by P J Parrish
Louis noticed that Phillip was taking it all in, his elbow propped on the window, his hand under his chin. The road curved and climbed and suddenly, two giant wood towers loomed ahead. At the crest of the hill, Louis slowed.
The towers looked like two stocky lighthouses, with peeling white paint and huge fading letters that spelled out WELCOME TO THE IRISH HILLS.
“Let’s stop for a second,” Phillip said.
Louis pulled into the empty parking lot that faced a deserted miniature golf course. Phillip got out and started away from the car. Louis joined him.
“I could have sworn they were taller,” Phillip said, his eyes moving up over the towers.
“Memories can be unreliable,” Louis said.
Phillip glanced back at him and smiled slightly. “When did you become so philosophic?”
“It’s not mine. It’s from a friend.”
Phillip looked back up at the towers. “There wasn’t supposed to be two of them,” he said, “but after the first guy built his, the fellow who owned the property next door got jealous and built one even higher. They kept adding on and adding on, waging their little war, and finally one day they just gave up. Those men are gone but the towers are still here.” He paused. “They don’t even look like they belong together, do they?”
Louis shrugged, deciding it was best to let Phillip wander.
“See that little bridge up there?” Phillip said, pointing. “One day somebody got the idea that the towers needed to be joined together forever. So they built a bridge between them.”
Phillip pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. He drew in heavily, then let it out in one long, slow breath. For several minutes, they just stood there in the cold sun while Phillip smoked his cigarette. Finally, Phillip tossed the butt to the dirt.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I have something I want to show you.”
They backtracked on U.S. 12 until Phillip steered him down a side road. It wound among small cottages, every once in a while offering up a glimpse of water beyond. Phillip pointed to a place called Jerry’s Pub and told Louis to pull in.
Inside, a fire was burning and the guys at the bar—a gregarious mix of young longhairs in down vests and old guys in flannel—were watching the football game. Louis ordered beers and they took them outside to the leaf-strewn deck. Phillip stood at the railing looking out over the green-gray lake. He was quiet for a long time.
“This is Wampler’s Lake. It hasn’t changed that much since I was last here,” Phillip said finally.
“When was that?” Louis asked.
“September 1951.” Phillip set his beer bottle on the railing, his eyes scanning the far shoreline.
Louis could see something change in Phillip, a loosening in his shoulders, a softening in his eyes. Instinct was telling him this lake was where he had brought Claudia. And that bringing Phillip here now had been the right thing to do.
“It was Labor Day weekend,” Phillip said. “Rodney brought her to the park near her house—her mother was away—and I picked her up on my motorcycle.” A small smile tipped his lips. “She was afraid and clung to my back the whole way out. I drove faster so she’d hold on harder.”
Phillip looked to the left, pointing. “There was a pavilion over there with an arcade. It had one of those machines where you could put in a dime and make this claw thing pick up a prize. I won her this ugly fake silver ring.”
Phillip was smiling now. “She wanted to go out on the lake on a powerboat ride, but it was fifty cents and I had just enough money left to pay for the motel room and a couple of burgers so I said no. I think she knew what I was up to.”
Louis waited for him to go on. For a long time, the only sound was the gentle bump of a pontoon boat against the dock.
“We went upstairs to the dance hall,” Phillip said. “It was the last night before they closed for the season and Fred Waring was playing. We danced and it was like I had caught on to the air and was holding it in my arms. It was so hot. She had a pink scarf and she used it to wipe my forehead.”
Louis didn’t move, didn’t even want to take a breath.
“There were these little cabins over there,” Phillip said. “She wouldn’t go inside when I checked in. She was pretty nervous about everything. I took her back to the cabin and we made love. After, we laid there with the window wide open to catch any breeze, but there wasn’t any. Just the music from the pavilion as they played the last song.”
Slowly, softly, Phillip began to hum. Then hesitantly, the words came, in a whispered waltz.
