by P J Parrish
He tried to imagine Phillip in this room. Tried to imagine him as a young man in love with a woman whose hair smelled like lilacs.
“My son said you wanted to see me?”
Louis turned. Eloise DeFoe was tall and brittle thin in a dark blue wool dress with a high collar. Her hair was white and cut in a severe chin-length bob with a slash of bangs. There was another slash of bright red at her lips. She had a silver-tipped ebony cane, but as she came into the room it appeared more an ornament than a necessity.
“Louis Kincaid,” he said, coming forward with an outstretched hand.
She gave him her cold dry hand as she stared at him. She had the same pale brown eyes as her son, who had come up behind her and was leaning against the door frame.
“Rodney said you’re an investigator,” she said.
“Yes, I’m here about your daughter, Claudia.”
She blinked. “My daughter is dead. She died in 1972.”
Rodney came toward Louis. “I can’t imagine what business you might have—”
“Just a moment, Rodney,” the old woman said sharply, holding up a hand. She looked back at Louis. “What exactly do you want, Mr. . . ?”
“Kincaid. Something else has come up, ma’am,” Louis said. “In the process of relocating the remains—”
“Relocating?” she interrupted. “What do you mean relocating?”
Louis hesitated, his confusion echoing Eloise DeFoe’s. “Well, as part of Hidden Lake’s closing down, they have to move the graves and your--”
Rodney pushed forward. “Mother, the hospital called about this a couple weeks ago. You haven’t been well lately and I just didn’t see any reason to bother you with something routine.”
Louis stared at the guy. Routine?
“I wish you had told me, Rodney,” Eloise DeFoe said.
“Everything is taken care of, Mother.”
Louis watched them carefully. Eloise DeFoe was probably in her eighties, but she looked anything but feeble. There was a steeliness in her eyes that was disarming. She seemed mildly upset, but Louis couldn’t tell if it was because he had brought up her dead daughter or because her son had left her out of the loop.
“Look, Mr. Kincaid, we can take care of this,” Rodney said, taking his arm and leading him toward the door. “If there is something else I need to sign—”
Louis pulled away. “No, my business here isn’t quite done. I came to tell you something else.”
Eloise DeFoe was looking at him expectantly. Rodney had retreated behind the rim of his glass. Louis watched their faces carefully as he spoke.
“When we opened your daughter’s casket, it was filled with rocks.”
“Rocks?” Eloise DeFoe stared at him for a moment, then sank into a chair. “Good Lord,” she murmured.
Louis looked at Rodney. He had gone pale.
A clock chimed out in the foyer three times before Eloise DeFoe spoke again. “Well, where are my daughter’s remains then?”
There was nothing in the woman’s face to read, not surprise, horror, or grief. Louis realized she was assuming he was working for the hospital and he decided to use this assumption to his advantage. “We haven’t been able to locate them,” he said.
Rodney set the glass down with a thud. “You’re saying you’ve lost my sister?”
“We don’t know,” Louis said carefully. “We are looking into it and—”
“This is outrageous,” Rodney said. “You can just go back to that hospital and tell your boss to expect a letter from my lawyer.”
Louis glanced at the mother. She was just sitting there, stunned. He knew he was about to get thrown out and that he wasn’t going to get any information about Claudia’s past. He decided his best chance was to keep up the pretense of working for Hidden Lake.
“Now calm down, Mr. DeFoe,” Louis said to Rodney.
“You can help us out. Surely when your sister died, you were given some paperwork, a death certificate. Anything you have might help us.”
“You lost all her records, too? I want you out of our house. Now.”
Louis turned to the mother. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Please, just go,” she said softly.
Rodney followed him to the door and waited stone-faced as Louis stepped outside.
“My mother isn’t well,” Rodney said. “Don’t call her, don’t come back here.”
Louis started down the steps but then turned back. He couldn’t let this go. “You don’t care, do you?” Louis said. “You don’t care at all where your sister’s remains are. What kind of brother are you?”
Rodney slammed the door.
CHAPTER 7
Louis checked his watch. Just after nine. He had left Plymouth before his foster parents were awake, not wanting to give Phillip the chance to come along to Hidden Lake. There was a growing chill in the Lawrence house, and Louis didn’t want to give Frances any more reason for suspicion.
There were only three cars in the parking lot when he pulled up to the hospital. He zipped up his jacket and got out, letting his gaze wander over the grounds.
From what he could see, the compound was huge, enclosed in a wrought-iron fence that had once been very elegant but was now topped with loops of razor wire. He could see maybe a half-dozen red brick buildings, some small and utilitarian looking, others large and elaborate with steep-sloped roofs and peaked dormer windows, spires, chimneys, and bell towers. He could see the top of three brick smokestacks attached to what he guessed was some kind of power plant. Beyond the smokestacks, more red brick buildings, and then a border of bare trees.
He remembered the schematic on the bulletin board back at John Spera’s office. It had shown a lake on the property, but he couldn’t see one. There was a narrow asphalt road that stretched from the parking lot and up the hill, disappearing into the pines. Maybe he would drive it when he was done inside. If it wasn’t closed.
