Precious Blood(87)

Then, when Cheryl was ten, Richard Cass disappeared. Whether he’d taken off or died, Gregor found it impossible to tell from the information Smith had given him. For whatever reason, he was no longer there and Cheryl and her mother were no longer in the apartment over the bar. They had moved to a rented house described as “around the corner from the church.”

Things should have gotten just a little better, but they didn’t, not really. Myrna Cass was a drunk, too. Instead of taking her addiction out in violence, she liked men. During the year Cheryl was ten, Myrna was arrested for prostitution three times. During the year Cheryl was twelve, Myrna was arrested for prostitution eight times. During the year Cheryl was sixteen, Myrna wasn’t arrested for prostitution at all, but she was arrested for shoplifting. Repeatedly. So repeatedly, in fact, that Gregor wondered if she’d ever got away with it.

Sixteen, Gregor thought, was the crucial year. During that year, Cheryl would have been a junior in high school. At the end of it, there would have been the incident in Black Rock Park. Gregor thought he understood how it must have been: Myrna disintegrating, past help or redemption, past hope—and Cheryl, too, past hope, clutching the only kind of love that had ever been offered to her, in the backseats of cars and on the cold ground under the bleachers on football fields. The town tramp, daughter of the town drunk, good enough for a quick in-and-out but not good enough for a prom. Gregor paged to the end of the report.

The end, he found, was much less satisfactory than the beginning, although one thing stood out. He had been told repeatedly, by more than one person, that Cheryl Cass had “dropped out of school” after her junior year. According to the report, that wasn’t quite true. At the end of her junior year, three weeks before the incident at Black Rock Park, Cheryl had signed up for a senior year at Cathedral Girls’ High. She had a scholarship—a mercy scholarship, Gregor decided, considering the vague reference to her grades—and she had told her nun principal, Sister Andrea Joan, that she intended to pick it up again. Then, when the school term opened in September, she didn’t. She didn’t notify anyone, or talk to anyone, or try to provide an explanation. If she had, it would have been in the file. The file was complete enough otherwise for Gregor to be sure of that. Somewhere between the incident at Black Rock Park and September 11 of the same year, Cheryl Cass disappeared.

Gregor checked back, again. Yes, there it was. Cheryl had been picked up for causing a disturbance on the beach at Lake Diantha on June 9. The incident at Black Rock Park was officially assumed to have taken place on June 12, since the animal carcasses had been found the next day fairly fresh. Gregor checked the reference number next to the line about the June 9 disturbance, borrowed a pen from John Smith’s penholder and a piece of paper from his notepad, and wrote it down. It wasn’t unusual for someone to be picked up for causing a disturbance all on her own, but he wanted to read the full report anyway. From things Judy Eagan, Sister Scholastica, and Peg Morrissey Monaghan had said, he had the impression that this was the period when Tom, Barry, and Andy had been giving Cheryl a sexual rush. If that was true, Cheryl might not have been alone at Lake Diantha.

Come to think of it, Gregor wanted to read the file on Black Rock Park, too. He had come to share John Smith’s evaluation of Andy Walsh’s murder, and the Cardinal’s. Whyever it had been done, it had had nothing directly to do with the slaughtered animals in Black Rock Park. Indirectly was another matter, though. Black Rock Park was like a large chandelier hanging from the ceiling in a very narrow hall. Its presence was inescapable and oppressive, intrusive, demanding. If it had had nothing to do with any of this, it shouldn’t have been. The worst thing about Black Rock Park was that you couldn’t get away from it, no matter what you did.

He looked up, stretched his arms and legs, and was glad to see Smith coming back into the squad room, carrying a big greasy paper bag filled to the brim with white cardboard cartons. Just what I need, Gregor thought, lots of food and a shot at more information. Then he realized that John Smith was running.

Smith ran right up to the desk, connecting with nobody else in the room at all, and dumped the bag of cartons in his chair. He was out of breath and flushed, as if he’d run up the four flights to homicide instead of taking the elevator.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s get moving. I ran into Janice from Advisory down on the second floor.”

“Who’s Janice from Advisory?”

“The woman who tells you you have to be someplace. Which we do. Come on, will you please, for God’s sake? There’s been another one.”