An Unquiet Grave

CHAPTER 13

The drive back to Hidden Lake seemed longer this morning. Maybe it was the sadness of Phillip’s journey back to the Irish Hills yesterday. Or maybe it was because, more than anything right now, Louis just wanted to go home.

But he couldn’t leave things as they were. He had promised Phillip he would find out what he could. And he had promised Alice he would try to help Charlie. Right now, he didn’t feel very confident he could do either.

The gates of Hidden Lake came into view. Near the guardhouse sat two Ardmore cruisers and a midnight-blue state police car. And a few feet down the road, parked almost in a ditch, was a rusty brown Civic. A man stood next to it, shivering in a tattered suede jacket and faded jeans.

Louis pulled up to the guardhouse. A cop walked to his open window and peered in.

“No visitors today, partner,” the cop said.

Louis showed him the pass Dalum had given him Friday, but the cop shook his head. “This is three days old,” he said. “Let me make a phone call.”

Louis shoved the car into Park and got out, leaning against the front fender. His eyes drifted to the man in the suede coat, who was now walking toward him.

He looked familiar. Thin and young, with spikes of orange-tipped blond hair. He wore blue wire-rimmed sunglasses, but Louis could see his face clearly and as the man grew closer, it started to come back to him.

I’ll be damned.

It was Doug Delp, the reporter he had known up at Loon Lake a few years back. The guy was aggressive and obnoxious and Louis had almost decked him once or twice. But in the end, it had been Delp who probably kept Louis out of jail.

Delp’s step slowed suddenly and he pulled off his sunglasses, staring at Louis. When recognition settled in, he came forward quickly, sticking out a wind-chapped hand.

“Louis Kincaid,” Delp said. “What the fuck are you doing back here?”

Louis glanced down at Delp’s hand and hesitated long enough for Delp to know he had to think about shaking it before he did. Doug sniffed from the cold, jamming his hands back in his jacket pockets.

“I should ask you the same thing,” Louis said.

“I’m here checking out Rebecca Gruber’s murder,” he said. “And looking for Donald Lee Becker.”

“Becker’s dead.”

Delp grinned. “That’s what people say about Elvis.”

Louis didn’t reply, glancing back at the Ardmore cop, who was still holding his radio waiting for Chief Dalum.

“I thought they ran you out of Michigan,” Delp said.

“Well, I’m back.”

“You still in Florida?”

“Yeah.”

“Last I heard, you were a P.I. down there.”

“You heard right.”

Delp was looking at him through the blue lenses. Louis turned away from his scrutiny.

“Why you here at Hidden Lake?” Delp asked.

“None of your business.”

“Does it have anything to do with Becker?”

Louis shot Delp a look. Delp smiled. “Hey, it’s juicy stuff, man. You heard, didn’t you? They found some bones at Becker’s old farm up near Mason. He admitted killing six women, and they found all six. So that poses the question, whose bones are these new ones?”

Louis stared at him.

Delp smiled. “This is going to make a helluva final chapter for my true crime book.”

“You’re writing a book on Becker?”

“Yeah, it’s called. .” Delp raised his hands, as if he were seeing the title on a marquee. “The Grim Reaper. The True Story of the Coed-Killing Farmer.”

“Jeez, Delp,” Louis said.

“Come here. Look.”

Delp led Louis back to the Civic. Louis bent and peered in the driver’s window. The car was a mess, filled with papers and boxes. Mounted on a makeshift holder near the glove box sat five police radios, their tops glittering as the tiny red lights zipped back and forth. On the passenger seat was a cardboard box labeled D.L. Becker.

“Looks like you got everything you need,” Louis said. “Why you hanging out here?”

“I would kill for a look at Becker’s hospital file,” Delp said.

Louis shook his head. “Ain’t going to happen.”

“I would settle for some photographs of E Building and the name of Becker’s doctor.”

The Ardmore cop called to Louis, indicating he could go on through the gates.

Louis looked back at Delp. “I gotta go.”

“So you aren’t going to help me? After all I did for you?”

Louis ignored him, climbed back in the Impala, and drove through the gates. In his rearview mirror, he could see Delp huddled near his car.

Louis found Alice in her office, a small room not far down the hall from the nurse’s station where he had first encountered her last week. When she looked up at him, her eyes were circled in shadows, and her red curls looked as tired as she did.

