South of Hell (Louis Kincaid Mysteries)

by P J Parrish

  “I was alone at the farm. I’ve never talked to you before.”

  Joe was quiet. She was beginning to suspect Amy had some sort of blackout at the farm, maybe a weird kind of seizure that had triggered her childlike state and a temporary amnesia. A medical condition like that might explain her need for deep sleep and her nonsensical jabber.

  “Can I eat now?” Amy asked.

  “Of course you can.” Joe started for the phone. “How about I order—”

  Amy knelt and dragged her backpack from under the coffee table. Joe watched as Amy unzipped it and pulled out a can of sardines, setting it on the table.

  “Amy, wouldn’t you rather have a pizza?” Joe asked.

  “I can only eat what is on the list,” Amy said. She began carefully to roll back the tin’s top.

  Joe set the phone down, went to the kitchenette, and brought back a plate and a fork. She set it in front of Amy on the coffee table. Joe watched as Amy sat cross-legged on the floor, picking the sardines from the can with her fingers, ignoring the plate and the fork. When she went to wipe her oily hands on her shirt, Joe caught her wrist and handed her a towel.

  Amy used the tip, then tucked the towel into her collar, like a bib. She didn’t look up, and she didn’t make a sound for five minutes. Then she wiped her fingers again, dabbed at her mouth, and carefully rolled the tin top on the can flat. Still without a word, she picked up the plate and the can and walked to the sink.

  The unused plate went back into the cupboard, and Amy reached down to the lower cupboard to throw away the can. Her fingers paused an inch from the knob. She was frozen.

  “Just put the can in the sink, Amy.”

  “There’ll be ants if I leave it.”

  “No, there won’t. Put the can in the sink.”

  Amy closed her eyes. “I’m very tired.”

  Joe went to her and took the can. Amy’s eyes were glazing over. Set off by memories of the cupboard back at the farm?

  “Why don’t you go into the bedroom and sleep now?” Joe said.

  “Will you stay here with me?”

  “Yes.”

  Amy walked to the bedroom, her step a little unsteady. Joe followed, stopping at the door to watch her. Amy went to the closet and pulled a spare blanket from the top shelf.

  Joe thought she simply wanted to sleep on top of the flowered spread, but Amy set the blanket on the floor in the corner, then knelt to arrange it in an almost perfect square. When she seemed satisfied, she curled up on it, pulling the extra over her shoulders.

  “Amy, why are you sleeping on the floor?”

  “So I can hear you if you call to me in the night. Would you please turn out the light? I’m not afraid of the dark.”

  Joe flipped the switch, but she didn’t move away from the door. The shadows grew deep, the only light a faint glow from the living room behind her. She could not take her eyes off the small girl huddled on the floor. And she could not stop the images her mind was churning up of things that may have happened at the farmhouse or on Locust Street.

  Then she heard something.

  She thought it was the chirp of a bird but it was too soft, too childlike.

  Joe stepped closer to Amy.

  The sound was coming from the folds of the blanket. Amy was singing.

  “Catch Don…set a seal…oh do you know so sweet, you and me, Pearl, no matter hurt…New rips in two in stormy…”

  Amy’s voice trailed off as she fell asleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Joe was napping on the sofa when she heard the rattle of the hotel-room door. It was followed by a soft knocking, and she rose, glancing at the clock. Almost midnight. Through the peephole, she saw Shockey’s pitted face.

  She opened the door for Shockey, and Louis followed, carrying a cardboard box, which he set on the coffee table.

  “You got my note,” Joe said.

  “Yeah,” Louis said. He glanced around the room. “This is a big improvement. Expensive?”

  “We’ll split the cost,” Joe said with a small smile.

  “Where’s Amy?” Louis asked.

  “Asleep,” Joe said, nodding toward the door she had left ajar.

  Louis took off his jacket and moved immediately to the pizza box sitting on the table. Joe went to the small fridge to get him a beer.

  “You want one, Detective?” she asked.

  Shockey shook his head.

