudrick told Ednetta to look on page seven of the first section.

Look for what? “Rookie Cop Death Ruled ‘Gun Accident’ Pending Investigation.”

Grainy photograph of a boyish-faced young man with pale hair, a strong-jawed face, shy-friendly smile and dimples in both cheeks.

“Rev’end? What? I’m lookin . . .”

“There he is, Ednetta: ‘
Rookie Cop.
’”

Ednetta was confused. “Who—who’s this?”

The caption beneath the photograph identified
Jerold M. Zahn, 27, Pascayne Police Dept.

Was this someone Ednetta was supposed to know? She hated the Reverend talking to her like this, as often he did, and to Sybilla too, as if they were so stupid they had to be led by their hand.

Gravely Reverend Mudrick said: “Sister Ednetta, that is the ‘yelow-hair’ cop who raped your daughter.”

Ednetta was so stunned, for a moment she couldn’t speak.

“Oh—no . . . No, Rev’end, this ain’t him.”

“Call Sybilla. Let Sybilla make that decision.”

“Rev’end, this ain’t him. This some sad boy looks like he kilt himself with his gun . . .”

“This is no ‘sad boy,’ Sister Ednetta. This is the ‘yelow-hair cop’ who raped your daughter, she’d identified as best as she could under the circumstances. But now, here is his photo, and here is his name. ‘Jerold Zahn.’”

Ednetta was rubbing her arm energetically. Aching joints, swollen knuckles. Her mother Pearline spoke of the “misery”—that was what Ednetta had now.

She’d been crying to Cheryl the night before
If only none of this had got started! All that damn girl’s fault.

“Call your daughter to the phone. Please.”

Ednetta wanted to protest but dared not. Even on the telephone Reverend Mudrick exerted a powerful spell that left Ednetta feeling weak.

Ednetta went to fetch Sybilla back in Martine’s bedroom. Though Sybilla had complained of school, having to study, do homework, take tests, now that she’d been temporarily excused from school attendance on the recommendation of Dr. Cleveland, she complained of missing school, and all her friends. She’d been sleeping in her clothes, it looked like. Her hair was like a bushman’s springing out from her head and as she came slowly into the kitchen to take the phone, she was sucking her thumb.

Deftly Ednetta knocked Sybilla’s hand away from her mouth. “Shhh, girl! It’s the Reverend wantin to talk to you.”

Sybilla made a face, shrinking away, but Ednetta pushed the receiver at her.

Sybilla took the receiver and pressed it against her ear. Her mouth was sullen. Cheryl had told Ednetta a rumor Ednetta didn’t want to believe, that Jaycee Handler was back in Red Rock on parole, and had spoken of looking up Sybilla Frye.

Sybilla said little as Reverend Mudrick addressed her in his urgent voice, for Reverend Mudrick rarely allowed others to speak; he knew all the words beforehand, and so there was no need for anyone else to speak. Reverend Mudrick was like certain of her teachers except the teachers always came to an end, with the class period, while there could be no natural end to Reverend Mudrick’s talk.

Sybilla did as Reverend Mudrick instructed, examining the photograph at the top of page seven of the
Pascayne Journal
.

Rookie Cop Death Ruled “Gun Accident” Pending Investigation.

Sybilla squinted at the young man’s face. White guy, kind of boyish, good-looking. Was he some older kid at school, one of the few white guys? But couldn’t be, if he was twenty-seven.

The Reverend was saying, “Sister Sybilla? He has committed suicide out of guilt for what he did to you. And now you can come forward.”

Sybilla squinted at the photo. She’d jammed her thumb into her mouth and was sucking.

“Here is the ‘yelow-hair cop’ you saw, Sybilla. The one who was a little younger than the others. Take your time studying the photo.”

Laughter began deep inside Sybilla, unless it was trembling. Her silly heart was beating quickly.

“Nah, Rev’end, that ain’t him. I guess I didn’t see who it was so clear. They had, like, this towel over my face so I couldn’t see—‘blindfold.’” Sybilla began coughing. Close by Ednetta stood listening shaking her head
No, no!
but Sybilla ignored her.

Speaking gravely, yet forcefully, Marus Mudrick sounded as if he were in the kichen with Sybilla. Almost, she could feel his heavy warm hand on her shoulder where often he let it fall, seemingly by chance.

