An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries) (17 page)

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Authors: P.J. Parrish

BOOK: An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries)
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The sun crawled out from behind a cloud. Louis was about to stand up when something caught his eye in the dirt. It was a tiny flash that came to life for just an instant in the sun and was gone.
“Chief,” he said, pointing.
“What is it?” Dalum asked, squinting.
Louis carefully wedged a finger in the dirt and popped the object out of the ground. It was dirt-encrusted and he still couldn’t tell exactly what it was. He picked up a stick and used it to flick away more dirt. It was a ring.
“I’ll be damned,” Dalum said.
Louis glanced back at the crime tech, who was putting away his tools. He used the stick to scrape away some of the dirt, enough so they could see an emblem and a stone. It looked like a class ring.
“Better leave it,” Dalum said.
Louis nodded and dropped the stick, as Dalum called over the tech guy. Louis rose, brushing the dirt from his hands.
The tech guy was working on the ring now, and Louis knew it would eventually make its way into a nice clean evidence bag. Soon enough they would have a school and a date and a lead on an ID. One thing was sure right now, however. Whoever this was, it wasn’t a Hidden Lake patient, because Alice had told him patients weren’t allowed to wear jewelry.
Louis felt a strange surge of disappointment that it couldn’t be Claudia. At least he would have had something to take back to Phillip, something less horrible than one of those pathetic forgotten cans.
“Kincaid?”
He turned back to Dalum.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why are you hanging around here? What exactly is it that you’re investigating here?”
Louis hesitated. It didn’t seem right, telling a stranger the intimacies of Phillip’s past. But if there was even the slimmest possibility this was Claudia’s remains, then Dalum had a right to know. Louis told the story, told Dalum about Phillip and Claudia, about the rocks in the casket, about Dr. Seraphin and the copper cans in the bowels of the hospital. Before he knew it, he had also told him about Eloise DeFoe committing her only daughter, and about Rodney DeFoe not even wanting to bring his sister’s remains home. When Louis was finished, Dalum was staring at him.
“You think your case has anything to do with these bones? Or Rebecca Gruber?”
“No,” Louis said.
“Why not?”
“Patients weren’t allowed to wear jewelry. And Claudia DeFoe died in 1972. That puts sixteen years between her and Rebecca Gruber. Too much time.”
Dalum put his hands on his hips and scanned the cemetery. “Two women dead,” he said almost to himself. “Both left in the same place. This can’t be a coincidence.”
“Chief, I have something to tell you,” Louis said. “It may not have anything to do with this, but I don’t think we can discount anything right now.”
Dalum looked at Louis.
“I was in E Building yesterday,” Louis said. “I heard a noise. I didn’t see anyone.”
“But?” Dalum said, sensing Louis had more to say.
Louis shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”
Dalum took a long breath, his hands slipping into his jacket pockets. Louis knew Dalum was probably taking this personally, like it was an invasion in his small hometown. He knew, too, that it was going to be hard for Dalum to hand things off to the state or county boys. But any small-town cop who was worth a damn knew there was no choice.
A whirring noise made Louis turn.
Shit
. It was Doug Delp.
Dalum spun around. “What the hell? How’d you get in here?”
Delp let the camera fall so it hung over his suede jacket. He held up his hands. “Hey, Chief. I’m just doing my job.”
“Get out of here! Pete! Escort this asshole back behind the line.”
A hulking officer appeared and clamped a mitt on Delp’s shoulder. Delp looked to Louis for help, but Louis offered nothing.
“I know you found bones,” Delp hollered as the officer gave him a shove. “I know you’ve got the whole damn county on their way down here.”
The officer grabbed Delp’s jacket again.
“Damn it, wait a minute!” Delp said. “I have information. I can help you.”
“Get him out of here now, Pete,” Dalum said.
“Becker did it!” Delp yelled. “Donald Lee Becker, that’s your guy.”
Louis and Dalum stared at Delp.
“Becker’s dead, you moron,” the chief said. “Now get out of here before I run you in.”
Louis watched the officer drag Delp off toward the cemetery entrance. Just outside the two towering pines, the officer gave Delp a shove and the reporter stumbled toward his Civic. But he didn’t get in. He just stood there, looking back at them. The officer came back, shaking his head and circling a finger near his temple as he walked past Louis.
Dalum turned his gaze from Delp. “Is that the guy who’s been bothering Alice and everyone?”
“Yup,” Louis said.
“Never seen him before. What paper is he with?”
“He’s not. He’s here to get material for a book about Becker.”
Dalum shook his head. The crime scene tech was waving him over, so Dalum left Louis standing alone at the edge of the shallow grave. Louis stared down at the bones. When he looked up, his eyes went back to the cemetery entrance. Delp was still there.
Louis walked through the brown grass and out through the pine trees. Delp watched him coming, leaning against his car smoking a cigarette.
“I saw that,” Delp said. “I saw what that cop did. You think I’m nuts. But I’m not. Donald Lee Becker is alive.”
Louis pointed back to the cemetery. “Becker is in there, Delp, has been for eight years.”
Delp stuck the cigarette in his mouth and used both hands to rummage through his pockets. He pulled out a creased photograph and held it up. “See this? This is Donald Lee Becker. It was taken at his farm up near Mason.”
“So?”
“It was taken three years ago,” Delp said.
Louis took the picture from Delp. It was a blurry black-and-white shot of a guy standing in a cornfield. “You can’t tell who this is,” Louis said.
“Eyewitnesses,” Delp said. “They’ve seen him.”
“Yeah, sharing a Slurpee at the 7-Eleven with Elvis.”
Delp snatched the photo from Louis’s hand and stuffed it back in his coat pocket. He tossed his cigarette to the dirt, unlooped the Nikon from around his neck, and aimed it toward the cemetery.
Instinctively, Louis held a hand up in front of the lens.
“Hey, man,” Delp said.
“Knock it off.”
“I got a right—”
Louis grabbed the camera. He knew he had no authority here, but the guy was a ghoul, lurking around taking pictures of bones before Dalum had even had a chance to figure out who it was.
Louis turned the camera over, looking for the latch to release the film-loading mechanism. Delp realized what he was doing.
“Hey, don’t do that, man,” Delp said, groping for the camera. “Don’t expose the film. All my shots of the asylum are on this roll.”
“The asylum?” Louis asked, holding the camera at arm’s length.
Delp put on a defensive face. “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
Louis looked hard at Delp, remembering the noise he had heard and the cigarette smoke he had smelled the day he was in E Building getting Claudia’s medical records. “Have you been inside E Building?”
“E Building?” Delp asked.
“Yeah,” Louis said. “The building Becker was in.”
Delp ran a hand across his nose. “No.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” Louis asked.
Delp was quiet. Louis looked down at the camera. He hit the Rewind button and the Nikon gave out a loud whirring sound.
“What you doing?” Delp said, grabbing for it.
Louis jerked the camera away. When it was finished rewinding, he popped open the back and took out the film, putting it in his pocket.
“You can’t have that!” Delp said.
“I’ll get the other pictures back to you.”
“Yeah, thanks a lot.”
Louis handed him the empty camera. “You’re lucky the chief didn’t throw you in jail for obstruction,” he said.
“Let him. It would make a good chapter in the book.” Delp leaned against the car again. He pulled out his pack of Kools, hesitated, and held it out to Louis.
Louis shook his head. Delp lit one for himself and looked back at the cemetery.
“So how old you think those bones are?” he asked.
“No way to tell.”
“But it’s a female, right?”
“No way to tell.”
“You’re jerking my chain, Kincaid.”
Louis was silent.
“Well, they looked old to me,” Delp said. “You know, Becker was in this place from the early sixties until 1980, don’t you?”
“I don’t care.”
“Becker died here. Under mysterious circumstances, they say.”
Louis didn’t look at him. He heard a door open and looked over to see Delp putting his Nikon back in a bag on the front seat. Louis’s eyes went to the box on the backseat. It was stuffed with folders,
D.L. Becker
scrawled in black marker on the side. He looked away as Delp emerged.
Delp leaned against the car again, his gaze going back to the cemetery. “They don’t have any names. Did you know that?”
Louis nodded slowly.
“Weird, huh? Wonder why they did that. Why did they only give them numbers?” he said.
Louis was quiet.
“The hospital people won’t tell me which grave is his,” Delp said. “You don’t happen to know, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter because Becker ain’t in it.” Delp took a drag on his cigarette. “But it would be kind of cool to find out who is.”
Louis was silent.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of strange?” Delp said.
“What?”
“That the hospital won’t tell me where he’s buried.”
Louis turned to face him. “It’s none of your fucking business, Delp.”
Delp gave a short laugh. “You just don’t want to admit that I’m onto something here with Becker. He’s alive, man. He’s alive and out there killing girls again.”
“You’re nuts.” Louis started away.
“
I’m
nuts? You came over here. You listened to me, man.” Delp’s laugh followed Louis as he went back into the cemetery.
CHAPTER 18
 
