Read A Quiet Belief in Angels for Free Online Page A

newspaper report the following Wednesday. I cut out her picture and the article beneath.

    CHARLTON COUNTY JOURNAL
    Friday, August 9th, 1940
    Second Girl Found Murdered
On the morning of Friday August 9th, the citizens of Augusta Falls were once again witness to a terrifying discovery. The naked body of Laverna Stowell, daughter of Silco couple Leonard and Martha Stowell, was found naked but for her socks and a single shoe on her right foot. The second murder follows the November death of Alice Ruth Van Horne. Camden County Sheriff Ford Ruby refused to comment, but did allow that a dual-county operation would be established by himself and Charlton County Sheriff Haynes Dearing. Miss Alexandra Webber, teacher at the Augusta Falls School where Laverna Stowell was a student, said that Laverna was a bright and outgoing child who had no difficulty making friends. She said that the children had been informed of this situation, and prayers would be said at each morning roll call for the forthcoming week. Already citizens of Augusta Falls and Silco have met, and a town meeting to discuss the possibility of united action will be arranged. Sheriff Haynes Dearing once again stressed the importance of citizens in both towns and surrounding areas remaining calm. “There is nothing worse than panic in such situations. I am here to reassure everyone that there is a police procedure employed in any murder investigation, and it is the duty of the police to establish and carry out this procedure. If people wish to assist they can be alert to any strange or unfamiliar individuals, and also take care to ensure the safety and welfare of their own children at all times.” When asked if any progress had been made in the investigation of the killing of Alice Ruth Van Horne, Sheriff Dearing refused to comment, saying that “all details of an ongoing investigation need to remain confidential until the perpetrator has been arrested and charged.”
    I held the cutting in my hands and felt my eyes fill with tears. I imagined how I would feel if it had been Elena. I cried again, but this time there was something else beneath the sense of loss: fear. A bone-deep jag of fear that pierced me, and around it was a sense of anger, of near hatred for whoever had done this thing. Laverna had come each day from Silco in Camden County, and though I’d shared no more than half a dozen words with her outside of Miss Webber’s class, I still believed that somehow I had failed her. Why, I did not know, but I believed that both of them—Alice Ruth and Laverna—had been my responsibility.
    “You can’t blame yourself,” my mother told me when I explained my feelings. “There are people out there, Joseph, people who do not see life the way that we see it. They grant it no importance, no value, and they are almost incapable of stopping themselves when it comes to such terrible things.”
    “There must be something we can do.”
    “We can be watchful,” she said. She leaned closer to me as if imparting a secret not to be shared with the world. “We must take to watching for ourselves, and watching for everyone else. I know you feel responsible, Joseph, that is your nature, but responsibility and blame are not the same thing. You should be responsible if you feel it is your duty, but you must never blame yourself. You cannot punish yourself for the crimes of another.”
    I listened. I understood. I wanted to do something, but I did not know what.
    Two men came. They wore dark suits and hats. My mother told me they were from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, that they had been assigned to assist Sheriff Dearing. They crisscrossed the state asking forthright, indelicate questions, and from what I overheard from the kitchen it seemed that people quickly began to resent their presence. Dearing had apparently requested that he accompany them, but agents Leon Carver and Henry Oates declined his request, said it was Federal business, that objectivity was the key. I