An Unquiet Grave

CHAPTER 32

When Dalum picked up Louis at the Adrian Police Station, he relayed a message from Dr. Seraphin’s office: The doctor had gone to her weekend cottage on Wampler’s Lake and if Louis needed to see her immediately, he should come there.

Dalum dropped Louis back at Hidden Lake and after fighting their way back onto the property to get the Impala, Louis immediately headed to the lake. But after three drive-bys along the street Seraphin had given him, he had to stop at Jerry’s Pub to get directions, where the bartender looked at the address Louis had scribbled on a paper and said, “Oh yeah, that’s the old Beuller place.”

It was easy to see why he had missed it. Dr. Seraphin’s “weekend cottage” was set far back from the road and hidden behind large evergreens. There was an iron gate barring the driveway. The gate looked new, Louis thought, as he pulled up to the intercom.

The doctor herself answered, and the gate slid back. He drove up the driveway and parked next to the Volvo.

It was dark, nearly seven, and still snowing. But thanks to several well-placed floodlights, he could see the house clearly. It was a large, two-story wood-frame home, probably built in the forties, and very different from the gleaming new minimanses that surrounded it. Far from a cottage, the “old Bueller place” had that carefully cultivated shabby look that whispered old money.

Louis was surprised when Oliver opened the door. “The doctor is in the den,” he said.

Louis came in. He heard a click and a beep and turned to see Oliver locking the door and resetting an alarm. Louis followed him through a dimly lit living room and down a hallway. The den was all wood and glowing lamps with a fire crackling in a stone fireplace. An antlered deer head on the far wall loomed over the room, next to an antique gun case that held a couple of shotguns.

When Dr. Seraphin saw him, she set aside her book, shrugged off a red plaid throw, and stood up from her chair.

She was wearing what looked to Louis like a plain gray sweatsuit, but as she came toward him, he guessed it was probably cashmere.

“Good Lord, you look half frozen. Can I get you a drink?” she asked, taking off her gold-rimmed bifocals to let them dangle by a gold chain.

“No, thanks.”

“You don’t mind if I have one then.” She went to a small table that held a variety of bottles. “Please, take off your coat and make yourself comfortable.”

Louis didn’t move. He waited as she fixed her drink, looking out the large windows. The backyard was fully illuminated by floodlights, revealing a couple of snow-covered Adirondack chairs on the deck and a white expanse that tapered down to the black lake. In the distance, Louis could make out a boathouse. It looked old and like it was ready to fall away into the lake.

Dr. Seraphin came up behind him. “I really need to do something about that boathouse,” she said. “I don’t even have a boat and it’s such an eyesore.”

Louis turned to her.

“Now, what was so urgent that you had to see me tonight?” Dr. Seraphin asked, drink in hand.

“A security guard was murdered in E Building today,” Louis said.

Dr. Seraphin’s face and shoulders sagged. She went to the sofa and sat down on the edge, clutching her glass in both hands, looking at the carpet.

“The killer slit his throat, then wrote bitch on the wall with his blood.”

“Good God,” she whispered, looking up at him. “But he killed a man this time. It’s obviously a message of some kind, a way to get attention.”

“Whose attention, Doctor?” Louis asked.

She stared at him.

“The guard was stabbed in the lobby, but then whoever did it took the trouble to drag the body upstairs and into an office before he slit his throat-into your old office, I’d bet.”

Louis watched her face for a reaction. But there was just a bland sadness that seemed forced.

“It’s your attention he’s trying to get,” Louis said. “Why?”

She set her glass on a table before she looked back at him.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, you’re a target now, Doctor, so you damn well better try to figure it out.”

He could see a hint of displeasure flick across her face. But he didn’t care. He was tired. Tired of hitting dead ends, tired of chasing ghosts. A man had died tonight and he couldn’t get it out of his head that somehow he had been responsible.

“You need to go to the police,” Louis said.

She stood up. “Impossible.”

“You need to tell them what you know, tell them about the files we pulled.”

She was shaking her head. “I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I have a reputation to protect.”

“Screw your reputation, damn it.”

A couple seconds of silence ticked off before she spoke. “You are obviously under a lot of stress, Mr. Kincaid. I can’t imagine it is easy for you right now, being caught in the middle of all this.”

She went back to the bar. Louis heard the clink of ice cubes. His head was throbbing, probably from not eating all day. He shut his eyes briefly. When he opened them, Dr. Seraphin was standing in front of him holding out a glass.

“It’s brandy,” she said. “Take it.”

He took the glass. The brandy burned a trail down his throat and hit his empty stomach like a hard punch.

“Please sit down,” she said.

He perched on the edge of the sofa, his back to the fireplace, across from the chair where she had been reading. The book was open, facing down on the ottoman. He could read the title: The Divided Self by R.D. Laing.

“I want to help, Mr. Kincaid,” Dr. Seraphin said, sitting back down.

“Then go to the police with what you know.”