“Try again, Sybilla. Here is the ‘yelow-hair cop’—you can see he’s blond, and any kind of ‘blond’ hair would have looked to you like ‘yellow’ in your duress. He was a relatively young cop, you’d said—maybe thirty—one of the five or six or seven ‘white cops’ who raped you. See, ‘Jerold Zahn’ has killed himself over the shame and guilt of having raped
you
. He has killed himself because he knows that the Crusade for Justice for Sybilla Frye would soon have identified him . . . Sybilla? Are you there?”

Sybilla mumbled an inaudible reply.

“We are going to identify ‘Jerold Zahn’—we will come to Pascayne PD headquarters immediately.”

Sybilla was staring at the photograph in the paper. A white boy, looked like a nice boy, even if he was some kind of cop—“rookie.” There were white guys Sybilla knew, fair-skinned, part Anglo from the Islands so you couldn’t tell if they were Puerto Rican or Jamaican or—whatever. This boy didn’t look much like them with his white-looking hair. A certain kind of older fair-skinned boy like in high school or older, observing Sybilla Frye like he’d kind of like
her
. They weren’t all nasty.

There were streets in Red Rock in an outlying district where some of them lived. She’d wanted to make that clear. In the interviews, where Sybilla sat silent beside Reverend Mudrick while he answered questions, she’d wanted to interrupt sometimes and explain that “white cops” had hurt her but she didn’t hate all “white” people—she did not.

She’d had teachers . . .

And this boy, looked like he’d shot himself with his gun. That had to be sad.

“Nah, this ain’t him, Rev’end. The one that did it was like older . . .”

“Sybilla, look again. Take your time.”

“This ain’t him, Rev’end.”

Sybilla’s voice was beginning to quaver. Ednetta was feeling so stressed, she was pacing at the doorway, hitting her fists light against her thighs. Her face was a net of wrinkles Sybilla hated to see—
No no no no no.

Weakly Sybilla said she didn’t think this was the man—“Like I say, he younger, Rev’end. The ‘yelow-hair cop’ I saw was not so young”—and Reverend Mudrick interrupted saying how fitting it was, at this time, that one of her rapists should kill himself out of fear of being exposed by the Crusade; being caught, arrested, and put to public shame. And Sybilla said that might be right but this wasn’t the man. And Reverend Mudrick said this was the one who killed himself—“The guilt was just too much for him. Even a white Nazi-fascist cop.”

Sybilla was shaking her head
no
, stubbornly.

Ednetta had come to stand square before her, staring at her face. But Sybilla’s sly-drifting left eye avoided her mother’s urgent gaze and her other, good eye was shimmering with tears.

The Reverend was saying, slowly, as one might speak to a retarded person, “This happens to be the Pascayne police officer who has killed himself, Sybilla. We are not going to have a choice of such officers, I think. Is your mother there? I can talk to her.”

Quickly Sybilla murmured
No! Mama ain’t here.

“It’s a crucial step, Sybilla. Here is our man—a gift and a blessing from Jesus. People are beginning to say, even in Pascayne, even among my brother’s law students and Newark colleagues, that you might have lied, Sybilla—made the ‘kidnapping’ and the ‘rape’ up. Because you haven’t identified a single ‘white cop’ so far. And now, when one of them is displayed before you, and you have plenty of time to deliberate and remember, you must seize it.”

Sybilla sucked at her thumb, breathing quickly.

“D’you know what ‘perjury’ is, Sybilla? ‘Filing a false charge’ with the police? If you’ve lied, if there was never any rape and never any
‘white cops,’ the Pascayne PD will arrest
you
. The district attorney will get a waiver for your age, and try Sybilla Frye as an adult.” Reverend Mudrick paused.

“Do you want to examine the photograph again? ‘Jerold Zahn, twenty-seven.’ It’s natural that you mistook his light-blond hair for ‘yelow hair’—the interior of the van would have been dim.”

Sybilla said, with an angry little sob, “OK Rev’end. This him.”

Quickly then before Reverend Mudrick could speak again she hung up the phone. Would have run blindly out of the apartment and into the drafty corridor and maybe tripped and flung herself down the stairs but her mother grabbed her and shook her, hard.