“A boy and girl, they can kiss good-bye,
and run down the hillside together.
But a man and woman, their hearts can cry
forever and ever
Though oceans may sever.
True be my true love....”
Phillip fell silent, his eyes on the lake. And he said something so softly, Louis was sure he wasn’t meant to hear it.
“I don’t even have a picture of her.”
Somewhere beyond the trees a church bell rang. It filled the silence. When it stopped, Phillip turned to him.
“Thank you, Louis,” he said.
Louis wasn’t sure what to say. Phillip didn’t wait for a reply. He turned and left the deck.
CHAPTER 13
The drive back to Hidden Lake seemed longer this morning. Maybe it was the sadness of Phillip’s journey back to the Irish Hills yesterday. Or maybe it was because, more than anything right now, Louis just wanted to go home.
But he couldn’t leave things as they were. He had promised Phillip he would find out what he could. And he had promised Alice he would try to help Charlie. Right now, he didn’t feel very confident he could do either.
The gates of Hidden Lake came into view. Near the guardhouse sat two Ardmore cruisers and a midnight-blue state police car. And a few feet down the road, parked almost in a ditch, was a rusty brown Civic. A man stood next to it, shivering in a tattered suede jacket and faded jeans.
Louis pulled up to the guardhouse. A cop walked to his open window and peered in.
“No visitors today, partner,” the cop said.
Louis showed him the pass Dalum had given him Friday, but the cop shook his head. “This is three days old,” he said. “Let me make a phone call.”
Louis shoved the car into Park and got out, leaning against the front fender. His eyes drifted to the man in the suede coat, who was now walking toward him.
He looked familiar. Thin and young, with spikes of orange-tipped blond hair. He wore blue wire-rimmed sunglasses, but Louis could see his face clearly and as the man grew closer, it started to come back to him.
I’ll be damned.
It was Doug Delp, the reporter he had known up at Loon Lake a few years back. The guy was aggressive and obnoxious and Louis had almost decked him once or twice. But in the end, it had been Delp who probably kept Louis out of jail.
Delp’s step slowed suddenly and he pulled off his sunglasses, staring at Louis. When recognition settled in, he came forward quickly, sticking out a wind-chapped hand.
“Louis Kincaid,” Delp said. “What the fuck are you doing back here?”
Louis glanced down at Delp’s hand and hesitated long enough for Delp to know he had to think about shaking it before he did. Doug sniffed from the cold, jamming his hands back in his jacket pockets.
“I should ask you the same thing,” Louis said.
“I’m here checking out Rebecca Gruber’s murder,” he said. “And looking for Donald Lee Becker.”
“Becker’s dead.”
Delp grinned. “That’s what people say about Elvis.”
Louis didn’t reply, glancing back at the Ardmore cop, who was still holding his radio waiting for Chief Dalum.
“I thought they ran you out of Michigan,” Delp said.
“Well, I’m back.”
“You still in Florida?”
“Yeah.”
“Last I heard, you were a P.I. down there.”
&nbs
p; “You heard right.”
Delp was looking at him through the blue lenses. Louis turned away from his scrutiny.
“Why you here at Hidden Lake?” Delp asked.
“None of your business.”
“Does it have anything to do with Becker?”
Louis shot Delp a look. Delp smiled. “Hey, it’s juicy stuff, man. You heard, didn’t you? They found some bones at Becker’s old farm up near Mason. He admitted killing six women, and they found all six. So that poses the question, whose bones are these new ones?”
Louis stared at him.
Delp smiled. “This is going to make a helluva final chapter for my true crime book.”
“You’re writing a book on Becker?”
“Yeah, it’s called . . .” Delp raised his hands, as if he were seeing the title on a marquee. “The Grim Reaper. The True Story of the Coed-Killing Farmer.”
“Jeez, Delp,” Louis said.
“Come here. Look.”
