by P J Parrish
Screaming. His eyes jerked open and he struggled to get up, bracing himself on the wall and wincing at the pain in his frozen feet.
No, not a scream. It was a scraping sound. He started down the tunnel toward the sound, limping, swaying from wall to wall. Another scrape, louder now.
It was the doors. Had to be the doors.
He tried to go faster, but each step sent stabs of pain shooting up his legs. The tunnel seemed to be growing colder. He hit an intersection and kept going. And then, suddenly, the air started to change. There was something different in it now, something colder and sharper.
More water. And the crunch of glass under his feet. No, ice.
And the air. It was cold. So fucking cold. And so . . . so fresh. He kept following it.
He stopped. In the black void ahead, he could see something. He squinted, afraid his mind was deceiving him again.
There was something there. A glimmer of gray . . . a faint cast of light and he knew what it was. The doors. The metal doors were open and the air he was feeling was coming from the opening by the lift.
The doors were open.
He stumbled to them, pressing his hands against the rusty surface. Then he felt his way along the concrete wall, his feet slipping on the water, the air getting colder and clearer.
The lift came into view, blue in the shaft of moonlight. A shadowy iron square, frosted with ice, shimmering at the end of the tunnel.
And next to it, a ladder.
He staggered to it. He fell off the first step of the ladder and he had to concentrate to make his foot stay on the rung. He grabbed the sides and pulled himself up, first one step, then another. And finally he was above-ground.
He threw himself off the ladder, hitting a thick layer of crusty snow, and he wanted to just lie there, but he didn’t, and he crawled a few feet, then pushed his body up onto all fours, gulping in the air. He stayed that way for a long time, afraid to open his eyes, afraid it was all a dream. His hands grew cold in the snow.
Slowly, he rose to his knees and looked out at the cemetery.
Everything was iced over, silvery white under a generous moon, all of it still and unmoving and pure. And it was beautiful.
CHAPTER 40
The light was pale pink, the morning rising as if it were coming from a deep sleep. Even the voices seemed hushed, and the footsteps in the snow were a soft steady crunch, like something brittle and fragile was breaking under the ground.
Louis stood wrapped in a blanket, someone else’s shoes on his feet, gloves on his hands. His body still trembled, but the cold was gone, leaving nothing inside. He watched the police work, watched as they disappeared in and out of the hole in the ground like roaches scrambling from the light.
Chief Dalum stood nearby, silent now, long ago giving up trying to urge Louis to go to the hospital. Louis had asked about Charlie, but Dalum hadn’t known anything. Didn’t know where Charlie was or why he hadn’t delivered the message.
“Bloom is here,” Dalum said suddenly.
Louis looked toward the cemetery entrance. Detective Bloom was hurrying toward them, his face red and wrinkled from sleep, his coat open, shirt half tucked in. Another man struggled to keep up with him, talking quickly as they both made long strides across the snow.
Bloom stopped at Louis, silencing the other cop with a wave of his hand. Louis looked at him for a moment, then away.
“What the hell were you thinking going down there?” Bloom asked.
Louis stared at the hole in the ground, pulling the blanket tighter. He heard Dalum say something to Bloom, and then the two walked away. Bloom came back a few minutes later, head down, and he blew out an apologetic breath.
“You need to see a doctor,” Bloom said.
“When they find her.”
Bloom glanced at the hole. “We have someone working on the electricity now. If she’s down there, they’ll find her.”
“She is there,” Louis snapped.
“Wasn’t what I meant, Kincaid. Any idea who it was?”
“No.”
A uniform waved at Bloom. “Lights are on down there,” he called. “At least in some places.”
Bloom gave him a nod, then looked back at Louis. “You warm enough?”
Louis ignored him.
Bloom motioned toward the hole. “You feel like showing us anything?”
Louis didn’t move. Bloom waited for an answer, but Louis couldn’t give him one, couldn’t even take a step toward the hole. There was a part of him that knew how that looked, that it looked weak and frightened, but he just couldn’t do it.