Louis jogged across the parking lot to the building signposted ADMINISTRATION. Like all the others, it was red brick but with an imposing stone portico of three columned arches. Carved in the portico was ANNO DOMINI 1895.
Louis found himself trying to imagine what the building might have looked like a hundred years ago, before the harsh Michigan winters had scarred the bricks and eaten away the stone steps, before the ivy, snaking over the stone arches and pillars, had gone brown and brittle.
A water-stained sign was taped to the front door that read CLOSING, DECEMBER 31, 1988. ALL VISITORS CLAIMING RECORDS OR LOVED ONES MUST REPORT TO THE MAIN NURSE’S STATION ON THE SECOND FLOOR.
Louis pulled open the door and stepped inside. The lobby had an austere beauty, like an old-fashioned bank, with marble pillars and elegant fixtures. There were no lights, just a single shaft of pale light coming from a glass ceiling dome and settling in a pool on the terrazzo floor. Two corridors branched off into darkness and there was a wide marble staircase. Off in one corner was a glass showcase filled with curios and old medical instruments. A reception desk sat empty, its marble top caked with dust, a hand-printed sign propped on top: ALL INQUIRIES SECOND FLOOR.
The marble banister was cold under Louis’s hand as he started up the staircase. The place felt so hollow he swore he could hear the echo of his own heart.
Then he heard something else. Footsteps from above, coming down. A man appeared at the landing between the first and second floor, drawing up short. He was tall and thin, about thirty, dressed in baggy hospital scrubs and an oversized gray sweatshirt. He peered at Louis, as if he were trying to focus, his fingers moving from his thin ragged beard to his red tufted hair.
“I’m going out,” he said.
There was something in his look—and his voice—that told Louis this man was a patient, and he was surprised any patients still remained. Louis moved toward the wall to give him room to pass.
“My name’s Charlie,” the man said.
Louis gave him a nod. “Mine’s Louis.”
Charlie shifted and glanced sl
owly to the front door, as if he had to figure out exactly where it was. “I need to keep my head warm,” Charlie said, holding out a woolly hat with red and green stripes.
“Good idea.”
Charlie pulled the cap down over his head, leaving the tasseled chin ties hanging loose like braids.
“Do you like my hat?” Charlie asked.
“It’s a helluva hat.”
Charlie smiled and came down a few more steps. “Did you hear them?”
“Hear who?”
“I never hear them in the daytime, but I did today. Did you hear them?”
Louis tried to keep an even expression. “No,” he said. “Excuse me. I need to go upstairs.”
“I hear them.”
“I’m sure you do,” Louis said. “Excuse me.”
Louis moved past Charlie and continued up the stairs. At the top, he looked back over the railing. Charlie had disappeared and the front door was easing shut behind him.
It was dim on the second floor, the only light filtering through the barred windows. There was a big desk that looked like a nurse’s station but it was deserted. Down the hall, Louis could make out a series of signs: RECORDS. PHARMACY. LOUNGE. SUPERINTENDENT. There were boxes stacked against the walls, along with three folded wheelchairs.
An odd sound made Louis turn. A woman was coming down the hall, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking softly on the linoleum. She was reading a file as she walked, and all he could see was the top of her head, a fuzzy circle of reddish brown curls. She was wearing a plain skirt and blouse covered with a baggy cardigan sweater that stretched almost to her knees.
When she saw Louis, she stopped. Her eyes were as blue as the Gulf of Mexico outside his cottage back home. They were the most vivid feature in an otherwise unremarkable pale face that set her age at somewhere close to fifty. He had to lean in to read her name tag: Alice Cooper.
She saw the question in his eyes. “I know, I know,” she said. “But it was mine long before it was his.”
Louis smiled, but it didn’t seem to warm her.
“If you’re here to claim a family member you’ll have to fill out the form,” she said, ducking behind the counter of the nurses’s station.
“No, I’m not. I just need some information. Are you the person I need to talk to?”
“I’m head of records here. Or at least I was.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you a reporter?”
“No.”
“Then what kind of information do you want?”
“A friend of mine made arrangements to move one of the deceased patients from the cemetery to a place closer to his home.”
She picked up a stack of files and started sifting through them quickly. The desk was heaped with them.
He went on. “But when they went to move her, the casket was full of rocks.”
Her eyes came up to his face. “Are you a lawyer?”
“No, just a private investigator trying to help out a friend.”
She blew out a long breath and ran a hand over her curls. “Yes, I remember now. Someone called us a few weeks ago about this. His name was . . . Lawrence, I think. Are you him?”
“No, but I’m working for him.”
“What was the woman’s name again?”
“DeFoe, Claudia DeFoe.”
Alice shook her head slowly. “I felt bad for him, but I couldn’t tell him anything because she was an E Building patient.”
“What’s E Building?” Louis asked.
She paused. “Are you sure you’re not that reporter who’s been calling here?”
“I’m a private eye out of Florida.” Louis reached in his coat and flipped open his ID card. She gave it a careful look before he put it away.
“E Building housed the criminally insane and other patients who posed a danger to others,” she said.
“This woman was here for depression,” Louis said. “Why would she have been in E Building?”
