An Unquiet Grave

CHAPTER 10

It was dark by the time Louis walked out of the Ardmore Police Station. Alice had asked for a ride back to the hospital, so he waited near the door, out of the wind, watching the street.

The shops were dark, CLOSED FOR THANKSGIVING signs on the doors. Christmas lights twinkled in the window of O’Malley’s Hardware. A single car made its way slowly up the street, a faint sprinkle of rain shimmering in its headlights.

“Thanks for waiting.”

Louis turned to look at Alice. He hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to her once Chief Dalum had shown up and he wondered how she was doing. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, but there was something else in them, too-disbelief. The same disbelief he had seen in the eyes of so many other people whose quiet lives collided with catastrophe.

“You okay?” Louis asked.

Alice nodded, stuffing her hands in her pockets. “I just want to go home.”

“You want me to drive you home?”

She shook her head. “No, just back to the hospital is fine. I need to get my car and lock up.”

Louis led her to Phillip’s Impala and helped her inside. She was quiet as he backed out of the space and flipped up the heater.

“Did you know her well?” Louis asked.

Alice sighed, folding her hands in her lap. “Pretty well, but we weren’t close. Rebecca came to Hidden Lake before me.”

Louis slowed for a stop sign, then drove on through, leaving the soft glimmer of Ardmore behind them as they headed out into the empty farmlands.

“Her last name was Gruber,” Alice said.

Louis didn’t reply, knowing nothing he could say would make this any better. But he did have some questions, ones he knew he shouldn’t be asking because this wasn’t his case. But he couldn’t help it.

“Can you tell me more about Charlie Oberon?” Louis asked.

Alice didn’t answer immediately, but her eyes were on him, looking for some level of trust. “I’ve known Charlie for six years,” she started slowly. “And I’ve never known him to be violent.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Louis asked.

“We’re not sure. He’s been diagnosed as several things. Schizophrenia, mild retardation as a result of possible fetal alcohol syndrome or drug addiction. Maybe brain damage due to physical abuse as an infant. No one seems to be able nail it down since we have no history on him.”

“Who brought him here?”

“The state. They found him wandering the streets of Jackson in the summer of seventy-four. He seemed to function on the level of about an eight-year-old. Things haven’t changed all that much really.”

She made a sniffling sound and Louis glanced over at her. But she wasn’t crying, just reaching into her purse for a Kleenex so she could blow her nose.

They fell into a silence that was broken only when Alice had to give him some directions. Out here, in the emptiness of the hills and fields, with no streetlights to relieve the darkness, Louis wasn’t quite sure where he was.

The blue and red bubble lights of a cruiser were visible well before they pulled up to the Hidden Lake entrance. Louis produced the pass Dalum had given him, and the two cops at the guardhouse waved him through. Beyond the administration building, he saw a flurry of lights-small jerking ones, like flashlights. The Ardmore Police Department didn’t have any floodlights, so Dalum was waiting for the state to bring some. The few cops here were protecting the scene and walking the grounds.

Louis swung the Impala in next to a cruiser, but didn’t switch off the engine. He turned toward Alice. She was watching the flashlights, the Kleenex balled in her hand.

“It’s going to be hard to go back in there,” she said softly.

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Louis said.

“I have to. I have to finish boxing the records.”

“You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I won’t be. The superintendent has arranged for extra security.”

“Is there anyone else still working here?” Louis asked.

She shook her head. “It was just Rebecca and me. We were the last ones here. I was packing up the last of the records that were going to the state. She was helping the salvage company.”

“There was a salvage crew here this week?” Louis asked.

“Yes, a foreman and his crew. All the buildings have been locked for months and Rebecca had to take them around so they could do inventory.”

“Who else was around?”

Alice had to think for a moment. “Three security guards, the old fellow at the guardhouse, and two others who were only here at night. One walked the grounds watching for vandals and the other was posted out in the cemetery to keep an eye on the exhumation company’s equipment.”

“Anyone else in and out?”

“Just a few people claiming remains in the last week.” Now Alice had turned toward him. “Why are you asking?”

“No reason,” Louis said.

Alice started to rummage through her purse, pulling out her gloves. “Well, thank you for the ride,” she said.

“No problem.”

Alice opened the door and started to slide out.

“Miss Cooper, wait,” Louis said.

She looked back at him.

“Why do you think Charlie put flowers on Rebecca’s eyes?”

She hesitated. “Chief Dalum asked me the same thing. You talk like a policeman.”

Louis smiled. “I used to be one. It never really goes away.”

“Do you think Charlie did it?” she asked.

“I don’t know enough about him or Rebecca to answer that, Miss Cooper,” Louis said.

She sat back in the seat, looking back out the windshield at the black hulk of the administration building. “Charlie loved Rebecca,” she said. “She was the only one who really paid any attention to him, the only one who worked with him.”

“Worked?” Louis asked. “How?”

“She figured out that he loved it when she read to him, and that he could remember things he had heard and recite them back. It didn’t really matter what she read. Charlie just seemed to like to hear the words.”

