An Unquiet Grave

CHAPTER 42

He felt as if he were back in the tunnels staring at a cinder-block wall. Dead-ended. Blocked. Nowhere to go. And with this small echo of a voice in his head whispering that maybe he was seeing things that weren’t really there.

The farmland was a blur. After Bloom had dropped him off, he had picked up the Impala and just started driving, heading out into the cornfields away from Adrian.

He realized suddenly he was speeding and eased off the pedal.

He wasn’t crazy. Angry, and fighting to stay awake, but not crazy. Something bad had been going on at Hidden Lake and Seraphin was behind it. But no one believed him and he had no proof. Millie Reuben’s word wasn’t going to convince Bloom. But who else was there who knew the truth?

The wind was gusting hard, sending dervishes of snow spinning across the road. The Impala fishtailed and Louis hit the brake. The car skidded to a stop on the empty road. Nothing around him but beaten-down cornstalks and just beyond a barbed-wire fence, the remnants of a listing gray-plank barn.

Louis sat there, hands gripping the wheel. An old windmill groaned in the wind.

Who else knew the truth?

Rodney.

He had been to see Claudia regularly. That much he could prove with the visitors’ log. Rodney might have seen something, remembered something she did. Or the way she looked. Might have seen her pregnant.

There was a tractor path just ahead. Louis pulled the car into it, turned around, and headed back the way he had come. At least he had a plan now-detour back to Plymouth to pick up Claudia’s file and then go to Grosse Pointe.

Frances’s car wasn’t in the drive when he pulled up to the house. Louis was glad; he didn’t really want to face Phillip right now. Inside, he didn’t even stop to take off his coat. He found Claudia’s file in his room and was starting back downstairs when he heard the door. He hesitated, then went down.

Phillip was hanging up his coat in the hall closet and looked up.

“You coming or going?” Phillip asked.

“Going,” Louis said. “I’ll be back later.”

Phillip shut the closet door. He wanted to say something. Louis could see it in the way Phillip’s hand lingered on the closet knob, blocking Louis’s path to the front door. Louis felt a stab of guilt for the way he had left things the last time they had spoken. But he knew he was in no frame of mind to fix it right now.

“You look terrible, Louis,” Phillip said.

For a second, Louis thought about telling him about the tunnels. “I’m all right,” he said.

The wounded look on Phillip’s face made Louis suddenly feel as if he were ten years old again. “Phillip, don’t worry about me,” Louis said.

“I’m thinking you should go home,” Phillip said.

“What?”

“I want you to let this go, forget about it.”

Louis shifted the folder to under his arm. “Can you?”

Phillip hesitated, then nodded slowly.

Louis looked off toward the dark kitchen, then back. “I don’t want to leave you here alone, Phillip. What about Frances?”

“That’s between us. You can’t fix that, Louis.”

The sadness was etched in Phillip’s face, and Louis knew it wasn’t about Claudia. It was about Frances and what Phillip might have destroyed.

“I have to go somewhere,” Louis said.

Phillip’s eyes held his for a moment, and then he stepped aside.

It was dark by the time Louis pulled into the drive at the mansion on Provencal Road. There were no cars in the circular drive, but the old leaded windows glowed gold in the cold night.

A maid answered. She told Louis that Rodney wasn’t in but was expected back shortly. Louis told her he’d wait and pushed his way into the foyer before she could stop him.

The maid led him to the same library where he had first met Rodney. There was no welcoming fire burning, and the room was illuminated by only one table lamp. Louis sat in a wing chair by the dead hearth. A good twenty minutes, maybe a half hour passed. Finally, he got up and switched on two other lamps. The old house seemed to breathe around him, exhaling a cold vapor into the still air.

“Can I help you?”

Louis leaned forward to peer around the wing chair. It was Eloise DeFoe. She was wearing a fur coat, holding it around her like a blanket against the cold. Her mouth was a slash of red in her small white face.

Louis rose. Her expression shifted. “You’re that police person,” she said.

“Investigator,” Louis said. “I’m waiting for your son.”

She pulled off her black leather gloves, then shrugged out of her coat, leaving it on a chair. “I can’t tell you when Rodney might be home,” she said. “He’s very unreliable.”

“I’ll wait,” Louis said. He sat back down in the wing chair.

“I can’t imagine why you need to talk to him,” she said. “Perhaps I can save you some time? What is it you need?”

There was something about her stance, her ramrod posture, that told Louis she wanted him out of here.

Louis stood up. “I need to know more about your daughter Claudia.”

Eloise Defoe just stared at him.