Alice reached below the desk and pulled out a cardboard box. She didn’t look up as she began to stack the files in it. “Sometimes the family doesn’t know everything. People change after they come here.”
“What about her records? Could I see them?” Louis asked.
She arched an eyebrow. “Medical records are confidential. As a private investigator you ought to know that.”
“Look, I really am a P.I. and the only thing I am interested in is finding out what happened to this woman’s remains.”
Her expression changed slightly, the bright blue eyes not softening—Louis suspected she was too shrewd for that—but at least she wasn’t looking through him as if he weren’t there.
“I can’t help you,” she said, stuffing another folder into the already packed box. “I am in charge of seeing that the patient files are moved. But all the E Building patient files are locked up over there, and I’ve been told a special crew is coming to move them next week.”
“To make sure they don’t get in the wrong hands,” Louis said.
“Exactly. Wrong hands, as in reporters’.”
“What would reporters be after in this place?”
“Donald Lee Becker. Does that ring a bell?”
It took Louis a second to place the name. Donald Lee Becker had raped and murdered six young women at Michigan State in the sixties. He had claimed an insanity defense and had been institutionalized.
“Becker was here?” he asked.
She nodded. “In E Building. He died here. Last week, they found some bones on Becker’s old farm, and now the reporters have starting coming around again.”
“So what’s going to happen to the E Building records?”
“Someone from the state’s mental health association will go through them. Most will go to the county, some sealed and sent to the state.”
Alice hoisted the full box with a grunt. Louis moved to help her, but she was already coming out from behind the counter. He watched as she went to the far wall and stacked it next to the others. He knew that once the state or county took possession of Claudia DeFoe’s hospital records, he’d never get a look at them.
She came back with an empty box and started in on the next tower of folders.
“I met a man on the steps,” he said.
Alice hesitated. “That would be Charlie Oberon.”
“Is he a patient?”
“Kind of.”
“I thought there were no patients left here.”
Alice didn’t answer for a moment. “There aren’t. The last ones were moved months ago. We sent Charlie to a group home in Albion, but he ran away and came back here. We discovered his status has always been voluntary and he has no family.” She looked up at Louis. “He’s harmless.”
“How long has he been here?”
“Since he was fifteen.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
Alice stopped her sorting for a second, and when she resumed she didn’t seem to be looking at the files. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been letting him sleep in one of the old beds, but I don’t know what’s going to happen to him when we lock the doors.”
A phone rang somewhere. Alice’s eyes went down the empty hallway. Finally, the phone stopped, the ring echoing in the hallway.
Alice looked back at Louis. “Please don’t tell anyone,” she said.
“Tell anyone what?”
“That I let Charlie stay here.”
When Louis didn’t answer, she bent down and got another empty box. She began stuffing the box with the files she had just sorted. For several minutes, they were both quiet, Louis watching her as she finished filling the second box. Then she picked it up and started toward the stack of boxes at the far wall. Louis picked up the other box and followed her.
She looked up at him in surprise when he deposited it next to the others.
“Phillip Lawrence, the man I’m working for, he’s my foster father,” Louis said. “He was in love with Claudia DeFoe. They were going to elope but Claudia’s mother interfered. Claudia trie
d to kill herself and her mother sent her here.”
Alice was quiet.
“She was only seventeen,” Louis added.
The phone began to ring again. This time Alice didn’t even look down the hall. She was looking hard at Louis, those keen blue eyes searching for a reason to trust him.
She walked back to the nurse’s station. Reaching behind for a coat, she put it on. “I can’t give you the records,” she said. “But if you want to see E Building, I’ll show it to you.”
CHAPTER 8
Alice walked quickly, head bent against the wind, one hand holding the lapels of her wool coat closed.
“That was originally the tuberculosis sanitarium,” she said, pointing to a building on their left. “After the TB epidemics subsided, it was transformed into a laundry and sewing department.”
Louis glanced at it. Like all the buildings, it looked deserted, front door chained, windows dark.
“The smokestacks are the power plant. Everything was steam heated in the early days, and somewhere around the late twenties, it was reconstructed to provide heat, lights, and hot water to the whole institution.”
Louis paused for a second, turning almost a full circle. “How big is this place?”
“A hundred and eighty acres,” Alice said. “Over there was the bakery and kitchen, and beyond that, the fire-house and police station.”
“A police station?” Louis asked.
“Not like you would imagine,” she said. “More of a security force. They were trained to deal with the patients and, well, to be honest, the hospital didn’t want outsiders coming in unless they had to.”
They passed another brick building, three floors with dark, meshed windows. Alice saw him look up.
“That’s the POG building. It was a dormitory for the homeless men who wandered in every winter. In the old days, Hidden Lake would take in the homeless and let them out every spring. They called them POGs.”
“Pogs?”
“Poor Old Guys.” Alice walked on, her shoes crunching on the frosted grass. Louis followed, his eyes still scanning the grounds as he tried to imagine living inside the iron fence with no contact with the outside world, your mind muddled with drugs or sadness or unseen demons. And he thought about the soothing curl of the waves on the gulf and the endless shimmer of blue that he looked out at every day, and suddenly he could not imagine being without it.