A small smile tipped her lips. “She used to read him Shakespeare.” She saw the incredulous look on Louis’s face and her smile grew. “Well, only A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There’s a character in it named Oberon. I guess he was the king of the fairies or something, and Rebecca told Charlie that’s what he was.”

When Louis said nothing, Alice went on. “She didn’t mean it cruelly, and I’m sure Charlie didn’t understand the play. He just knows his name is in it.”

Alice’s smile faded and in the faint lights of the dash, Louis could see her eyes, full of questions.

“He loved her,” she said, more fiercely this time, as if she were trying to convince herself now.

“People sometimes kill the people they love,” Louis said.

She looked away. “That’s what the chief said.”

The heater had fogged the windows, and Louis could barely make out the ghostly play of the flashlights out by E Building. Dalum had told him he didn’t expect to find anything out there tonight. Tomorrow, in the daylight, Dalum and the state police would conduct a more thorough search.

A hundred and eighty acres. He wondered what else they’d find.

“Mr. Kincaid,” Alice said.

“Yes?”

“Do you still want to see Claudia DeFoe’s medical records?”

“Of course I do.”

Alice was still for a moment, head down, her fingers working the Kleenex. “I’m going to make you an offer,” she said. “I will show you the records, even let you copy them, if you’ll do something for me.”

He knew what was coming. And it surprised him that Alice would cross that line. But then he realized that she wasn’t crossing it for him.

“You want me to prove Charlie didn’t do this.”

“Yes,” Alice said. “Or at least prove beyond any doubt he did. So the town knows for sure. So I know for sure.”

For an instant he wondered if she really wanted the truth. He had known other people, family members of accused murderers, who said they wanted to know the truth, but most didn’t really. No one wanted to know that they were close-be it next door or by blood-to a killer. But he suspected Alice was different. She had seen the worst of things here. And in many ways, she had to be stronger than he was. Stronger than most cops he knew.

“You have a deal, Miss Cooper.”

“Call me Alice,” she said.

“When can I see the records?” Louis asked.

“We’re closed now for Thanksgiving weekend,” Alice said. “How about Monday morning? We don’t have much time after that. The hospital will be closed by December thirty-first.”

“Monday’s fine. I’ll be here early.”

Alice pushed open the door against a rush of cold air. She whispered a soft thank-you and she was gone.

Louis waited until she had climbed in her car and he saw the headlights go on before he even backed out. He followed Alice down the narrow drive and through the gate. She turned east, toward Ardmore. He sat for a moment, watching her taillights grow smaller.

His mind was already working on Charlie and Rebecca and the plastic flowers. And he was hearing Charlie’s strange, childlike voice as they stood by the single white shoe in the woods.

I got them from the cemetery.

What were you doing in the cemetery, Charlie?

I walk there every night.

Louis turned west, easing down Highway 50, trying to find the tiny road that led to the cemetery. He knew why he was going, but the thought was so absurd he almost couldn’t let it linger long in his mind: He wanted to see if he could hear the graves cry.

In the black cloak of darkness, he almost missed the road. But soon he saw the towering sentry pines that marked the entrance and he eased the car to a stop. He got out and went to the trunk, hoping Phillip had a flashlight. He didn’t, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need light. Maybe it was better if he approached this in darkness.

A wisp of a moon scampered between the high icy clouds, giving him just enough light to see. He could make out the dark hulk of the backhoe in the far corner. He didn’t see a security guard. Maybe he was out helping the cops, or more likely sleeping inside the backhoe. He was about to let it go when it occurred to him the guard could wake up, and in a panic, think Louis the killer and shoot him. So he walked to the backhoe, climbed up on the side, and peered inside. No one.

Maybe the guard had quit, afraid to sit in a cemetery with a killer running loose. Shit, maybe the damn guard was the killer.

Louis walked across the frozen dead grass, shaking his head. He would check it out with Dalum on Monday. But for the moment, he was glad the guard wasn’t there. There was something about all this that required solitude.

Louis stopped in the center of the cemetery and looked around. For a moment, the wind died and a silence, as thick and heavy as the night, enveloped the cemetery. He closed his eyes, trying to focus.

On what?

On some part of himself that he had never used before? On something deep inside his brain that he wasn’t even sure existed? On something that could allow him to see or hear or feel what Charlie Oberon did?

But there was nothing. Nothing but the steady pulse of his blood in his ears. Louis opened his eyes.

He walked away from the backhoe, his steps slow and quiet. He couldn’t see the flat concrete markers, but sometimes he could feel them under his feet and he had the urge to step away from them, like walking on them was disrespectful. But he couldn’t avoid them. The rows that had been so visible in the daylight now seemed distorted and he had no sense of the layout.

He stopped.

That silence again. No wind. Not even a sound of a car on the highway. Not the rustle of a branch.

He closed his eyes, drew in a breath, and held it.

What did you hear, Charlie?

The call of an owl in a tree?

The cry of a wounded animal?

The creak of a loose fence post?

The murmur of the pines?

The wind picked up suddenly, cold on the back of his neck, but he stood still, listening. And he guessed a minute went by. Then another. There was nothing. The silent nothing of the six thousand dead.

He pulled up the collar of his coat and walked back to the car.