“How was your weekend?” Louis asked.

She took a second to answer. “I had family over,” she said. “Of course they knew about Rebecca, but no one said anything. Saturday, Chief Dalum came to see me and I had to go over things again.”

“I’m sorry,” Louis said. “Is there anything I can do?”

Alice shook her head. “Nothing you’re not already doing, Mr. Kincaid.”

Alice didn’t stand up, and he didn’t want to seem pushy by asking her if they could walk to E Building right now. So he waited, his gaze moving to the window and the spiderweb of black branches against the cloudless sky.

“I have some information for you on Rebecca,” Alice said. “Do you want to sit down?”

Louis slipped into a chair, then realized he didn’t have his notebook with him. Alice was staring at him, and he hoped she hadn’t noticed how unprepared he was. His mind had been on Claudia, not Rebecca. He saw a small steno pad on the edge of the desk and picked it up. Alice waited until he had flipped it open and plucked a pen from his pocket.

“Rebecca was at work Tuesday,” Alice started. “I saw her on and off during the day up to about two. When I left before four, her car was still here in the lot.”

“Okay.”

“On Wednesday, her car was here when I arrived at nine, and I just assumed she had come in early,” Alice said. “She had been working over in C Building with the salvage crews, so not seeing her was no surprise.”

Louis looked up. “Do we know if she made it home Tuesday night?”

“She didn’t,” Alice said. “Chief Dalum told me he thinks she was abducted Tuesday afternoon and left in the woods at dawn Wednesday.”

“So someone kept her for a day,” Louis said.

Alice sighed as she nodded. “It seems that way.”

“Did the chief tell you anything else?” Louis asked. “Like how she was killed or what had happened?”

“No,” Alice said.

He would have to get that himself. He suspected Rebecca’s death had been horrific, and that Dalum hadn’t felt comfortable sharing that with Alice.

“Tell me about Rebecca’s family,” Louis said.

“She had a son, living with his father down South somewhere. No current boyfriends or angry exes.”

“Have you talked to Charlie?” Louis asked.

“No,” Alice said. “The chief won’t let me. I’m sure he’s scared to death in there. How long can they hold him without charging him, Mr. Kincaid?”

Louis gave a shrug. “Forty-eight hours usually, but in a small town, if no lawyer steps for ward. . well, the chief can end up calling it all sorts of things. Even protective custody.”

“That’s wrong,” she said.

“In this case, it’s probably better for Charlie if he’s in a cell. At least until we know.”

Alice had no comment, but she reached into a desk drawer and withdrew a thin paperback book and held it out to Louis. “I thought you might like to read this.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He took it, flipping through it. “You got this from Rebecca’s office?”

“She didn’t have an office,” Alice said. “She had a locker, and the police took most everything. They didn’t seem interested in this, so I asked if I could keep it.”

“Have you read it?”

“Just enough to know why Charlie put flowers on Rebecca.”

“Why?”

“In the story, the men place flowers on sleeping women’s eyes,” Alice said. “When the woman awakes, she falls in love with the first man she sees.”

“And you think Charlie wanted Rebecca to fall in love with him?”

Alice rose suddenly, moving to the window, almost disappearing into the glare. Louis turned his chair so he could see her, but she spoke without turning back. “There was something about the way Charlie looked at Rebecca,” she said. “I think. .” She drew a breath and her voice grew huskier. “I think he might have tried to tell her he loved her and when she did not. . could not. . accept it, something happened to him.”

Louis looked down at the paperback cover. A bare-breasted woman in a bride’s veil was being groped by a half-man, half-donkey character. A full white moon shone above them. A small, naked crying child huddled on the bottom.

“So you think he was trying to put her to sleep so he could wake her up with the flowers?” Louis asked.

Alice faced him. “I don’t know.”

Louis knew he needed to talk to Charlie. If he could relate to him, using what was in the book, maybe Charlie would tell him what happened.

For a second, Louis had the thought that maybe that would be okay for Charlie. No way was Charlie competent to stand trial and he undoubtedly would be sent to a new hospital. In the end, his life wouldn’t change at all.

He heard the jingle of keys and looked up. Alice was holding the ring out to him. He slipped the book into his jacket pocket and took the keys.

