P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

“Aw, Jesus.”

Bloom handed the officer the Glock. “Lock this up and don’t give it back until he shows you an airline ticket to Florida.”

Bloom walked away, and Louis looked at the officer. His face was set, shoulders stiff. Louis spun and started walking toward the parking lot. The cop followed, silent, always staying a few feet behind him. When they reached the cluster of patrol cars, Louis hesitated and the cop motioned to one, finally stepping ahead of him. Then he opened the back door and held it for Louis.

The ride was a long, silent journey through a misty white landscape, south on Highway 223. As they drove into Adrian, Louis stared out the window. The place looked a little like Dexter, the town where he had found Millie Reuben. He saw a sign telling him it was the county seat for Lenawee County, and before they got to the state substation, they passed a beautiful old red brick courthouse with gold arches and a flag high atop a white spire.

The car pulled to a slippery stop and the officer opened his door for him. Louis was led inside a building that looked like one of the smaller buildings at Hidden Lake, two stories of brick with long rectangle windows. Once inside, the officer passed him off to another uniform, who gave him to a man in a suit who asked for Louis’s ID. Louis handed it to him, and was then told to sit in a hallway on a hard bench.

He doubted they would offer him a ride back to Hidden Lake and he finally got up, found a pay phone, and called Chief Dalum to come get him. As he hung up, it occurred to him that he should call Dr. Seraphin, too.

He dug her card from his pocket. A clerk at her Ann Arbor office answered, so he left a message for the doctor to call him at Phillip’s tonight, then changed his mind and gave her Dalum’s office number. He reminded the clerk again how urgent it was that he talk to Dr. Seraphin tonight. Then he walked outside and stood on the steps.

He could see the courthouse from here. His mind drifted back to the bloody hall in E Building and the word bitch written on the wall above Zeke’s head. And he couldn’t help but wonder if Seraphin knew who had written it.

He thought about the way she had profiled the killer so quickly, and he had no idea if that came from experience or a subconscious-or even conscious-memory. But why would she hide his identity? Embarrassment that she couldn’t-or didn’t-help him?

That was crazy. She was a doctor. And she was doing all she could to help, including breaking doctor-patient confidentiality.

A siren caught his attention and he watched a Lenawee County Sheriff’s car pull away from the courthouse.

Something else hit him.

Hidden Lake was in Lenawee County, and court-houses had planning and zoning records, and even blueprints for structures. He glanced back at the doors to the state police substation. In the hall stood the trooper who had taken his ID. Louis went back inside.

The officer saw him coming and held out the cards. “You’re free to go. But Detective Bloom wanted me to give you a message.”

“Yeah, what?” Louis asked.

“He said to tell you you’ll get the gun back when you leave the state, and not to come around the hospital again or one of the surveillance officers just might shoot you by mistake.”

“He can’t keep my gun.”

“I’m just the messenger.” The officer walked away.

Louis stuffed the cards back in his wallet and pushed back out the front doors, heading toward the Lenawee County Courthouse.

Inside, he found the planning and zoning department, and waited behind three people filing construction permits. The office was small and overly warm, and he pulled off his jacket. Twenty minutes later, he was at the counter and facing a plump woman with yellow curls and jingle-bell earrings that tinkled when she moved.

“Can you get me the blueprints or building plans for Hidden Lake Hospital?” he asked.

“The insane asylum over near Ardmore?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t know. Got a Sidwell number for me?”

“A what?”

“Got a parcel identification number?”

“No.”

She turned away from him. “You’re lucky I got some holiday spirit here,” she said over her shoulder. “Lucky, too, I know where that nuthouse is.”

With a jingle of her earrings, she opened a large bound book and started flipping pages. After a few minutes, she disappeared into a back room.

Louis wandered over to the wall and absently read the notices, sometimes glancing out the window at the snow. He wondered if he would be able get back to Plymouth tonight. He could stay with Dalum again, but it was going to be hard not to share with him what he and Seraphin had done. But how was he going to track these four suspects down without the chief’s help?

“Sir?”

He turned. The clerk was spreading the large blueprints on the countertop and Louis walked quickly to her.

“These are the blue lines,” she said. “But all we have is from 1948 to the present.”

“That’s fine,” Louis said.

She left him and Louis stared at the top one. It took him a few seconds to figure out it was a construction plan for one of the newer buildings-the commissary. It clearly showed there were no tunnel entrances in the store and that it was built over the top of an existing tunnel. He had been right.

The next paper outlined the plans for another building, erected in 1959. M Building, the physical therapy building in the southeastern corner, directly opposite from E. This blue line showed only the tunnel entrances and then dotted lines that faded to nothing as they moved farther away from the building under construction.

Same with the next and the next, plans for buildings constructed in the sixties. Not one diagram of the original structures, and not one that showed all the tunnels.

Damn it.

“You done?” the clerk called. “We’re closing now.”

He pushed the papers toward her. “Yeah.”

She frowned. “Look, mister, it isn’t my fault we don’t have what you want.”

“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to snap.”

Louis left the office and headed back toward the state police building. He stayed outside, huddled against the cold, watching for Dalum’s Ardmore cruiser.

The sun had faded, leaving a dark gray glow to the sky, and for a few seconds, Louis just watched the street. After a few minutes, twinkly white lights in sagging garlands on the streetlamps popped on. And from somewhere in the air, he could hear a tinny rendition of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

He thought about Zeke and realized he didn’t even know the guy’s last name. Or if he had a family. He thought about Frances, sitting at her sister’s house in Brighton. And he thought about the photo of Claudia DeFoe on his nightstand.

But mostly, he thought about Joe, curled up on her sofa, a mug of coffee in her hand, a cat at her feet. He thought of Joe and he knew he wasn’t going to be home any time soon. He turned the collar of his jacket up against the cold, watching the snow sifting down from the quickly darkening sky.

When Dalum picked up Louis at the Adrian Police Station, he relayed a message from Dr. Seraphin’s office: The doctor had gone to her weekend cottage on Wampler’s Lake and if Louis needed to see her immediately, he should come there.

Dalum dropped Louis back at Hidden Lake and after fighting their way back onto the property to get the Impala, Louis immediately headed to the lake. But after three drive-bys along the street Seraphin had given him, he had to stop at Jerry’s Pub to get directions, where the bartender looked at the address Louis had scribbled on a paper and said, “Oh yeah, that’s the old Beuller place.”