“Look,” Bloom said, “I’ll have one of my officers drive you back to Adrian.”
“No.”
“What the hell do you want me to do with you then?”
“Just leave me alone.”
“If you won’t see a doctor, then I need a statement and I need it quick. Anything you can tell us might help catch this guy.”
“He’s gone.”
“How do you know that?”
Louis spun to him. “Because I fucking know. And I know what’s behind all this, too. I know what they were doing here and why they were doing it and why they had to hide it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Louis almost said it. Almost told him about the babies and the experiments, about Ives and Seraphin, but something stopped him. It was a small, instantaneous flash of clarity that he knew he should listen to. If he told him what he knew, Bloom would think he was crazy, really crazy.
But there was one thing he could tell him. “His name is Buddy Ives,” Louis said. “He was a patient here.”
“I guess you just fucking know that, too?”
“His handprint is on the damn door down there—just like the one he left on the E Building wall.”
Bloom fell quiet, his gaze drifting back to the lift. He let the silence fill the moment, and Louis finally looked away from him.
“I guess we owe you and Charlie an apology,” Bloom said.
“You’ve seen Charlie?” Louis asked.
“Yeah,” Bloom said, his voice edged with embarrassment. “When he showed up at the security gate yesterday afternoon my officer arrested him.”
“Arrested him?”
Bloom’s hand came up. “We told him three times to stay off the grounds. We had no choice.”
“You stupid son of a bitch.”
“Hold it right there, Kincaid.”
“Was the cop fucking deaf?” Louis said.
Bloom put a hand on Louis’s chest, but Louis pushed it off, losing the blanket as he stepped into Bloom. Bloom grabbed Louis’s arm and tried to turn him, but Louis twisted away and his arm came back to take a swing, but he never made it. He was pushed down into the snow, a dozen hands keeping him there. He jerked back, trying to push himself up, but he had no strength, and he finally went limp under their pressure.
Bloom’s mouth came down to his ear. “Please,” he said firmly. “Don’t do this. Let us help you.”
Louis lowered his head, taking a moment to close his eyes and calm himself. Then he gave Bloom a nod and the hands left his back. Bloom and Dalum helped him to his feet. Louis wiped his face and stared at the ground, trying to sort his thoughts, but he couldn’t. Things still didn’t seem right.
A cop handed him the blanket and Louis took it and put it around him. He just looked at the snow, his mind almost as frozen as his body.
A radio went off somewhere close by and Louis thought he caught something about a girl and he was at the edge of the hole before Bloom. Two uniforms and a man in a CSU jacket stood at the bottom.
“We found a body,” one of them called up. “It’s bad.”
Louis stared at the man, anxious to know more but afraid of what it might be. Afraid the woman he heard dying was Alice. Or even Dr. Seraphin.
“What did she look like?” he asked.
The crime scene investigator glanced at Bloom for permission to answer and Bloom gave hi
m a nod.
“Twenty—maybe,” the man said. “Long brown hair, hundred ten, hundred fifteen pounds.”
Louis stared down at the man’s face, seeing the emptiness in it as he went on, talking about things Louis had to concentrate on to understand.
“She was nude, beaten some, then burned, maybe with a cigarette, and it looked like someone tried to dig out her insides, Detective.”
Louis turned and walked away, stopping ten or fifteen feet away from the hole. He could feel his mind shutting down, filling itself with a cottony darkness.
After a few seconds, Bloom came up behind him. “You ready to leave now, Kincaid?”
“Yes.”
“Stay at the station house until I get there. If you want a doctor, have the officer call one. We’ll take care of it.”
Louis nodded and headed toward the gates of the cemetery.
Charlie was in a cell, sitting on a single bunk, his back to the wall. It looked like a temporary holding cell, but it was locked, officers working nearby, phones ringing and computers clicking.