Delp led Louis back to the Civic. Louis bent and peered in the driver’s window. The car was a mess, filled with papers and boxes. Mounted on a makeshift holder near the glove box sat five police radios, their tops glittering as the tiny red lights zipped back and forth. On the passenger seat was a cardboard box labeled D.L. Becker.
“Looks like you got everything you need,” Louis said. “Why you hanging out here?”
“I would kill for a look at Becker’s hospital file,” Delp said.
Louis shook his head. “Ain’t going to happen.”
“I would settle for some photographs of E Building and the name of Becker’s doctor.”
The Ardmore cop called to Louis, indicating he could go on through the gates.
Louis looked back at Delp. “I gotta go.”
“So you aren’t going to help me? After all I did for you?”
Louis ignored him, climbed back in the Impala, and drove through the gates. In his rearview mirror, he could see Delp huddled near his car.
Louis found Alice in her office, a small room not far down the hall from the nurse’s station where he had first encountered her last week. When she looked up at him, her eyes were circled in shadows, and her red curls looked as tired as she did.
“How was your weekend?” Louis asked.
She took a second to answer. “I had family over,” she said. “Of course they knew about Rebecca, but no one said anything. Saturday, Chief Dalum came to see me and I had to go over things again.”
“I’m sorry,” Louis said. “Is there anything I can do?”
Alice shook her head. “Nothing you’re not already doing, Mr. Kincaid.”
Alice didn’t stand up, and he didn’t want to seem pushy by asking her if they could walk to E Building right now. So he waited, his gaze moving to the window and the spiderweb of black branches against the cloudless sky.
“I have some information for you on Rebecca,” Alice said. “Do you want to sit down?”
Louis slipped into a chair, then realized he didn’t have his notebook with him. Alice was staring at him, and he hoped she hadn’t noticed how unprepared he was. His mind had been on Claudia, not Rebecca. He saw a small steno pad on the edge of the desk and picked it up. Alice waited until he had flipped it open and plucked a pen from his pocket.
“Rebecca was at work Tuesday,” Alice started. “I saw her on and off during the day up to about two. When I left before four, her car was still here in the lot.”
“Okay.”
“On Wednesday, her car was here when I arrived at nine, and I just assumed she had come in early,” Alice said. “She had been working over in C Building with the salvage crews, so not seeing her was no surprise.”
Louis looked up. “Do we know if she made it home Tuesday night?”
“She didn’t,” Alice said. “Chief Dalum told me he thinks she was abducted Tuesday afternoon and left in the woods at dawn Wednesday.”
“So someone kept her for a day,” Louis said.
Alice sighed as she nodded. “It seems that way.”
“Did the chief tell you anything else?” Louis asked. “Like how she was killed or what had happened?”
“No,” Alice said.
He would have to get that himself. He suspected Rebecca’s death had been horrific, and that Dalum hadn’t felt comfortable sharing that with Alice.
“Tell me about Rebecca’s family,” Louis said.
“She had a son, living with his father down South somewhere. No current boyfriends or angry exes.”
“Have you talked to Charlie?” Louis asked.
“No,” Alice said. “The chief won’t let me. I’m sure he’s scared to death in there. How long can they hold him without charging him, Mr. Kincaid?”
Louis gave a shrug. “Forty-eight hours usually, but in a small town, if no lawyer steps for ward . . . well, the chief can end up calling it all sorts of things. Even protective custody.”
“That’s wrong,” she said.
“In this case, it’s probably better for Charlie if he’s in a cell. At least until we know.”
Alice had no comment, but she reached into a desk drawer and withdrew a thin paperback book and held it out to Louis. “I thought you might like to read this.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He took it, flipping through it. “You got this from Rebecca’s office?”
“She didn’t have an office,” Alice said. “She had a locker, and the police took most everything. They didn’t seem interested in this, so I asked if I could keep it.”
“Have you read it?”
“Just enough to know why Charlie put flowers on Rebecca.”
