It opened just enough from him to see a single, brown eye.
“Yeah?” the man said harshly. “What do you want?”
“Are you Harry Towers?” Frank asked.
“Who wants to know?” the man asked coldly.
“Ollie Quinn,” Frank said. He stepped back slightly, then slammed into the door. “And Caleb Stone.” Towers’ body crashed backward and tumbled over a small wooden table. He scrambled to his feet, and reached for the pistol in his belt.
Frank hit him in the stomach, then jerked him up and punched him twice in the face. Towers staggered backward and fell on his back, moaning loudly. He tried to rise, but Frank fell upon him, grabbed his head in his hands, and pounded it twice against the floor.
Towers groaned again, as his eyes closed, then fluttered open.
Frank tossed the pistol across the room, then grabbed his own. For a moment, he wanted to press the barrel into Towers’ gaping, toothless mouth and pull the trigger. He wanted to see Towers’ head explode beneath him, but he saw Karen in the darkness, the rose still in her hand, and heard her voice over his shoulder, whispering Caleb’s words: Not yet.
Instead, he put the gun beside Towers’ head, the barrel pointing toward the floor, and fired. The house shook with the reverberating roar.
“If I ever come here again,” he said, “you won’t hear a thing.”
“You’re late,” Karen said, as she walked quickly out of the house.
“Sorry,” Frank said.
“That’s all right. We’ll make it. There won’t be much traffic at this time of night.”
“No,” Frank said. He glanced down at the single suitcase she carried in her hand. “That’s all you’re bringing?”
“I’m having other things shipped up,” Karen said.
Frank took the suitcase and tossed it into the backseat of the car. “Well, let’s go,” he said.
It took a little over a half-hour to reach the airport, and for most of the ride, Frank said nothing. It was as if he had gone to the very brink of what he could feel, and now, there was only heat, night, silence. Perhaps there could be nothing more.
They were already boarding the plane when Frank and Karen reached the gate.
Karen took her suitcase from Frank’s hand.
“I’ll be back soon,” she said.
Frank nodded silently.
“I really will,” Karen insisted. “I promise.”
“Good-bye, Karen,” Frank said softly. Then he kissed her.
She disappeared into the crowd of passengers more quickly than he could have imagined, and he sat down in one of the bright red chairs and watched the lights of the plane as it waited for clearance beyond the enormous window. In his mind, he could see her as she settled into her seat, fastened on her seat belt, then lifted her eyes toward the front of the plane and thought, he knew, of him. He saw her once again as she had first appeared to him, somber in her artist’s smock, her dark eyes full of things that were immense and unsayable, and it struck him that this deep, abiding gravity was the badge she carried with her all the time, and that others possessed it, too, a way of looking into the heart of the general misfortune. He drew out his gold shield and stared at it for a moment. It belonged to Atlanta, but he knew now that he could take it anywhere.
The ticket agent looked up slowly as Frank approached the booth.
“May I help you, sir?”
“Is it too late to get on the flight to New York?”
“No.”
“Then I’d like to go,” Frank said. “One way.”
The agent made out the ticket and handed it to him, glancing curiously at Frank’s face. “What happened to you?” he asked.
For once, Frank realized, he had an answer that seemed right.
“A woman,” he said. Then he walked onto the plane.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1988 by Thomas H. Cook
cover design by Jason Gabbert
This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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Thomas H. Cook, Sacrificial Ground
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