by P J Parrish
Delp shook his head. “I’ll go back and check through my files, but I know that all Becker’s victims were found in an advanced state of decomposition. Probably no way to tell.”
Louis was quiet, sorry he had shared that detail with Delp. He still didn’t trust him, and he knew Dalum intended to keep that fact secret from the public.
“I do know,” Delp said, leaning close, “that Becker was a smoker. Had a carton of Camels in his car when they arrested him.”
Louis could see Delp’s Civic outside the window, and he remembered it was filled with boxes and files. To know what they found in Becker’s car, Delp had to have gotten a copy of the evidence log or the arrest reports.
“What else do you have on Becker?” Louis asked.
“Everything from police interviews to crime scene photos to copies of one of the dead girl’s diaries.”
Louis shook his head. “Where’d you get it all?”
Delp grinned. “Bought some. Stole some. Some was public record. Met a few greedy cops along the way. But there’s one thing I don’t have that you can get me. I need Becker’s death certificate.”
“Get it yourself. It’s public record,” Louis said.
Delp made an obnoxious sound like a game show buzzer. “Wrongo, LaBatts breath. It’s sealed. Now why do you suppose the state did that?”
“To keep it away from ghouls like you.”
Delp held up his empty beer bottle for the waitress to see. “I think it’s because Becker escaped from that hell-hole and the hospital had to cover it up, just like they covered up your friend’s death.”
The waitress set down a fresh bottle in front of Delp. “Becker’s out there, man,” he said.
“Becker’s out there in that cemetery,” Louis said.
“Sure. Just like your missing woman was.”
Louis shook his head. “You’re believing your own hype, Delp.”
“Okay, then, let’s find someone who can tell us,” Delp said. “Someone besides a doctor or nurse who are afraid they’ll be sued. Like a former patient who knew Becker or Claudia.”
Louis looked down at his bottle. Delp was right. The hospital staff wasn’t going to tell any secrets. And if he was going to take this crazy Becker theory to Dalum, he needed something solid, needed to know more about what it really had been like inside Hidden Lake.
And there was someone who could tell him. The woman who had tried to run off with Claudia in 1952. What was her name? Millie something. Millie Reuben.
Alice had refused to give him her files, but he knew Dalum could find out where Millie Reuben was. If she was still alive.
“What are you thinking, Kincaid?” Delp asked.
Louis stood up and tossed some money on the counter. “Nothing.”
“You have an inside contact, don’t you,” Delp said. “You have a former patient you’re going to see, right?”
“Doesn’t matter, Delp,” Louis said, slipping on his jacket. “You’re not going with me anyway.”
“Quid pro quo, Kincaid.”
Louis shook his head. “Not this time.”
Louis left the restaurant, pausing under the overhang to zip his jacket. Louis heard the slam of the storm door and smelled cigarette smoke, knowing Delp had followed him out. Louis put up his collar and stepped out into the sleet. As he was unlocking the car, Delp grabbed his arm.
“Kincaid, if you guys dig up Becker, I want in.”
“No promises.”
“Then how’s this for a headline?” Delp said. “A Foster Son’s Lonely Search for the Missing Bones of a Poor Little Rich Girl.”
“I ought to deck you,” Louis said.
“Aw, come on,” Delp said. “If Becker’s grave is empty, it’ll be national news. Just let me break the story.”
Delp was shivering, the damp Kool dangling from his lips.
“All right,” Louis said, slipping in the car. “I’ll do what I can.”
“I’ll give you an acknowledgment in the book.”
Louis jerked the car door closed and started the engine. Delp tossed the cigarette to the dirt, gave Louis a small wave, and hurried back inside the restaurant.
CHAPTER 22
Louis took a drink from the can of Dr Pepper, careful not to take his eyes off the twisting road. The last sign he had seen said DEXTER 6 MILES. He passed under an old stone railroad bridge, and started seeing a scattering of Victorian houses set back among the trees. He passed a sign for the Dexter Cider Mill; then the town came into view and he slowed.
The row of storefronts were painted in rusty reds and shades of gray. There was a small Victorian clock tower set on an island in the middle of the street. Beneath it, huddled on a green bench, were two old men in checkered flannel jackets and leather caps with earflaps.
Farther along, he passed a weathered wooden gazebo. Inside the gazebo were two teenagers who, in between kisses, were watching workers string a banner from the streetlights that read A VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS.
He took a right at Apple Orchard Lane, and less than a block later, he saw the house that Millie Reuben had described to him on the phone, a pale pink Victorian with a wraparound porch. He pulled in behind a blue sedan, picked up the thin manila folder off the seat, and walked to the door. He knocked.
When he had called, he had told Millie Reuben that he wanted to talk about Hidden Lake, and after a long silence, she had agreed, without even asking him why.
There was a white lace curtain over the door’s glass inset. It moved suddenly, a pair of eyes appearing. Then the door opened.
He knew Millie Reuben was in her midfifties and he had been expecting a hollow-eyed, broken woman. But Millie Reuben had loose, brown curls and was wearing a leopard-trimmed, velour pantsuit. Her face was lightly lined with a brush of rose at her cheeks, but she wore no mascara or eye shadow. She didn’t need to. Her deep-set, thickly lashed eyes were flecked with yellow and green, and he knew instantly they had once been her most beautiful feature.
