An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries) (45 page)

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Authors: P.J. Parrish

BOOK: An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries)
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Rodney’s face was red, sweat beading on his forehead. When his eyes came back to Louis they glistened with rage, and for a moment Louis thought of the way Charlie’s eyes had looked when they locked him in the cell.
“Claudia
was
pregnant,” Rodney said. “She was pregnant when she went into Hidden Lake.”
Louis was stunned into silence as his mind struggled to accept what he had just heard—and what it meant. He looked from Rodney to Eloise, but neither was going to say anything.
“Phillip?” he asked.
Rodney nodded.
It was so quiet Louis could hear the soft tick of the sleet on the windows. He had a vague sense of Eloise DeFoe moving away. Rodney’s eyes shifted as he watched his mother go to the sofa and sit down.
Louis turned toward her. “Did you know? Is that why you sent Claudia away?”
“No,” Eloise said firmly. “I didn’t know until the hospital called me months later. I sent her away because it was the only way I could control her.”
“You sent her away because you were afraid she was just like Father,” Rodney said.
Louis could see it in her face, see that Rodney was right, that Eloise DeFoe was ashamed of her own daughter’s mental illness.
Louis turned back to Rodney. “Tell me what happened that night.”
Rodney pulled in a deep breath and sat down in the chair. “Claudia was going to run off with Phillip.” His eyes went to Eloise. “But
she
found out and locked Claudia up in her room.”
His eyes were locked on his mother. “I should have gone to her,” he whispered. “I heard her crying and screaming, but I just stayed down here like a fucking coward. I stayed down here, sitting right here in this same chair with my drink.”
He was silent for a moment. “I think I passed out. All I remember is it was quiet. The next thing I remember was some strange guy shaking me and telling me Claudia had slit her wrists in the bathtub. I ran outside and she was strapped on this thing and they were putting her in the ambulance and she looked . . .” He took in a slow breath. “She looked . . .”
Rodney put a hand over his face. The shoulders of the camel coat began to move as he cried.
Louis saw something on the floor by Rodney’s feet. It was the photo of Claudia, crumpled into a wad. He looked back at Rodney, but he couldn’t muster much pity for him. He was a weak man who believed the world turned only in rhythm to his own needs. And even now, it was still about him.
Louis looked back at Eloise. “You were the one who found her and called the police?”
Eloise nodded, her mouth set in a hard line. “I went up to check on her when I realized I hadn’t heard any sound from her room. I went up there, but she wasn’t in her bedroom. I went to her bathroom and that’s where I found her. She had taken a razor blade and cut her wrists.”
Louis looked back at Rodney. He was staring at his mother with anguished eyes.
“Claudia was very ill,” Eloise said. “I couldn’t control her. I had no choice but to send her to Hidden Lake for her own safety.”
“What happened to the baby?” Louis asked.
Eloise just sat there.
“You’re Catholic. You wouldn’t have allowed it to be aborted,” Louis said. “What happened to the baby?”
Eloise didn’t blink as she met his eyes. “I signed adoption papers. I did what was necessary. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“Who arranged it?”
“The hospital.”
“Dr. Seraphin?”
She was quiet. But the answer was there in her face, in the shock that Louis knew the name.
“I think you should leave,” Eloise said.
Louis picked up the crumpled photograph of Claudia and put it in his pocket. He left, pausing outside to dig the car keys out of his jacket. The door opened behind him, but he didn’t turn.
“Wait!”
Louis glanced back. Rodney was coming toward him. Louis ignored him, opening the Impala’s door and getting in. Rodney grabbed the door before Louis could shut it. He looked down at Louis with reddened eyes.
“Tell Phillip I’m sorry,” he said.
Louis jerked the door closed. He started the car, revving the engine, and Rodney stepped away. As Louis headed down Provencal Road, he looked up at the rearview mirror. Rodney was still standing there in the driveway.
 
