An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries) (36 page)

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Authors: P.J. Parrish

BOOK: An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries)
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“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 he 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.”
“All right, Phil. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
It took Louis three hours to make it back to Plymouth. The freeway was plowed, but all other roads were iced over, and twice he had almost lost the car into a ditch. He pulled up in the driveway tense and tired, flexing his hands, cramped from gripping the wheel.
The front door was locked. He dug back in his jacket pocket for his keys. The wind was bitter and his fingers were so cold he was struggling to separate the keys when the door swung open. Phillip stood there, dressed in a blue sweater and old slacks. He stepped back to let Louis inside.
As Louis wiggled out of his jacket, he thought about asking if Frances had come back, but he knew she probably hadn’t. It was a little after 10:00 A.M. and the house was empty of any of her usual scents.
“How was the drive?” Phillip asked, taking his coat.
“Dangerous,” Louis said.
Phillip said nothing and Louis headed to the kitchen to look for something to eat. It hit him how sharp his comment about the drive probably sounded, and he knew he was just tired. He hadn’t slept well at Dalum’s last night. Thinking about Delp and having to ask him for help. Thinking about what Dr. Seraphin had said. But none of that was any reason to snap at Phillip.
Louis turned to apologize, but Phillip interrupted him. “So, what’s going on out there?”
Louis opened a cupboard and pulled down a box of Cheerios and some sugar. “We had another murder. A security guard.”
“Yes, I saw something in the
Free Press.
That’s terrible.”
Louis grabbed the milk and was pouring it on the Cheerios when Phillip spoke again.
“Have you found any connection to Claudia?”
“Not to the killer, no,” Louis said.
“To what then?”
“What do you mean, to what? I don’t have any more information on Claudia than I had two days ago,” Louis said. “And it’s kind of hard to deal with her with everything else that’s going on there.”
“Hard to deal with her?”
Louis was pushing the Cheerios around with a spoon and he stopped. There was a tinge of annoyance in Phillip’s question, and Louis bit back his first response, letting his irritation fade before he spoke.
“There aren’t many leads for her, Phillip,” Louis said evenly. “Right now, we have to catch this guy and maybe when we do, he’ll tell us more. I don’t know.”
“But isn’t there someone else you can talk to?” Phillip asked. “Aren’t there more people out there like that Millie woman? More patients who knew her?”
Louis faced him. “Yeah. I can do that. I can go get all kinds of stories about Claudia. How she looked. What drugs she was given. All the horrible things she went through.”
Phillip stared at him and Louis could see the anguish in his face, and he knew he shouldn’t say one more word because he could hear the edge to his voice and one more word might be one too many. But they poured out anyway.
“Is that what you want, Phillip?” Louis asked. “More guilt?”
“No,” Phillip said. “I have plenty of that.”
Louis turned back to his cereal, but he just stared at it, working his way toward an apology he didn’t want to give. Maybe Phillip needed to hear that remark. Maybe he needed to know just how pathetic he had become, hanging on to some kind of romantic dream that he could never get back, throwing his life away for a ghost.
“But that
is
why I asked you to come here,” Phillip said. “I didn’t expect you to get involved in another case.”
Louis closed his eyes, his chest so tight he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t want to fight with Phillip. He didn’t want to fight with anyone.
“If you want to quit all this, I understand,” Phillip said.
“I don’t want to quit.”
“You sound like it.”
Louis started stirring the cereal in slow circles.
“If you want to talk, Louis,” Phillip said, “we can go down to the basement. Grab a beer, eat some nuts. You know. We can talk, like we used to do.”
And the words were on his lips before he thought about them, and he heard them come out, but he couldn’t believe they were his.
“We never talked, Phillip,” Louis said.
“That’s not true,” he said. “I remember . . .”
Louis faced him. “I got lots of fatherly advice. I got nice clothes. And a damn good education. But we never talked.”
Phillip’s shoulders drew stiff, hurt coloring his face. It was a look Louis had never seen before. But it didn’t stop the rush of emotion, and before he could stop himself, he was talking again.
“Did it ever occur to you why that coach in high school wanted me on the basketball team?” Louis asked.
“Well, I—”
“Or why I didn’t go to the prom?”
Phillip was just staring.
“Or why I ran away so many times? Or what I might have wanted to eat at Christmas?”
“Louis—”
“Did it ever occur to you that I might want something like greens or hot skillet corn bread or smoked turkey legs or anything that might be southern?” Louis stopped for a moment, trying to even his voice. “Or black?”
Now Phillip knew what he was talking about and his expression changed from confusion to indignation. Louis saw something else there—pity.
“I thought it was best for you to forget what happened to you before you came here,” Phillip said.
“
Forget?
” Louis asked.
“Yes.”
“Forget what happened to me, Phil, or forget what I was?”
“You talk like I tried to make you white,” Phillip said.
“Maybe you did.”
Phillip took a step back, and Louis thought he was going to leave the kitchen, but he didn’t.
“When they brought you here, Louis, you were eight years old,” Phillip said. “You had marks and bruises. And I didn’t care what color of skin those marks were on. I only wanted to make them go away.”
Louis could feel the pounding of his heart. But he had no words now. His throat was too tight and the emotions suddenly too strong. He knew none of this was meant for Phillip. It was something else. And it was
about
someone else. A different white man in a straw hat, and a face that no matter how hard Louis tried to bring into focus, remained a blur.
Suddenly Phillip was gone and Louis was alone in the kitchen. And for almost a full minute, he didn’t move. Then he sank into a chair at the table and put his head in his hands. He needed to apologize and he would. In a minute. But right now he didn’t want to move. Right now, it was all he could do to control the waterfall of images and memories. Keep them inside and steady. And God, he needed to be steady right now.

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