An Unquiet Grave

CHAPTER 16

Alice hung up the phone and leaned back in her chair. “Mr. Spera wasn’t there, but his son said he would make sure his father knew about the cremated remains as soon as possible.”

Louis was slumped in a chair across from her desk and nodded woodenly. “How can something like that even happen?” he asked, almost to himself.

“I don’t know,” Alice said.

They were quiet for a long time. A banging sound drew Louis’s gaze to the window. Some men were loading doors onto one of the salvage trucks. He shivered, wrapping his arms around himself. When he looked back at Alice, she was watching him closely.

Suddenly, she opened a drawer and pulled out a thick manila folder, setting it on the desk between them. Louis recognized it as Claudia DeFoe’s original medical file.

“I took a look through this yesterday,” Alice said. “Did you get a chance to go through it yet?”

“Just a quick glance. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

“Well, maybe I can help.”

Louis sat up straight, scooting the chair closer. Alice flipped the folder open and studied the various forms for a long time before looking up at Louis.

“Most of this looks pretty normal to me,” she said, sifting slowly through the papers. “It’s just the usual progress reports from her doctors, logs of the therapies she underwent, routine nurses’ notes.” Alice went back to reading, then looked back up at Louis. “Maybe if you could tell me what it is you’re hoping to find. .”

Louis shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess I just want to know her.”

Alice’s expression had just a hint of pity in it. “Some of what you find in here might be a little hard to take, Louis.”

“That’s all right,” he said. He jammed his hands in his coat pockets, waiting while Alice read some more papers.

“Maybe we could start with the intake form,” Alice said, pulling out a paper. “Claudia was admitted to Hidden Lake in October 1951 by her mother, Eloise DeFoe.” Alice hesitated. “She had multiple self-inflicted lacerations on both wrists. The doctor noted that her mood was alternately hysterical and disoriented.”

Louis thought of the photograph of Claudia he had taken from the file, how the masklike quality of her face contrasted with the wild look in her eyes.

“She was admitted to B Building,” Alice went on. “That’s the ward for the general women’s population.” She picked up a different form and studied it.

“What’s that?” Louis asked.

“Drug log. I’m just trying to see what they gave her.

Here it is. She was on Thorazine, twenty milligrams per day.” She looked up at Louis. “I’d say that would be a routine protocol for a suicidal girl and a fairly low dosage. It would make her. . compliant but not out of it.”

Louis nodded.

Alice went back to reading. “She was kept on suicide watch, but I can’t find any notes of other attempts. In fact. .” Alice picked up the drug log again. “She was totally off the Thorazine by late November.”

“So she was getting better,” Louis said.

“Looks like it.” Alice sniffled. “My, it’s cold in here.

Why don’t you pour us some more coffee?”

Louis got the thermos and poured two fresh cups while Alice continued her reading.

“Claudia was admitted to the general infirmary in late December, but it doesn’t say why,” Alice said. She looked back at the drug log. “Apparently, she was treated for a nervous stomach, because it says here she was given something for stomach distress.”

“So why did she end up in E Building?” Louis asked.

“Good question,” Alice murmured, her head bent over the records. She had five different forms spread out on the desk now, trying to piece together Claudia’s history. It was quiet. Louis could hear the salvage guys talking and laughing out in the yard.

“All right,” Alice said quietly. “She was moved to E in September of 1952. It looks like she had some kind of breakdown.”

“Is that normal?” Louis asked.

Alice looked up, a sad smile tipping her lips. “Normal? That’s not a word we use a lot here. Let’s just say it happens. People can be fine one day and you think they are getting better. Then something snaps inside them and they fall back down into these. . holes. A few, with the right help, climb back out. But some just can’t. Some are just. . I don’t know, too fragile.”

Louis was remembering the story Alice had told him about the mother visited by her two children who had a moment of clarity, then slipped away forever. He wondered if Alice was thinking about it, too, because there was a far-off look in her eyes as she sipped her coffee.

“Can you tell much about what happened to Claudia after she went to E?” Louis asked.

Alice went back to the forms. “She was back on the Thorazine at a much higher dosage.” Alice shook her head slowly, pulling one of the forms closer. “Things went downhill from there. Ice-bath treatments several times a week. Apparently that didn’t work so they tried electroshock therapy.”

Alice let out a long sigh. “It looks like she broke her arm during one of the treatments.”

Louis shut his eyes against the image of that heap of leather straps he had seen in E Building. When he opened his eyes, Alice was looking at him.

“Go on,” he said quietly.

“By the summer of 1953, they were using insulin shock therapy on her,” Alice said.

“What in God’s name is that?”

Alice hesitated. “The patient would be strapped down and injected with enough insulin to bottom out the blood sugar. The patient would go into severe convulsions or seizures. It was looked at as safer than electroshock. They didn’t realize until years later that they were killing the patient’s brain, leaving holes.”

“Jesus.”

“Patients were often left worse off than when they came in. The long-term effects could be anything from mild delusions to incoherent babble.”

Louis rose slowly and went to the window. The salvage workers had driven off with their plunder.

“This is odd.”

Louis looked back at Alice. He almost didn’t want to hear anything else.

“It looks like Claudia tried to escape once,” Alice said.

“Escape?” he asked. “How?”

“It was late summer, 1952, about ten months after she arrived, before she was sent to E Building.”

Louis moved back to the desk. “What’d she do?”

“Claudia and another young patient by the name of Millie Reuben snuck out of the ward after dinner and climbed over the fence behind B Building.”

“The fence with the razor wire?”

“It would not have had razor wire then. It would have been fairly easy for a young girl to get over.”

“How far did they get?”

“A half mile or so,” Alice said. “They were found in the middle of an apple orchard by a local farmer who recognized the hospital dresses and called the police. They were returned in less than an hour. The nurses wrote that Claudia was hysterical and incoherent and that restraints were necessary.”

Alice fell quiet, reading down the page. Louis edged closer, but the handwriting was small, and he couldn’t read it upside down.

“That night,” Alice went on, “she was transferred to E Building and received her first ice bath. I guess that is your answer as to why she ended up in E Building.”

“Did she ever try to escape again?”

Alice’s head came up. The tip of her nose was red from the cold. “She would not have had the chance once she went to E Building.”

Louis sank back into his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. He could see them, two young women, running through an apple orchard, desperate enough to want to be free yet incapable of finding their way. And for an instant, his image of Claudia changed to something prettier and brighter, as if her run through the orchard was the last real moment she would have before they took it all away.

“Alice,” he said, “is there any way you can get to Millie Reuben’s file?”

Alice’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I should.”

“Please.”

“I’m sorry. It was different with your friend. But there’s still confidentiality to consider.”

He didn’t press it. Alice’s gaze turned to the window. The pane had a thin layer of frost on it, blurring the trees outside. He wanted to leave, but he knew Alice expected some information from him on Charlie. But he had nothing to tell her. He hadn’t yet made it to the Ardmore Police Station to even speak with him.

The phone rang and Alice glanced at it, then lifted the receiver slowly. Louis could hear a man’s voice on the other end. Strong, but slow. Alice listened for a minute; then her face started to change as her eyes came to Louis.

“Yes, Chief,” she said. “Yes, I understand.”

She hung up.

“What’s wrong?” Louis asked.

“That was Chief Dalum,” she said. “They’ve found some bones.”