South of Hell (Louis Kincaid Mysteries)

by P J Parrish

  “You could have called,” she said.

  He didn’t answer. He dropped onto the edge of the bed and started tugging at his shoes.

  “Did you see Kyla?” she asked. It was a struggle to say her name and to keep her voice even.

  Louis didn’t look up. He dropped one sneaker to the floor and started working on the other.

  “Louis, talk to me,” Joe said.

  The other shoe fell with a thud. He sat there, his back to her, hands on his knees, face down.

  “Louis—”

  “Joe, just leave me alone, okay?” he said quietly.

  She started toward him. “No, I won’t leave you alone. Did you see Kyla? Did you ask her—”

  His face swung up to her. “There’s no baby, okay?”

  She stopped cold, the harshness of his voice like a slap.

  He brought up a shaky hand. “I just want to go to sleep,” he said softly. He turned away, his fingers clumsily working on the buttons of his shirt.

  She went into the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was burning, but she was as white as the tile walls, almost as if she were fading into them. Snatching her crumpled jeans and shirt from the floor, she yanked on her clothes. She ran a quick comb through her wet hair and went back into the bedroom.

  “I’m going down to get something to—”

  Louis was sprawled on the bed, clothes still on, eyes closed.

  She grabbed her purse and left.

  Chapter Ten

  The woman behind the glass arched her brow in annoyance. She wore a blue Ann Arbor PD uniform, but her name tag said she was an administrative assistant.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Kincaid, Detective Shockey did not leave us your name,” she said. “And you are not on the approved visitors list. I can’t let you back into the squad room without authorization.”

  “Then call him,” Louis said. “Tell him I want to see him now.”

  He felt Joe’s hand on his arm, tugging him away from the window. He resisted, then followed her. The stale alcohol was still trickling through his veins, creating a swell of nausea, and he put a hand on the wall to steady himself. He could hear Joe calmly talking to the woman behind the glass.

  “I’m Undersheriff Frye from Leelanau County. It’s important we talk to Detective Shockey. I’m sure he’ll see us.”

  He heard the woman pick up a phone and say there was an undersheriff from up north and an agitated man waiting for Detective Shockey in the lobby.

  Louis took a drink from the water fountain and walked to the glass doors to look outside. The sunlight was making his eyes water. The floor felt like it was moving.

  “You okay?” Joe asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “It’s not the first time I’ve been hungover.”

  “It’s a first for me,” she said. “I’ve got to call Mike.”

  He watched her walk away to the pay phone nearby. He had awoken this morning still wearing his clothes. His shoes were in the corner, and he guessed Joe had been the one who had removed them. He sure as hell had no memory of it. Or much of anything from last night. Joe had been quiet all morning, and he knew she was pissed. He knew this wasn’t the time to try to mend anything, though. He could barely think right now.

  He heard heavy footsteps and turned. Shockey was coming toward him like an unblocked linebacker. He grabbed Louis’s arm and pushed him out through the front doors. Louis was standing on the walk before he could make his mind work enough to react.

  He jerked away from Shockey. “Don’t you ever grab me again.”

  “I asked you not to come here.”

  “And I asked you to tell me everything you knew about Jean Brandt,” Louis said. “Why didn’t you tell me Jean had a kid?”

  Shockey blinked. “What?”

  “A kid,” Louis said. “There’s a toy wagon out at the farm. It has amy painted on the side. Who is Amy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Stop lying to me, you sorry piece—”

  Louis stopped himself, seeing two uniformed patrolmen approaching. He pulled in a breath, and he and Shockey both waited until the cops disappeared into the station.

  “Jean never mentioned a kid,” Shockey said. “I’m telling you the truth. We talked about everything, but I swear, no kid.”

  “Then how do you explain the wagon?” Louis asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Shockey said. “Probably belongs to some neighbor kid.”

  “There’s not a house for miles around that place, you know that.”

  “Then maybe someone else lived there for a short time after Brandt left.”

  “Brandt never sold it.”

  Shockey was quiet.

  “There was pink wallpaper in one of the bedrooms,” Louis said.

  “My ex-wife put pink wallpaper in our bedroom,” Shockey said. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I know there was a kid there,” Louis said.

  “Then what happened to her?” Shockey asked.

  “What do you think?” Louis asked.

  Shockey froze for a second, then moved away, raking his hair. He seemed genuinely stunned. Louis wanted to believe he was, but the man had been playing on the edge of the truth since this began.

  Shockey turned back to him. His face was slack, but Louis could almost see the gears in his brain working, like he was trying hard to remember something.

  “Okay, okay,” Shockey said. “Maybe Jean had a kid, I don’t know. But I swear to God, she never said anything.”

  “We need to find out for sure,” Louis said.

  Shockey didn’t seem to hear him. He was still stunned by what Louis had told him.

  “Shockey,” Louis said, “where do you want to start?”

  Shockey scratched his forehead. “Well, without an age or birth date, there’s no point in checking state records,” he said. “You should start with the schools out there.”

  Louis let out a stale breath, his head throbbing. “They won’t tell me anything,” he said. “Their records are confidential.”

