P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

Dalum turned to look at Charlie, but he was almost invisible in the back of the cruiser. “Charlie say anything to you back there in the woods?” Dalum asked.

There was a defensive edge in Dalum’s voice, and Louis understood why. No local cop wanted to be upstaged by an out-of-state P.I., especially on what was probably the town’s first homicide in years.

“I’m not sure,” Louis said. “It didn’t make any sense to me, but maybe when you question him you’ll hear something I didn’t. Alice may be a big help, too. She knows him.”

“Did you find a crime scene?” Dalum asked.

“No, it looks like she was killed somewhere else and just dumped there. No blood, no clothes, except for one shoe.”

Dalum was quiet for a moment, his eyes drifting back down to Rebecca. Her skin had gone even bluer, and she looked more like a toppled marble statue than a human being.

“Let me get something from the car,” Dalum said.

Louis nodded. Dalum walked back to his cruiser and leaned into an open window, picking up his radio from inside. Louis guessed he was calling the medical examiner or crime scene techs. When he was finished, Dalum walked to the trunk of the car and opened it. He returned with a green blanket that he laid over Rebecca. Then he looked at Louis.

“Show me this place you think she was dumped.”

Louis led Dalum into the trees.

“I’m going to ask for your discretion on this, Mr. Kincaid,” Dalum said.

“Of course.”

“Most people around here are damn glad to see this place go away, and this kind of murder will just bring more looky-loos out here again.”

“I understand,” Louis said.

“For years, we’ve been swatting away reporters who wanted to write about people like Donald Lee Becker.”

“Or the eyeball eater,” Louis said.

“There was never an eyeball eater. It was just a myth,” Dalum said, ducking under a branch.

“I know,” Louis said.

“Yeah, but a lot of other people don’t. They think he was real. Like the stories of torture and brain removals that were supposedly going on inside.”

Louis didn’t want to anger Dalum, but he couldn’t resist saying something. “In the early days, it was inhumane.”

Dalum took a moment before answering. “Maybe. But they did the best they could with what they had. Many of these people had nowhere else to go. Even their own mothers didn’t want them. As far as I’m concerned, this was a good place in many ways.”

Louis let it go. He stopped and scanned the trees until he saw the break of the clearing. The single white shoe stood out against the brown ground. The yellow plastic flowers lay nearby.

“The flowers are Charlie’s,” Louis said, pointing. “He said Rebecca needed them to wake up.”

Dalum stepped forward, looking at the flowers and the shoe. Then his gaze moved over the trees and he turned almost a full circle.

“Any thoughts on where she was killed?” Louis asked.

“Not a one. It’s been about thirty degrees out here the last few nights. From the looks of her body, she was kept awhile.”

“And it was probably done indoors,” Louis said.

Dalum was still looking. “Yup. And as far as I know, all the buildings are empty except one.”

“How many buildings are there?”

“Well,” Dalum said, “I know they had a P Building, so if they all had letters, that would make. .”

“Sixteen,” Louis said.

Dalum exhaled a sigh.

Louis started to ask another question. He wanted to know how big the Ardmore Police Department was, if they had a homicide detective, and if they had the manpower for a search of this kind. But he knew it was none of his business. And a part of him didn’t want to deal with another case. But he was seeing Rebecca, lying in the grass, her skin frosted blue. Seeing her and wondering what her last name was, and who was going to miss her tonight.

“I’ll have to call in the state police,” Dalum said.

Dalum didn’t sound happy. Louis could guess why. Five years ago, Louis had his own experience with the Michigan State Police. It had ended his law enforcement career in Michigan.

“Maybe Charlie will just tell you where he killed her,” Louis said.

Dalum’s gaze swung quickly back to Louis. “You think Charlie Oberon killed that nurse?”

“I’m leaning that way,” Louis said.

“Why?” Dalum asked. “Because he’s a crazy man?”

Louis started to say no, but maybe Dalum was right. He had made a quick assumption, something no investigator should do. And he had made it because of what Charlie was. And, maybe even, where he was.

“Damn,” Dalum said softly.

Louis glanced over at him. He was looking back toward the red brick buildings.

“I was really hoping they’d just let this place die peacefully,” he said as if to himself.

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a white handkerchief. He tied it to a bare limb above the nurse’s shoe. “I’ll need you and Miss Cooper to come down to the station for a statement,” Dalum said, starting back toward E Building.

“Of course,” Louis said.

“Might take a couple hours.”

“No problem.”

Louis glanced at his watch. He knew Frances expected him back for dinner, but things at home had been so tense, he was dreading another evening with Phillip hidden behind a newspaper and Frances folding laundry.

But now there was something else, too. He had to explain to Phillip that the search for Claudia had come to a dead end, that they would probably never find her remains.

“So, your work finished here, Mr. Kincaid?” Dalum asked as they walked back to the cruiser.

“I think so,” Louis said.

“Then you’ve really got no reason to come back here to Hidden Lake, do you?”

“No.”

“Just as well,” Dalum said.

Louis didn’t answer. He stopped and looked back at the empty windows of E Building. As much as he wanted to help Phillip, he hoped he’d never have to come back to this place again.

It was dark by the time Louis walked out of the Ardmore Police Station. Alice had asked for a ride back to the hospital, so he waited near the door, out of the wind, watching the street.

The shops were dark, CLOSED FOR THANKSGIVING signs on the doors. Christmas lights twinkled in the window of O’Malley’s Hardware. A single car made its way slowly up the street, a faint sprinkle of rain shimmering in its headlights.

“Thanks for waiting.”

Louis turned to look at Alice. He hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to her once Chief Dalum had shown up and he wondered how she was doing. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, but there was something else in them, too-disbelief. The same disbelief he had seen in the eyes of so many other people whose quiet lives collided with catastrophe.

“You okay?” Louis asked.

Alice nodded, stuffing her hands in her pockets. “I just want to go home.”

“You want me to drive you home?”

She shook her head. “No, just back to the hospital is fine. I need to get my car and lock up.”

Louis led her to Phillip’s Impala and helped her inside. She was quiet as he backed out of the space and flipped up the heater.

“Did you know her well?” Louis asked.

Alice sighed, folding her hands in her lap. “Pretty well, but we weren’t close. Rebecca came to Hidden Lake before me.”

Louis slowed for a stop sign, then drove on through, leaving the soft glimmer of Ardmore behind them as they headed out into the empty farmlands.

“Her last name was Gruber,” Alice said.

Louis didn’t reply, knowing nothing he could say would make this any better. But he did have some questions, ones he knew he shouldn’t be asking because this wasn’t his case. But he couldn’t help it.