A cop unlocked the door, swung it open, and left. When Charlie didn’t move, Louis stepped to the cell.
“You can come out now, Charlie,” Louis said.
Charlie looked up at him, then down, embarrassed. “Is Miss Alice here?”
“No,” Louis said. “But she’s coming to pick you up.”
“I’ll wait here. It’s cold out there.”
“Can I come in and wait with you?” Louis asked.
Charlie didn’t answer, but he scooted over on the bunk. Louis went in and sat down next to him. He was still shivering a little, but he wore a Michigan State Police sweatshirt now, given to him after he had taken a shower in the cops’ locker room.
He had stayed in the shower almost thirty minutes, feeling the hot water burn his skin, standing there, eyes closed, hoping the heat and water would somehow wash away the stench of the tunnel and everything else, but knowing somewhere inside that nothing would ever wash it off.
Charlie was staring at the cops, his breaths slow and heavy.
“I messed up,” he said finally.
“We both did.”
Charlie glanced at him, holding the look a long time before he spoke. “They told me you got stuck in the hole.”
“Yes.”
“Were you down there a long time?”
“Yes.”
“Was it dark?”
“Yes.”
“Were you scared?”
Louis didn’t answer. Charlie drew his feet to the edge of the bunk and wrapped his arms around his knees.
“Did you see them?” Charlie asked.
“See who?”
“Those things that come in the dark.”
“Yes,” Louis said. “I saw things.”
“Did you see the apple babies?”
“I heard them.”
Charlie lowered his head to his knees and was quiet for a long time. “They’re not coming back, are they?”
“No,” Louis said quietly.
Charlie lifted his head and pulled his knees closer to his chest, watching the stir of activity in the office.
“You don’t need the apple babies to make a new home somewhere, Charlie,” Louis said. “You have everything you need to do that by yourself.”
They sat silent, only the ringing of phones and murmur of voices in their ears. Charlie seemed to be thinking about what Louis had just said. Then Charlie looked at him, his eyes clear and focused.
“‘I had a dream,’” he said softly. “‘I had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.’”
“That’s from your book,” Louis said.
Charlie nodded. “Do you know what it means?”
Louis let out a long breath. “Yes, I do.”
Detective Bloom stood behind his desk, collar open, tie loose, his eyes fogged with fatigue or maybe disbelief, Louis wasn’t sure. Dalum stood off to the right, and another detective Louis didn’t know stood to the left.
All three were digesting what he had just told them, which had been everything he knew about this whole case. The rapes, dating back to Claudia and including Millie Reuben, and both of them being burned with cigarettes. How they had dug up Donald Lee Becker. Louis then went on to betray Dr. Seraphin, explaining how she came to E Building and picked out suspects. How Ives had been one of those suspects.
And then he had wrapped it up with his theory of how Dr. Seraphin had for some reason condoned or arranged the rapes, and that there had been babies conceived—Charlie’s apple babies—and those babies were aborted or later killed because of deformities and were now in rusty cans in John Spera’s tent.
Louis waited, watching their faces, knowing with every word how insane it sounded to three seasoned cops, but he didn’t care. He knew it was true.
Bloom looked at Chief Dalum. “Maybe you should take Kincaid back to your house, Dan.”
Dalum looked at Louis, trying to work some sympathy into his face, but Louis was seeing only incredulity.
“I know how crazy it seems,” Louis said. “But I can take you to Millie Reuben. She’ll tell you. She may even be able to identify Ives as her rapist.”
“No.”
“Then take me to Dr. Seraphin’s lake house,” Louis said, stepping forward. “Confront her on all this. Ask her about our trip to E Building and how she picked Ives out and why she let him do what he did.”
Again, they were quiet. Louis felt a slow shiver make its way across his shoulders as he waited for an answer, some sign that they would take this one step further.
“Do your damn job,” Louis said. “Just ask her some questions. She knows everything.”
