An Unquiet Grave

CHAPTER 43

It was snowing hard by the time he started up the hill toward Seraphin’s house. He had gone only twenty feet when the Impala lost traction and stopped. He tried again but the tires spun and the car went nowhere.

“Shit,” he muttered. He looked out the windshield at the huge wet flakes caught in the headlight beams. Far up the hill, between the bare trees, he could see the front of the house in the glare of the floodlights. No choice. He had to walk the rest of the way or risk getting stuck here all night.

He got out and trudged up the hill. The driveway looked like it had been plowed recently, but there was at least a foot of fresh snow covering it now.

Seraphin’s Volvo was parked to the left of the front door. Louis went up and knocked. Oliver opened the door immediately, wearing his usual black suit.

“The doctor’s waiting for you in the den,” he said. His face was red from cold or exertion. There was a mound of Vuitton luggage behind him.

“I can find my way,” Louis said.

Oliver gave him a cold stare, then hoisted up two bags and headed outside to the car.

Seraphin was behind a desk, sorting through some papers, when Louis came into the den. She looked up and gave him a curt smile as she continued putting papers in a briefcase.

“Please, make yourself comfortable, Mr. Kincaid. I’m just finishing up here.”

Louis slipped out of his jacket and took a chair. He noticed two Vuitton duffels on the floor next to the desk.

“So, where are you going?” Louis asked.

“Florida,” she said. “I have a condo on Hobe Sound.” She smiled again. “I just can’t tolerate the cold the way I used to. The price one pays for getting old, I suppose.”

Louis had to grit his teeth at the small talk. “Yeah.”

Seraphin snapped the briefcase closed and set it on the floor near the duffels. She came forward, pushing up the sleeves of her beige sweater as she took the chair opposite him. “Now,” she said. “What exactly is wrong?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Louis said.

“Have you ever been in therapy before?”

“No,” he said.

“Well, there’s nothing to be nervous about.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“Do you always sit on the edge of a chair like that?”

Louis hesitated, then sat back, draping his hands over the chair’s arms. “Is this better?”

She allowed her smile to widen. Then she, too, sat back in her chair. “You said something happened to you while you were in the tunnels,” she said.

He nodded.

“That you were scared.”

He nodded again.

“Can you tell me why you felt scared?”

“You mean besides the fact I was locked down there with a crazed, insane murderer?”

Seraphin somehow managed to keep her expression neutral. She picked a speck of lint off her beige skirt. Her eyes came back to Louis’s face and stayed there, waiting.

Louis let out a long breath. “I heard things,” he said finally. He waited, seeing a new spark of interest in her eyes.

“Go on,” she said.

“I heard things and I don’t know if they were real.”

“What did you think you heard?”

“Babies. . babies crying.”

There was a quick flash of something across her face. Louis was sure he had seen it.

“Why do you think you heard babies?” Seraphin asked.

“Why do you think I heard babies, Doctor?”

She uncrossed her legs and sat up straighter in the chair. “I would guess it was your guilt,” she said.

“What do I have to feel guilty about?”

“That you couldn’t save that poor woman. I would guess that it was her cries you heard in your imagination.”

Louis shook his head slowly. “No. It was babies.”

She tilted her head as she looked at him. “Do you have any children of your own, Mr. Kincaid?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Of course it is.”

Louis sat forward in his chair. “I know what you did. I know you used Buddy Ives to impregnate patients and that you sold the babies. You isolated the women and then shipped their babies out in apple baskets. For money.”

Seraphin didn’t move.

“How much did you make, Doctor?” Louis pressed. “Enough to build a new infirmary? Enough to pay off the nurses? Enough to get appointed to the state board?”

Louis stopped. He couldn’t believe it. Seraphin was smiling.

“That’s quite a story,” she said. “You believe it’s real, don’t you?”

He could feel the balance shifting back to her, but he wasn’t going to let it happen. “I know Claudia DeFoe was real,” he said. “And I know she was pregnant when she came to Hidden Lake.”

A small crack in Seraphin’s smile.

“Rodney DeFoe told me everything,” Louis said. “And Claudia’s mother told me she signed adoption papers. You took her baby and sold it. That’s how you got the idea for all this.”

Seraphin rose slowly, walking a slow, deliberate circle. “You’ve taken this one tragic incident and made it into this preposterous black market baby conspiracy.”

“So I’m right,” Louis said.

“Right?” she asked.

“About the babies.”

“You seem to need me to confirm something you already know.”

“Just tell me, damn it. Am I right?”

Seraphin hesitated. “Did you read that book by Dr. Laing I gave you? He identified a state called ontological insecurity. It means lacking a sense of selfhood and personal identity.”

“I know who I am,” Louis said.

