by P J Parrish
“Yeah.”
Bloom moved forward. “Doctor, I need to ask you a few questions about Buddy Ives.”
“I’m afraid that’s confidential.”
“Well, now,” Bloom said, “if what Kincaid told me about you visiting E Building is true, I don’t see how you can hide behind confidentiality now.”
Her gaze finally swung to Bloom. “What do you mean?”
“Kincaid tells me you two went through the patient files last week and you picked him out four suspects, Doctor. Ives included.”
“That’s absurd.”
“What?” Louis said.
Bloom threw a hand toward Louis, then gathered a breath. “How about we ask your bodyguard, Doctor?”
“My what?” Dr. Seraphin asked.
“That big fellow that answered the door.”
“Oliver is my driver and personal assistant. Nothing more.”
“How about we ask anyway?”
Dr. Seraphin set her glass down and walked to the door, calling softly for Oliver. He was there in a second, his bulk filling the frame, his beefy face expressionless.
“Oliver,” Bloom said, “did you and Dr. Seraphin visit Hidden Lake last week?”
“No.”
“Anytime in the last month?”
“No.”
“Anytime in the last year?”
“I have never been to Hidden Lake Hospital,” Oliver said.
Louis lowered his head, working hard at staying level. He should have expected this. Seraphin would never have made that visit without first making sure she could deny it later.
“Tell me, Oliver,” Bloom said. “What’s your job here?”
“I am a driver and an assistant.”
Louis watched Bloom, worried he was buying all of this crap. Damn it. He had to figure out a way to get to Seraphin. Make her admit something.
“Why would I need a bodyguard?” Seraphin asked.
“Kincaid thinks Buddy Ives is after you,” Bloom said, “that you’re the ultimate victim, so to speak.”
She was unfazed. “Why would this patient want to hurt me?”
“Because of the rapes,” Louis said.
Her face gave a little, her upper lip moving with a tiny tremor, but Louis knew Bloom hadn’t seen it. His head was down to his notebook.
“Rapes?” Dr. Seraphin asked.
“Ives raped at will for over two decades,” Louis said. “While he was in your hospital, while he was under your control, while his victims were in isolation.”
Bloom quickly stepped in. “Kincaid, let me handle this.”
Seraphin’s eyes shifted to Louis. “Detective, have you had Mr. Kincaid examined since his experience in the tunnel?”
Louis moved forward and Bloom caught his arm, holding tight. “Hang on there, Kincaid.”
Bloom looked to Seraphin. “How about we just get a statement from you on this rape thing, Doctor? Just for the record?”
“This is abominable,” she said. “If Ives managed to hurt anyone while he was institutionalized, I had no knowledge of it.”
“He raped Millie Reuben,” Louis said.
“Who is she?”
“A former patient. I talked to her. She remembers ever ything.”
“I’m sure she does,” Seraphin said. “In her own way.”
Louis felt everything starting to slip from under him; Seraphin was studying him; then she shook her head, pulling gently on the sleeve of her sweater.
“Detective Bloom, you’re wasting my time and yours and you’re only furthering Mr. Kincaid’s trauma by letting him pursue these ridiculous thoughts,” she said.
“Trauma?” Louis said.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re not a stupid man, Mr. Kincaid.
You have training. You know what fear and isolation do to the mind. Certainly you recognize you’re irrational right now.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Louis said.
She looked at Bloom, a sad smile on her lips. Bloom closed his small notebook. “I do have one more question, Doctor. How could you release a man like Ives?”
“I was not at Hidden Lake when he was released,” Seraphin said. “And even if I had been, there was probably little else I could have done.”
Bloom looked at Seraphin, tapping his notebook on his hand. Then he turned to Louis. “Come on, Kincaid.”
“No,” Louis said. He faced Seraphin. “I can prove you were there in E Building. I can find someone who saw you. Your fingerprints will be on the files. And when we find Ives, he’ll tell us what you did inside that place.”
“I hope you do catch him.”
“Kincaid. Let’s go now,” Bloom said.
Louis stared at Seraphin. Bloom pulled at his arm, but Louis shrugged it off.
“You need to deal with what happened to you,” Seraphin said. “I can help you.”
“I don’t need your help,” Louis said.
