South of Hell (Louis Kincaid Mysteries)

by P J Parrish

  A Bible…

  He pulled it out. It was a heavy old thing, its dark red leather scarred, its bindings eaten away by age and insects. He had seen one like it before, back in the Mississippi boarding house where he had briefly stayed while waiting for his mother to die. The woman who had rented him the room—Bessie, he could still see her face clearly—had brought the Bible out one night to show him her family tree because she had a notion that it would instill a sense of pride in his own roots. It hadn’t worked—that was a different life, and he had been a different, younger man then. But he had been intrigued by Bessie’s attachment to her past and her need to write it all down.

  The Bible opened with a soft crack. And there it was, whole lives laid out on the frontispiece in a listing of births, deaths, and marriages.

  Louis took the Bible over to the small window for more light. The names at the top said family record amos and phoebe brandt. Patting his jacket, he found his glasses and slipped them on. The listings began in 1800, and a quick calculation told him he was looking at Owen Brandt’s great-great-great-grandparents.

  Family Record

  Amos and Phoebe Brandt

  This confirmed that the farm had been in the Brandt family for generations. And at least Louis had hard proof that the Amos of Amy’s memories was a real man and that his name had been written down in a Bible that Amy could have seen.

  As Louis studied the names, he found himself trying to imagine what kind of man Amos Brandt had been. And even stranger, he was trying to imagine what Amos Brandt would feel seeing his farm in ruin and worse, knowing his family tree had produced such rotted stock as Owen.

  He glanced at his watch. He had to get out of here before Brandt returned. He was about to close the Bible when a thought hit him.

  He looked again at the names.

  Damn. Amos and Phoebe had only two daughters, Ann and Lucinda. The daughters had married and taken their husbands’ names. So, how had the Brandt name survived five generations without sons? Who the hell had Owen Brandt descended from? Something wasn’t right.

  There were two words scrawled under one of the death entries. The second word was cemetery; the other might have said brandt, but he couldn’t make it out.

  He closed the Bible, took it and the tin of photographs, and climbed down out of the attic and went back to the kitchen. He retraced his steps through the cellar and closed the blue doors, pulling weeds over them.

  Back in the Bronco, he tore a muddy, gravel-spewing path back to the Texaco station. No sign of the Gremlin, so he chanced a quick stop at the gas station, parking out of sight just in case.

  Inside, a pimply-faced kid was tipped back in a chair behind the register reading a comic book. He looked up at Louis with eyes that said he didn’t get many black men in this part of his world.

  “Hey, is there a cemetery around here?” Louis asked.

  The kid frowned. “Well, there’s a big county one up near Pinckney.”

  “No, I mean a small one, like just for one family.”

  The kid shook his head. “Ain’t nothing buried around here.”

  Louis thanked him and left. Back in the Bronco, as he waited for the heater to chase away the chill, he looked again at the Bible’s frontispiece.

  Two things were gnawing at his brain. How had Owen Brandt come to inherit the farm and the Brandt name if Amos had no sons? And why had Amy screamed out Amos’s name in terror?

  He stared at the name amos brandt at the top of the register. This was the man who would give him answers.

  All he had to do was find him.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  A phone call to the Livingston County records office had led Louis to a clerk who had patiently gone through the records but found nothing with the name Brandt in it. It didn’t even appear on the countywide survey of family plots the Daughters of the American Revolution had done back in the forties.

  But the clerk had told Louis that her grandfather often talked about an abandoned cemetery somewhere out by Lethe Creek. She directed him to Talladay Trail, a dirt road that ran along Lethe Creek. The creek, Louis knew, was the northern border of the Brandt land.

  The Bronco bounced along the rutted road, overgrown branches scraping the windows. Louis slowed to avoid a hole, and that was when he saw the small break in the trees. He stopped and peered out of the side window.

  He thought he caught a glimmer of water through the brush. But no way could he get the Bronco down that road. He switched off the engine and got out.