“Why?”
“In the story, the men place flowers on sleeping women’s eyes,” Alice said. “When the woman awakes, she falls in love with the first man she sees.”
“And you think Charlie wanted Rebecca to fall in love with him?”
Alice rose suddenly, moving to the window, almost disappearing into the glare. Louis turned his chair so he could see her, but she spoke without turning back. “There was something about the way Charlie looked at Rebecca,” she said. “I think . . .” She drew a breath and her voice grew huskier. “I think he might have tried to tell her he loved her and when she did not . . . could not . . . accept it, something happened to him.”
Louis looked down at the paperback cover. A bare-breasted woman in a bride’s veil was being groped by a half-man, half-donkey character. A full white moon shone above them. A small, naked crying child huddled on the bottom.
“So you think he was trying to put her to sleep so he could wake her up with the flowers?” Louis asked.
Alice faced him. “I don’t know.”
Louis knew he needed to talk to Charlie. If he could relate to him, using what was in the book, maybe Charlie would tell him what happened.
For a second, Louis had the thought that maybe that would be okay for Charlie. No way was Charlie competent to stand trial and he undoubtedly would be sent to a new hospital. In the end, his life wouldn’t change at all.
He heard the jingle of keys and looked up. Alice was holding the ring out to him. He slipped the book into his jacket pocket and took the keys.
“The big key opens the main door for E Building,” she said. “The records room is at the end of the main hallway, on the first floor. The files are by admission date. Please make sure you lock everything before you leave.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
“I can’t. The salvage men will be here in a few minutes and the superintendent is supposed to be coming by later.” She nodded toward a copy machine. “I’d appreciate it if you could be gone by the time he gets here. Just bring her file back here and I will copy whatever you need.”
“Thank you, Alice.”
Louis left the administration building and walked quickly across the grass to E Building. He didn’t see any cops, except the two at the front gate, but yellow crime scene tape was still draped across the trees, stretching deep into the woods. A salvage tr
uck sat at a distance near another building.
Louis slipped the key in the lock and pulled open the heavy door. It scraped on the concrete and he debated leaving it open, but decided against it. He didn’t need an open door attracting the cops or anyone else, so he struggled to close it, taking a second to relock it from the inside.
His breath clouded in the musty air as he moved down the hall, listening to the lonely tap of his footsteps on the terrazzo floor. A sudden wind at his face drew his eyes to a window. The grating was still in place, but the glass was broken, shards strewn on the sill and floor.
He moved on, past five or six closed doors, stopping at one with RECORDS stenciled on the pebbled glass window. He stuck the key in and went inside.
Boxes . . . so many he could not even tell how large the room was. There were walls of white cardboard stacked to the ceiling, leaving the lower three rows crushed to almost a third their size. He could not even read the dates on those.
He leaned against the doorjamb, drawing a long breath as he scanned the boxes. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe 1951 would be up high. He stood there almost a full minute, looking. There didn’t seem to be any system to the dating on the boxes. He did not see 1951.
There was no space to work inside the room, so he started stacking the boxes in the hall. After one row, he was sweating, and he stopped to pull off his jacket.
A noise.
Just a tiny clink, like glass against metal.
He froze, listening.
The loose grating. At the broken window. Had to be it.
But he stayed still, laying his jacket down silently, waiting. When he heard nothing, he went back to work, reaching down to grab the box labeled 1933. It was wet and the soggy side ripped away, scattering folders and papers.
Damn it . . .
It took fifteen minutes to put the box back together, and he wasn’t even sure he had the right records in the right folders as he jammed them inside. When he was done, he shoved the box away with his foot. Right behind it sat another, the date 1951 scrawled in thick black letters on the side.
He sat down on the floor, pulling the box to him, and opened it. It was fat with folders, but they looked to be in alphabetical order. He found Claudia DeFoe’s, wiggled it free, and spread it open on his lap.