Louis turned away from her and pushed past Bloom. He heard Bloom say something to her, but he wasn’t sure what it was and didn’t care.
He was standing outside in the driveway, trying to sort his thoughts, when Bloom came out the door.
“She’s lying, Detective,” Louis said.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Bloom said. “But if she did allow Ives to rape whoever he wanted when he wanted, why would he hate her so much?”
Louis glanced back at the house, then at the ground, a jab of panic working its way through his chest. Suddenly it felt as if his whole body were shutting down, that even the simplest thought—like the way home—was hard to bring into focus.
“I don’t know,” Louis said.
CHAPTER 42
He felt as if he were back in the tunnels staring at a cinder-block wall. Dead-ended. Blocked. Nowhere to go. And with this small echo of a voice in his head whispering that maybe he was seeing things that weren’t really there.
The farmland was a blur. After Bloom had dropped him off, he had picked up the Impala and just started driving, heading out into the cornfields away from Adrian.
He realized suddenly he was speeding and eased off the pedal.
He wasn’t crazy. Angry, and fighting to stay awake, but not crazy. Something bad had been going on at Hidden Lake and Seraphin was behind it. But no one believed him and he had no proof. Millie Reuben’s word wasn’t going to convince Bloom. But who else was there who knew the truth?
The wind was gusting hard, sending dervishes of snow spinning across the road. The Impala fishtailed and Louis hit the brake. The car skidded to a stop on the empty road. Nothing around him but beaten-down cornstalks and just beyond a barbed-wire fence, the remnants of a listing gray-plank barn.
Louis sat there, hands gripping the wheel. An old windmill groaned in the wind.
Who else knew the truth?
Rodney.
He had been to see Claudia regularly. That much he could prove with the visitors’ log. Rodney might have seen something, remembered something she did. Or the way she looked. Might have seen her pregnant.
There was a tractor path just ahead. Louis pulled the car into it, turned around, and headed back the way he had come. At least he had a plan now—detour back to Plymouth to pick up Claudia’s file and then go to Grosse Pointe.
Frances’s car wasn’t in the drive when he pulled up to the house. Louis was glad; he didn’t really want to face Phillip right now. Inside, he didn’t even stop to take off his coat. He found Claudia’s file in his room and was starting back downstairs when he heard the door. He hesitated, then went down.
Phillip was hanging up his coat in the hall closet and looked up.
“You coming or going?” Phillip asked.
“Going,” Louis said. “I’ll be back later.”
Phillip shut the closet door. He wanted to say something. Louis could see it in the way Phillip’s hand lingered on the closet knob, blocking Louis’s path to the front door. Louis felt a stab of guilt for the way he had left things the last time they had spoken. But
he knew he was in no frame of mind to fix it right now.
“You look terrible, Louis,” Phillip said.
For a second, Louis thought about telling him about the tunnels. “I’m all right,” he said.
The wounded look on Phillip’s face made Louis suddenly feel as if he were ten years old again. “Phillip, don’t worry about me,” Louis said.
“I’m thinking you should go home,” Phillip said.
“What?”
“I want you to let this go, forget about it.”
Louis shifted the folder to under his arm. “Can you?”
Phillip hesitated, then nodded slowly.
Louis looked off toward the dark kitchen, then back. “I don’t want to leave you here alone, Phillip. What about Frances?”
“That’s between us. You can’t fix that, Louis.”
The sadness was etched in Phillip’s face, and Louis knew it wasn’t about Claudia. It was about Frances and what Phillip might have destroyed.
“I have to go somewhere,” Louis said.
Phillip’s eyes held his for a moment, and then he stepped aside.
It was dark by the time Louis pulled into the drive at the mansion on Provencal Road. There were no cars in the circular drive, but the old leaded windows glowed gold in the cold night.
A maid answered. She told Louis that Rodney wasn’t in but was expected back shortly. Louis told her he’d wait and pushed his way into the foyer before she could stop him.
The maid led him to the same library where he had first met Rodney. There was no welcoming fire burning, and the room was illuminated by only one table lamp. Louis sat in a wing chair by the dead hearth. A good twenty minutes, maybe a half hour passed. Finally, he got up and switched on two other lamps. The old house seemed to breathe around him, exhaling a cold vapor into the still air.