  Joe grabbed a Heineken for Louis and poured herself a glass of wine. “So, is there really an Aunt Geneva?” she asked.

  Louis was eating, and Shockey answered. “Yeah,” he said. “Right where the girl said she’d be. Looks like she died of some kind of cancer. But they’re doing an autopsy anyway. From what Louis told me about this girl, she sounds a little loony, and we need to make sure the girl didn’t murder the old bag.”

  “You should have seen this place, Joe,” Louis said. “This old house out in the sticks, and the inside was like no one had cleaned it in years. No wonder the poor kid—”

  Joe held up a hand, looked toward the open door of the bedroom, and went to close the door before she turned back to Shockey and Louis. “I think Amy is a lot closer to normal than we first thought,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Louis asked.

  “When she woke up here, she was very sensible,” Joe said. “Except for being shy and maybe a little emotionally stunted, she carried on a normal conversation.”

  Louis picked up a second slice of pizza. “She say anything more about Brandt?”

  Joe shook her head. “Nothing important. She didn’t remember us being at the farmhouse or that she had even spoken to me before.”

  Shockey scratched his chin. “That doesn’t sound normal to me,” he said.

  “I know it sounds strange,” Joe said, “but what if she has some medical condition that causes her to have waking blackouts?”

  “Easy enough to check out,” Shockey said. “I’ve worked with a lot of doctors in town. I’ll find her one.”

  “Yeah,” Louis said, “but not tonight. It’s late. Let her sleep.”

  Shockey glanced at Louis. Joe suspected the topic of what to do with Amy had been discussed already.

  “Look, Louis,” Shockey said, “it was everything I could do to stop my lieutenant from calling Family Services this afternoon. He agreed to wait until I got a chance to evaluate the girl myself. But we have to call them. You know we do.”

  “It’s midnight,” Louis said.

  “They get calls at midnight all the time. It’s their job.”

  Louis tossed the slice of pizza back into the box, walked to the bedroom door, and opened it. Joe could tell by the subtle stiffening of his shoulders that he was looking at Amy curled up on the floor.

  “Is there any way they would give us temporary custody of her?” Louis asked as he quietly closed the door.

  “Us?” Joe asked.

  Louis looked to her. “Yes.”

  “Louis, I have a job to go back to,” she said. “I’m supposed to be there tomorrow. I can’t stay here to babysit this girl because you can’t stand the idea of her going into the system.”

  “But what about Brandt?” Louis asked. “Eventually, they’ll have to notify him, and he’ll get custody. What then?”

  “Me staying here a few more days won’t stop that,” Joe said. “That’s a fight for family court. And as much as neither of us likes it, it’s a fight you’ll probably lose.”

  “I know a pretty good children’s rights lawyer,” Shockey offered. “I could ask him if—”

  “Forget it,” Louis said, shaking his head and moving away.

  Joe went to the desk to get the list she had made earlier. Someone needed to make a run to the store, and maybe this was a good time to send Louis out and let him get some air.

  “Amy needs some things,” she said, holding out the paper. “There’s a convenience store open down the road. Would you mind getting these things?”

  Louis looked up at Joe. “I don
’t mean to be rude, Joe, but we’ve just spent five hours on the road.”

  “Well, I can’t go,” Joe said. “If she wakes up, she’ll be terrified to find two strange men here. Please.”

  Shockey held out a hand. “Give it to me. I’ll go.”

  Joe gave him the list, and he scanned it. His eyes came up with a question. “Ah, number four here,” he said, his cheeks reddening. “What color is the box? I only know those things by the color.”

  Joe hid her smile. The man couldn’t even say the word Kotex. “It’s pink, if I remember right.”

  Shockey nodded and left.

  Louis didn’t look as if he had even heard the conversation. He was picking pepperoni off the pizza. Joe turned to look inside the box Louis had brought from Aunt Geneva’s.

  There were some clothes, but they were all in terrible shape, a print blouse missing most of its buttons, a pink sweater with holes, some faded T-shirts, two pairs of threadbare slacks, a dirty parka that looked like it belonged to a girl half Amy’s age. There was a cheap plastic bead bracelet, a tangle of ribbons, and three books.