It didn’t look much like a police station. Louis had been here last week, to give his statement on Rebecca and Charlie, but he hadn’t really taken a good look at it.
The walls of the Ardmore station were a golden brown, the desks mahogany, the floor carpeted in a thick but well-worn forest green. A fire blazed in a field-stone hearth near the back of the main office.
The fire was warm on Louis’s back, but it was making him sleepy. The day had been a long one that had started ten hours ago in Ann Arbor with Dr. Seraphin, followed by his trip down into the mortuary, and talking with Alice about Claudia’s records. Then the new bones. And just when he thought he was on his way home, Dalum had made a suggestion.
Why don’t you come back to the station with me, Kincaid?
He hadn’t said why, but Louis knew. Dalum wanted to talk about the bones, Rebecca, and probably Charlie. And just as Louis was about to decline, he remembered that look on Alice’s face a few hours earlier.
When are you going to help Charlie?
So he had agreed.
Dalum had gone into his office with a grim-looking man in a navy peacoat and a gold badge on the pocket. Louis guessed he was an investigator with the state. Out here in the lobby, a few Ardmore officers worked the desks.
Alice had been here earlier, but when she could offer no thoughts on the bones, Dalum sent her home. She had left with the look of a woman whose whole life was starting to crack. And Louis found himself wondering if she had a husband or a friend she could talk to.
Dalum’s door opened and Louis looked up. The state investigator pulled on his coat and left the station, and Dalum waved Louis in. Louis went into the office, closing the door.
Dalum was behind his desk. Behind him was a window fogged with condensation. And on Louis’s left, a wall of shelves with a rainbow of book spines. Michigan law books. Lenawee County plat maps. Lenawee County history. Law enforcement handbooks.
Cultivating Beautiful Roses. Investigating Unexplained & Strange Phenomena. Psychics: Law Enforcement’s New Tool? The Deep
by Mickey Spillane.
Study Guide for the Florida Law Enforcement Officer’s Certification Examination.

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