An Unquiet Grave

CHAPTER 17

The bones had been buried in a shallow grave on the north end of the cemetery. John Spera and his crew had been working nearby, exhuming grave number 978, when a brownish-colored human skull tumbled from the claw of the backhoe. Spera had promptly stopped and called Chief Dalum.

Two of Dalum’s men borrowed spades from Spera and carefully dug a wide hole around the area where the skull had been found. It didn’t take long for them to uncover a rib cage and right arm bone. Dalum immediately called the county for the crime scene investigators. No one was sure if this was a crime scene, but Dalum wasn’t going to take any chances.

Dalum had seemed surprised when Louis showed up at the cemetery entrance, but he waved to his officer to let him in. When Louis explained he had been visiting Alice, Dalum just nodded and brought him over to the grave. Now the three of them stood-Dalum, Louis, and Spera-watching as one of the technicians carefully brushed away the last of the dirt that had concealed the skeleton.

Spera suddenly turned away, going over to stand next to his backhoe operator. Louis watched him. The wind was in Spera’s face, tearing his eyes and whipping his thin dark hair into a frenzy. The man had been digging up graves for weeks now, and Louis knew there was a certain stoicism that went with that. But now Spera had the same look Alice had last week when Charlie walked from the woods carrying Rebecca Gruber-the look that came from being touched by something close to evil.

Spera had a rolled paper in his hand, and Louis guessed it was the layout of the cemetery. He walked over to Spera and asked if he could see it. Spera unrolled it and as he tried to smooth it against the side of the backhoe, it snapped furiously in the wind.

“We’re right here,” Spera said, pointing a callused finger at the grid. “Number 978 is the farthest grave at the back of the cemetery. The graves end right there. That skull shouldn’t have been where it was.”

There was a slight defensiveness in Spera’s voice, like he felt this was his fault somehow.

Louis looked north beyond the cemetery boundaries. No fence, just heavy brush, then nothing but tall trees so thick they formed a twisted wall of branches as far as Louis could see.

“What’s beyond those trees?” Louis asked.

“Farmland,” Spera said. “Apple orchards mostly.”

Louis looked back at the map, then at the spot where the bones lay. There was less than a yard between grave number 978 and the bones, but probably a good fifty feet of nothing to the north trees.

“Do you have any idea why this area from here to the back was not used for burial?” Louis asked.

“Nope,” Spera said. “I just go by the map.”

Spera rolled up the paper and walked back to his worker. Louis turned and headed to the north trees, scanning the ground as he walked. He didn’t see any stone markers embedded in the ground. There were no graves here. Just grass.

He stopped when he got to the high brush. It was too thick to venture in, and he strained to peer into it. It was wild and tangled, unlike the woods behind E Building, which were maintained by the hospital with plenty of paths and clearings.

“Kincaid, come on over here. I need you to see this.”

He headed back to Dalum. He was standing legs wide, arms folded across his jacket as he stared down at the bones, now fully exposed.

Louis guessed the skeleton was still positioned as it had been when it had been dumped and buried. On its side, legs drawn up, both arms folded to one side.

The technicians rose, nodding to Dalum, who in turn nodded to Louis. They both knelt down for a closer look.

“I’d guess it’s a child,” Louis said. “Or a teenager since the bones are small. I’d estimate the height at no taller than about five three.”

“I take it you agree with me that no way is this a patient they just didn’t happen to have a casket for,” Dalum said.

Louis nodded. “It’s not deep enough and there’s no clothing.”

“You have a guess on how long she’s been here?”

Louis looked at him. “She?”

Dalum shrugged.

“No idea, Chief.” Louis fell quiet, staring at the bones. A thought was pushing its way to the front of his brain, but it was so far-fetched he couldn’t believe it had even occurred to him. Could this be Claudia? His eyes swept over the cemetery. They were a good thirty yards from where her marker was. And it was pretty damn unlikely she would have been dumped like this and so hastily buried. But the bones did look old.

The sun crawled out from behind a cloud. Louis was about to stand up when something caught his eye in the dirt. It was a tiny flash that came to life for just an instant in the sun and was gone.

“Chief,” he said, pointing.

“What is it?” Dalum asked, squinting.

Louis carefully wedged a finger in the dirt and popped the object out of the ground. It was dirt-encrusted and he still couldn’t tell exactly what it was. He picked up a stick and used it to flick away more dirt. It was a ring.