“Why didn’t you ever visit her at Hidden Lake, Mrs. DeFoe?”

“My daughter was ill,” Eloise said. “The doctors advised me that it was best to leave her alone so she could heal.”

Before Louis could reply, there was a sound out in the foyer. A man’s voice and then, a few seconds later, Rodney DeFoe was standing in the doorway. He was wearing a handsome camel cashmere overcoat and a bright red scarf hanging loosely around his neck. He looked harried and, Louis noted, disoriented.

Rodney’s eyes found Louis’s face. “Well, look who’s here, Columbo.”

Eloise DeFoe’s eyes swept over her son as he came into the room, and Louis picked up the scent of her disdain-and, from Rodney, the smell of alcohol. Rodney ignored them both, heading toward the table of glasses and bottles. The room was quiet as he poured himself a drink.

“Rodney, we need to talk,” Louis said.

Rodney didn’t turn around, but Louis could see him raise the glass and take a big drink.

“I said we need to talk,” Louis said.

Rodney turned. “Really? And what other filth have you come to tell me? Telling me she was raped wasn’t enough? You want to see me lose it again?”

Eloise came forward. “Raped? Who was raped?”

Rodney’s eyes drifted to his mother, then to Louis. “Go ahead, tell her.”

Louis was silent.

“Tell her, damn it,” Rodney said.

“Who was raped?” Eloise demanded.

“Claudia!” Rodney shouted. “Claudia was raped. Your daughter Claudia was raped! In that place!”

Rodney turned away, slamming the drink down.

Eloise stared at his back. “That’s impossible,” she said finally. “I would have been informed.”

Rodney spun around. “Informed? You think they would have told us something like that?” His face crumbled. “Jesus, if I had known. . I could have. .”

Louis took a step toward him. “Rodney, I have questions-”

Rodney closed his eyes and shook his head.

“You visited Claudia-” Louis said.

“You visited her?” Eloise interrupted.

Louis ignored her. “Rodney-”

Eloise pushed her way to Rodney, grabbing his arm. “You went there?”

“Yes, I went there,” Rodney said. “I went there to see her.”

“But I told you-”

“I don’t care, Mother. Go ahead, cut me off, throw me out. I just don’t care anymore.”

Louis pulled the picture of Claudia from the patient file and walked to Rodney, holding it under his nose. “You don’t care?”

For a long time, Rodney didn’t move. Then his hand came out and he took the picture. It shook slightly as he stared at it.

When he looked at Louis, there were tears in his eyes. “She was beautiful,” he said. “Not like this.”

“Rodney, listen to me,” Louis said. “In all the times you saw Claudia, did you ever notice if she was pregnant? Did she ever say anything about it?”

“Pregnant?” Eloise said.

Rodney just stared at Louis, the picture of Claudia still in his hand.

“Think, try to remember,” Louis said. “Did she ever talk about being pregnant? Did she ever mention a baby?”

Eloise was at Louis’s side. “I won’t listen to this anymore. I won’t listen to you talk about my daughter like this anymore,” she said. “Get out of my house before I call-”

“Shut up!” Rodney shouted.

Eloise drew back. “How dare you raise your voice to me,” she said.

“Shut up! Shut up!” Rodney shouted again.

“Rodney, don’t-”

“Don’t what? Don’t tell, Mother? Well, fuck that. Fuck you! I’ve had it! I can’t do this anymore!”

Rodney’s face was red, sweat beading on his forehead. When his eyes came back to Louis they glistened with rage, and for a moment Louis thought of the way Charlie’s eyes had looked when they locked him in the cell.

“Claudia was pregnant,” Rodney said. “She was pregnant when she went into Hidden Lake.”

Louis was stunned into silence as his mind struggled to accept what he had just heard-and what it meant. He looked from Rodney to Eloise, but neither was going to say anything.

“Phillip?” he asked.

Rodney nodded.

It was so quiet Louis could hear the soft tick of the sleet on the windows. He had a vague sense of Eloise DeFoe moving away. Rodney’s eyes shifted as he watched his mother go to the sofa and sit down.

Louis turned toward her. “Did you know? Is that why you sent Claudia away?”

“No,” Eloise said firmly. “I didn’t know until the hospital called me months later. I sent her away because it was the only way I could control her.”

“You sent her away because you were afraid she was just like Father,” Rodney said.

Louis could see it in her face, see that Rodney was right, that Eloise DeFoe was ashamed of her own daughter’s mental illness.

Louis turned back to Rodney. “Tell me what happened that night.”