  Louis heard the door behind him open and saw Shockey look beyond him. Shockey thrust out his hand as Joe came up to them.

  “Detective Jake Shockey,” he said, introducing himself. “You must be the undersheriff.”

  “Joe Frye, Leelanau County,” Joe said with a smile.

  Shockey tipped his head toward Louis. “You with the peeper on a personal visit or working the case with him?”

  “Mostly the first, a little of the second.”

  Shockey gave Joe a quick, appraising look, then turned back to Louis. “Folks in those towns out there will talk to a sheriff.”

  He nodded to Joe. “Just let her flash her badge.”

  The school in Hell was a three-story, red brick building. To the right was a playground, to the left a football field. There were a bunch of screaming kids on the swings and a squad of teenage boys running sprints on the field. The two contrasting stretches of grass were testament to the school’s service to students from kindergarten to high school.

  “Got your badge out?” Louis asked.

  Joe glanced at him and led the way into the school’s dim lobby. At the door stenciled with the word office, Louis held the door open so Joe could go in first.

  A woman with winged glasses and a thick cardigan sweater rose from a desk to greet them. While Joe introduced herself, Louis looked around. Beyond the windows, he could see the football field’s scoreboard, one of those old hang-the-numbers kinds, with a cut-out of a roaring lion mounted on top.

  The secretary’s voice drew him back to her.

  “Amy Brandt?” the woman said. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard the name. Do you know what grade she would have been in?”

  “Old enough to have a wagon and young enough to still want to play with it,” Joe said.

  They waited while the woman rifled through a file cabinet. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have no Amy Brandt.”

  Louis had the thought th
at maybe Amy might be a middle name or a nickname. “Do you have any Brandts?” he asked.

  The woman reached back into the drawer and pulled out two folders. “I have a Geneva and an Owen.”

  “May we see Owen’s?” Louis asked.

  The secretary came back to the counter and started to hand the file to Joe. Louis intercepted it and flipped it open. He had no idea what could be in there that could be of any use, but he wanted to look.

  The first paper was a history of Owen Brandt’s time in school. He started kindergarten in 1953, missed a year in 1962, and finally dropped out in the tenth grade.

  Louis sifted through the rest. Report cards, heavy with D’s and F’s, teachers’ notes, class schedules, and a list of family contacts.

  “Geneva was his older sister,” he said to Joe.

  Joe was flipping through Geneva’s file. “I know. Nothing important in her file. Mediocre grades, lots of absences. Looks like she left school at sixteen.”

  Louis found a form titled “Disciplinary History.” It was filled with the handwriting of teachers, starting in grade school: fighting, insubordination, fighting, truancy.

  “Look at these,” Louis said, sliding the paper to Joe.

  Age ten. Owen hit Mary Jane Wilson in her face with his fist. Suspended three days. Age fourteen. Owen tore Betsy Miller’s blouse. Sheriff Potts called. Suspended three weeks.

  “I have a feeling that was more than a torn blouse,” Joe said.

  Louis nodded. He closed the file and handed it back to the secretary. Joe thanked her, and they left the school. As they walked across the parking lot, Louis fell a few paces behind. Joe turned to look back at him when she reached the Bronco.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Sorry about that remark about you having your badge ready,” he said.

  “No problem.”

  “It was just the hangover talking.”

  “Forget it,” Joe said. “Where do you want to go now?”

  “I want to talk to some people in town,” he said. “Just because the kid never made it to school doesn’t mean she didn’t exist.”

  He counted seven buildings in Hell. On one side of County Road D32 stood a general store, a Marathon gas station, the Brimstone Café, and a souvenir shop called the Devil’s Lair. On the other side of the blacktop road was the Tree Top Tavern, a real estate office that doubled as a doughnut shop, and a second souvenir store called Lucifer’s. Halloween costumes, mostly devils, hung in the window. Near the door sat a barrel of plastic pitchforks.

  “These people are scary,” Joe said as she climbed out of the Bronco.

  Louis closed his door and looked around, a small memory kicking in: passing through this place on one of his foster father Phillip’s long Sunday drives. He’d been about eleven and wanted to stop and get a devil mask. His foster mother, Frances, was a little sharp as she told him she wouldn’t hear of it. It had taken him years to figure out that it had nothing to do with him but everything to do with the crucifix that hung over her bed.

  Louis pulled the picture of Owen Brandt from his pocket, and they went inside the Devil’s Lair.

  The old place was packed to its wood rafters. Shelves of T-shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with i’ve been to hell and back. Racks of Halloween costumes. Counters heaped with red coffee mugs, plastic skulls, bobble-head devils, and hats printed with flames.

  The middle-aged guy behind the register was bagging up some shirts for a woman. Louis waited until she was gone, then introduced himself.

  The man seemed impressed by the fact that there was a real private investigator in his store. “My name’s Harry,” he said. “What can I help you with?”

  Louis showed him Brandt’s photo. “Do you know this man?”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “That’s Owen Brandt.”

  “You know much about him?” Louis asked.

  “Haven’t seen him for years,” Harry said. “He used to come into town once in a while. Buy some gas or groceries. Big, friendly guy.”

