An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries)

by P J Parrish

  Dr. Seraphin came up behind him. “I really need to do something about that boathouse,” she said. “I don’t even have a boat and it’s such an eyesore.”

  Louis turned to her.

  “Now, what was so urgent that you had to see me tonight?” Dr. Seraphin asked, drink in hand.

  “A security guard was murdered in E Building today,” Louis said.

  Dr. Seraphin’s face and shoulders sagged. She went to the sofa and sat down on the edge, clutching her glass in both hands, looking at the carpet.

  “The killer slit his throat, then wrote bitch on the wall with his blood.”

  “Good God,” she whispered, looking up at him. “But he killed a man this time. It’s obviously a message of some kind, a way to get attention.”

  “Whose attention, Doctor?” Louis asked.

  She stared at him.

  “The guard was stabbed in the lobby, but then whoever did it took the trouble to drag the body upstairs and into an office before he slit his throat—into your old office, I’d bet.”

  Louis watched her face for a reaction. But there was just a bland sadness that seemed forced.

  “It’s your attention he’s trying to get,” Louis said. “Why?”

  She set her glass on a table before she looked back at him.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Well, you’re a target now, Doctor, so you damn well better try to figure it out.”

  He could see a hint of displeasure flick across her face. But he didn’t care. He was tired. Tired of hitting dead ends, tired of chasing ghosts. A man had died tonight and he couldn’t get it out of his head that somehow he had been responsible.

  “You need to go to the police,” Louis said.

  She stood up. “Impossible.”

  “You need to tell them what you know, tell them about the files we pulled.”

  She was shaking her head. “I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I have a reputation to protect.”

  “Screw your reputation, damn it.”

  A couple seconds of silence ticked off before she spoke. “You are obviously under a lot of stress, Mr. Kincaid. I can’t imagine it is easy for you right now, being caught in the middle of all this.”

  She went back to the bar. Louis heard the clink of ice cubes. His head was throbbing, probably from not eating all day. He shut his eyes briefly. When he opened them, Dr. Seraphin was standing in front of him holding out a glass.

  “It’s brandy,” she said. “Take it.”

  He took the glass. The brandy burned a trail down his throat and hit his empty stomach like a hard punch.

  “Please sit down,” she said.

  He perched on the edge of the sofa, his back to the fireplace, across from the chair where she had been reading. The book was open, facing down on the ottoman. He could read the title: The Divided Self by R.D. Laing.

  “I want to help, Mr. Kincaid,” Dr. Seraphin said, sitting back down.

  “Then go to the police with what you know.”

  “I am the head of the state psychiatric association. Do you have any idea what will happen to me if they find out I breached confidentiality?”

  “Look,” Louis said, “when this guy is caught, there will be a trial. You will have to testify.”

  “You promised me—”

  “There is no way I can keep you out of it now.”

  Her expression didn’t change, but Louis could see the slow rise of anger reddening her cheeks.

  “No,” she said firmly.

  Louis took a quick swig of the brandy and banged the glass down. He reached inside his jacket, pulled out four file folders, and tossed them on the ottoman next to the book.

  “Then pick one, damn it. Tell me where to start.”

  Her eyes went from the folders up to his face. “You had no authority to take those out of the hospital.”

  “So sue me.”

  For a moment she didn’t move. A log fell in the fireplace with a sharp crack. Dr. Seraphin reached down and gathered up the files. She looked through each one slowly, then set them in her lap.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It could be any of these men, it could be someone we didn’t even find.”

  Louis rubbed the bridge of his nose. His head was killing him.

  “All right,” Dr. Seraphin said. “I won’t go to the police, but I will help you. I want to help you. I will advise you all I can. Find these four men, find out what they are doing now, find out who is functional and who is not. Maybe then I can narrow it down.”

  She held out the files, but Louis didn’t take them. “And I’ll go back over things tonight,” she said. “I’ll try to remember any others who seem to fit. Believe me, I want this man caught as much as you.”

  Dr. Seraphin was still holding the folders. After a moment, she set them on the ottoman and sat back in her chair, considering him carefully.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Kincaid?” she asked.

  “A headache, that’s all.”

  She nodded. “Not sleeping well either, I would imagine.” When he didn’t say anything, she added, “I could write you a prescription for something.”

  “I hate pills. But thanks anyway.”