  Through the quiet, the trickle of water pricked his ears. He followed the sound through the brush and down a hill, emerging into a marshy slough.

  Lethe Creek spilled out before him, its tea-colored water cutting a slow, broad swath through the cattails and sedge grasses before disappearing into a tunnel of black trees to the west.

  There was a patch of high, cleared ground on the south bank and what looked like headstones. Or maybe they were just rocks jutting from the ground. He couldn’t be sure.

  Louis eyed the dark water. Upstream, it narrowed enough for him to venture a leap across. He made it—barely—almost leaving a shoe in the muck on the bank as he fell forward trying to break his momentum.

  Wiping his muddy hands on his jeans, he went up the rise. He was standing on a hill, and he looked south. There, through the bare trees, he could just make out the faded red of the old Brandt barn a mile or so away.

  He headed east toward the clearing where he thought he had seen the gray stones. They were, indeed, grave markers, mostly small square slabs of granite, some lying toppled in the weeds, others broken and listing.

  He went to the front of the largest headstone. The inscription, mottled with moss, was so worn he could barely make it out:

  AMOS BRANDT

  BORN MAY 3, 1800

  DIED JUNE 6, 1879

  WHERE THERE IS MUCH LIGHT

  THE SHADOWS ARE DEEPEST

  The wind sent the trees sighing, and Louis shrugged off the shower of dead leaves. He surveyed the other headstones. There was one of equal size and shape but it was in two pieces, facedown in the weeds. He pried the edge from the dirt and flipped it over. The only word still visible through a swirl of ants was phoebe.

  Amos’s wife.

  He went to the nearest stone, the one just to the right of Amos’s large marker. He was expecting to see one of the daughters’ names from the family Bible, Lucinda or Ann. The carved letters were completely covered in moss. He found a stick, squatted down, and dug out the moss until the letters emerged:

  CHARLES BRANDT

  BORN JANUARY 1832

  DIED APRIL 1895

  BELOVED SON OF AMOS

  Louis rose slowly. Charles? There had been no record of this name in the family Bible. Louis moved on to the nearest headstone. Most of it was sunken in the ground, leaving only one name and part of a date visible;

  CLEONA

  1889

  Near this one was a tiny marker with the inscription

  INFANT DAUGHTER

  Gone to the Angels 1856

  Was this Charles Brandt’s wife and daughter? There were three other headstones that were too old and decayed to make out the inscriptions. Louis noticed another, newer-style headstone in the far southern corner of the clearing and went to it. It was a simple gray marker:

  This had to be Owen’s parents. Louis looked across the grass, back at the first headstone. And Amos must have been the patriarch who had first settled here generations ago. So, why were Amos’s “beloved son” Charles and his family buried here at Amos’s right side, but their names were not recorded in the family Bible?

  Louis felt something touch his leg, and he jumped. He looked down to see a large dog sniffing at his pants. Louis backed away slowly, and the dog gave out a low growl.

  “Don’t move.”

  Louis spun at the sound of the voice. An old man was standing at the edge of the trees. How had he not heard him or the dog coming? The dog was staring at him. It had o
ne blue eye and one brown eye.

  The old man came forward. He was wearing a red plaid jacket over mud-caked overalls, a John Deere cap pulled low over a thin face elongated by a full gray beard. He carried a stripped-down tree branch as a walking stick.

  “Here, give him this, and he’ll leave you be,” the old man said, holding out a Milk Bone.

  Louis, one eye still on the dog, took the biscuit and held it out. The big mutt snatched it and trotted away. Louis let out a breath.

  “What’s your business here?” the old man asked.

  There was a challenge in the man’s voice, and Louis was about to ask the same thing when the old man gave him a gap-toothed smile.

  “You’re one of them history nuts, right?” he asked. “Snooping around graveyards looking for your roots.”

  Louis nodded, deciding it was better not to be caught trespassing on the Brandt land.

  “You got kin here?” the old man asked.

