by P J Parrish
And Ives . . .
Where the hell was he?
Seraphin was afraid of Ives. She was smart to be leaving.
Louis stopped.
The suitcases sitting by the Volvo. Something weird about that. They were covered with snow, like they’d been sitting there a long time. And the trunk was closed. Why would Oliver leave them in the snow to get ruined?
Forget it, Kincaid. Go home. Get some sleep.
But something felt wrong. Shit, just go back and check.
Louis turned and trudged back up the hill. In the glare of the floodlights, he could see that the front door was closed now, but the suitcases were still sitting by the truck untouched, a heavy layer of snow on top now. Where the hell was Oliver?
Louis went to the back of the Volvo. The snow was tamped down, but the impression was half filled with a fresh cover. Louis stood, looking into the trees, his ears attuned to any sound. But there was only the soft hiss of the falling snow.
He walked to the driver’s door, jerked it open and found the latch to pop the trunk. He went back and threw the truck open.
Oliver lay facedown across the suitcases. There was a huge jagged hole ripped in his neck. The blood had soaked through his collar and onto the suitcases below.
Louis drew back, scanning the nearby trees.
Shit. Ives was here.
His eyes shot to the closed front door. Ives was inside.
Louis pulled up Oliver’s jacket, searching the body for a gun. Nothing. He needed a weapon . . . something. Rolling the body onto its side, Louis pulled out a suitcase, tossing it to the snow, looking for something he could use. There was a large black kit and he tore it open.
A tire iron. He grabbed it and ran to the front door.
CHAPTER 44
He pushed against the door. It was locked. He bumped against it with his shoulder, but the door didn’t give. He pounded on it with the tire iron.
“Dr. Seraphin!” he shouted.
He heard nothing from inside.
The windows. There were two, one on each side of the doors, but their wood shutters were closed and pad-locked.
He stepped back to the door, his eyes on the brass door handle. He’d break it off. He started slamming at the handle with the tire iron, smashing it with vicious swings. The wood splintered and the brass started to bend and finally pulled loose from the door. But the lock wouldn’t give.
“Dr. Seraphin!” he yelled again.
He changed angles, jamming the tire iron into the crevice between the lock and the jamb, trying to snap the lock off. The door start to rattle, but still something was holding the lock in place.
He stepped back and kicked at it with the flat of his foot. It shuddered but didn’t open, and he kicked it again, and a third time, and finally on the forth, it popped open, slamming back against the wall.
“Dr. Seraphin!”
The house was dark. The living room, the hall, all the lights were off and still he heard no voices. No screams. And he wondered if he was too late. The den. She would still have been in the den.
The door at the end of the hall was closed and he shoved it open, bracing himself in the doorway for anything or anyone, but the room was empty.
And cold.
The sliding glass doors were wide open, snow swirling and dancing on the rush of wind. On the floor, near the doors, lay a long thin tool with a rusty handle and a spray of sharp prongs on the other end. The prongs were wet with blood.
He scanned the rest of the room. An overturned table, shards of glass from a broken lamp, bunched-up area rugs, and blood . . . lots of it, tracked across the floor to the deck outside.
Louis stepped quickly to the doors, flipping on the back floodlight. The entire yard and dock exploded in a wash of white light and it was so bright against the snow Louis had to blink to bring everything into focus.
Blood.
Red footprints and long, bloody drag marks stretching across the snowy deck and down the sloping yard.
Ives had taken her with him. But why? Where did he think he could go?
Louis squinted into the yard.
The boathouse. Ives would think it held a boat, a way to escape and a way to take Seraphin with him so he could finish her later.
Louis took a step outside, then turned back to the room.
The gun case.
He smashed the front glass with the tire iron, jerking out the closest shotgun, a long-barreled twelve-gauge. He cracked it open. It was not loaded.
He tried the other one. Empty. He reached for the small drawer at the bottom of the gun case. It was locked and it took only one hard jam of the tire iron to split it open.
Fuck! No shells.