“Millie Reuben?” he asked.
“You must be Officer Kincaid.”
“Yes. May I come in?”
Millie stepped back and let him inside, then led him to a living room filled with sunshine from a large bay window. The place was pine-scented with an undernote of something sweet he thought he knew but couldn’t quite imagine in this old house.
Millie motioned for him to sit and he propped himself on the corner of a hard-tufted couch. Millie started to sit down, but her eye caught a shadow behind her and she turned.
“Go stir the stew, Ruthie. He’s not here to see you.”
The shadow disappeared and Millie reached to an end table and opened a silver box, taking out a cigarette. “My sister,” she said as she lit the cigarette with a red Bic from her pocket.
She grabbed an ashtray and came to sit across from Louis. “I’m sorry,” she said, waving her cigarette. “Does this bother you?”
“No.”
“Good,” she said. “Not that it would make any difference to me. Ever since I got out of that place, I’ve made it a point to do exactly what I want to do when I want to do it.”
“I understand.”
“So,” she said. “Why do you want to know about that place? Is someone suing them?”
“No,” Louis said.
“You writing a book?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Miss Reuben,” Louis said, “I realize this might be hard for you—”
Millie shook her head quickly. “I used to talk about this stuff every week with my shrink. I saw the same one for years and trust me, he got memories out of me about that place I didn’t know I had. I’m fine with all of it now.”
She reached over and opened a drawer on the end table. It was full of brown prescription vials.
“Really, I am,” she added.
Louis wasn’t so sure. Maybe it would be best if he started with something other than Donald Lee Becker.
“Do you remember Claudia DeFoe?�
�� he asked.
Millie closed the drawer and sat back, blowing out smoke. “Nice little rich girl,” she said. “Not that having all that money ever helped her any. Money didn’t do you a damn bit of good in that place.”
“When did you meet her?”
Millie had to think for a minute. “Right after I went in,” she said. “Let’s see, my father committed me in the summer of 1952. She’d been there awhile by then.”
“May I ask why you were committed?”
Millie’s eyes swept back to Louis quickly and he was sure she was going to tell him it was none of his business. “I was a heroin addict,” she said. “My boyfriend got me hooked, and when my father found out, he had me arrested. I stabbed a police officer with a kitchen knife and then stabbed myself.”
Louis looked down at the folder in his hand.
“I was high,” she said, stiffening. “I never would have hurt myself or that cop without that crap in me.”
When Louis said nothing, Millie went on. “They detoxed me and a month or so later I was bunking next to Claudia in that place. She was the saddest person I ever met, I think.”
“Sad, how? Suicidal?”
“Oh no, not like that. I never heard her talk about hurting herself.”
“She slashed her wrists. That’s what put her there.”
“I know. But she told me she didn’t even remember doing that,” Millie said. “Like I didn’t remember much about stabbing the cop or myself, either. Besides, that one thing didn’t make her a lunatic.”
Louis opened the folder and reached for the photograph of Becker, but Millie was talking again.
“She used to cry all night,” she said. “I never heard someone cry so much.”
His next question popped into his head and he almost thought about not asking it. “Did she talk of anyone?” Louis asked.
Millie’s lips turned up in a sad smile. “She was a romantic, that one was. She talked of a boy named Phillip. And how they were going to get married, and how she and him and their children would live in this beautiful house on Lake Michigan.”
Louis lowered his eyes, but they fell on the mug shot of Becker. He closed the folder again. “Did she ever seem to get better?” he asked.
“Better?” Millie asked. “In that place they didn’t want anyone to get better. They only wanted you to comply. And if you didn’t you went to E Building.”
“That’s where she went after you and she tried to escape, right?”
Millie seemed surprised he knew, and she took a second to stab out her cigarette in the ashtray and then gave him a long look. “If you know that, then you know what they did to her in that place. They say she died of the flu, but it wasn’t that. It was that place. It killed you in ways you didn’t even know you could die.”
Louis didn’t want to go back into this, but Millie kept talking and he had the sense that outside of her therapist, she didn’t have anyone to talk to about this. Or at least anyone who wanted to hear it.
“Do you know about the therapy they gave her?” Millie asked.
“I know about the shock and insulin treatments.”
“And about the isolation periods?”
“No,” Louis said. “I haven’t read the whole file yet.”
“She would disappear for months at a time, and when I’d ask, they’d tell me she was on punishment and in isolation and if I wasn’t good, that’s where I’d end up, too.”
He knew what effect long periods of isolation had on convicts in maximum-security prisons. He could not imagine the effect on a young woman already under the influence of drugs and suffering from depression.
His eye caught a shadow lurking just inside the kitchen, and Millie saw him glance toward it.
“Excuse me,” she said. She walked quickly to the kitchen door and in harsh whispers again told her sister to go find something to do. When Millie returned, she carried an amber-colored drink with ice.
“I was isolated once,” she said, setting the glass aside and lighting another cigarette.