She studied him for a moment. “But your experience in the tunnel may have altered that. Dr. Laing said that when people are in a threatening situation from which there is no physical escape they can dissociate-their mental self splits from their body and what they experience is like a dream.”

“I read part of that damn book,” Louis said. “He also said being threatened can make your thinking extra sharp.”

Another small smile, as cold as the air. “Then you have nothing to worry about.”

She was still putting it back on him. Making him believe he already had the answers to his questions. But he didn’t.

“Where is Claudia DeFoe?” he asked.

She stared at him. It was a cool, long look that he could read nothing into. For several seconds, neither spoke. Then a sound behind Louis made Seraphin’s eyes swing up.

“Yes, Oliver?”

“The snow is getting worse. We have to get going, Doctor, or we won’t make it out of here,” he said.

“Right,” she said. “Take those bags and finish loading the car. I will be along shortly.”

Oliver picked up the two duffels sitting by the desk and left.

Seraphin looked back at Louis. “I’m afraid our time is up, Mr. Kincaid.”

She turned off the nearest lamp, then went to her desk and picked up her briefcase.

Louis stood up. “Where is Claudia DeFoe?”

Seraphin was at the doors leading to the deck. She gave them a hard tug to make sure they were locked. She turned to him.

“Dead,” she said. She switched off the floodlight. The backyard went black. She looked at him.

Louis didn’t move.

“You’re not going to leave until you hear this, are you?” she asked.

“No.”

“Claudia committed suicide,” Seraphin said. “She got out one night and just walked into the lake.”

“How do you know it was suicide?”

Seraphin paused, seeing the look on Louis’s face. “She left a note for Rodney,” she said. “I have it in my office in Ann Arbor. I’ll show it to you.”

“Why didn’t you just tell the family the truth?”

“You know their history. It would have been cruel. And there would have been other. . repercussions.”

Louis sat back in the chair. He understood what she was saying. And he wanted to believe her about the way Claudia died. But. .

“What happened to her remains?” he asked.

Seraphin sighed, taking a moment to answer. “She was cremated by mistake. You can find her remains in the columbarium. There are small numbers imprinted on the tops of the cans. It was done as a precaution in case the labels were lost. Look for number 926. There is a file somewhere in E Building that holds the cremation log. You’ll find her name there.”

She held up her hands as if she wanted to say something else, but then she just dropped them to her sides. “I probably should have told you all this a long time ago, but I was hoping to spare everyone,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

He was quiet. Unmoving. In the reflected light from the desk lamp, Seraphin’s face looked suddenly old and deflated. The hardness that always seemed to be there was gone.

Louis picked up his coat off the chair.

“Good-bye, Mr. Kincaid,” she said.

He left the den. Out in the foyer, he paused to put on his coat. There were still three large suitcases sitting next to the open front door and a trail of wet footprints leading outside.

Leaving the door ajar, Louis stepped out into the snow. The Volvo was parked to the left of the entrance. There were two suitcases sitting back near the closed trunk. Louis turned up his collar and started back down the hill.

The snow was up to his calves and he walked slowly, his mind locked now on Claudia and her baby. He had his truth now. Claudia was dead. He had his truth now about the baby-from Eloise DeFoe and now Seraphin. But that was all that seemed real. Everything else that had happened at Hidden Lake might as well be a damn dream for all the chance he had of proving it.

And Ives. .

Where the hell was he?

Seraphin was afraid of Ives. She was smart to be leaving.

Louis stopped.

The suitcases sitting by the Volvo. Something weird about that. They were covered with snow, like they’d been sitting there a long time. And the trunk was closed. Why would Oliver leave them in the snow to get ruined?

Forget it, Kincaid. Go home. Get some sleep.

But something felt wrong. Shit, just go back and check.

Louis turned and trudged back up the hill. In the glare of the floodlights, he could see that the front door was closed now, but the suitcases were still sitting by the truck untouched, a heavy layer of snow on top now. Where the hell was Oliver?

Louis went to the back of the Volvo. The snow was tamped down, but the impression was half filled with a fresh cover. Louis stood, looking into the trees, his ears attuned to any sound. But there was only the soft hiss of the falling snow.

He walked to the driver’s door, jerked it open and found the latch to pop the trunk. He went back and threw the truck open.

Oliver lay facedown across the suitcases. There was a huge jagged hole ripped in his neck. The blood had soaked through his collar and onto the suitcases below.

Louis drew back, scanning the nearby trees.

Shit. Ives was here.

His eyes shot to the closed front door. Ives was inside.

Louis pulled up Oliver’s jacket, searching the body for a gun. Nothing. He needed a weapon. . something. Rolling the body onto its side, Louis pulled out a suitcase, tossing it to the snow, looking for something he could use. There was a large black kit and he tore it open.

A tire iron. He grabbed it and ran to the front door.