He grabbed the twelve-gauge. He had to hope that Ives would see the gun and believe it was loaded and surrender.
Louis started to the deck, then spotted a phone on the desk. It would take at least thirty seconds to call, but he knew he had to. He punched in the Ardmore station number, left a rushed message with the dispatcher, then headed out into the deck.
The cold air was a sudden burn against the rush of adrenaline surging through him. The snow was deepening, up to his ankles now. As he walked he searched the yard, looking to the shadows for movement, but there was nothing. Just the track of red in the snow leading down to the boathouse.
The narrow door to the boathouse was unlocked and he threw it open, taking a second to back off, waiting for a possible shot, even though he knew Ives didn’t use a gun. But still he waited, and coming from inside, he heard a soft, pained whimpering, and the hiss of a man’s voice.
Louis stepped inside, the floodlight spraying in around him, painting the rugged wooden walls with a gray light.
The boathouse was long, the beamed roof about ten or twelve feet high, strung with ropes, hooks, and pulleys. Along the outside walls was a narrow wooden walkway, braced by a thin weathered rail. And between them was the black opaque surface of the lake.
It took a second for Louis to see Ives, but slowly his body began to take shape in the shadows. Ives was pressed into the corner at the far end of the boathouse. His head was covered in a black wool cap, long hanks of dark hair snaking from it, a spray of whiskers darkening his jaw. His slender body billowed with the bulk of a filthy old parka.
Ives held a long knife in one hand, his other wrapped around Seraphin’s neck. She was clinging to his arm, her fingers pressed into the sleeve of the parka. The front of her beige skirt was soaked with blood.
For a second it was still, then sounds began to register. Ives’s ragged, desperate breaths. Seraphin’s whimpers. His own pounding heartbeat.
Louis pointed the shotgun. “Let her go.”
Ives brought the knife down, thrusting it into her abdomen. Seraphin screamed, her body going limp, the scream quickly turning to a wet gasp.
Dear God.
Louis quickly moved closer, the shotgun leveled, hoping to force Ives into a decision. But Ives didn’t seem to even be aware Louis was there. Didn’t seem to recognize the gun as anything that could hurt him.
“Ives!” Louis shouted. “Listen to me.”
Ives looked up, looking toward Louis but not at him. His face was strangely calm, his eyes small empty holes that were searching but seeing nothing.
Then he unexpectedly flipped the knife to the hand that held Seraphin and Louis thought he was going to cut her throat. But Ives ignored Seraphin and the knife, focused on his empty hand.
“Ives!”
Ives reached down and touched Seraphin’s skirt, then pressed his fingers deep into the shredded fabric, into the wound.
Jesus.
Then he jerked his hand free, and brought it to himself, rubbing the blood on his crotch with frenzied strokes. Whispers now. Grunts. Hisses. Groans, as if there were some animal inside him fighting to get out.
Louis moved closer, watching for some sign Ives would defend himself or lunge at him, but Ives had reached back to Seraphin to get more blood. She was unconscious. O
r dead.
“Ives!”
Finally Ives looked at him, his wild pupils still for just a second. Louis lifted the shotgun and aimed it at Ives’s forehead.
“Let her drop.”
Ives hurled himself sideways. Louis reached for him—both of them—but they were gone, crashing through the rotted railing and hitting the thin ice with a splintering splash. Ives disappeared underwater, taking Seraphin with him.
Louis leaned over the railing, stunned, his eyes searching the surface. For several seconds he saw nothing but the swirl of ice and black water. Then Ives’s head broke through, frantic, spinning, spraying water. And he still had Seraphin in his grasp, holding her now by the hair. Her eyes were open but Louis couldn’t tell if she was alive.
Ives struggled to stand in the waist-deep water and when he got his footing, he started to trudge away toward the open lake, dragging Seraphin behind him.
No. No.