“Silent Night” was playing softly, emerging strained and tinny sounding from the old radio and fading away into the shadows of the basement. Louis sat at the bar, a warm beer in front of him. He was waiting for Phillip to get out of the shower and he’d been down here maybe fifteen minutes, sometimes rolling a walnut between his fingers as a way to pass the time. And a way to keep from looking at himself in the mirror.
He had caught a glimpse of himself when he first sat down and hadn’t liked what he had seen. He looked older, and defeated, the shadows in his face hard. Even his eyes were a deeper shade of gray like there was something opaque behind them now.
He heard the water cut off, and the rushing sound in the pipes above his head faded to a drip. He rolled the walnut across the bar, watching it flop end over end until it came to a stop next to the bowl. When he heard Phillip’s footsteps on the stairs, he drew a breath and took a drink.
Phillip wore a red-and-green striped sweater and black slacks, his wet hair slicked back. Louis waited while he grabbed a beer from behind the bar and settled onto a bar stool.
“Are you going to tell me you’re leaving?” Phillip asked.
“No,” Louis said.
Phillip looked down, turned his bottle slowly. “So what is it then?”
“Claudia was pregnant when she was sent to Hidden Lake.”
Phillip said nothing, didn’t move except for a slight slump of his shoulders.
“She had the baby and it was put up for adoption by her mother,” Louis said.
Still Phillip didn’t speak or look up. Louis let the silence lengthen. He picked up the walnut and set it back in the bowl, catching another glimpse of his face in the mirror. Then his eyes moved to Phillip’s face. Phillip’s eyes were closed.
“Rodney knew,” Louis said. “Says he’s sorry.”
Phillip finally looked up. “Sorry?”
Louis nodded.
“He takes my child and he’s sorry?”
Louis again nodded, not knowing what else to say. Phillip drew a breath so deep and hard that Louis could hear it, and it seemed to bring some rigidity back to Phillip’s posture.
“Can we find this child?” Phillip asked.
“I don’t know,” Louis said. “It depends on how it was done. If they left a paperwork trail. If it was even legal.”
“It wasn’t legal. It couldn’t be. I never signed anything.”
“I know. But it’s real easy to cover something like this up. Falsify the mother’s name. Fake a birth certificate. A shady attorney.”
Phillip touched his arm. “Will you try?”
“I don’t know,” Louis said.
Phillip looked away, his mind suddenly on something else, and Louis was grateful he didn’t ask more about finding the child. He wanted to help Phillip, and he knew that if it were his child, he’d want to find it. But there was something else to finish first.
“The child would be thirty-six, Louis,” Phillip said.
“I know.”
“Did you ask if it was a boy or girl?”
“No,” Louis said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Phillip said. “It’s all right.”
Phillip slid off the bar stool and started back up the stairs. Louis watched him, surprised at the sudden change in his face—and his step. It was resolve or acceptance, or maybe a mix of both.
“Phillip,” Louis said, “where are you going?”
“To see Frances,” he said. “This is something I need to talk over with her.”
“Don’t you think it will make her even angrier?”
“I don’t know,” Phillip said. “I just know I need to talk with her.”
“Jesus, Phil,” Louis said, “aren’t
you
angry?”
“Of course I am,” Phillip said. “But I don’t have to stay that way. You’ve given me something I never thought I’d have. You’ve put everything into focus for me.”
“Wait a minute,” Louis said. “What are you going to tell this kid when you find him or her?”
“I’m going to say ‘I’m your father,’” Phillip said.
“‘And I made a mistake.’”
Phillip disappeared up the steps and Louis turned back to the bar. He didn’t understand how Phillip could be happy about confronting a long-lost, grown-up child when it would be so painful and hard. He didn’t understand how Phillip could ever expect Frances to accept this on top of everything else. And he didn’t understand why Phillip wasn’t furious.
He should be. Not only at Eloise DeFoe and Rodney, but at Seraphin and everything she had done to Claudia.
Claudia . . . something was coming back to him, something Charlie had said about the apple babies, and suddenly he knew that what he thought in the tunnels was only half right.
Claudia and Phillip’s baby . . . that was what had started it all. Someone had probably paid good money to Seraphin for that baby. And that was what had given her the idea.
Use women patients for breeding. Use Ives to impregnate them. A scheme to create healthy, white infants that Seraphin could adopt out to wealthy couples.
Seraphin’s voice came back to him:
The hospital had so little funding, so money was always a problem. . . . I was instrumental in correcting many deficiencies.
Those long periods of isolation. It wasn’t therapy or to punish patients; it was to keep the pregnancies secret. Then the newborns were removed from the hospital in baskets, driven away in fruit trucks.
Babies . . . conceived by a rapist, sold to the highest bidders so Dr. Seraphin could keep her programs in place. Buy new equipment. Make a career.
Proof. He still had no real proof. There was nothing to connect Seraphin directly to Ives.
Louis stared at his reflection in the mirror, something clicking in his brain. He slid off the stool and went quickly upstairs to his bedroom. It took him a moment to find the patient file for Buddy Ives. He grabbed his glasses off the nightstand and began flipping through the files.
He found the notation he was looking for: Ives had been put in “temporary isolation” at least five times. He was about to pull out Claudia’s file to compare the dates when something on Ives’s form caught his eye.
He stared at the bottom of the form at the signature right above the typed line ATTENDING PHYSICIAN.
Dr. Rose Seraphin.
Louis pulled out other forms. She had signed them all. He slapped the file shut. Seraphin had told him she had stopped seeing patients after being promoted to assistant deputy superintendent. So why the hell was her name on every piece of paper in Buddy Ives’s file?
His eyes swung to the phone. He searched his wallet for Seraphin’s lake house number and dialed.
Oliver answered. Louis was polite when he asked for her. After a few minutes, Seraphin’s voice came on the line.
“Good evening, Mr. Kincaid,” she said. “Have you called to shout at me again?”
He took a breath, working hard on sounding contrite. “No,” he said. “I called to apologize.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I also called for something else,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I need some help.”
She was quiet for a moment. “What kind of help?”
“Personal,” he said, lowering his voice, trying now to sound pathetic. “I lost it down there, Doctor.”
She said nothing.
“It scared me,” he said. “Scared the shit out of me.”
“And you want a session?”
“Yes.”
Again, a pause. “I’m closing up the lake house in the morning,” she said. “If you want to see me, you’ll have to come here.”
“Thank you.”
“Tonight.”
“I’ll see you around seven.”
“I’ll be waiting, Mr. Kincaid.”
CHAPTER 43
 
It was snowing hard by the time he started up the hill toward Seraphin’s house. He had gone only twenty feet when the Impala lost traction and stopped. He tried again but the tires spun and the car went nowhere.
“Shit,” he muttered. He looked out the windshield at the huge wet flakes caught in the headlight beams. Far up the hill, between the bare trees, he could see the front of the house in the glare of the floodlights. No choice. He had to walk the rest of the way or risk getting stuck here all night.
He got out and trudged up the hill. The driveway looked like it had been plowed recently, but there was at least a foot of fresh snow covering it now.

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