The Sacrifice by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

glossy posters of rock musicians. Iglesias recognized most of the figures—Tina Turner, Whitney Houston were her own favorites.
    “Mrs. Frye, please tell me where Sybilla is. She may need further medical care. You should want to cooperate in this investigation.”
    Ednetta had come up behind Iglesias incensed and panting. Just barely audible Ednetta murmured what sounded like God damn bitch.
    Iglesias felt her face flush with heat. But she spoke calmly and without rancor.
    Telling Ednetta Frye that her daughter had made “serious charges” and that it would be determined eventually what had happened to her—“It will be better for you, and for Sybilla, if you cooperate now. We only have your daughter’s welfare in mind.”
    Ednetta snorted in derision. She was badly out of breath from the stairs. “Off’cer, you best go away now. You see Sybilla ain’t here like I told you.”
    “Where is she? With relatives?”
    Ednetta frowned. The way in which she stared at Iglesias suggested that yes of course, Sybilla was staying with relatives. And probably not far away.
    “She stayin where she safe. Ain’t gon do any good if you hound her, ma’am.”
    Iglesias was pained that Ednetta Frye so disliked and distrusted her. There seemed nothing she could say to persuade the woman otherwise.
    The animosity of men, she could comprehend. Sex-hatred of the female was common in the culture. But the animosity of a woman so like herself—so essentially herself —was something very different.
    “We both want what is best for Sybilla, Mrs. Frye. I wish you would cooperate with the investigation and with me. I wish you would help me .”
    “No cop is gonna help us. No ‘white cop’ is gonna arrest any ‘white cop.’”
    Thinking But I am not a “white cop.”
    Iglesias was satisfied that Sybilla Frye wasn’t at her mother’s house but still the brownstone had to be thoroughly searched, upstairs and down. And the dank smelly cellar into which, as she descended the wobbly stairs, flashlight in hand, Iglesias felt a thrill of sheer visceral revulsion for people who lived in such quarters—who could not help themselves to live in any other way.
    Within a day Iglesias had traced the girl to Mrs. Frye’s grandmother’s home in an apartment building on Eleventh Avenue.
    Here, the elderly white-haired Pearline Tice told Iglesias that her great-granddaughter was “resting” and couldn’t “speak with a stranger.” But Iglesias managed to talk the elderly woman into opening the door to the room in which Sybilla lay in bed with a cover pulled to her chin, staring stonily in Iglesias’s direction. When Iglesias greeted the girl, Sybilla gave no sign of hearing her.
    The girl’s eyes were still bruised but not so badly swollen as they’d been when Iglesias had last seen her. Her face was near-normal except for stitches in her lip and above her eyebrow.
    Her hair had been washed and brushed. Wild frizzed and nappy dark hair tied up in a scarf.
    “See, Off’cer, S’b’lla all right—she ain’t sick —just needin to conval’sce. Her mother don’t want her to start back at school till she is feelin strong again.”
    Politely Iglesias requested if she might ask Sybilla just a questionor two?—and Pearline Tice said sharply that Iglesias should ask her , and she would ask the girl.
    In this way Iglesias conducted a kind of interview with the girl—hardly an “interview” of any substance.
    Asking if Sybilla could provide any further descriptions of the white cops , or of the van in which she’d been kept; and if she would allow a doctor to come to her, to examine her, since the examination at St. Anne’s ER had not been completed.
    Pearline Tice shut the bedroom door while she conferred with Sybilla. Whatever the elderly woman and her great-granddaughter said together, in lowered voices, Iglesias couldn’t hear. She thought But I have found her, at least. She is still alive.
    Iglesias had learned about Pearline Tice