He couldn’t let Ives just swim away, but he couldn’t go in the water after him. If he did, he would have to overpower Ives and do it quickly. And he realized in that instant that it might be for nothing. That Seraphin could already be dead. That Ives would freeze out in the lake anyway. And then he knew it was none of that. He was afraid to go into the water. Afraid he couldn’t take Ives. Afraid he would die.
He jumped.
The water stabbed at his body, pushing the air from his lungs, and he gasped, his heart throwing itself into a furious hammer.
Move. Move!
He forced his legs forward. Ives was only a few feet away, weighed down by the heavy parka and Seraphin. Louis lunged, grabbed the parka’s collar, and Ives spun, one hand still gripping Seraphin, the other flailing the knife. He started stabbing at Louis, thrusting up and down. Louis tried to use the shotgun butt as a weapon, but he couldn’t get in a solid hit.
Damn the gun. He tossed it to the water and grabbed Ives’s jacket with both fists, jerking him above the water and slamming his back against a piling so hard Ives let out a groan. But the knife came up and started on a downward thrust. Louis caught Ives’s wrist, keeping the knife high in the air, using his body weight to slam him harder against the piling.
Louis saw panic in Ives’s eyes.
Ives let go of Seraphin. The water started to take her away. Louis’s eyes flicked to her, and Ives’s fist came in hard, smashing into Louis’s temple. Before Louis could react, he was hit again.
Louis threw all his strength into dislodging the knife, slamming Ives’s hand against the piling. But the bastard didn’t let go, like he was feeling none of it.
Louis tried to rip Ives’s fingers from the knife handle, twisting them backward. The snap of bone and Ives let out a bellow, dropping the knife. Louis lunged for it before it sank. Ives slumped against the piling.
Louis could barely stand up. He needed to get out of the water. He started slogging toward a small wooden ladder on the other side of the walkway. His frozen fingers touched wood, but he couldn’t grip the rung.
An arm came around his neck, grappling at him, pulling at his jacket, almost taking him underwater, and Louis knew if he went under now, he would not come back up.
He spun, grabbed Ives behind the neck, and jerked him forward, chest to chest, so close he could feel Ives’s panicked breaths. Louis stuck the knife into his belly.
Ives jerked. Gasped.
Louis stabbed him again. And again.
Ives let out a rasp and his body went limp and he fell against Louis, the knife still in his gut, the water around Louis’s hand suddenly warm.
A thick stillness settled over them. No sound except the lapping of the water against the pilings. Louis draped one arm over the ladder rung, afraid he was going to pass out. Ives’s body started to drift away, the back of the parka ballooning with enough air to keep him afloat.
Louis didn’t want to think. Couldn’t think. He just needed to get out of the icy water that was eating away at his legs and chest and head.
The knife . . . where? Then he remembered. It was still in Ives’s body. Louis looked out to the opening leading out to the lake. Ives’s body had disappeared.
He was shivering so hard he could barely hold on to the ladder rung. Willing every muscle to work, he started to pull himself up. His feet fumbled to find the rung, his legs burned. But suddenly he was there, flat on his belly on the wood.
He knew he couldn’t stay there. He struggled to his knees, then his feet. Stumbling from the boathouse, he trudged through the snow, the floodlight like acid in his eyes, the air so thick and so cold he felt like he had to push his way through it.
He went down. Hands. Knees. Snow in his nose. Icy water in his lungs.
Louis lifted his head. His legs. He couldn’t feel his legs. But he could feel his heart. Beating.
Jesus. Jesus. God, help me. I can’t think. I can’t feel. I can’t move.
Things were going black. But from somewhere he heard a sound. A sound he knew.
Sirens.
CHAPTER 45
“What happened?”
For a moment, Louis couldn’t reply. Then he pulled the blanket tighter around his shivering body. Dalum was waiting, looking down at him with pleading eyes, like he needed someone to make him feel that what he was thinking wasn’t crazy.
Louis spoke, but nothing came out. His throat was raw or frozen and he cleared it. “I killed Ives,” he said.
“Out there?”
Louis nodded and he heard himself saying something about Seraphin and he was watching Dalum’s face as the words stumbled out. Then another face came into focus. Detective Bloom. And then Louis could see uniforms, hear other voices.