  Louis held out the picture of Jean Brandt. He had cut off the missing persons part of the bulletin, leaving only her face.

  “You ever see him with this woman?” Louis asked.

  Harry peered at the photo and started to shake his head, but a memory hit him. “Oh, yeah, I did,” he said. “One time, maybe 1977 or so. We were all sitting over at the Brimstone having coffee, and Owen pulled up. He came inside, but she stayed in the truck. I could see her pretty good because we were in the window booth.”

  “Was she alone in the truck?” Louis asked.

  “Far as I could tell,” Harry said. “I remember thinking how strange it was for Owen to leave her out there in the cold while he came in and ate himself a nice hot breakfast.”

  Louis picked up the two pictures.

  “In fact,” Harry went on, “I remember that same winter, Fred from over at the gas station drove down to deliver Owen some firewood. Normally, Owen chopped his own or came and picked it up, but his truck was broke or something.”

  “What happened?” Louis asked.

  “Fred said he started to help Owen unload the wood,” Harry said. “But Owen told him never mind, and he got the woman from inside the house to come help him. It was freezing cold, and Fred said Owen made that woman make all these trips back and forth carrying logs that weighed more than she did.”

  “Did you ever see a child with Owen Brandt?” Louis asked.

  Harry’s brow rose in surprise. “A child? No.”

  “This Fred fellow from the gas station, did he mention seeing a child?”

  Harry shook his head. “He would’ve, too, because later that night at the bar, we all talked about how crappy it was to make that woman work like that.”

  “Thank you,” Louis said.

  He went back through the store, but Joe was gone. He stepped outside to see her coming out of the café, carrying two Styrofoam cups. She met him at the rear end of the Bronco and gave him one.

  “You find out anything over there?” he asked.

  “Just that people here liked Owen Brandt, as far as they knew him,” she said. “No one ever saw a child with him.”

  “I want to try the places across the street,” Louis said.

  Joe let out a small, frustrated sigh. He knew she thought this was a waste of time, but he didn’t say anything as he started across the road.

  No one in the bar or the other gift shop knew Owen well enough to offer an opinion, nor had anyone ever seen him with a child. He had better luck at the real estate office. The woman behind the desk stood up quickly when Louis showed him the picture.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know him. He called me once about selling that farm of his.”

  “When?” Louis asked.

  She opened a file cabinet behind her and came out with a thin folder. The single piece of paper in it looked like an appraisal.

  “It was November 3, 1980,” she said. “He heard about the big food-processing companies that were trying to buy out the small farmers and he wanted me to come down and take a look and figure out how much he could get if he decided to sell.”

  “Did you go to the farm?” Louis asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I remember we stood outside, and, well, just between me and you, the place was kind of decrepit. It was like just out in the middle of nowhere at the end of this dead-end road. I knew the big companies didn’t care about the buildings, and I could have used the commission. But I still remember wanting to get away from that place as fast as I could.”

  “While you were there did you see a child? Or any evidence that a child lived there?” Louis asked.

  “No,” she said. “But he wouldn’t let me inside.”

  “Did you see a woman out there?” Louis asked.

  “No.”

  “So Brandt seemed interested in selling?”

  “Very much so,” she said. “But about a month later, right after Christmas, I called him back and he said he had changed his mind. Sa
id something about not wanting to sell something that had been in his family for generations.”

  Louis thanked her and left.

  Joe was sitting in the driver’s seat when he got back to the Bronco, leafing through some of the papers she had brought with her from Echo Bay.

  “Find anything?” she asked.

  “Just that Owen Brandt was looking to sell that farm in November, 1980, but a month later, after Jean disappeared, he suddenly changed his mind.”

  Joe set the folder aside and started the engine. She did a U-turn in the parking lot, pulled up to the road, and stopped.

  “We go left to get back to Ann Arbor, right?” she asked.

  “We’re not going to Ann Arbor,” he said. “We’re going back to the farm.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to look through those storage boxes,” he said. “Kids need stuff. It couldn’t all just disappear.”

  Joe shoved the Bronco into park and turned to face him. “Louis,” she said, “it’s bad enough you entered the house illegally once. Ripping open sealed boxes without a warrant is another thing altogether. You could jeopardize Shockey’s case in court.”

  “I won’t be looking for evidence of a murder, just some indication that a kid lived there. No one ever needs to know.”

  “And if you just happen to find evidence of a murder?” she asked. “What happens then?”

  “Then I put it back, reseal it, and we find another way to expose it later.”

  “You’re asking me to stand by and watch you break the law,” she said.

  He held her eyes for a moment. “You can always go home.”

  She turned away from him, hands resting on the wheel. Then, with a hard jerk of the gearshift, she put the Bronco into drive and headed south out of Hell.

  Chapter Eleven

  Just like Crazy Verna…

  That was the first thing that came into Owen Brandt’s head as he stood in the doorway of the bedroom in a house on Locust Street in Hudson, Michigan.

  The dead woman lay in her bed. Her skin was gray, her eyes sunken, her ragged black hair thin, giving her face the look of one of the those cheap rubber Halloween witch masks they sold at that souvenir place back in Hell.