  Louis searched the man’s face for a smirk. But his expression was merely one of mild curiosity. Then it came to Louis in a cold, clear rush: Charles wasn’t in the family Bible because he wasn’t Phoebe’s son. Charles had a different mother. And she was black.

  “You part of the Brandt clan?” the man asked again.

  “No, I’m just interested in old cemeteries,” Louis said.

  “Lots of folks are,” the old man said, and went off to find his dog.

  Louis walked back to Amos’s headstone, an idea forming in his head. The mid-1800s…of course, there would have been black servants living on the farm. A young black servant woman, an older man who wielded power over her. An illegitimate son.

  Beloved son of Amos.

  The dog was back suddenly, sniffing at Louis’s feet. Louis felt the old man at his side a moment later.

  “Do you know much about the Brandt history?” Louis asked.

  “Little bit,” the old man said. “Been walking this earth a long time, son. Now I just walk Henry here every day this time.”

  “Do you know about the bones found on the farm this week?”

  “Yup, read about it in the paper. They say they belonged to a black woman. Been there a long time, they said.”

  “Charles Brandt,” Louis said. “Was Phoebe his mother?”

  “Well, there was always talk about the Brandts. Way back, I mean,” the old man said. “That there was…well…”

  “A black woman in the family,” Louis said evenly.

  The man nodded.

  Louis went to Charles’s headstone. The big yellow dog trotted over and sat by Louis’s feet.

  “Is Charles’s mother buried here?” Louis asked.

  “Don’t know. Hard to tell with these old stones being as messed up as they are,” the man said. “Nobody to care for this place anymore. Things went to hell after Jonah died. The daughter, Geneva, ran off, and the son, Owen, got in trouble with the law, I heard.”

  Louis was thinking about the bones of the black woman buried in the Brandt barn. It struck him odd that Amos’s “beloved” black son, Charles, was buried here but that Charles’s mother was not.

  His eyes traveled over the other ruined and half-buried headstones. Maybe her headstone had simply been lost. Or was she the woman whose bones had been found in the barn?

  “Folks are saying she was probably a slave,” the old man said.

  Louis looked over at him.

  “That woman they found in the barn, I mean,” the man said.

  “Michigan was a free state,” Louis said.

  The man tugged at his beard. “Maybe she was runaway and the slave catchers found her at a station here.”

  “Station?” Louis said. “You mean the Underground Railroad?”

  The man nodded. “Two of the lines ran right through these parts, they say.”

  Louis looked past the old man, southward through the bare trees, to the faded red of the Brandt barn. He was seeing the bones in the dirt, but he was hearing Amy’s descriptions of men on horses with torches.

  He shook his head slowly.

  “What’s the matter, son?” the old man asked.

  “Nothing,” Louis said.

  The old man tugged the John Deere cap down on his head. “This is a haunted place,” he said. “You can feel it, you can.” He scratched the dog’s head. “Let’s go home, Henry.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Joe was perched on the edge of the bed, the old tin of photographs, the Bible, the piano roll, and the scrap of pink wallpaper spread out on the blanket.

  “You haven’t said what you think about all this,” Louis said.

  “It certainly explains some things,” Joe said.

  “I think Dr. Sher is right,” Louis said.

  “About what?”

  “Imagination, real memories, that Amy is just mixing all this up in her head,” Louis said.

  Joe gave him a warning with her eyes to lower his voice. He looked to the open door and went to it. Amy was sitting on the floor of the living room watching Phil Donahue. Joe had been slowly introducing the girl to television, and she was mesmerized by everything. She was sitting only a foot from the screen, and for a second, Louis thought about telling her to move back, but then he remembered how it annoyed him when his foster mother, Frances, bugged him about the same thing. He closed the door and turned back to Joe.

  She was going through the photographs from the tin. She held one out. “Did you see this?”

  Louis came forward and took it. It was a sepia-toned photograph of a white man and woman. And a second woman, dark-skinned, holding a baby.

