P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

He had a hard time not looking away.

“But it’s quite natural for you to believe so,” she went on. “When we are under stress, our reality can become distorted. We can lose our sense of what is true and what is not.”

“I’m fine,” Louis said.

She tilted her head, a bare hint of a smile tipping her lips. The amusement of an older woman for a young man? The sympathy of a doctor for. . what? Louis couldn’t read it at all.

“Take the past, for example,” Dr. Seraphin went on. “We all see it through a prism of distortion. Whether it is an experience we wish to hold on to or a childhood that we need to believe existed-or didn’t exist. We all abdicate reality to some degree to survive.”

Dr. Seraphin’s gold earrings caught the light as she shifted in her chair.

“Your past, Mr. Kincaid, would you call it happy?” she asked.

He almost said it, almost said, “Fuck you, lady.”

Instead, he waved a hand toward the sofa. “Should I lay down now?” he asked.

She smiled, the lines in her powdered face suddenly rising into high relief. “I only ask to make a point,” she said. “Understand a person’s past reality and you might get a grip on his present one.” She nodded to the four file folders. “As I said, tell me who these men are now and I will try to tell you if one of them is a killer.”

Louis leaned forward and gathered up the folders. They both rose. For a moment, Louis just stood there looking at Dr. Seraphin. He was thinking of something Dan Dalum had said on their ride back to Hidden Lake, that if the murderer was a former mental patient, and if they caught him, there was a good chance the man would go right back into an institution instead of prison.

Louis tapped the folders lightly on the palm of his hand. “Just tell me this much,” he said. “Is this guy nuts or not?”

“That’s not a word I use,” she said.

“Okay, is he insane?”

Dr. Seraphin hesitated, then reached down and picked up the book she had been reading when Louis came in.

“Take this,” she said, holding out the book. “Maybe it will help you understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Life after death, a death of the mind, if you will.”

Louis didn’t really want the book, but she seemed to need to believe he did. So he took it.

“I read it in 1959 when it first came out. I had already been at Hidden Lake for ten years, but it forced me to reconsider how I viewed my patients,” she said, nodding to the book. “Dr. Laing believed that madness should be viewed from the inside, and that it was possible to understand the insane by entering their world, relating to them, conversing with them.”

Louis found himself thinking suddenly of Charlie.

“Psychiatry is a very conservative science, and Laing was seen as a quite a radical.” She paused. “Strange, isn’t it, that we doctors would consider compassion radical?”

“Yeah, real strange,” Louis said. He wanted to get out of here, get away from her double talk, just go back to Dalum’s lumpy fold-out sofa and crash.

He heard a sound behind him and turned to see Oliver standing by the door.

“Oliver will show you out,” Dr. Seraphin said. “Drive carefully, Mr. Kincaid. The road out of here is very bad.”

Louis heard the bell over the door at the Sand Lake Inn tinkle again and turned. But it wasn’t Doug Delp, so he went back to his beer. He had called Delp about thirty minutes ago, after he left Dr. Seraphin, and damn near ordered him to meet him at the Sand Lake Inn as soon as possible. He was grateful to find the restaurant was still open, but he had gotten lucky. They were holding a Christmas party for a group of local workers. The place was noisy, filled with holiday sounds and laughter.

Louis pushed aside the plate with its half-eaten burger and signaled the waitress for another beer. He had a passing thought that it would be his third beer, but he was staying with Dalum tonight and the drive was short. He’d be okay.

The door again.

Delp came through it this time, lugging his scarred briefcase. He was dusted with snow, the tip of his nose red. Louis picked up his beer bottle and walked quickly to him, taking him right back out the door to the Impala. Delp looked at the car.

“We’re talking out here?” he asked.

Louis opened the passenger door. “Get in.”

Delp slipped inside. Louis got in the driver’s side and started the engine to warm up the car. Then he reached in the backseat and grabbed the four hospital files of Seraphin’s suspects.

He tossed them in Delp’s lap. “I need some help finding these guys.”

Delp looked down; then his fingers went slowly to the file tabs, and he read each name slowly. His eyes jumped back to Louis. “These are suspects in the murders?”

Louis was silent, staring at him. The outside lights of the inn were bright and the shadow of the falling snow was like a ghostly leopard crawling across Delp’s face.

“Answer me, Kincaid. These are suspects?”

“Yes.”

Delp’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you asking me to do this? Why not just get the cops to track these guys down?”

“They can’t know where I got the names from.”

Delp flipped open the top folder. He read a few lines, then looked back up, a slow smile on his lips. “These are medical files. You stole these from E Building, didn’t you?”

Louis didn’t answer.

Delp had a full grin now. “Dude, I didn’t think you had it in you. I’m impressed.”

“Can you do this or not?” Louis asked.

Delp slapped the folder closed. “Hell yeah, I can do it. However, there are a few things I haven’t heard yet.”

“Like what’s in for you?”

“Exactly.”

“I can’t pay you. Do it as a public service.”

Delp laughed. “Not in my nature, Kincaid. Nothing is free in our world, you know that.”

Louis was quiet. Delp’s smile faded, the boyish sparkle in his eyes dying with it. He suddenly looked older, his face clouded with those moving shadows.

“You know better than anyone that everything has a price,” Delp said softly.

“Don’t start that shit, Delp.”

Laughter rose up around the car and they both turned to watch a young couple stagger by the Impala. When they were gone, Delp spoke.

“There’s a few other reporters hanging around here now. Guys that have heard about Rebecca, the bones, and now this security guard.”

“So?”

“But they don’t know this former patient angle,” he went on. “They don’t know you were so desperate for answers you dug up Donald Lee Becker. And they don’t know Claudia DeFoe’s coffin was empty.”

“You can have it all. Except Claudia. You leave out Claudia, I’ll tell you about Millie.”

“Who’s Millie?”

Louis gave him a shake of his head. “When I have your word.”

“Okay,” Delp said. “Unless Claudia turns out to be a victim of this killer, then no deal on her. I told you that already.”

“All right. Get your pad out and write down those names and whatever else you need from the files to get started. I can’t let you have the folders.”

Delp reached inside his jacket, grabbed a pencil and a notebook. He stuck a penlight in his teeth, opened the folder, and started writing.

Louis remembered the beer in his hand and he took a drink, watching the people go in and out of the restaurant.

“One more thing, Kincaid,” Delp said.

“What?”

“I want to interview you.”

“No way.”

“I can make you famous.”

“I don’t want to be famous. Finish your notes.”

Delp turned in his seat, the penlight in his hand pointed at Louis.

“I’m using your name with or without talking to you.