Bloom was talking now, face close, but his words were making no sense.
“Stop,” Louis whispered. “Stop. Speak slower.”
“You’re saying Buddy Ives killed Dr. Seraphin and you killed him in a struggle?”
Louis nodded. He realized he was only half dressed, wearing a dry T-shirt and socks. Two pairs. And he was only now starting to feel the warmth from the fireplace. He looked at it, wanting to move closer, but he couldn’t manage the strength.
“Who killed the man in the Volvo trunk?” Bloom asked.
“Ives.”
Bloom was quiet. Everyone was quiet. It was a deafening kind of silence, filled with questions and doubt.
“Ives is out there,” Louis said. “Go find him.”
“The lake may ice over by the time they float up,” Bloom said. “If that’s the case, we won’t find them until spring.”
Louis coughed, tasting water, feeling as if the muscles in his stomach were ripping apart, and he brought a fist to his mouth to stifle a second cough. His eye caught the lower end of a pair of uniform pants as they walked by. The cop’s feet were bare.
“Kincaid,” Bloom said.
“What?”
“I need some answers here. How do I know you didn’t go off the deep end and kill this Oliver guy? Or the doctor? Or that you didn’t murder Buddy Ives in cold blood?”
“You don’t,” Louis said.
“Then what do you expect me to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Dalum’s voice came back. “Detective, right now he needs a doctor. Let me take him over to the hospital.”
Bloom stood up. He said something to Dalum that Louis couldn’t hear; then he was gone. A few minutes later, he heard the squeak of a gurney and he was being helped up. He tried to keep the blanket around him, but the edges kept slipping from his fingers and he felt as if he were dropping off into a sleepy fog.
He was flat on his back, faces above him. Then the air was cold, the sky dark. A bump as they hefted him off the porch. Snow settling on his face. He could see sleeves. Patches. The red and white of the EMTs. The blue and gold of the state police.
“Dan?” he called.
“I’m right here,” Dalum said.
Two full days by the fire and still his feet felt cold. Most of his whole body felt cold, but it was his feet th
at bothered him the most. He hadn’t lost any toes to frost-bite. Had no permanent damage to his muscles. Or bones. The two ugly bruises on the side of his face would go away, too.
He slumped lower in the chair, easing his stockinged feet closer to the fireplace. He pulled the afghan over the MSU sweatshirt, and closed his eyes, listening to the perky voice of Jane Pauley on the Today Show as she told the ladies how to make Christmas ornaments out of egg noodles.
Phillip was on his way to Brighton to pick up Frances. Louis had overheard him on the phone last night, telling Frances that Louis had been through a rough time, killed a man, and almost drowned, and that Frances should come home and spend some time with him before he went back to Florida. She had agreed.
Detective Bloom had called last night. He still couldn’t find any bodies and the lake was starting to ice over, making the divers’ search dangerous. He said it might be spring before they found them. Asked Louis if he’d stay in Michigan for a few more days at least. Louis said he would. Until Friday. His flight left at two.
Louis glanced over at the phone. John Spera had called an hour ago to tell him he had gone through all the cremation cans. He had found a can with the number 926 on the top. There was no label, Spera had told him. Short of finding the cremation file in E Building there was no real way to prove it held Claudia’s remains. Louis told Spera to keep the can in a safe place until he could come and pick it up.
Louis muted the television, thinking about Claudia, how there was nothing to mark her existence except numbers. First that sad stone marker in the cemetery, then Spera’s tags, and now this. At least he had the ashes to offer Phillip. He hadn’t decided yet if he was going to tell him what Seraphin said about Claudia committing suicide.
Louis heard the hum of a car motor, close like it was in the driveway. But it was too soon for Phillip to be back. A few seconds later, he heard boots crunching in the snow, then the doorbell. He debated whether to answer it. His feet still prickled with every step, and the muscles along his back and legs were bruised and tight.
Again, the doorbell.