Read Online An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries) by P.J. Parrish - Free Book Online Page A

baths. They were used to shock the system,” Alice said, walking away.
    He followed her, catching up as she swung open another door. It looked like an examination room inside. There was one window, covered with steel mesh. A bed sat in the center, worn leather straps with large buckles dangling from each side, more leather at the foot.
    “Electroshock therapy,” Alice said.
    Louis stared at the straps. “How did it work?” he asked.
    “It was supposed to shock the brain back into functioning normally,” she said. “They used it for everything, three and four times a week, even on things like depression. But it caused convulsions, sometimes so bad patients broke bones or their teeth.”
    “And afterward?”
    “The patients were postictal . . . confused, disoriented.”
    Alice moved on, pushing open more doors, but Louis couldn’t take his eyes off the table. Suddenly there was little he wanted to see. He was picturing Claudia DeFoe in this place and he couldn’t help but wonder again how she ended up here with people like Donald Lee Becker. He was wondering, too, how in the hell he was going to tell all this to Phillip.
    He fell into step behind Alice, stopping to look into the other small rooms. Some had padded walls, others old wood tables, a few just stacks of cardboard boxes. Most of the doors had been taken off their hinges and were stacked against the peeling walls or rusting radiators. The hallway walls were marked with graffiti—obscenities, crude drawings, and a symbol Louis recognized as a devil’s pentagram.
    “We’ve had a lot of trouble with break-ins,” Alice said. “Kids think this is a cool place to party.” She turned away with a disgusted snort, pulling up her coat collar against the wind whistling through a broken window-pane.
    They passed a small pile of leather straps dumped in a corner and Alice saw him look down. She offered no explanation and he didn’t ask.
    “I’ll show you the wards,” she said.
    Alice led him to another stair well. Unlike the one on the first floor, this one was narrow, dark, and completely caged in heavy grating. Louis guessed it was because the stairs were used by the patients going down to therapy.
    “The women were housed on the third floor,” Alice said, heading toward another metal door. “The men were kept up on four.”
    The large room on the third floor was sectioned off by pillars, small barred windows every ten feet or so. In the dim light, Louis could count twenty metal beds, their white paint peeling, the bare springs cobwebbed and corroded. At each footboard sat a small metal locker. Off in one corner, there was a jumble of wood rocking chairs. The floors were littered with beer cans, garbage, and a couple of old striped mattresses.
    “Seen enough?” Alice asked.
    He said nothing, and Alice turned away from him. He knew the tour was over and he closed the door to the ward. The bang echoed through the hollow halls. Alice led him down a back stairwell and they emerged into a dark hallway. Louis was disoriented and headed toward what he thought was the exit. But it was just another plain metal door with PASSAGE 12 painted on it. There was no doorknob, no handle of any kind.
    “This way, Mr. Kincaid,” Alice called out.
    Back in the lobby, Alice held the door for him, and he stepped back into the cold air.
    He turned to look at her as she locked the building. “Thank you,” he said.
    “I hope you’re able to help Mr. Lawrence.”
    “I need to know what happened to her here,” Louis said. “And where her remains might be now. I need to see her records.”
    Alice’s face scrunched slightly as she stared into the gray sky.
    “Please,” Louis said. “He doesn’t even know how she died.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Kincaid. I just can’t.”
    He nodded, and they started back to the main building. It was just before noon now, but the day had not warmed up at all. The wind was stiff from the west, the leaves skipping furiously at their feet.