Rodney pulled in a deep breath and sat down in the chair. “Claudia was going to run off with Phillip.” His eyes went to Eloise. “But she found out and locked Claudia up in her room.”

His eyes were locked on his mother. “I should have gone to her,” he whispered. “I heard her crying and screaming, but I just stayed down here like a fucking coward. I stayed down here, sitting right here in this same chair with my drink.”

He was silent for a moment. “I think I passed out. All I remember is it was quiet. The next thing I remember was some strange guy shaking me and telling me Claudia had slit her wrists in the bathtub. I ran outside and she was strapped on this thing and they were putting her in the ambulance and she looked. .” He took in a slow breath. “She looked. .”

Rodney put a hand over his face. The shoulders of the camel coat began to move as he cried.

Louis saw something on the floor by Rodney’s feet. It was the photo of Claudia, crumpled into a wad. He looked back at Rodney, but he couldn’t muster much pity for him. He was a weak man who believed the world turned only in rhythm to his own needs. And even now, it was still about him.

Louis looked back at Eloise. “You were the one who found her and called the police?”

Eloise nodded, her mouth set in a hard line. “I went up to check on her when I realized I hadn’t heard any sound from her room. I went up there, but she wasn’t in her bedroom. I went to her bathroom and that’s where I found her. She had taken a razor blade and cut her wrists.”

Louis looked back at Rodney. He was staring at his mother with anguished eyes.

“Claudia was very ill,” Eloise said. “I couldn’t control her. I had no choice but to send her to Hidden Lake for her own safety.”

“What happened to the baby?” Louis asked.

Eloise just sat there.

“You’re Catholic. You wouldn’t have allowed it to be aborted,” Louis said. “What happened to the baby?”

Eloise didn’t blink as she met his eyes. “I signed adoption papers. I did what was necessary. I don’t know what happened after that.”

“Who arranged it?”

“The hospital.”

“Dr. Seraphin?”

She was quiet. But the answer was there in her face, in the shock that Louis knew the name.

“I think you should leave,” Eloise said.

Louis picked up the crumpled photograph of Claudia and put it in his pocket. He left, pausing outside to dig the car keys out of his jacket. The door opened behind him, but he didn’t turn.

“Wait!”

Louis glanced back. Rodney was coming toward him. Louis ignored him, opening the Impala’s door and getting in. Rodney grabbed the door before Louis could shut it. He looked down at Louis with reddened eyes.

“Tell Phillip I’m sorry,” he said.

Louis jerked the door closed. He started the car, revving the engine, and Rodney stepped away. As Louis headed down Provencal Road, he looked up at the rearview mirror. Rodney was still standing there in the driveway.

“Silent Night” was playing softly, emerging strained and tinny sounding from the old radio and fading away into the shadows of the basement. Louis sat at the bar, a warm beer in front of him. He was waiting for Phillip to get out of the shower and he’d been down here maybe fifteen minutes, sometimes rolling a walnut between his fingers as a way to pass the time. And a way to keep from looking at himself in the mirror.

He had caught a glimpse of himself when he first sat down and hadn’t liked what he had seen. He looked older, and defeated, the shadows in his face hard. Even his eyes were a deeper shade of gray like there was something opaque behind them now.

He heard the water cut off, and the rushing sound in the pipes above his head faded to a drip. He rolled the walnut across the bar, watching it flop end over end until it came to a stop next to the bowl. When he heard Phillip’s footsteps on the stairs, he drew a breath and took a drink.

Phillip wore a red-and-green striped sweater and black slacks, his wet hair slicked back. Louis waited while he grabbed a beer from behind the bar and settled onto a bar stool.

“Are you going to tell me you’re leaving?” Phillip asked.

“No,” Louis said.

Phillip looked down, turned his bottle slowly. “So what is it then?”

“Claudia was pregnant when she was sent to Hidden Lake.”

Phillip said nothing, didn’t move except for a slight slump of his shoulders.

“She had the baby and it was put up for adoption by her mother,” Louis said.

Still Phillip didn’t speak or look up. Louis let the silence lengthen. He picked up the walnut and set it back in the bowl, catching another glimpse of his face in the mirror. Then his eyes moved to Phillip’s face. Phillip’s eyes were closed.

“Rodney knew,” Louis said. “Says he’s sorry.”

Phillip finally looked up. “Sorry?”

Louis nodded.

“He takes my child and he’s sorry?”

Louis again nodded, not knowing what else to say. Phillip drew a breath so deep and hard that Louis could hear it, and it seemed to bring some rigidity back to Phillip’s posture.

“Can we find this child?” Phillip asked.