“Can I help you?”
Louis leaned forward to peer around the wing chair. It was Eloise DeFoe. She was wearing a fur coat, holding it around her like a blanket against the cold. Her mouth was a slash of red in her small white face.
Louis rose. Her expression shifted. “You’re that police person,” she said.
“Investigator,” Louis said. “I’m waiting for your son.”
She pulled off her black leather gloves, then shrugged out of her coat, leaving it on a chair. “I can’t tell you when Rodney might be home,” she said. “He’s very unreliable.”
“I’ll wait,” Louis said. He sat back down in the wing chair.
“I can’t imagine why you need to talk to him,” she said. “Perhaps I can save you some time? What is it you need?”
There was something about her stance, her ramrod posture, that told Louis she wanted him out of here.
Louis stood up. “I need to know more about your daughter Claudia.”
Eloise Defoe just stared at him.
“Why didn’t you ever visit her at Hidden Lake, Mrs. DeFoe?”
“My daughter was ill,” Eloise said. “The doctors advised me that it was best to leave her alone so she could heal.”
Before Louis could reply, there was a sound out in the foyer. A man’s voice and then, a few seconds later, Rodney DeFoe was standing in the doorway. He was wearing a handsome camel cashmere overcoat and a bright red scarf hanging loosely around his neck. He looked harried and, Louis noted, disoriented.
Rodney’s eyes found Louis’s face. “Well, look who’s here, Columbo.”
Eloise DeFoe’s eyes swept over her son as he came into the room, and Louis picked up the scent of her disdain—and, from Rodney, the smell of alcohol. Rodney ignored them both, heading toward the table of glasses and bottles. The room was quiet as he poured himself a drink.
“Rodney, we need to talk,” Louis said.
Rodney didn’t turn around, but Louis could see him raise the glass and take a big drink.
“I said we need to talk,” Louis said.
Rodney turned. “Really? And what other filth have you come to tell me? Telling me she was raped wasn’t enough? You want to see me lose it again?”
Eloise came forward. “Raped? Who was raped?”
Rodney’s eyes drifted to his mother, then to Louis. “Go ahead, tell her.”
Louis was silent.
“Tell her, damn it,” Rodney said.
“Who was raped?” Eloise demanded.
“Claudia!” Rodney shouted. “Claudia was raped. Your daughter Claudia was raped! In that place!”
Rodney turned away, slamming the drink down.
Eloise stared at his back. “That’s impossible,” she said finally. “I would have been informed.”
Rodney spun around. “Informed? You think they would have told us something like that?” His face crumbled. “Jesus, if I had known . . . I could have . . .”
Louis took a step toward him. “Rodney, I have questions—”
Rodney closed his eyes and shook his head.
“You visited Claudia—” Louis said.
“You visited her?” Eloise interrupted.
Louis ignored her. “Rodney—”
Eloise pushed her way to Rodney, grabbing his arm. “You went there?”
“Yes, I went there,” Rodney said. “I went there to see her.”
“But I told you—”
“I don’t care, Mother. Go ahead, cut me off, throw me out. I just don’t care anymore.”
Louis pulled the picture of Claudia from the patient file and walked to Rodney, holding it under his nose. “You don’t care?”
For a long time, Rodney didn’t move. Then his hand came out and he took the picture. It shook slightly as he stared at it.
When he looked at Louis, there were tears in his eyes. “She was beautiful,” he said. “Not like this.”
“Rodney, listen to me,” Louis said. “In all the times you saw Claudia, did you ever notice if she was pregnant? Did she ever say anything about it?”
“Pregnant?” Eloise said.
Rodney just stared at Louis, the picture of Claudia still in his hand.
“Think, try to remember,” Louis said. “Did she ever talk about being pregnant? Did she ever mention a baby?”
Eloise was at Louis’s side. “I won’t listen to this anymore. I won’t listen to you talk about my daughter like this anymore,” she said. “Get out of my house before I call—”
“Shut up!” Rodney shouted.
Eloise drew back. “How dare you raise your voice to me,” she said.
“Shut up! Shut up!” Rodney shouted again.
“Rodney, don’t—”
“Don’t what? Don’t tell, Mother? Well, fuck that. Fuck you! I’ve had it! I can’t do this anymore!”
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.