“The big key opens the main door for E Building,” she said. “The records room is at the end of the main hallway, on the first floor. The files are by admission date. Please make sure you lock everything before you leave.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“I can’t. The salvage men will be here in a few minutes and the superintendent is supposed to be coming by later.” She nodded toward a copy machine. “I’d appreciate it if you could be gone by the time he gets here. Just bring her file back here and I will copy whatever you need.”

“Thank you, Alice.”

Louis left the administration building and walked quickly across the grass to E Building. He didn’t see any cops, except the two at the front gate, but yellow crime scene tape was still draped across the trees, stretching deep into the woods. A salvage truck sat at a distance near another building.

Louis slipped the key in the lock and pulled open the heavy door. It scraped on the concrete and he debated leaving it open, but decided against it. He didn’t need an open door attracting the cops or anyone else, so he struggled to close it, taking a second to relock it from the inside.

His breath clouded in the musty air as he moved down the hall, listening to the lonely tap of his footsteps on the terrazzo floor. A sudden wind at his face drew his eyes to a window. The grating was still in place, but the glass was broken, shards strewn on the sill and floor.

He moved on, past five or six closed doors, stopping at one with RECORDS stenciled on the pebbled glass window. He stuck the key in and went inside.

Boxes. . so many he could not even tell how large the room was. There were walls of white cardboard stacked to the ceiling, leaving the lower three rows crushed to almost a third their size. He could not even read the dates on those.

He leaned against the doorjamb, drawing a long breath as he scanned the boxes. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe 1951 would be up high. He stood there almost a full minute, looking. There didn’t seem to be any system to the dating on the boxes. He did not see 1951.

There was no space to work inside the room, so he started stacking the boxes in the hall. After one row, he was sweating, and he stopped to pull off his jacket.

A noise.

Just a tiny clink, like glass against metal.

He froze, listening.

The loose grating. At the broken window. Had to be it.

But he stayed still, laying his jacket down silently, waiting. When he heard nothing, he went back to work, reaching down to grab the box labeled 1933. It was wet and the soggy side ripped away, scattering folders and papers.

Damn it. .

It took fifteen minutes to put the box back together, and he wasn’t even sure he had the right records in the right folders as he jammed them inside. When he was done, he shoved the box away with his foot. Right behind it sat another, the date 1951 scrawled in thick black letters on the side.

He sat down on the floor, pulling the box to him, and opened it. It was fat with folders, but they looked to be in alphabetical order. He found Claudia DeFoe’s, wiggled it free, and spread it open on his lap.

Man. .

There were metal clips on each side to keep the documents in place, but the papers were loose, dog-eared and water-stained. He pulled out his reading glasses. Charts. Log entries. Prescriptions. Treatments.

But he couldn’t make much sense of it, couldn’t even read the handwriting, except the scribbled letters THOR, which he guessed was Thorazine. He was going to have to ask Alice to help.

Putting his glasses away, Louis got to his feet. He set Claudia’s file in the hall and started bringing the boxes back in. The room quickly filled back up, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure they were all going to fit, but he crammed the last of them up against the ceiling and scanned the floor, making sure he hadn’t lost any papers.

Clank.

He spun toward the rear of the building.

That noise wasn’t the flap of loose metal grating. The broken window was near the front door. This noise came from the back. And it sounded like the slam of metal against metal.

The hall was brushed with sunlight, and he could see clearly that it went on about twenty feet before it split into a T at the end. There were four or five more doors, all closed.

Louis picked up his jacket and quietly slipped his Glock from the pocket, easing it from the holster. Then he waited, his eyes locked on the end of the hall. Dust motes glittered in the shafts of light and he could feel the wind from the broken window against the back of his neck.

He moved forward slowly, shoving open each door, bracing himself for any flash of movement. But the rooms were empty, the windows closed. He continued on down the hall.

At the T, he stopped. To his left was an exit door, chained shut from the inside. To his right, more empty rooms. He moved on to the door he knew led to the upper floors, where the stairwell was grated all the way up. The door was unlocked, but the stairwell gate was chained at the first floor. He walked on.

One last room. A large one with double doors, propped open.

Louis moved inside.

