P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

His eye caught a shadow lurking just inside the kitchen, and Millie saw him glance toward it.

“Excuse me,” she said. She walked quickly to the kitchen door and in harsh whispers again told her sister to go find something to do. When Millie returned, she carried an amber-colored drink with ice.

“I was isolated once,” she said, setting the glass aside and lighting another cigarette.

Louis opened the folder and slipped out the photograph of Becker, hoping to get Millie back on track. But she kept talking.

“They locked me in that isolation room downstairs and I remember it was cold and wet.” She nodded briskly. “It was February 1964. I remember because those Beatle guys were supposed to be on television that night and I had been good ’cause I wanted to watch them-”

“Miss Reuben,” Louis interrupted.

“But they took me anyway,” she said, her voice changing to something deeper and more distant. “They came and got me in the afternoon and they took me down there and they strapped me down and they just left me there.”

Louis held up a hand, hoping she would see he wanted to talk about something else, but her eyes weren’t on him. She was staring beyond him and she was remembering. He wasn’t sure what to do. He had no idea whether she could make that mental journey back to E Building, and he didn’t want to be here with her alone if she couldn’t.

“That’s the first night I was raped.”

Louis watched her carefully, not quite sure he had heard her right. Millie hadn’t moved and her cigarette ash was growing long between her fingers.

“Who raped you?” Louis said.

Millie was still.

“Miss Reuben?”

Suddenly, her eyes focused on him, and she flicked her ash twice toward the table, missing the ashtray. “I don’t know,” she said. “It was dark and I was full of pills. I felt him and I saw him, but I didn’t see him, do you know what I mean?”

“Do you know anything else about him?”

“I know he was a patient,” Millie said. “He wore the blue tunic the men wore and he had a plastic ID bracelet on his wrist.”

“How would a patient get into a locked room?” Millie shrugged. “Probably let in by some orderly who wanted to watch.”

Louis drew a breath and looked back at the papers he had in the folder. Under Becker’s photograph was a newspaper account of his arrest and incarceration at Hidden Lake. Louis knew the date, but he doubled-checked now. Becker had been sent to Hidden Lake in 1963.

He glanced up at Millie. She was quiet, the cigarette at her lips, her eyes steady on the window. Then he held out the photo of Becker, bracing himself for her reaction-anything from a gasp to hysteria.

“Is there any chance this is the man who raped you?” he asked.

Millie stared at it. “That’s that weirdo Becker. But I don’t know if he was the man who raped me.”

“Did you know Becker?”

“I saw him around,” Millie said. “The men and women were always kept separate inside E Building. We didn’t even eat together, but occasionally, if we were good, every few weeks, they’d let us out and we could walk the grounds. Sometimes, you could visit with the men then.”

“Wasn’t Becker under guard?” Louis asked.

Millie shook her head. “The inmates ran the prison, if you know what I mean. I saw him alone sometimes.”

Louis put the photo away.

“The night of the Beatles,” Millie said, “that wasn’t the only time I was raped.”

Louis looked back at her. She had the expression of someone who was remembering a disturbing but foggy dream rather than a nightmare, and he was suddenly thankful that she had been too drugged to remember the specifics.

“How many times?” Louis asked. “Do you know?”

“A dozen or so, all during that same time.”

Louis stared at the floor. He was trying to imagine how Becker might have gained access to the women when something else edged into his brain. The autopsy photo of Rebecca Gruber’s thighs.

“Miss Reuben,” he said softly, head still down, “may I ask you a very personal question?”

“Sure.”

“Did your rapist burn you?”

When Millie didn’t answer him, he looked up at her. The beautiful speckled eyes misted as she blew a long, thin stream of smoke from her lips.

“They told me later I did that to myself with cigarettes,” she said. “But I knew I didn’t.”

“Where did he burn you?”

Her hand moved slowly to her leg, and she touched her inner thigh with the tip of her finger. “There. On both sides.”

“Three burns?”

“Three with each rape. My legs are full of marks.” Louis rubbed his forehead, listening to the rattle of pans in the kitchen. The sweet smell in the house seemed stronger now, a mixture of air freshener, incense, and that other smell he now was sure was pot.

“I heard about that girl who was murdered down there,” Millie said. “The newspaper said she was a nurse.”

“Yes.”

“Was she burned, too?”

“Yes.”

“And you think Donald Lee Becker did it?”

“Becker died in 1980.”

“Inside that place?”

It was then he realized she had never said Hidden Lake. She had called it only “that place.” He nodded in response to her question.

Millie shook her head. “You seen his body, Mr. Kincaid?”

“No.”

“Then don’t be so sure he’s dead,” she said.

Millie had that same crazy look Delp had when he talked of Becker being alive. By 1980, she had already been out of Hidden Lake for six or seven years. She couldn’t know anything about Becker, how he died or where he was even buried.

He stood up. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “And your honesty.”

“What the hell, it’s therapy, right?” she said with a shrug. She walked him to the foyer and opened the door. As he started out, she touched his arm.

“Why were you asking about Claudia?”

“I’m working for someone who knew her a long time ago,” he said. “I’m working for Phillip.”

Millie looked surprised. “So there really was a Phillip,” she said. “I thought the girl was just crazy with all that talk.”

“She wasn’t crazy,” Louis said.

Millie smiled. “None of us in that place were. Don’t you know that?”

Louis parked the car in front of the Ardmore Police Station, and turned off the engine. But he didn’t move from the driver’s seat.

He had called Alice from a pay phone as soon as he left Millie Reuben’s house and asked her to pull Donald Lee Becker’s medical records. Alice had refused, claiming confidentiality. Louis then told her he had found Millie Reuben and that she had the same burns Rebecca Gruber had.

“I still can’t give you those records, Louis,” Alice had said. “I just can’t. Please don’t ask again.”

“Then just pull his death certificate, Alice. Please.”

“You can get that from the public records.”

“No, I can’t. The state sealed it.”

With that, she had reluctantly agreed to get the death certificate, and they arranged to meet at the police station around three. It was ten after, but he didn’t see her car yet.

It was going to be hard, approaching Chief Dalum with all of this. There was now a definite link between Rebecca Gruber and Millie Reuben, and Dalum might even be willing to concede that Sharon Stottlemyer could be connected, despite the fact they would never prove she was burned or raped. From there, it wasn’t a big stretch to see that a former patient was the likely perpetrator. But Louis knew Dalum wouldn’t buy Becker-a dead man-as a viable suspect.

Louis wasn’t sure he did, either. Except for the one fact that in a case where nothing else made sense, Becker did. If Claudia’s body had gone missing, why couldn’t Becker’s?