  “Is this all you found?” Joe asked, picking through the meager offerings.

  “Those were the only clothes that looked good enough to bring back,” Louis said.

  “Did you find a toy rabbit?” Joe asked. “With one ear?”

  Louis shook his head. “No toys. Just those books.”

  Joe picked up the three books. Gone with the Wind, Little Women, and a children’s book called The Hundred Dresses. She took Little Women with her to the sofa. The room was quiet as Louis ate his cold pizza and Joe skimmed the book. She had never read Little Women before and was surprised to find out that one of the sisters in the book was named Amy, another Jo. It was a curious coincidence that Amy would have both names. Joe wondered if Amy’s mother, Jean, had selected the combination intentionally.

  “Why did you bring the books back?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t know. Just a feeling that they might mean something to her and she’d want to have them.”

  He picked up the copy of Gone with the Wind. “I tried to read this one once. Just couldn’t seem to get into it for some strange reason,” he said, tossing it back onto the table with a wry smile.

  “Did you read a lot when you were a kid?” Joe asked.

  Louis nodded. “Especially when I was being bounced around between homes.”

  Joe kept her head down. “What was your favorite story?”

  “Things like Treasure Island. Gulliver’s Travels,” he said. “I stole books from the library. And I bet that’s stolen, too.”

  Joe looked inside the back of the book. It was from the Hudson Public Library, taken out in 1986.

  She picked up The Hundred Dresses. The copy on the back said it was about a little girl who was so poor she wore the same tattered blue dress to school every day, and when she was teased, she told the other girls that she had a hundred other beautiful dresses at home.

  She felt Louis’s eyes on her and looked up.

  “I’m sorry, Joe,” he said. “I’ve been a bastard for two days.”

  “Apology accepted,” she said softly, tossing the book aside.

  He sighed and pushed off the sofa to take his empty bottle to the kitchen.

  A cry drifted from the bedroom. Louis looked quickly at Joe. “What was that?”

  She hurried to the bedroom. In the darkness, she dropped to her knees next to Amy. She was writhing in the tangles of her blanket. Her breathing was labored, and she was whimpering.

  “Amy. Wake up,” Joe said.

  “Stop, stop…stop. Don’t—”

  “Amy!” Joe said sharply.

  Amy’s eyes opened. Wide but unfocused. She was instantly still. When she finally recognized Joe, she scrambled to a sitting position, her chest heaving as she struggled to pull in a breath.

  “Amy, what’s the matter?”

  The girl was pale from the effort of trying to breathe. The wheezing made an awful sound. “I can’t…”

  Joe’s eyes shot up to Louis at the door. “She can’t breathe!”

  “It sounds like an asthma attack, Joe,” Louis said. “Ben gets them. Try to get her to calm down.”

  “Amy,” Joe said, putting her arm around her. “Try to slow down.”

  “I saw it. I saw it.” Amy gasped.

  “Saw what, Amy?”

  “The ropes. The ropes on the hook in the barn. There was screaming. So much screaming.”

  “Slow down,” Joe said. “Just try to breathe.”

  “The ropes…oh…they hurt. They hurt so much.”

  Amy’s eyes filled with tears, as if she could feel the pain herself. “And he was digging…digging a hole in the dirt. It was dark. So dark and so cold.”

  Amy was making no sense, and Joe didn’t know if she was in a state similar to the one she had experienced at the farmhouse or simply reliving a nightmare. She had to be sure.

  “Louis, turn the light on.”

  The room brightened.

  Amy blinked and looked immediately to Louis. “You have to go! You have to go now. Run!”

  Louis put up his hands. “Okay. I’m going.”

  He left the bedroom. Amy watched him, staring at the door even after he disappeared. Joe touched her cheek to bring her back.

  “Amy,” Joe said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Ann Arbor,” she said, wheezing. Her breathing seemed to be less labored.