“I don’t know,” Louis said. “It depends on how it was done. If they left a paperwork trail. If it was even legal.”

“It wasn’t legal. It couldn’t be. I never signed anything.”

“I know. But it’s real easy to cover something like this up. Falsify the mother’s name. Fake a birth certificate. A shady attorney.”

Phillip touched his arm. “Will you try?”

“I don’t know,” Louis said.

Phillip looked away, his mind suddenly on something else, and Louis was grateful he didn’t ask more about finding the child. He wanted to help Phillip, and he knew that if it were his child, he’d want to find it. But there was something else to finish first.

“The child would be thirty-six, Louis,” Phillip said.

“I know.”

“Did you ask if it was a boy or girl?”

“No,” Louis said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Phillip said. “It’s all right.”

Phillip slid off the bar stool and started back up the stairs. Louis watched him, surprised at the sudden change in his face-and his step. It was resolve or acceptance, or maybe a mix of both.

“Phillip,” Louis said, “where are you going?”

“To see Frances,” he said. “This is something I need to talk over with her.”

“Don’t you think it will make her even angrier?”

“I don’t know,” Phillip said. “I just know I need to talk with her.”

“Jesus, Phil,” Louis said, “aren’t you angry?”

“Of course I am,” Phillip said. “But I don’t have to stay that way. You’ve given me something I never thought I’d have. You’ve put everything into focus for me.”

“Wait a minute,” Louis said. “What are you going to tell this kid when you find him or her?”

“I’m going to say ‘I’m your father,’” Phillip said.

“‘And I made a mistake.’”

Phillip disappeared up the steps and Louis turned back to the bar. He didn’t understand how Phillip could be happy about confronting a long-lost, grown-up child when it would be so painful and hard. He didn’t understand how Phillip could ever expect Frances to accept this on top of everything else. And he didn’t understand why Phillip wasn’t furious.

He should be. Not only at Eloise DeFoe and Rodney, but at Seraphin and everything she had done to Claudia.

Claudia. . something was coming back to him, something Charlie had said about the apple babies, and suddenly he knew that what he thought in the tunnels was only half right.

Claudia and Phillip’s baby. . that was what had started it all. Someone had probably paid good money to Seraphin for that baby. And that was what had given her the idea.

Use women patients for breeding. Use Ives to impregnate them. A scheme to create healthy, white infants that Seraphin could adopt out to wealthy couples.

Seraphin’s voice came back to him:

The hospital had so little funding, so money was always a problem. . I was instrumental in correcting many deficiencies.

Those long periods of isolation. It wasn’t therapy or to punish patients; it was to keep the pregnancies secret. Then the newborns were removed from the hospital in baskets, driven away in fruit trucks.

Babies. . conceived by a rapist, sold to the highest bidders so Dr. Seraphin could keep her programs in place. Buy new equipment. Make a career.

Proof. He still had no real proof. There was nothing to connect Seraphin directly to Ives.

Louis stared at his reflection in the mirror, something clicking in his brain. He slid off the stool and went quickly upstairs to his bedroom. It took him a moment to find the patient file for Buddy Ives. He grabbed his glasses off the nightstand and began flipping through the files.

He found the notation he was looking for: Ives had been put in “temporary isolation” at least five times. He was about to pull out Claudia’s file to compare the dates when something on Ives’s form caught his eye.

He stared at the bottom of the form at the signature right above the typed line ATTENDING PHYSICIAN.

Dr. Rose Seraphin.

Louis pulled out other forms. She had signed them all. He slapped the file shut. Seraphin had told him she had stopped seeing patients after being promoted to assistant deputy superintendent. So why the hell was her name on every piece of paper in Buddy Ives’s file?

His eyes swung to the phone. He searched his wallet for Seraphin’s lake house number and dialed.

Oliver answered. Louis was polite when he asked for her. After a few minutes, Seraphin’s voice came on the line.

“Good evening, Mr. Kincaid,” she said. “Have you called to shout at me again?”

He took a breath, working hard on sounding contrite. “No,” he said. “I called to apologize.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I also called for something else,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I need some help.”

She was quiet for a moment. “What kind of help?”

“Personal,” he said, lowering his voice, trying now to sound pathetic. “I lost it down there, Doctor.”

She said nothing.

“It scared me,” he said. “Scared the shit out of me.”

“And you want a session?”

“Yes.”

Again, a pause. “I’m closing up the lake house in the morning,” she said. “If you want to see me, you’ll have to come here.”

“Thank you.”

“Tonight.”

“I’ll see you around seven.”

“I’ll be waiting, Mr. Kincaid.”