“All right,” Bloom said. “I’ll go out there.”
“I want to go with you.”
“Jesus Christ,” Bloom said. “Give me a break here, Kincaid. You’re in no shape to go anywhere.”
“I can help you. I know what to ask, how to handle her.”
Bloom gave a heavy sigh and he looked to Dalum, then back at Louis. “All right, but you keep your mouth shut unless I need you to open it. We clear?”
“Yeah.”
Bloom picked his coat up off the chair, his head moving in a slow, impatient shake.
“I want my gun,” Louis said. “Give it back to me.”
Bloom was pulling the black overcoat on his shoulders. “Not today, Kincaid. You see yourself a doctor first and we’ll talk about that.”
Louis rubbed his face, fighting the urge to argue, knowing he wouldn’t win. He turned and left the office, walking stiffly through the halls and pushing out the front doors.
Everything was gray and muted and cold. He stood on the steps for a few minutes, then walked down to the sidewalk, head bent, hands in his pockets.
The door opened behind him and he looked back to see Chief Dalum come out, but he turned away from him, not wanting a lecture. Or sympathy. Or pity.
“Louis,” Dalum said.
When Louis didn’t answer him, Dalum came up next to him and stood quietly for a second before speaking. “I want you to know, I believe most of what you said in there.”
Louis stared at the ground.
“Something else, too,” Dalum said. “The state has no death certificate on file for Claudia DeFoe.”
Louis could not answer. There was something in his head that couldn’t grasp what Dalum was telling him. Couldn’t figure out what to do with the information. God, what was wrong with him?
He felt Dalum’s hand on his shoulder. “It’s time for you to go home,” he said. “You need to be with family right now.”
Louis’s eyes were drawn to a state cruiser pulling from the parking lot. It stopped in front of the station, and Bloom honked the horn for him.
Louis faced Dalum, reaching slowly into his pocket and withdrawing his wallet. He flipped it open and took out the Ardmore badge.
“Thanks for everything, Dan,” Louis
said.
Dalum took the badge and Louis walked away from him, toward the blue cruiser.
CHAPTER 41
Oliver opened the door of the lake house and stood there, one hand still on the door to block their entry. Bloom held open his coat so Oliver could see the badge.
“We’d like to see Dr. Seraphin.”
Oliver’s chin dipped in a quick nod and he walked away, leaving the door open as he disappeared down the hall. Louis and Bloom made their way to the living room. Louis was drawn to the fireplace and moved to it, holding out his hands. Bloom went to a window.
“Lake’s not frozen over yet,” Bloom said.
Louis didn’t answer.
“Pretty isolated area for a woman who might be in danger from a crazy man,” Bloom added, turning back to Louis.
“I think the man who let us in is her bodyguard,” Louis said. “My guess is she’s had him for years.”
“Why?”
“Because she knew Ives might come after her someday.”
Bloom looked at Louis, his face wrinkled with the same doubt as it had shown in his office. Louis let it go, edging closer to the fire. He heard footsteps coming back down the hall, then Oliver’s voice.
“The doctor will see you in the den.”
Dr. Seraphin was standing near the glass doors that led out to the snow-covered deck, a glass of white wine in her hand. Behind her, the lake moved with an icy slowness, almost blending into the smoke-colored afternoon sky.
Her eyes went to Louis and stayed there. She seemed to sense something was different and her face reflected first a glimmer of curiosity, then changed to a mask of defiance. Maybe anger.
“Good afternoon, Officers,” she said.
Bloom introduced himself, flashed a badge Dr. Seraphin did not look at, and started speaking slowly, first telling her about Ives, the latest victim whose name was still unknown, and the cemetery tunnel, then adding a few words about Louis’s being trapped in it.
“I had forgotten about that tunnel,” she said softly. “How long were you trapped, Mr. Kincaid?”
“Over twelve hours.”
Seraphin showed no expression. “How terrible for you.”