The yellow walls were slashed with deep shadows that seemed to move as he did. Tables. Plastic chairs. A stainless steel sink and an old red and white Coca-Cola machine in the corner. Trash littered the floor. A Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle lay under the window. But the window was closed and barred on the outside.

And a smell. .

Cigarettes. No, not cigarettes. Ashes.

He turned slowly, his eyes falling on a single cigarette lying on the stainless steel counter. It had been set on the edge and left burning, leaving a perfectly straight line of gray ash that stretched from the edge of the counter to the gold filter.

Louis bent and sniffed it. It was cold and stale. It could be months or even years old. And anyone could have left it, vandals, salvage men, or an employee sneaking a smoke while packing up the files.

Louis had started to turn back to the hall when he caught a whiff of something else.

Cigarette smoke. And it was fresh, hanging in the air like Phillip’s did after he left the patio. Louis drew in a breath, trying to get a direction on the smell, but suddenly it was gone, leaving just that dusty medicinal odor in its place.

Louis eased back to the hall, his gun still level, his eyes lingering on the abandoned cigarette on the counter. He moved as quietly as he could, his ears still alert for anything. But there was nothing.

He walked back to the records room, and picked up his jacket and Claudia’s file and locked the records room door. As he made his way to the main door, he glanced at the front stairwell, the one he and Alice had gone up last Wednesday.

If someone had been in here a few minutes ago, chances were they were long gone, but still he felt the need to look. Maybe there was a stairwell he hadn’t seen.

He pulled out Alice’s keys and headed upstairs. On each floor, he did a cursory check of the rooms and closets. He went down the same steps he had come up and left E Building, again using both hands to push the door closed tight enough to lock it.

The cold air felt good in his lungs and he gulped in a deep breath, then another before starting across the grass. He had gone about fifty feet when he felt the urge to turn back.

The sun was hovering just above the roof, and Louis had to squint to bring the building into focus. The glare obliterated the grating and colored the windows black, and for a moment, they looked like something in an old fifties sci-fi movie, mysterious holes that led to another dimension.

Clutching Claudia’s records, he hurried back to the administration building.

He was deep into copying the file when Alice came back into the office. She looked harried.

“You found it,” she said.

“But I can’t make much of it,” Louis said. “I’m just copying everything until you can help me-”

“Oh dear, I can’t,” she interrupted. “Not now, at least. The superintendent is on his way.”

“Alice,” he said, “I just need a place to start. Please.” She hesitated, then picked up the file folder. She flipped through it quickly. Her eyebrow arched as she read something; then she looked up at Louis.

“What did you find?” he asked.

“Her attending doctor.” She held out the paper. “It was Dr. Rose Seraphin.” She waited, like she expected Louis to recognize the name, and when he didn’t she went on. “She’s a big name in psychiatric circles.”

“So she’s still alive then?” Louis asked, taking the paper and looking at the name.

Alice nodded. “I see her name in the journals. Last I heard she was affiliated with the medical school at University of Michigan. She would be. . oh, in her seventies by now.”

Louis slipped the paper in with his other copies. “Then that’s where I go next. Thanks.”

Alice’s eyes went to the window. “Oh no, there’s the superintendent’s car. You better finish up quickly. I’ll go and keep him outside for a while.”

Alice grabbed her coat and was gone. Louis went back to copying, keeping one eye on Alice, who was steering a fat man in a gray overcoat away from the front door. Louis was down to the last few papers when a picture caught his eye. It was old, a faded black-and-white photograph clipped to what looked like an admitting form.

Good God. .

Louis quickly pulled his reading glasses out of his jacket, and when he put them on, Claudia DeFoe came to life before his eyes.

It was a head-and-shoulders shot, and she appeared to be wearing a hospital gown. Her hair was a white blond, hanging lank and uncombed over her white face. Her head was cocked to one side and there was a mark on her cheek that could have been a bruise or a smear of blood.

Her eyes. .

God, her eyes.

Dark, wide, with a beseeching stare. Dark desperate eyes in that blank white face, like something trapped inside fighting to get out.

Louis took off his glasses. He could see Alice and the superintendent coming back toward the door. He stuffed the original papers back in their folder and left it on Alice’s desk. He gathered up his copies and slipped on his jacket, stashing the copies under his arm. He started for the door, but stopped.

He went back to the folder, pulled out the picture of Claudia, and slipped it in his pocket.