She shook her head. “It was just Rebecca and me. We were the last ones here. I was packing up the last of the records that were going to the state. She was helping the salvage company.”
“There was a salvage crew here this week?” Louis asked.
“Yes, a foreman and his crew. All the buildings have been locked for months and Rebecca had to take them around so they could do inventory.”
“Who else was around?”
Alice had to think for a moment. “Three security guards, the old fellow at the guardhouse, and two others who were only here at night. One walked the grounds watching for vandals and the other was posted out in the cemetery to keep an eye on the exhumation company’s equipment.”
“Anyone else in and out?”
“Just a few people claiming remains in the last week.” Now Alice had turned toward him. “Why are you asking?”
“No reason,” Louis said.
Alice started to rummage through her purse, pulling out her gloves. “Well, thank you for the ride,” she said.
“No problem.”
Alice opened the door and started to slide out.
“Miss Cooper, wait,” Louis said.
She looked back at him.
“Why do you think Charlie put flowers on Rebecca’s eyes?”
She hesitated. “Chief Dalum asked me the same thing. You talk like a policeman.”
Louis smiled. “I used to be one. It never really goes away.”
“Do you think Charlie did it?” she asked.
“I don’t know enough about him or Rebecca to answer that, Miss Cooper,” Louis said.
She sat back in the seat, looking back out the windshield at the black hulk of the administration building. “Charlie loved Rebecca,” she said. “She was the only one who really paid any attention to him, the only one who worked with him.”
“Worked?” Louis asked. “How?”
“She figured out that he loved it when she read to him, and that he could remember things he had heard and recite them back. It didn’t really matter what she read. Charlie just seemed to like to hear the words.”
A small smile tipped her lips. “She used to read him Shakespeare.” She saw the incredulous look on Louis’s face and her smile grew. “Well, only A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There’s a character in it named Oberon. I guess he was the king of the fairies or something, and Rebecca told Charlie that’s what he was.”
When Louis said nothing, Alice went on. “She didn’t mean it cruelly, and I’m sure Charlie didn’t understand the play. He just knows his name is in it.”
Alice’s smile faded and in the faint lights of the dash, Louis could see her eyes, full of questions.
“He loved her,” she said, more fiercely this time, as if she were trying to convince herself now.
“People sometimes kill the people they love,” Louis said.
She looked away. “That’s what the chief said.”
The heater had fogged the windows, and Louis could barely make out the ghostly play of the flashlights out by E Building. Dalum had told him he didn’t expect to find anything out there tonight. Tomorrow, in the daylight, Dalum and the state police would conduct a more thorough search.
A hundred and eighty acres. He wondered what else they’d find.
“Mr. Kincaid,” Alice said.
“Yes?”
“Do you still want to see Claudia DeFoe’s medical records?”
“Of course I do.”
Alice was still for a moment, head down, her fingers working the Kleenex. “I’m going to make you an offer,” she said. “I will show you the records, even let you copy them, if you’ll do something for me.”
He knew what was coming. And it surprised him that Alice would cross that line. But then he realized that she wasn’t crossing it for him.
“You want me to prove Charlie didn’t do this.”
“Yes,” Alice said. “Or at least prove beyond any doubt he did. So the town knows for sure. So I know for sure.”
For an instant he wondered if she really wanted the truth. He had known other people, family members of accused murderers, who said they wanted to know the truth, but most didn’t really. No one wanted to know that they were close-be it next door or by blood-to a killer. But he suspected Alice was different. She had seen the worst of things here. And in many ways, she had to be stronger than he was. Stronger than most cops he knew.
“You have a deal, Miss Cooper.”
“Call me Alice,” she said.
“When can I see the records?” Louis asked.
“We’re closed now for Thanksgiving weekend,” Alice said. “How about Monday morning? We don’t have much time after that. The hospital will be closed by December thirty-first.”
“Monday’s fine. I’ll be here early.”
Alice pushed open the door against a rush of cold air. She whispered a soft thank-you and she was gone.
Louis waited until she had climbed in her car and he saw the headlights go on before he even backed out. He followed Alice down the narrow drive and through the gate. She turned east, toward Ardmore. He sat for a moment, watching her taillights grow smaller.
His mind was already working on Charlie and Rebecca and the plastic flowers. And he was hearing Charlie’s strange, childlike voice as they stood by the single white shoe in the woods.
I got them from the cemetery.
What were you doing in the cemetery, Charlie?
I walk there every night.
Louis turned west, easing down Highway 50, trying to find the tiny road that led to the cemetery. He knew why he was going, but the thought was so absurd he almost couldn’t let it linger long in his mind: He wanted to see if he could hear the graves cry.
In the black cloak of darkness, he almost missed the road. But soon he saw the towering sentry pines that marked the entrance and he eased the car to a stop. He got out and went to the trunk, hoping Phillip had a flashlight. He didn’t, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need light. Maybe it was better if he approached this in darkness.
A wisp of a moon scampered between the high icy clouds, giving him just enough light to see. He could make out the dark hulk of the backhoe in the far corner. He didn’t see a security guard. Maybe he was out helping the cops, or more likely sleeping inside the backhoe. He was about to let it go when it occurred to him the guard could wake up, and in a panic, think Louis the killer and shoot him. So he walked to the backhoe, climbed up on the side, and peered inside. No one.
Maybe the guard had quit, afraid to sit in a cemetery with a killer running loose. Shit, maybe the damn guard was the killer.
Louis walked across the frozen dead grass, shaking his head. He would check it out with Dalum on Monday. But for the moment, he was glad the guard wasn’t there. There was something about all this that required solitude.
Louis stopped in the center of the cemetery and looked around. For a moment, the wind died and a silence, as thick and heavy as the night, enveloped the cemetery. He closed his eyes, trying to focus.
On what?
On some part of himself that he had never used before? On something deep inside his brain that he wasn’t even sure existed? On something that could allow him to see or hear or feel what Charlie Oberon did?
But there was nothing. Nothing but the steady pulse of his blood in his ears. Louis opened his eyes.
He walked away from the backhoe, his steps slow and quiet. He couldn’t see the flat concrete markers, but sometimes he could feel them under his feet and he had the urge to step away from them, like walking on them was disrespectful. But he couldn’t avoid them. The rows that had been so visible in the daylight now seemed distorted and he had no sense of the layout.
He stopped.
That silence again. No wind. Not even a sound of a car on the highway. Not the rustle of a branch.
He closed his eyes, drew in a breath, and held it.
What did you hear, Charlie?
The call of an owl in a tree?