  “Another brandy then?”

  “No, thanks,” he said, even though he wanted one badly.

  It was quiet. For a moment, just one, he wanted to close his eyes and give himself over to the silence, anything to stop the whirl of thoughts in his head. The warmth of the fire on his back was lulling. He didn’t even realize he had closed his eyes until she spoke again.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said.

  He looked at her. “Excuse me?”

  “The guard who died. It’s not your fault.”

  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.”

&nbs
p; 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.”

  CHAPTER 33

  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.

  It would make a much better story if I had your insights.”

  Louis shook his head.

  Delp shifted the folders and reached to his feet to open his briefcase. After a few seconds, he came up with a tattered old magazine, already flagged to a certain page. Louis could see the cover. Criminal Pursuits Magazine. And he knew what story Delp was about to read.

  “‘Kincaid, a twenty-seven-year-old unlicensed private investigator,’” Delp started, “‘refused to comment on his role in the capture of the Paint it Black serial killer, even after Lee County Sheriff Lance Mobley publically blasted him for his interference in the investigation. It is reported that Kincaid, an ex-police officer who left Michigan law enforcement a few years earlier under a black of cloud of suspicion—’”

  “Shut up.”

  Delp waved the magazine. “Is this the image you want?”

  “I don’t want any image.”

  “Well, you got one. You chase killers. Ordinary people love reading that shit. You can let crap like this sit out there or you can let me tell them what kind of man you really are.”

  Louis turned to the driver’s window, trying to keep his breathing even. He was furious and he tried to figure out why, but things weren’t making sense right now.

  “I’m going to write it anyway,” Delp said. “Not just when I do this story, but later in a full-fledged profile. With or without an interview.”

  When Louis still said nothing, Delp added, “I’ll do you right, Kincaid. I swear.”

  “Goddammit, Delp,” Louis said. “I’ll do your interview, but you’re going to do this my way or everything’s off.”

  Delp hesitated, then nodded. “Okay.” He went back to taking notes from the medical folders.

  Louis turned to the window. The car was hot now, the vent still blowing strong. The snow had stopped and the floodlight was bright white against a solid black sky. He tried to turn his thoughts back to Joe, and her smile and the feel of her body against his, but he couldn’t.

  The magazine article had taken him somewhere else. Somewhere back, deep into the northern Michigan pines. He was hearing the crack of a sniper’s bullet, seeing blood spreading across the collar of a baby-blue uniform as he held his partner, Ollie, in his arms. And he was feeling the cold on the back of his neck as h
e stood over the body of the first man he had ever killed.

  “Done here, man,” Delp said.

  Louis looked at Delp. “When will you know something?”

  “Day after tomorrow maybe,” Delp said, stacking the folders and tossing them in the backseat. He slipped his notebook back inside his coat, then reached for the door.

  Louis caught his arm. “When you get back to me, you’re going to tell me everything you find out, you got that?”

  “I got it.”

  “And you breathe even a hint of this to anyone, I swear, Delp, they won’t find you till spring.”

  Delp laughed as he pushed open the door. “Funny, Kincaid. Real funny.”

  Delp got out and Louis watched him walk to his Civic. Man, this was probably as low as he had ever gone, asking a reporter like Delp for help while experienced police officers fumbled around in the dark. And he tried to figure out why he had done it. He could have walked away from all of this as late as this morning and left Dr. Seraphin and Detective Bloom to figure it all out. If he’d done that, he’d be home by now, sitting on his porch, listening to the pounding of the waves, and drinking a beer, waiting for Joe’s car to pull into his drive.

  Florida and everything he had there had never seemed so far away.

  CHAPTER 34

  Louis was still asleep when Dee Dalum came into the guest room, gently shook him awake, and handed him the phone. He struggled to sit up as he took it.

  “Yeah?” he managed.

  “Louis, it’s Phil.” A pause. “Are you coming home today?”

  Louis could see a gray morning light seeping out from behind the drapes and he could smell coffee brewing.

  “I don’t know, Phil,” he said. “There’s a lot going on here now and—”

  “You aren’t even staying here anymore, Louis.”

  Louis swung his feet over the bed to the floor. “I know. I was going to drive back last night but the roads were bad.”

  There was a long pause on Phillip’s end. “I need you home. I need to talk to you.”