  He turned it over. No names or date. But the clothing looked as if it could be of the Civil War era. The man was bearded, with wire-rimmed glasses, wearing a suit. The woman was thin-faced, with severe dark hair, wearing a light printed gown and a dark shawl bound with a cameo brooch. The black woman was much younger, her ebony skin a sharp contrast to the white of her blouse, which seemed too large for her slender frame. Her hair was bound in a scarf. The face of the baby in her arms was as white as its long christening dress.

  “Amos and Phoebe?” Joe asked.

  “That’s my guess,” Louis said. He took his glasses from his pocket and slipped them on.

  “Then who’s the other woman?” Joe asked.

  “Charles Brandt’s mother?” Louis said.

  “And maybe the woman we found in the barn?”

  “There’s no way to prove it.”

  Joe sat back against the headboard. “But you want to.”

  Louis took off his glasses, bringing Joe back into focus. He had known her for more than a year but had told her little about his past. Yet she seemed to know him so well at times. He came over to sit next to her on the bed.

  “When I was on the force here in Ann Arbor, I had to take a leave to go to Mississippi,” he said. “I didn’t want to go. I hadn’t been there since I was seven, but my mother was dying, so I went.”

  “I didn’t know you were from Mississippi,” Joe said.

  “I was born there but went into foster care here in Michigan with the Lawrences when I was seven,” Louis said. “While I was down there, I got involved in this old case. Some bones were found in the woods. They turned out to be a lynching victim. No one wanted to know who this man was. No one wanted to speak for him. So I had to.”

  “Did you ever find out who it was?” Joe asked.

  Louis nodded. “His name was Eugene Graham.”

  Joe drew in a long breath. “Louis, we have other things to consider here. We can’t get distracted by this.”

  “I know that, Joe.”

  “We have Jean’s murder to think about,” Joe said. “And we have another hearing coming up in less than a week, and if we don’t find something, Owen Brandt will step in front of that judge and ask for his daughter back.”

  “I know that, too. Maybe the judge will give us more time.”

  Joe shook her head. “But I don’t have more time. I have to get back to work.”


  Louis rose and walked away, waiting a moment before he turned back to face her. He held up the old photograph. “Things like this are important to me, Joe.”

  “Well, what happens to that girl out there is important to me, Louis,” Joe said.

  Louis was quiet. A sudden crazy thought had come to him: Phillip and Frances taking in Amy. But the Lawrences hadn’t taken in a foster kid in more than a decade.

  A squeak drew their eyes to the door. Amy poked her face in through the crack. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said.

  “It’s okay, Amy. What is it?” Joe asked.

  “Mr. Shockey is here.” She lowered her voice. “And I think he’s been drinking beer.”

  Louis went out into the living room. Jake Shockey was standing just inside the door. His face was flushed, and his jacket looked as if he had slept in it. But it was his expression that made Louis go to him.

  “Jake, what’s the matter?”

  Shockey managed a hard smile. “Hey, peeper. Just wanted to drop in and see how things are going.” His red-rimmed eyes drifted past Louis and found Amy standing with Joe at the bedroom door. “How’s the kid?”

  Louis glanced back at Joe, then took Shockey’s arm. “Come on, I think you need some coffee.”

  Shockey didn’t seem to hear him. He was still looking at Amy.

  “I’ll be back in a while,” Louis said to Joe. He took Shockey’s arm and steered him out the door.

  They were the only two people in the hotel lounge. It was a sports bar, strung with NASCAR banners, UM pennants and Big Ten flags. A maize-and-blue football jersey was encased in plastic behind the bar: #48—GERALD FORD, 1932–34.

  Shockey hefted himself onto a bar stool and leaned on his elbows. Louis took the stool next to him, looking around for a bartender. The place was quiet except for the swish-swish of the glass-washing machine.

  “You don’t have to babysit me, Kincaid.”

  “You look like you had a tough day.”