An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries) (16 page)

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Authors: P.J. Parrish

BOOK: An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries)
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“I don’t know,” Alice said.
They were quiet for a long time. A banging sound drew Louis’s gaze to the window. Some men were loading doors onto one of the salvage trucks. He shivered, wrapping his arms around himself. When he looked back at Alice, she was watching him closely.
Suddenly, she opened a drawer and pulled out a thick manila folder, setting it on the desk between them. Louis recognized it as Claudia DeFoe’s original medical file.
“I took a look through this yesterday,” Alice said. “Did you get a chance to go through it yet?”
“Just a quick glance. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
“Well, maybe I can help.”
Louis sat up straight, scooting the chair closer. Alice flipped the folder open and studied the various forms for a long time before looking up at Louis.
“Most of this looks pretty normal to me,” she said, sifting slowly through the papers. “It’s just the usual progress reports from her doctors, logs of the therapies she underwent, routine nurses’ notes.” Alice went back to reading, then looked back up at Louis. “Maybe if you could tell me what it is you’re hoping to find . . .”
Louis shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess I just want to
know
her.”
Alice’s expression had just a hint of pity in it. “Some of what you find in here might be a little hard to take, Louis.”
“That’s all right,” he said. He jammed his hands in his coat pockets, waiting while Alice read some more papers.
“Maybe we could start with the intake form,” Alice said, pulling out a paper. “Claudia was admitted to Hidden Lake in October 1951 by her mother, Eloise DeFoe.” Alice hesitated. “She had multiple self-inflicted lacerations on both wrists. The doctor noted that her mood was alternately hysterical and disoriented.”
Louis thought of the photograph of Claudia he had taken from the file, how the masklike quality of her face contrasted with the wild look in her eyes.
“She was admitted to B Building,” Alice went on. “That’s the ward for the general women’s population.” She picked up a different form and studied it.
“What’s that?” Louis asked.
“Drug log. I’m just trying to see what they gave her.
Here it is. She was on Thorazine, twenty milligrams per day.” She looked up at Louis. “I’d say that would be a routine protocol for a suicidal girl and a fairly low dosage. It would make her . . . compliant but not out of it.”
Louis nodded.
Alice went back to reading. “She was kept on suicide watch, but I can’t find any notes of other attempts. In fact . . .” Alice picked up the drug log again. “She was totally off the Thorazine by late November.”
“So she was getting better,” Louis said.
“Looks like it.” Alice sniffled. “My, it’s cold in here.
Why don’t you pour us some more coffee?”
Louis got the thermos and poured two fresh cups while Alice continued her reading.
“Claudia was admitted to the general infirmary in late December, but it doesn’t say why,” Alice said. She looked back at the drug log. “Apparently, she was treated for a nervous stomach, because it says here she was given something for stomach distress.”
“So why did she end up in E Building?” Louis asked.
“Good question,” Alice murmured, her head bent over the records. She had five different forms spread out on the desk now, trying to piece together Claudia’s history. It was quiet. Louis could hear the salvage guys talking and laughing out in the yard.
“All right,” Alice said quietly. “She was moved to E in September of 1952. It looks like she had some kind of breakdown.”
“Is that normal?” Louis asked.
Alice looked up, a sad smile tipping her lips. “Normal? That’s not a word we use a lot here. Let’s just say it happens. People can be fine one day and you think they are getting better. Then something snaps inside them and they fall back down into these . . . holes. A few, with the right help, climb back out. But some just can’t. Some are just . . . I don’t know, too fragile.”
Louis was remembering the story Alice had told him about the mother visited by her two children who had a moment of clarity, then slipped away forever. He wondered if Alice was thinking about it, too, because there was a far-off look in her eyes as she sipped her coffee.
“Can you tell much about what happened to Claudia after she went to E?” Louis asked.
Alice went back to the forms. “She was back on the Thorazine at a much higher dosage.” Alice shook her head slowly, pulling one of the forms closer. “Things went downhill from there. Ice-bath treatments several times a week. Apparently that didn’t work so they tried electroshock therapy.”
Alice let out a long sigh. “It looks like she broke her arm during one of the treatments.”
Louis shut his eyes against the image of that heap of leather straps he had seen in E Building. When he opened his eyes, Alice was looking at him.
“Go on,” he said quietly.
“By the summer of 1953, they were using insulin shock therapy on her,” Alice said.
“What in God’s name is that?”
Alice hesitated. “The patient would be strapped down and injected with enough insulin to bottom out the blood sugar. The patient would go into severe convulsions or seizures. It was looked at as safer than electroshock. They didn’t realize until years later that they were killing the patient’s brain, leaving holes.”
“Jesus.”
“Patients were often left worse off than when they came in. The long-term effects could be anything from mild delusions to incoherent babble.”
Louis rose slowly and went to the window. The salvage workers had driven off with their plunder.
“This is odd.”
Louis looked back at Alice. He almost didn’t want to hear anything else.
“It looks like Claudia tried to escape once,” Alice said.
“Escape?” he asked. “How?”
“It was late summer, 1952, about ten months after she arrived, before she was sent to E Building.”
Louis moved back to the desk. “What’d she do?”
“Claudia and another young patient by the name of Millie Reuben snuck out of the ward after dinner and climbed over the fence behind B Building.”
“The fence with the razor wire?”
“It would not have had razor wire then. It would have been fairly easy for a young girl to get over.”
“How far did they get?”
“A half mile or so,” Alice said. “They were found in the middle of an apple orchard by a local farmer who recognized the hospital dresses and called the police. They were returned in less than an hour. The nurses wrote that Claudia was hysterical and incoherent and that restraints were necessary.”
Alice fell quiet, reading down the page. Louis edged closer, but the handwriting was small, and he couldn’t read it upside down.
“That night,” Alice went on, “she was transferred to E Building and received her first ice bath. I guess that is your answer as to why she ended up in E Building.”
“Did she ever try to escape again?”
Alice’s head came up. The tip of her nose was red from the cold. “She would not have had the chance once she went to E Building.”
Louis sank back into his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. He could see them, two young women, running through an apple orchard, desperate enough to want to be free yet incapable of finding their way. And for an instant, his image of Claudia changed to something prettier and brighter, as if her run through the orchard was the last real moment she would have before they took it all away.
“Alice,” he said, “is there any way you can get to Millie Reuben’s file?”
Alice’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I should.”
“Please.”
“I’m sorry. It was different with your friend. But there’s still confidentiality to consider.”
He didn’t press it. Alice’s gaze turned to the window. The pane had a thin layer of frost on it, blurring the trees outside. He wanted to leave, but he knew Alice expected some information from him on Charlie. But he had nothing to tell her. He hadn’t yet made it to the Ardmore Police Station to even speak with him.
The phone rang and Alice glanced at it, then lifted the receiver slowly. Louis could hear a man’s voice on the other end. Strong, but slow. Alice listened for a minute; then her face started to change as her eyes came to Louis.
“Yes, Chief,” she said. “Yes, I understand.”
She hung up.
“What’s wrong?” Louis asked.
“That was Chief Dalum,” she said. “They’ve found some bones.”
CHAPTER 17
 