Louis opened the folder and slipped out the photograph of Becker, hoping to get Millie back on track. But she kept talking.
“They locked me in that isolation room downstairs and I remember it was cold and wet.” She nodded briskly. “It was February 1964. I remember because those Beatle guys were supposed to be on television that night and I had been good ’cause I wanted to watch them—”
“Miss Reuben,” Louis interrupted.
“But they took me anyway,” she said, her voice changing to something deeper and more distant. “They came and got me in the afternoon and they took me down there and they strapped me down and they just left me there.”
Louis held up a hand, hoping she would see he wanted to talk about something else, but her eyes weren’t on him. She was staring beyond him and she was remembering. He wasn’t sure what to do. He had no idea whether she could make that mental journey back to E Building, and he didn’t want to be here with her alone if she couldn’t.
“That’s the first night I was raped.”
Louis watched her carefully, not quite sure he had heard her right. Millie hadn’t moved and her cigarette ash was growing long between her fingers.
“Who raped you?” Louis said.
Millie was still.
“Miss Reuben?”
Suddenly, her eyes focused on him, and she flicked her ash twice toward the table, missing the ashtray. “I don’t know,” she said. “It was dark and I was full of pills. I felt him and I saw him, but I didn’t see him, do you know what I mean?”
“Do you know anything else about him?”
“I know he was a patient,” Millie said. “He wore the blue tunic the men wore and he had a plastic ID bracelet on his wrist.”
“How would a patient get into a locked room?” Millie shrugged. “Probably let in by some orderly who wanted to watch.”
Louis drew a breath and looked back at the papers he had in the folder. Under Becker’s photograph was a newspaper account of his arrest and incarceration at Hidden Lake. Louis knew the date, but he doubled-checked now. Becker had been sent to Hidden Lake in 1963.
He glanced up at Millie. She was quiet, the cigarette at her lips, her eyes steady on the window. Then he held out the photo of Becker, bracing himself for her reaction—anything from a gasp to hysteria.
“Is there any chance this is the man who raped you?” he asked.
Millie stared at it. “That’s that weirdo Becker. But I don’t know if he was the man who raped me.”
“Did you know Becker?”
“I saw him around,” Millie said. “The men and women were always kept separate inside E Building. We didn’t even eat together, but occasionally, if we were good, every few weeks, they’d let us out and we could walk the grounds. Sometimes, you could visit with the men then.”
“Wasn’t Becker under guard?” Louis asked.
Millie shook her head. “The inmates ran the prison, if you know what I mean. I saw him alone sometimes.”
Louis put the photo away.
“The night of the Beatles,” Millie said, “that wasn’t the only time I was raped.”
Louis looked back at her. She had the expression of someone who was remembering a disturbing but foggy dream rather than a nightmare, and he was suddenly thankful that she had been too drugged to remember the specifics.
“How many times?” Louis asked. “Do you know?”
“A dozen or so, all during that same time.”
Louis stared at the floor. He was trying to imagine how Becker might have gained access to the women when something else edged into his brain. The autopsy photo of Rebecca Gruber’s thighs.
“Miss Reuben,” he said softly, head still down, “may I ask you a very personal question?”
“Sure.”
“Did your rapist burn you?”
When Millie didn’t answer him, he looked up at her. The beautiful speckled eyes misted as she blew a long, thin stream of smoke from her lips.
“They told me later I did that to myself with cigarettes,” she said. “But I knew I didn’t.”
“Where did he burn you?”
Her hand moved slowly to her leg, and she touched her inner thigh with the tip of her finger. “There. On both sides.”
“Three burns?”
“Three with each rape. My legs are full of marks.” Louis rubbed his forehead, listening to the rattle of pans in the kitchen. The sweet smell in the house seemed stronger now, a mixture of air freshener, incense, and that other smell he now was sure was pot.
“I heard about that girl who was murdered down there,” Millie said. “The newspaper said she was a nurse.”
“Yes.”
“Was she burned, too?”
“Yes.”
“And you think Donald Lee Becker did it?”
“Becker died in 1980.”
“Inside that place?”
It was then he realized she had never said Hidden Lake. She had called it only “that place.” He nodded in response to her question.
Millie shook her head. “You seen his body, Mr. Kincaid?”
“No.”
“Then don’t be so sure he’s dead,” she said.
Millie had that same crazy look Delp had when he talked of Becker being alive. By 1980, she had already been out of Hidden Lake for six or seven years. She couldn’t know anything about Becker, how he died or where he was even buried.
He stood up. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “And your honesty.”
“What the hell, it’s therapy, right?” she said with a shrug. She walked him to the foyer and opened the door. As he started out, she touched his arm.
“Why were you asking about Claudia?”
“I’m working for someone who knew her a long time ago,” he said. “I’m working for Phillip.”
Millie looked surprised. “So there really was a Phillip,” she said. “I thought the girl was just crazy with all that talk.”
“She wasn’t crazy,” Louis said.
Millie smiled. “None of us in that place were. Don’t you know that?”
CHAPTER 23
Louis parked the car in front of the Ardmore Police Station, and turned off the engine. But he didn’t move from the driver’s seat.