“Where are her clothes?” Louis asked.
Charlie didn’t answer him as he eyes drifted to the ground. At his feet were two small plastic flowers. Yellow daisies, the petals faded and cracked from the weather. Charlie bent to pick them up, but Louis grabbed his arm.
“Don’t touch them,” Louis said.
“They’re mine,” Charlie said. “I put them on her eyes. She needs them to wake up.”
“Where did you get the flowers?”
“The cemetery,” Charlie said.
Louis’s eyes moved slowly over Charlie’s shirt. The bloodstains were light smears, put there by cradling Rebecca’s body against his chest. But Charlie had no blood on his green cotton pants. Or his face or his hands, except a few light smears. It was obvious the woman had been dead far longer than a few minutes, so if Charlie had killed her, when had he done it? Last night? Early this morning? And if he had killed her, why carry her out into the open?
Jesus. You’re dealing with a crazy man, Kincaid. You have no idea what he did to her or why. You don’t even know what’s wrong with this man.
But he did know he needed to keep asking questions. And that he needed to keep it simple.
“Charlie, do you know what dead is?” Louis asked.
“Yes.”
“Rebecca is dead,” Louis said.
Charlie hung his head, drawing a hand across his face, smearing dirt on his cheek.
“You didn’t mean to hurt her, did you?” Louis asked.
“I didn’t. . no. I didn’t. But she cried. . she cried all night. All night. I listened to her cry all night.”
“Where was she when she was crying?” Louis asked. “Can you show me where she was?”
“I couldn’t see her but I could hear her.”
Damn it. . this isn’t making sense. Try again.
“Where were you when you heard her crying?” Louis asked.
“In the cemetery,” Charlie said.
“You were in the cemetery last night?”
“I walk in the cemetery every night,” Charlie said. “I talk to them.”
“The dead people?”
Charlie rubbed his face again, looking off into the woods. For a few seconds, he was quiet, as if he was suddenly aware that talking to graves was something he shouldn’t share. Louis wondered if there wasn’t a small part of Charlie that understood he saw the world differently than most people did.
“The graves cry,” he whispered. “I try to talk to them, but they never hear me.”
“Do the graves talk, too?”
“No,” Charlie said. “Just cry.”
Louis started to ask another question, but he heard the distant wail of a siren. Charlie heard it, too, and his head shot up, his eyes scanning the trees.
“Police,” he said. “The police are coming.”
“Yes. Let’s go back.”
“No. No police. No police.” Charlie’s arms came out, fingers spread. “No policemen. Please. No.”
“They won’t hurt you.”
“No police, please. Police hurt Mama.”
Louis pulled on Charlie’s sweatshirt to get him moving. Charlie tried to reach out to grab a branch, but Louis firmly eased him forward.
“Take me back, Charlie,” Louis said. “Take me back to Rebecca now.”
Charlie wiped his face again, the tears mixing with the mud and blood. “They’ll take me away,” he said.
“Take me back to Rebecca.”
Charlie started moving, pulling nervously at the straps of his wool hat as he trudged through the brush. Every few steps, Louis would hear a soft sob or a low muttering about the policemen.
The siren suddenly cut off as Louis and Charlie broke the trees, coming back out into the compound behind E Building. There were two police cars parked on the grass. White with a streak of blue across the side. Alice was standing near one, her coat pulled tight around her.
Two cops were bent over Rebecca’s body, and Louis directed Charlie toward them. He pressed back against Louis’s hand, but Louis urged him forward, and as they cleared the trees, one of the cops looked up.
He wore a navy blue windbreaker with a thin gold stripe and a cap embroidered with Ardmore P.D. on the front.
“I’m Chief Dan Dalum,” he said.
Dalum’s face had the pink puff of a newborn baby, but a healthy gray-blond mustache and wire-rimmed glasses set his age close to forty. His voice was deep and melodious like that of a D.J. on a classical radio station.
“Louis Kincaid,” Louis said.
“You’re the visitor,” Dalum said. He looked at Charlie.
“So that makes him the patient then, the man who carried her out here?”
“Yes.”
Dalum tapped his officer on the shoulder, then faced Charlie. “We’re going to handcuff you, Charlie,” Dalum said. “It’s for your protection and ours. Do you understand?”
Louis could tell Charlie didn’t understand, but Charlie let the officer handcuff him, his eyes searching for Alice. He saw her near the cruiser, and when the officer led him in that direction, he went easily.
Dalum looked back at the body in the grass, and then moved around her, positioning himself on the other side. His face was rigid, and Louis thought he saw him blanche slightly. Then his blue eyes came back up, settling on Louis.
“Why did you and Charlie go back there in the woods?” Dalum asked.
“I wanted to see if there was a crime scene,” Louis said. “I was hoping he might talk to me.”
Dalum’s eyes stayed steady on Louis. “You talk like a cop.”
“Ex-cop. I’m a private eye now,” Louis said.
“Here in Michigan?”
“Raised in Plymouth, live in Florida now.”
Dalum tipped up the brim of his ball cap. “And you’re here at Hidden Lake why?”
“I’m just trying to locate a former patient for a client. Alice and I were coming out of that building,” Louis said, pointing to E Building, “when we saw Charlie coming out of the trees, carrying her.”
Dalum turned to look at Charlie, but he was almost invisible in the back of the cruiser. “Charlie say anything to you back there in the woods?” Dalum asked.
There was a defensive edge in Dalum’s voice, and Louis understood why. No local cop wanted to be upstaged by an out-of-state P.I., especially on what was probably the town’s first homicide in years.
“I’m not sure,” Louis said. “It didn’t make any sense to me, but maybe when you question him you’ll hear something I didn’t. Alice may be a big help, too. She knows him.”
“Did you find a crime scene?” Dalum asked.
“No, it looks like she was killed somewhere else and just dumped there. No blood, no clothes, except for one shoe.”
Dalum was quiet for a moment, his eyes drifting back down to Rebecca. Her skin had gone even bluer, and she looked more like a toppled marble statue than a human being.
“Let me get something from the car,” Dalum said.
Louis nodded. Dalum walked back to his cruiser and leaned into an open window, picking up his radio from inside. Louis guessed he was calling the medical examiner or crime scene techs. When he was finished, Dalum walked to the trunk of the car and opened it. He returned with a green blanket that he laid over Rebecca. Then he looked at Louis.
“Show me this place you think she was dumped.”
Louis led Dalum into the trees.
“I’m going to ask for your discretion on this, Mr. Kincaid,” Dalum said.
“Of course.”
“Most people around here are damn glad to see this place go away, and this kind of murder will just bring more looky-loos out here again.”
“I understand,” Louis said.
“For years, we’ve been swatting away reporters who wanted to write about people like Donald Lee Becker.”
“Or the eyeball eater,” Louis said.
“There was never an eyeball eater. It was just a myth,” Dalum said, ducking under a branch.
“I know,” Louis said.
“Yeah, but a lot of other people don’t. They think he was real. Like the stories of torture and brain removals that were supposedly going on inside.”