P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

“That’s wrong,” she said.

“In this case, it’s probably better for Charlie if he’s in a cell. At least until we know.”

Alice had no comment, but she reached into a desk drawer and withdrew a thin paperback book and held it out to Louis. “I thought you might like to read this.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He took it, flipping through it. “You got this from Rebecca’s office?”

“She didn’t have an office,” Alice said. “She had a locker, and the police took most everything. They didn’t seem interested in this, so I asked if I could keep it.”

“Have you read it?”

“Just enough to know why Charlie put flowers on Rebecca.”

“Why?”

“In the story, the men place flowers on sleeping women’s eyes,” Alice said. “When the woman awakes, she falls in love with the first man she sees.”

“And you think Charlie wanted Rebecca to fall in love with him?”

Alice rose suddenly, moving to the window, almost disappearing into the glare. Louis turned his chair so he could see her, but she spoke without turning back. “There was something about the way Charlie looked at Rebecca,” she said. “I think. .” She drew a breath and her voice grew huskier. “I think he might have tried to tell her he loved her and when she did not. . could not. . accept it, something happened to him.”

Louis looked down at the paperback cover. A bare-breasted woman in a bride’s veil was being groped by a half-man, half-donkey character. A full white moon shone above them. A small, naked crying child huddled on the bottom.

“So you think he was trying to put her to sleep so he could wake her up with the flowers?” Louis asked.

Alice faced him. “I don’t know.”

Louis knew he needed to talk to Charlie. If he could relate to him, using what was in the book, maybe Charlie would tell him what happened.

For a second, Louis had the thought that maybe that would be okay for Charlie. No way was Charlie competent to stand trial and he undoubtedly would be sent to a new hospital. In the end, his life wouldn’t change at all.

He heard the jingle of keys and looked up. Alice was holding the ring out to him. He slipped the book into his jacket pocket and took the keys.

“The big key opens the main door for E Building,” she said. “The records room is at the end of the main hallway, on the first floor. The files are by admission date. Please make sure you lock everything before you leave.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“I can’t. The salvage men will be here in a few minutes and the superintendent is supposed to be coming by later.” She nodded toward a copy machine. “I’d appreciate it if you could be gone by the time he gets here. Just bring her file back here and I will copy whatever you need.”

“Thank you, Alice.”

Louis left the administration building and walked quickly across the grass to E Building. He didn’t see any cops, except the two at the front gate, but yellow crime scene tape was still draped across the trees, stretching deep into the woods. A salvage truck sat at a distance near another building.

Louis slipped the key in the lock and pulled open the heavy door. It scraped on the concrete and he debated leaving it open, but decided against it. He didn’t need an open door attracting the cops or anyone else, so he struggled to close it, taking a second to relock it from the inside.

His breath clouded in the musty air as he moved down the hall, listening to the lonely tap of his footsteps on the terrazzo floor. A sudden wind at his face drew his eyes to a window. The grating was still in place, but the glass was broken, shards strewn on the sill and floor.

He moved on, past five or six closed doors, stopping at one with RECORDS stenciled on the pebbled glass window. He stuck the key in and went inside.

Boxes. . so many he could not even tell how large the room was. There were walls of white cardboard stacked to the ceiling, leaving the lower three rows crushed to almost a third their size. He could not even read the dates on those.

He leaned against the doorjamb, drawing a long breath as he scanned the boxes. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe 1951 would be up high. He stood there almost a full minute, looking. There didn’t seem to be any system to the dating on the boxes. He did not see 1951.

There was no space to work inside the room, so he started stacking the boxes in the hall. After one row, he was sweating, and he stopped to pull off his jacket.

A noise.

Just a tiny clink, like glass against metal.

He froze, listening.

The loose grating. At the broken window. Had to be it.

But he stayed still, laying his jacket down silently, waiting. When he heard nothing, he went back to work, reaching down to grab the box labeled 1933. It was wet and the soggy side ripped away, scattering folders and papers.

Damn it. .

It took fifteen minutes to put the box back together, and he wasn’t even sure he had the right records in the right folders as he jammed them inside. When he was done, he shoved the box away with his foot. Right behind it sat another, the date 1951 scrawled in thick black letters on the side.

He sat down on the floor, pulling the box to him, and opened it. It was fat with folders, but they looked to be in alphabetical order. He found Claudia DeFoe’s, wiggled it free, and spread it open on his lap.

Man. .

There were metal clips on each side to keep the documents in place, but the papers were loose, dog-eared and water-stained. He pulled out his reading glasses. Charts. Log entries. Prescriptions. Treatments.

But he couldn’t make much sense of it, couldn’t even read the handwriting, except the scribbled letters THOR, which he guessed was Thorazine. He was going to have to ask Alice to help.

Putting his glasses away, Louis got to his feet. He set Claudia’s file in the hall and started bringing the boxes back in. The room quickly filled back up, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure they were all going to fit, but he crammed the last of them up against the ceiling and scanned the floor, making sure he hadn’t lost any papers.

Clank .

He spun toward the rear of the building.

That noise wasn’t the flap of loose metal grating. The broken window was near the front door. This noise came from the back. And it sounded like the slam of metal against metal.

The hall was brushed with sunlight, and he could see clearly that it went on about twenty feet before it split into a T at the end. There were four or five more doors, all closed.

Louis picked up his jacket and quietly slipped his Glock from the pocket, easing it from the holster. Then he waited, his eyes locked on the end of the hall. Dust motes glittered in the shafts of light and he could feel the wind from the broken window against the back of his neck.

He moved forward slowly, shoving open each door, bracing himself for any flash of movement. But the rooms were empty, the windows closed. He continued on down the hall.

At the T, he stopped. To his left was an exit door, chained shut from the inside. To his right, more empty rooms. He moved on to the door he knew led to the upper floors, where the stairwell was grated all the way up. The door was unlocked, but the stairwell gate was chained at the first floor. He walked on.

One last room. A large one with double doors, propped open.

Louis moved inside.

The yellow walls were slashed with deep shadows that seemed to move as he did. Tables. Plastic chairs. A stainless steel sink and an old red and white Coca-Cola machine in the corner. Trash littered the floor. A Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle lay under the window. But the window was closed and barred on the outside.

And a smell. .

Cigarettes. No, not cigarettes. Ashes.