“I’ll be damned,” Dalum said.

Louis glanced back at the crime tech, who was putting away his tools. He used the stick to scrape away some of the dirt, enough so they could see an emblem and a stone. It looked like a class ring.

“Better leave it,” Dalum said.

Louis nodded and dropped the stick, as Dalum called over the tech guy. Louis rose, brushing the dirt from his hands.

The tech guy was working on the ring now, and Louis knew it would eventually make its way into a nice clean evidence bag. Soon enough they would have a school and a date and a lead on an ID. One thing was sure right now, however. Whoever this was, it wasn’t a Hidden Lake patient, because Alice had told him patients weren’t allowed to wear jewelry.

Louis felt a strange surge of disappointment that it couldn’t be Claudia. At least he would have had something to take back to Phillip, something less horrible than one of those pathetic forgotten cans.

“Kincaid?”

He turned back to Dalum.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why are you hanging around here? What exactly is it that you’re investigating here?”

Louis hesitated. It didn’t seem right, telling a stranger the intimacies of Phillip’s past. But if there was even the slimmest possibility this was Claudia’s remains, then Dalum had a right to know. Louis told the story, told Dalum about Phillip and Claudia, about the rocks in the casket, about Dr. Seraphin and the copper cans in the bowels of the hospital. Before he knew it, he had also told him about Eloise DeFoe committing her only daughter, and about Rodney DeFoe not even wanting to bring his sister’s remains home. When Louis was finished, Dalum was staring at him.

“You think your case has anything to do with these bones? Or Rebecca Gruber?”

“No,” Louis said.

“Why not?”

“Patients weren’t allowed to wear jewelry. And Claudia DeFoe died in 1972. That puts sixteen years between her and Rebecca Gruber. Too much time.”

Dalum put his hands on his hips and scanned the cemetery. “Two women dead,” he said almost to himself. “Both left in the same place. This can’t be a coincidence.”

“Chief, I have something to tell you,” Louis said. “It may not have anything to do with this, but I don’t think we can discount anything right now.”

Dalum looked at Louis.

“I was in E Building yesterday,” Louis said. “I heard a noise. I didn’t see anyone.”

“But?” Dalum said, sensing Louis had more to say.

Louis shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”

Dalum took a long breath, his hands slipping into his jacket pockets. Louis knew Dalum was probably taking this personally, like it was an invasion in his small hometown. He knew, too, that it was going to be hard for Dalum to hand things off to the state or county boys. But any small-town cop who was worth a damn knew there was no choice.

A whirring noise made Louis turn.

Shit. It was Doug Delp.

Dalum spun around. “What the hell? How’d you get in here?”

Delp let the camera fall so it hung over his suede jacket. He held up his hands. “Hey, Chief. I’m just doing my job.”

“Get out of here! Pete! Escort this asshole back behind the line.”

A hulking officer appeared and clamped a mitt on Delp’s shoulder. Delp looked to Louis for help, but Louis offered nothing.

“I know you found bones,” Delp hollered as the officer gave him a shove. “I know you’ve got the whole damn county on their way down here.”

The officer grabbed Delp’s jacket again.

“Damn it, wait a minute!” Delp said. “I have information. I can help you.”

“Get him out of here now, Pete,” Dalum said.

“Becker did it!” Delp yelled. “Donald Lee Becker, that’s your guy.”

Louis and Dalum stared at Delp.

“Becker’s dead, you moron,” the chief said. “Now get out of here before I run you in.”

Louis watched the officer drag Delp off toward the cemetery entrance. Just outside the two towering pines, the officer gave Delp a shove and the reporter stumbled toward his Civic. But he didn’t get in. He just stood there, looking back at them. The officer came back, shaking his head and circling a finger near his temple as he walked past Louis.

Dalum turned his gaze from Delp. “Is that the guy who’s been bothering Alice and everyone?”

“Yup,” Louis said.

“Never seen him before. What paper is he with?”

“He’s not. He’s here to get material for a book about Becker.”

Dalum shook his head. The crime scene tech was waving him over, so Dalum left Louis standing alone at the edge of the shallow grave. Louis stared down at the bones. When he looked up, his eyes went back to the cemetery entrance. Delp was still there.

