P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

Louis nodded slowly.

“Weird, huh? Wonder why they did that. Why did they only give them numbers?” he said.

Louis was quiet.

“The hospital people won’t tell me which grave is his,” Delp said. “You don’t happen to know, do you?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter because Becker ain’t in it.” Delp took a drag on his cigarette. “But it would be kind of cool to find out who is.”

Louis was silent.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of strange?” Delp said.

“What?”

“That the hospital won’t tell me where he’s buried.”

Louis turned to face him. “It’s none of your fucking business, Delp.”

Delp gave a short laugh. “You just don’t want to admit that I’m onto something here with Becker. He’s alive, man. He’s alive and out there killing girls again.”

“You’re nuts.” Louis started away.

“ I’m nuts? You came over here. You listened to me, man.” Delp’s laugh followed Louis as he went back into the cemetery.

It didn’t look much like a police station. Louis had been here last week, to give his statement on Rebecca and Charlie, but he hadn’t really taken a good look at it.

The walls of the Ardmore station were a golden brown, the desks mahogany, the floor carpeted in a thick but well-worn forest green. A fire blazed in a field-stone hearth near the back of the main office.

The fire was warm on Louis’s back, but it was making him sleepy. The day had been a long one that had started ten hours ago in Ann Arbor with Dr. Seraphin, followed by his trip down into the mortuary, and talking with Alice about Claudia’s records. Then the new bones. And just when he thought he was on his way home, Dalum had made a suggestion.

Why don’t you come back to the station with me, Kincaid?

He hadn’t said why, but Louis knew. Dalum wanted to talk about the bones, Rebecca, and probably Charlie. And just as Louis was about to decline, he remembered that look on Alice’s face a few hours earlier. When are you going to help Charlie?

So he had agreed.

Dalum had gone into his office with a grim-looking man in a navy peacoat and a gold badge on the pocket. Louis guessed he was an investigator with the state. Out here in the lobby, a few Ardmore officers worked the desks.

Alice had been here earlier, but when she could offer no thoughts on the bones, Dalum sent her home. She had left with the look of a woman whose whole life was starting to crack. And Louis found himself wondering if she had a husband or a friend she could talk to.

Dalum’s door opened and Louis looked up. The state investigator pulled on his coat and left the station, and Dalum waved Louis in. Louis went into the office, closing the door.

Dalum was behind his desk. Behind him was a window fogged with condensation. And on Louis’s left, a wall of shelves with a rainbow of book spines. Michigan law books. Lenawee County plat maps. Lenawee County history. Law enforcement handbooks. Cultivating Beautiful Roses. Investigating Unexplained amp; Strange Phenomena. Psychics: Law Enforcement’s New Tool? The Deep by Mickey Spillane. Study Guide for the Florida Law Enforcement Officer’s Certification Examination.

Louis turned quickly. “You thinking of relocating?”

“I was. But then I met my wife, Dee,” he said, turning a photo on the desk to face Louis. The woman in the picture was a brunette, maybe forty, with eyes that were not afraid to still seduce the camera.

“That was twenty years ago,” Dalum added, nodding to the books. “I kept the Florida study guide just in case she ever left me.”

Louis smiled. Dalum set out two small glasses, then picked up a ceramic decanter. It was a figurine of a drunk cop leaning against a lamppost, gun in one hand, whiskey bottle in the other. When Dalum uncapped it, a song tinkled out. “Show Me the Way to Go Home.”

Dalum poured two glasses and held one out to Louis. Louis took it down in one gulp. The burn felt good.

“So,” Dalum said, reaching for a manila folder, “you interested in what we know about Rebecca Gruber?”

Louis only nodded, his throat still on fire. He didn’t want to tell Dalum that Alice had already given him some details.

“Based on what Alice said, and the last time the salvage men saw Rebecca, we’re guessing she disappeared Tuesday afternoon,” Dalum said. “Her abductor kept her about fifteen, sixteen hours, then dumped her in the woods behind E Building, where Charlie says he found her Wednesday morning.”

“You find anything close to a murder scene?” Louis asked.

“We searched every building,” Dalum said. “We didn’t find a thing.”

Louis had another question, but he was afraid if he asked it, Dalum might think he was questioning his competence. But he wanted to know exactly where things stood.

“Have you talked to all the salvage guys? And the security guards?”

Dalum nodded. “We’ve cleared all but one, the graveyard security guy. I’ve known him for a few years, and he seems clean, but it’s hard when your alibi is working alone in a place where a murder is committed. I don’t believe he’s involved.”

Dalum was fingering the folder in his hand and he didn’t seem anxious to open it.

“You have any other locals in mind you think might be involved?” Louis asked.

Dalum shook his head.

Louis motioned toward the folder. “Is that Rebecca Gruber’s autopsy?”

Dalum sighed and opened it. “She was raped, but they didn’t find any semen or fluids. The M.E. says the perp used an object, something long and sharp, with a jagged point. It ripped up her insides pretty bad.”

Dalum’s voice had grown tight and he paused, head down. The light bathed his thick curly hair a white gold. For a few seconds, the room was very still. Then he went on.

“She was beaten and the red marks on her neck and wrists were likely restraints. She was manually strangled. He crushed some of her vertebrae.”

Dalum’s eyes flicked down to the empty shot glasses. But he kept reading. “And she was burned with a cigarette.” He slipped a photo from the folder and held it out.

It was a glossy, color photo of Rebecca Gruber’s inner thigh. In the soft depression of pale skin up near her pubic hair were three small red scabs, aligned in a row. Louis looked up. Dalum was holding a second photo of Rebecca’s other leg. It had the same three burns.

Dalum slid the photos inside the folder and set it down, dropping slowly to his chair. Louis reached for the decanter, poured two more shots, and sat down in a chair across from Dalum. They drank in silence, the rattle of the wind on the window the only sound.

The photo was vivid in Louis’s mind. Burning was the kind of thing a killer would do while the victim was alive. So he could watch her, smell her skin burn, and hear her scream.

Did you hear them?

Louis stiffened.

I heard her crying.

Where did you hear her, Charlie?

In the cemetery.

Louis stood up. “Chief, can I see Charlie?”

“Now?”

“Yes,” Louis said.

“I don’t know how much he’ll tell you,” Dalum said.

“He won’t talk to us at all. Just keeps asking about Alice and Rebecca and saying he wants to go home.”

“I have something that might help,” Louis said.

Dalum eyed Louis for a second, then stood up. “All right, then. I’ll take you to him.”

Charlie stood up quickly when he saw Chief Dalum and Louis standing at the bars to his cell. He wore an oversized gray cotton jumpsuit, the letters A.P.D. stenciled over the chest. His hair was tangled, and his face was slashed with shadows. In the dim light of the cell, he looked like a frightened animal.