“I am the head of the state psychiatric association. Do you have any idea what will happen to me if they find out I breached confidentiality?”

“Look,” Louis said, “when this guy is caught, there will be a trial. You will have to testify.”

“You promised me-”

“There is no way I can keep you out of it now.”

Her expression didn’t change, but Louis could see the slow rise of anger reddening her cheeks.

“No,” she said firmly.

Louis took a quick swig of the brandy and banged the glass down. He reached inside his jacket, pulled out four file folders, and tossed them on the ottoman next to the book.

“Then pick one, damn it. Tell me where to start.”

Her eyes went from the folders up to his face. “You had no authority to take those out of the hospital.”

“So sue me.”

For a moment she didn’t move. A log fell in the fireplace with a sharp crack. Dr. Seraphin reached down and gathered up the files. She looked through each one slowly, then set them in her lap.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It could be any of these men, it could be someone we didn’t even find.”

Louis rubbed the bridge of his nose. His head was killing him.

“All right,” Dr. Seraphin said. “I won’t go to the police, but I will help you. I want to help you. I will advise you all I can. Find these four men, find out what they are doing now, find out who is functional and who is not. Maybe then I can narrow it down.”

She held out the files, but Louis didn’t take them. “And I’ll go back over things tonight,” she said. “I’ll try to remember any others who seem to fit. Believe me, I want this man caught as much as you.”

Dr. Seraphin was still holding the folders. After a moment, she set them on the ottoman and sat back in her chair, considering him carefully.

“Are you all right, Mr. Kincaid?” she asked.

“A headache, that’s all.”

She nodded. “Not sleeping well either, I would imagine.” When he didn’t say anything, she added, “I could write you a prescription for something.”

“I hate pills. But thanks anyway.”

“Another brandy then?”

“No, thanks,” he said, even though he wanted one badly.

It was quiet. For a moment, just one, he wanted to close his eyes and give himself over to the silence, anything to stop the whirl of thoughts in his head. The warmth of the fire on his back was lulling. He didn’t even realize he had closed his eyes until she spoke again.

“It’s not your fault,” she said.

He looked at her. “Excuse me?”

“The guard who died. It’s not your fault.”

He had a hard time not looking away.

“But it’s quite natural for you to believe so,” she went on. “When we are under stress, our reality can become distorted. We can lose our sense of what is true and what is not.”

“I’m fine,” Louis said.

She tilted her head, a bare hint of a smile tipping her lips. The amusement of an older woman for a young man? The sympathy of a doctor for. . what? Louis couldn’t read it at all.

“Take the past, for example,” Dr. Seraphin went on. “We all see it through a prism of distortion. Whether it is an experience we wish to hold on to or a childhood that we need to believe existed-or didn’t exist. We all abdicate reality to some degree to survive.”

Dr. Seraphin’s gold earrings caught the light as she shifted in her chair.

“Your past, Mr. Kincaid, would you call it happy?” she asked.

He almost said it, almost said, “Fuck you, lady.”

Instead, he waved a hand toward the sofa. “Should I lay down now?” he asked.

She smiled, the lines in her powdered face suddenly rising into high relief. “I only ask to make a point,” she said. “Understand a person’s past reality and you might get a grip on his present one.” She nodded to the four file folders. “As I said, tell me who these men are now and I will try to tell you if one of them is a killer.”

Louis leaned forward and gathered up the folders. They both rose. For a moment, Louis just stood there looking at Dr. Seraphin. He was thinking of something Dan Dalum had said on their ride back to Hidden Lake, that if the murderer was a former mental patient, and if they caught him, there was a good chance the man would go right back into an institution instead of prison.

Louis tapped the folders lightly on the palm of his hand. “Just tell me this much,” he said. “Is this guy nuts or not?”

“That’s not a word I use,” she said.

“Okay, is he insane?”

Dr. Seraphin hesitated, then reached down and picked up the book she had been reading when Louis came in.

“Take this,” she said, holding out the book. “Maybe it will help you understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Life after death, a death of the mind, if you will.”

Louis didn’t really want the book, but she seemed to need to believe he did. So he took it.

“I read it in 1959 when it first came out. I had already been at Hidden Lake for ten years, but it forced me to reconsider how I viewed my patients,” she said, nodding to the book. “Dr. Laing believed that madness should be viewed from the inside, and that it was possible to understand the insane by entering their world, relating to them, conversing with them.”

Louis found himself thinking suddenly of Charlie.

“Psychiatry is a very conservative science, and Laing was seen as a quite a radical.” She paused. “Strange, isn’t it, that we doctors would consider compassion radical?”

“Yeah, real strange,” Louis said. He wanted to get out of here, get away from her double talk, just go back to Dalum’s lumpy fold-out sofa and crash.

He heard a sound behind him and turned to see Oliver standing by the door.

“Oliver will show you out,” Dr. Seraphin said. “Drive carefully, Mr. Kincaid. The road out of here is very bad.”