The bones had been buried in a shallow grave on the north end of the cemetery. John Spera and his crew had been working nearby, exhuming grave number 978, when a brownish-colored human skull tumbled from the claw of the backhoe. Spera had promptly stopped and called Chief Dalum.
Two of Dalum’s men borrowed spades from Spera and carefully dug a wide hole around the area where the skull had been found. It didn’t take long for them to uncover a rib cage and right arm bone. Dalum immediately called the county for the crime scene investigators. No one was sure if this was a crime scene, but Dalum wasn’t going to take any chances.
Dalum had seemed surprised when Louis showed up at the cemetery entrance, but he waved to his officer to let him in. When Louis explained he had been visiting Alice, Dalum just nodded and brought him over to the grave. Now the three of them stood—Dalum, Louis, and Spera—watching as one of the technicians carefully brushed away the last of the dirt that had concealed the skeleton.
Spera suddenly turned away, going over to stand next to his backhoe operator. Louis watched him. The wind was in Spera’s face, tearing his eyes and whipping his thin dark hair into a frenzy. The man had been digging up graves for weeks now, and Louis knew there was a certain stoicism that went with that. But now Spera had the same look Alice had last week when Charlie walked from the woods carrying Rebecca Gruber—the look that came from being touched by something close to evil.
Spera had a rolled paper in his hand, and Louis guessed it was the layout of the cemetery. He walked over to Spera and asked if he could see it. Spera unrolled it and as he tried to smooth it against the side of the backhoe, it snapped furiously in the wind.
“We’re right here,” Spera said, pointing a callused finger at the grid. “Number 978 is the farthest grave at the back of the cemetery. The graves end right there. That skull shouldn’t have been where it was.”
There was a slight defensiveness in Spera’s voice, like he felt this was his fault somehow.
Louis looked north beyond the cemetery boundaries. No fence, just heavy brush, then nothing but tall trees so thick they formed a twisted wall of branches as far as Louis could see.
“What’s beyond those trees?” Louis asked.
“Farmland,” Spera said. “Apple orchards mostly.”
Louis looked back at the map, then at the spot where the bones lay. There was less than a yard between grave number 978 and the bones, but probably a good fifty feet of nothing to the north trees.
“Do you have any idea why this area from here to the back was not used for burial?” Louis asked.
“Nope,” Spera said. “I just go by the map.”
Spera rolled up the paper and walked back to his worker. Louis turned and headed to the north trees, scanning the ground as he walked. He didn’t see any stone markers embedded in the ground. There were no graves here. Just grass.
He stopped when he got to the high brush. It was too thick to venture in, and he strained to peer into it. It was wild and tangled, unlike the woods behind E Building, which were maintained by the hospital with plenty of paths and clearings.
“Kincaid, come on over here. I need you to see this.”
He headed back to Dalum. He was standing legs wide, arms folded across his jacket as he stared down at the bones, now fully exposed.
Louis guessed the skeleton was still positioned as it had been when it had been dumped and buried. On its side, legs drawn up, both arms folded to one side.
The technicians rose, nodding to Dalum, who in turn nodded to Louis. They both knelt down for a closer look.
“I’d guess it’s a child,” Louis said. “Or a teenager since the bones are small. I’d estimate the height at no taller than about five three.”
“I take it you agree with me that no way is this a patient they just didn’t happen to have a casket for,” Dalum said.
Louis nodded. “It’s not deep enough and there’s no clothing.”
“You have a guess on how long she’s been here?”
Louis looked at him. “She?”
Dalum shrugged.
“No idea, Chief.” Louis fell quiet, staring at the bones. A thought was pushing its way to the front of his brain, but it was so far-fetched he couldn’t believe it had even occurred to him. Could this be Claudia? His eyes swept over the cemetery. They were a good thirty yards from where her marker was. And it was pretty damn unlikely she would have been dumped like this and so hastily buried. But the bones did look old.

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