  Amy shut her eyes, her thin chest rising and falling as she concentrated on trying to breathe. The girl must have had attacks before, Joe thought, because she seemed to be calming herself down now.

  Joe waited, her arm around Amy. The girl’s skin was pale and clammy. But at least her breathing had returned to near normal.

  “Are you okay now?” Joe asked.

  Amy nodded, her eyes closed.

  “You had a bad dream,” Joe said.

  Amy’s eyes shot open. “It wasn’t a dream. I saw it. I saw the barn and the ropes and the hook. I saw the hole in the ground.”

  Joe hesitated. The last thing she wanted to do was make the girl remember things that might trigger another asthma attack or worse. But this could be an opening to a crucial memory about her mother’s death.

  “Amy,” Joe said gently, “is someone buried out there at the farm?”

  Amy nodded.

  “Who was buried?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But there’s a grave out there?” Joe asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Could you show us?”

  Amy looked to the door again. “Is he gone? It’s important that he’s gone now.”

  “Yes. Amy, talk to me. Can you show us where the grave is?”

  Amy pushed back her hair, her gaze moving around the room as if she was suddenly unsure what had happened. Her eyelids drooped, filming over with the need for sleep. She was leaving again, and Joe wished she could reach into that complicated little brain and bring her back.

  “Okay, Amy, lie down.”

  Amy nodded and adjusted herself, but she didn’t stretch out on the blanket. She curled forward, tucked her knees up, and laid her head on Joe’s knee.

  Joe sat still, not sure what to do or how much affection to show this girl. She knew she wouldn’t be here long enough to walk Amy through the tough days and months to come, and she didn’t want Amy to become too attached.

  But even as she thought about that, her hand went to Amy’s hair, and she found herself gently brushing a few strands back so she could see Amy’s face.

  “Now what?” Louis asked.

  Shockey had returned from the store and was standing at the bedroom door watching Amy sleep. They had briefed him on what Amy had said.

  “I don’t know what happens now,” Shockey said. “I’d like to think we have a witness to Jean’s murder, but this is a pretty weird situation. We’d have to convince a judge that what she told you wasn’t a nightmare but a real memory.”

 
; “What happens to her if we do?” Louis asked.

  “We take her into protective custody as a material witness,” Shockey said. “Something like that would at least give a judge a good reason not to return her to Brandt.”

  “We don’t have enough information,” Joe said. “I don’t think any judge will believe she saw Brandt kill her mother based on what she said. Not to mention that she was only four when it happened, and she’s not very stable now.”

  Louis rose and walked a small, slow circle around the room. “What about a psychiatrist?” he asked. “Someone who can draw more of the memory from her.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Shockey said.

  “Hypnosis?” Joe asked. “Eyewitness testimony elicited under hypnosis is not admissible. You both know that.”

  “Yeah, but maybe we’d get a lead out of it that we could verify ourselves,” Shockey said. “She told you someone’s buried out there. Maybe she can take us to Jean’s body. And we sure as hell can use that.”

  Joe chewed her lip, her eyes on the closed bedroom door.

  “Do you know someone, Shockey?” Louis asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, I do,” Shockey said. “She’s retired now but used to specialize in kid psychiatry. We used her in court a lot. Her name’s Mary Sher. I’ll call her first thing in the morning.”

  Joe’s eyes went from Shockey to Louis, a slow burn of irritation building inside her. It was probably a good idea to have Amy assessed for mental competency. But these two seemed more concerned with the case than with the girl’s fragility. And there was no way Amy was going to let two men take her anywhere without going into hysterics.

  Joe pushed away from the sofa and walked to the phone. Neither Shockey nor Louis paid her any attention as she called Mike Villella. When she hung up, she turned back to them.

  “Okay, I’m staying until Friday,” she said. “I’ll take Amy to the doctor—alone.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was a bright red whirligig bird stuck on a stick in the lawn. Its wooden wings spun in the wind. Amy was watching it intently.

  Finally, she turned to Joe and gave a small smile. “There are a lot of wah-wahs in the yard,” she said.