P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

“I didn’t say that,” Dr. Seraphin said. “But you can change how you remember it.”

“If you change how you remember it, then it’s no longer accurate now, is it?”

She smiled again, a smaller one. “Who’s to say it isn’t? It’s your memory.”

He pulled out a file and held it out to her. Dr. Seraphin accepted it and flipped through the pages, then set it aside. He handed her a second and a third, glancing up at the door for the driver, wondering what he was doing.

“I have a name for you,” Dr. Seraphin said suddenly. “Do you want to write them down?”

“Yes,” he said, pulling a small notebook from his pocket.

“Michael Boyd.”

Louis wrote the name down. “Any record of him burning or torturing anyone?”

“No, but he may not have done those things early on.”

“Anything else?”

“You asked for suspects, Mr. Kincaid, not their his-tor y.”

“I need a little something more.”

Dr. Seraphin looked annoyed with him, but she answered. “He came in at age fourteen. Raped his baby sister with a pencil.”

Louis started to write again, his pen pausing over the paper at the image her words gave him. Then he went back to pulling files.

Ten minutes later, she spoke again. “Stanley Veemer. Killed his mother at age fifteen, then set the house on fire.”

He kept handing her files, occasionally taking time to read some of them himself. But he didn’t know where to look to find their crimes or the reason for their commitment, and most of it was foreign to him.

She was quiet for a long time after that, the stack of nonsuspects growing so tall it tipped toward the boxes, then spilled. It occurred to Louis how pissed Alice would be if she knew they were here, looking at this stuff and making a mess.

They finished with 1959 well into the next hour and started on 1958. He could hear the rainy wind whipping at the windows and suddenly the lights started to flicker. He looked up.

Dr. Seraphin laughed softly. “Can it get any more dramatic?”

Louis slid the box to her and stood up, stepping out into the hall. The corridor was lit only by the faint gray light from outside, the pale walls alive with the thrashing shadows of branches outside.

“I have another,” Dr. Seraphin called out.

Louis went back inside the room and picked up his notepad off the box.

“Buddy Ives,” Dr. Seraphin said. “Came in at age eighteen. Sexually assaulted his grandmother, then killed her.”

“Why didn’t a guy like that end up in prison? Why here in a hospital?”

“Up until the eighties, Michigan had a law that said if a defendant pleaded insanity, it was up to the prosecution to prove he wasn’t,” Dr. Seraphin explained.

Louis started to question her, but then he remembered something like that from his prelaw classes. It was a crazy law, asking the state to prove sanity in a man who acted insane by the very nature of his crimes.

“I remember that,” Louis said. “It was almost impossible to prove back then. People didn’t want to think a man who committed the worst of crimes could be as normal as they were, so it was easy to label him as insane.”

“Yes.”

“But still,” Louis said, “why here? Why not in a state mental hospital?”

“Those grew full very quickly. We absorbed the overflow,” Dr. Seraphin said. “Of course, with a financial supplement from the state.”

“Must have been a nice extra income.”

“It was never enough,” she said, looking down at the folder in her hand. Louis sensed she was tiring.

“How much longer you want to go?” Louis asked.

“Let’s go one more year.”

Louis found the next box and they started again. His hands were growing stiff from the cold. He glanced up at her. Her face was expressionless, and he wondered what she was feeling right now, suddenly thrust back into the lives of those she knew in the most intimate of ways, lives that were lost and empty and unsalvageable.

“Earl Moos,” she said. “He was committed by his family,” she said. “He spoke of fantasies of rape and torture.”

“Did he ever follow through?”

“Not to my knowledge. He was here until 1969, and would be about. . fifty-eight now.”

A weak suspect, but Louis wrote down the name anyway. They finished up the folders for 1956 and Louis rose again to his feet, his knees creaking.

“Can you come back another time?” Louis asked.

“How do you know you won’t get lucky and find your killer among the names I gave you?” she asked.

Louis stuck the notebook in his pocket. “I don’t put much stock in luck, Doctor.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t suppose you would.”

He held the door for her. They paused in the corridor. “Where’s your driver?” Louis asked.

“He wouldn’t leave the building,” Dr. Seraphin said.

“He’s not far, I assure you. Why do you ask? Are you afraid your killer will get him?”

“This is no game, Doctor,” Louis said. “The man has been inside this building and he is dangerous.”

Dr. Seraphin’s eyes swept over the graffiti-scarred walls and the shadowed doorways.

“I think we better go look for him,” Louis said.

They went to the front entrance first, but there was no sign of Oliver in the lobby or outside. Louis started back down the hall, Dr. Seraphin close behind. They were near the back of the ground floor when Louis stopped suddenly.

Smoke. A bare whiff of it in the cold air.

Louis put out a hand to keep Dr. Seraphin back. He moved forward slowly toward the room at the end of the hall. With a quick glance back at the doctor, he stepped inside.

Oliver was standing in the corner, a cigarette frozen in his hand.

“Jesus,” Louis breathed.

A moment later, Dr. Seraphin was at his side. She stared into the room at Oliver.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“I just wanted a smoke, ma’am,” he said. “It was too cold to go outside.” Oliver had snuffed out the cigarette and was standing there like a boy caught in a dirty deed.

Dr. Seraphin gave Oliver a frown, but slowly her eyes began to wander over the plastic tables and stainless steel countertops.

Louis realized the room looked cleaner than the last time he had been in it. He guessed that the state cops had searched the building after Rebecca Gruber was found. He noticed dark fingerprint powder smudges around the windowsills and door frames.

As he took a step into the room, something caught his eye in the faint light. It was a large can, and he knew it hadn’t been here before.

He walked to it. It had been opened with a can opener, but the top was pushed down inside. He got out a pen and used the tip to lift it open.

The can was half-full of creamed corn, a large serving spoon stuck in it. Louis used the lid to turn it so he could read the label. Southern Michigan Food Supply. Hidden Lake Hospital.

“Doctor,” Louis said, “any idea where this might have come from?”

Dr. Seraphin came up behind him. “The hospital kitchen, I would presume.”

Louis pushed the lid back down to see if there was any stamping or embossing on top. There was none, and he grabbed an old paper towel from the floor and used it to lift the can up so he could see the bottom. In small print, stamped on the bottom, he saw a series of letters and numbers, and the date April 1987. Over a year ago.

“I’d bet there are a lot of these missing from the kitchen over the past few years,” Louis said.

“The police didn’t think to take that?” Dr. Seraphin asked.

Louis set the can down and stood up. “It wasn’t here when they searched. I’d bet it’s been here less than a day or two.”