Louis walked through the brown grass and out through the pine trees. Delp watched him coming, leaning against his car smoking a cigarette.

“I saw that,” Delp said. “I saw what that cop did. You think I’m nuts. But I’m not. Donald Lee Becker is alive.”

Louis pointed back to the cemetery. “Becker is in there, Delp, has been for eight years.”

Delp stuck the cigarette in his mouth and used both hands to rummage through his pockets. He pulled out a creased photograph and held it up. “See this? This is Donald Lee Becker. It was taken at his farm up near Mason.”

“So?”

“It was taken three years ago,” Delp said.

Louis took the picture from Delp. It was a blurry black-and-white shot of a guy standing in a cornfield. “You can’t tell who this is,” Louis said.

“Eyewitnesses,” Delp said. “They’ve seen him.”

“Yeah, sharing a Slurpee at the 7-Eleven with Elvis.”

Delp snatched the photo from Louis’s hand and stuffed it back in his coat pocket. He tossed his cigarette to the dirt, unlooped the Nikon from around his neck, and aimed it toward the cemetery.

Instinctively, Louis held a hand up in front of the lens.

“Hey, man,” Delp said.

“Knock it off.”

“I got a right-”

Louis grabbed the camera. He knew he had no authority here, but the guy was a ghoul, lurking around taking pictures of bones before Dalum had even had a chance to figure out who it was.

Louis turned the camera over, looking for the latch to release the film-loading mechanism. Delp realized what he was doing.

“Hey, don’t do that, man,” Delp said, groping for the camera. “Don’t expose the film. All my shots of the asylum are on this roll.”

“The asylum?” Louis asked, holding the camera at arm’s length.

Delp put on a defensive face. “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

Louis looked hard at Delp, remembering the noise he had heard and the cigarette smoke he had smelled the day he was in E Building getting Claudia’s medical records. “Have you been inside E Building?”

“E Building?” Delp asked.

“Yeah,” Louis said. “The building Becker was in.”

Delp ran a hand across his nose. “No.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” Louis asked.

Delp was quiet. Louis looked down at the camera. He hit the Rewind button and the Nikon gave out a loud whirring sound.

“What you doing?” Delp said, grabbing for it.

Louis jerked the camera away. When it was finished rewinding, he popped open the back and took out the film, putting it in his pocket.

“You can’t have that!” Delp said.

“I’ll get the other pictures back to you.”

“Yeah, thanks a lot.”

Louis handed him the empty camera. “You’re lucky the chief didn’t throw you in jail for obstruction,” he said.

“Let him. It would make a good chapter in the book.” Delp leaned against the car again. He pulled out his pack of Kools, hesitated, and held it out to Louis.

Louis shook his head. Delp lit one for himself and looked back at the cemetery.

“So how old you think those bones are?” he asked.

“No way to tell.”

“But it’s a female, right?”

“No way to tell.”

“You’re jerking my chain, Kincaid.”

Louis was silent.

“Well, they looked old to me,” Delp said. “You know, Becker was in this place from the early sixties until 1980, don’t you?”

“I don’t care.”

“Becker died here. Under mysterious circumstances, they say.”

Louis didn’t look at him. He heard a door open and looked over to see Delp putting his Nikon back in a bag on the front seat. Louis’s eyes went to the box on the backseat. It was stuffed with folders, D.L. Becker scrawled in black marker on the side. He looked away as Delp emerged.

Delp leaned against the car again, his gaze going back to the cemetery. “They don’t have any names. Did you know that?”

Louis nodded slowly.

“Weird, huh? Wonder why they did that. Why did they only give them numbers?” he said.

Louis was quiet.

“The hospital people won’t tell me which grave is his,” Delp said. “You don’t happen to know, do you?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter because Becker ain’t in it.” Delp took a drag on his cigarette. “But it would be kind of cool to find out who is.”

Louis was silent.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of strange?” Delp said.

“What?”

“That the hospital won’t tell me where he’s buried.”

Louis turned to face him. “It’s none of your fucking business, Delp.”

Delp gave a short laugh. “You just don’t want to admit that I’m onto something here with Becker. He’s alive, man. He’s alive and out there killing girls again.”

“You’re nuts.” Louis started away.

“I’m nuts? You came over here. You listened to me, man.” Delp’s laugh followed Louis as he went back into the cemetery.