“Girl, what the hell you doin? That ‘rookie cop’ some mother’s son feelin bad and kilt himself, and now—”

Sybilla jerked her arm away from her mother. With a sulky sort of triumph she said, “Go fuck y’self, Mama. This shit all comin from
you
.”

Sybilla ran from the kitchen and into the interior of the apartment. Ednetta was too distressed to follow. Nor did Ednetta wish to answer her sister’s prying questions. With the dazed helplessness of a creature staring at a cobra she stared at the telephone waiting for it to ring.

Y
es.”

And, “Yes. That him.”

“You are certain, Miss Frye? This officer—‘Jerold Zahn’?”

As instructed by Byron Mudrick she spoke quietly and without hesitation. She was not emotional: not sullen, not angry, not resentful, not vindictive, not anxious and not fearful. She did not betray uncertainty, or apprehension. Her eyes were partway closed.

“The young lady hardly knew the officer’s name, Officer. No point in asking her that.”

Byron Mudrick spoke curtly, with an edge of irony.

Third floor Pascayne City Hall, Family Services Division. On the morning of December 14, 1987, Sybilla Frye was seated at a table in an interview room making a formal statement to a woman officer from the Pascayne Police Department Juvenile Aid Bureau: identifying the “yellow-hair cop” who had raped her and participated in beating her on or about October 4, 1987.

Sybilla wasn’t definite about the location of the assault. As Byron Mudrick had cautioned her, she should say that she believed she’d been kept captive in “some kind of van, like a police van” and that it had not been driven very far, but parked much of the time.

(Byron Mudrick had explained to Sybilla that this was to establish “jurisdiction”—“Otherwise they might try to say that the crimes were committed in a county other than Passaic, and pass the blame onto someone else.”)

With Sybilla and Byron Mudrick were her mother Ednetta and Reverend Marus Mudrick, who were seated in chairs behind them, against a wall of the windowless room.

Byron Mudrick who was Sybilla’s “legal counsel” was more comforting to her than Reverend Mudrick who seemed never really to look at
her
. Byron was softer-spoken, with a smile like her real daddy ought to’ve had, if she’d ever known him. (Anis Schutt who was her stepdaddy had a smile hard as steel. You never wanted to see that smile bare Anis’s yellowy teeth.)

Sybilla was so grateful to Byron Mudrick! He’d insisted that his “juvenile client” meet with police officials and the Passaic County district attorney in the County Family Services Bureau office and not at police headquarters across the street, in order to avert a “nightmare scenario” of the rape victim accidentally encountering one or more of her yet-unidentified rapists.

“That would be a trauma we can avoid,” Byron Mudrick said gravely. “The original trauma, the nightmare to my client, is irrevocable.”

Family Services was a far friendlier setting than police headquarters, in any case. Ednetta Frye had come to this office a number of times in the past several years and believed she could remember having brought Sybilla with her at least once.

There would not be such hostility to the Fryes, in Family Services,
as in police headquarters. They would be spared entering into what Reverend Mudrick called the “dominion of the Enemy.”

Present also at the meeting were several Family Services officials, all women. And one of the social workers who’d come to speak with Ednetta Frye in her home several weeks before, whom Ednetta had ordered to leave.

The Pascayne Juvenile Aid officer, the Red Rock precinct captain, and the Passaic County district attorney sat at the table with Sybilla Frye and Byron Mudrick. Other officials, including several assistant district attorneys, sat behind the table in chairs against the wall.

This was a meeting highly charged with emotion! Sybilla sensed waves of repugnance for her, from the Enemy; though Byron had warned her and her mother what to expect, it was disconcerting. Sybilla wasn’t used to being in places where people disliked
her
—like they had some special reason to dislike
her
?

Both Byron and Reverend Mudrick had cautioned her not to smile at the Enemy, and not to make eye-contact. Ednetta had been so nervous earlier that morning, she’d been in and out of the bathroom throwing up.

Sybilla was only vaguely aware of the hours of negotiation that had preceded the meeting. Numerous calls had passed between Byron Mudrick and the Red Rock captain and other police officials, and between Byron Mudrick and the district attorney and assistants. As soon as he’d announced to them that his client had “made an ID of one of her rapists” and wanted to meet with authorities to “confirm” it, the Enemy had reacted with alacrity.