South Of Hell lk-9 Read online

“May I see her?”

  “Amy, her remains are-”

  “I know there will be only bones,” Amy said. “Please, may I see her?”

  Joe was silent.

  “She can do it, Joe,” Louis said.

  “All right,” Joe said softly.

  The bones weren’t laid out in a neat skeleton the way the black woman’s bones had been. The ME had taken possession of the bones only that morning, and when he got the call that Jean Brandt’s daughter was coming in, he had hastily tried to arrange them at least to hint at their once-human shape.

  Louis didn’t think Amy cared.

  She was standing next to the stainless-steel table looking down at the bones. Joe was close by so she could step in if Amy broke down. But from his vantage point on the other side of the table, Louis thought Amy seemed fine, her expression almost wistful.

  Amy looked up at the ME. “May I touch her?” she asked.

  Ward looked as if the question didn’t surprise him at all. “Yes, but be very careful,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to examine them… examine her yet.”

  “Why do you need to do that?” Amy asked.

  Ward’s eyes found Louis’s before he spoke. “To determine cause of death,” he said.

  “She died because he stabbed her,” Amy said.

  Ward again looked to Louis. He was a man who dealt with death through the lens of a microscope. As with a cop, detachment was part of the job. But Louis suspected he had never encountered someone like Amy before, whose self-possession in the face of a loved one’s death was almost unnerving.

  Amy picked up a small bone, looked at it for a moment, and placed it carefully back in its place on the table. “When can we take her home?” she asked.

  Ward looked at Joe.

  Louis knew what she was thinking. Amy had no home, and other than Joe’s court-mandated temporary custody, she had no clear future.

  “Amy,” Joe said evenly, “you’re going to be up north with me for a little while. Why don’t we leave her here until we can figure out where… where she’ll be buried?”

  Amy considered this for a moment, her face solemn, then nodded slowly. She looked around the large tiled room.

  “Is Isabel here, too?” she asked.

  Joe was too stunned to speak. Ward looked to Louis in confusion.

  “The bones that were found in the barn,” Louis said.

  “Ah.” Ward nodded. “Yes, they’re still here.”

  “Can I see her?” Amy asked.

  Joe started to object, but Amy didn’t even look at her. Her eyes were fixed on Ward. Louis gave a tight nod, and Ward went to a closet in the corner. He came back with a large gray box and set it on a second steel table.

  “I was just preparing to ship her to the university,” he said as he took off the lid. “I’m hoping they can narrow down the time period of death so I can see how close I was.”

  Louis watched Amy. She was peering into the box with awe.

  “It was 1850,” she whispered.

  Ward looked at Louis with a confused expression. Louis cleared his throat. “Amy, we probably should get going now.”

  “May I take her with me, too?” Amy asked Ward.

  Ward blinked. “I’m sorry. We only release the remains to the next of kin.”

  “I think that’s me,” Amy said.

  Ward put the lid back on the box. “We don’t even know her name,” he said. “And without that, there’s no way to connect any family to her.”

  “Her name was Isabel,” Amy said.

  Ward let out a sigh and addressed Louis. “Look, I’m not sure what’s going on here, but before these bones can be released to someone, I need some proof that someone is a descendant, and if-”

  Joe stepped forward quickly, a hand on Amy’s shoulder. “Amy, we have to get going.”

  Amy looked up at the medical examiner. “Will you take good care of my mother until I can come back and get her?” she asked.

  “You have my word,” Ward said.

  “And Isabel, too?”

  “I promise,” Ward said.

  “Thank you.” With a last look at the gray box, Amy turned to Joe. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Outside, they paused in the parking lot while Joe helped Amy put on the denim jacket. Louis noticed that Amy was moving gingerly and that she looked tired. Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea. Physically, the girl had survived a knife attack, and emotionally, she had just endured a second bruising.

  “Amy, are you okay?” Joe asked.

  Amy was silent, looking back at the plain gray brick building.

  “Are you upset, I mean, about leaving her here?”

  Amy slowly shook her head. “Momma’s not really there anymore,” she said softly. “Those are just bones now.”

  Joe looked at Louis and gave a small confused shrug.

  “I saw her, you know,” Amy said softly.

  “Saw who?” Joe asked.

  “Momma,” she said. “In the hospital. I saw her when I left.”

  Louis met Joe’s eye over Amy’s head. The doctor had told them that Amy had been clinically dead for three minutes before they had been able to restart her heart.

  “She looked beautiful and happy, and I knew she was safe. I wanted to stay there with her,” Amy said. “But she told me I had to go back and take care of Mr. Shockey.”

  Amy looked at Louis.

  “I think we should go see him,” she said.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Joe put a hand on Amy’s back and gently urged her into Shockey’s hospital room. Despite Amy’s anxiousness to see Shockey, her hesitation now was obvious.

  In all ways but one, this was simply a visit with a man Amy had already met a dozen times, during lunches and in discussions about Jean, as an escort to Dr. Sher’s office, and even that night he showed up drunk at the hotel room.

  In all the times Joe had seen them together, she had never felt either of them had made a connection to the other. Shockey had called her “the girl.” And Amy still called him “Mr. Shockey.”

  What was Amy feeling now? Joe wondered. What did it feel like to look into the eyes of a stranger and know that you were tied to him in a way you could never have imagined and a way that could never be completely severed?

  Joe stopped Amy just inside the door. There wasn’t much time left. She and Amy were leaving for Echo Bay right from the hospital, and there were many things Joe still needed to discuss with Shockey.

  “Amy, would you stay here for a minute?” Joe said, nodding to a chair by the door.

  Amy slid into the chair.

  Joe went to the bed. Shockey was lying flat on his back. His size was minimized by the cluster of machines and the patchwork of bandages on his body. Most of the gauze had been removed from his face, leaving spidery stitches of knotted black thread. The pull of death had left a chalky gray pallor on his skin.

  The nurse had told Joe that Shockey was conscious, but his eyes were closed, and it didn’t appear as if he had heard the door open.

  “Jake?” she said.

  His eyes opened with a drugged flutter.

  “Jake, it’s me, Joe.”

  “Joe…”

  “How you feeling?” she asked.

  “Like shit,” he said.

  Joe glanced back at Amy. She had a small smile on her face.

  “Did you get the bastard?” Shockey whispered through cracked lips.

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s dead. I had to shoot him.”

  Shockey closed his eyes, his lips forming a small grimace of a smile. “Wish I could’ve been there.”

  “There’s something else,” Joe said. “We found Jean’s remains.”

  Shockey’s smile vanished. His eyes were still closed, and he was very still, but Joe knew he hadn’t gone back to sleep. The moment was for the grieving, a kind he had not allowed himself for almost ten years.

  “She was on the farm,” Joe said softly. “Just like you thought.”

  S
till, nothing. Then he opened his eyes and lifted a finger to motion that he wanted the bed raised. Joe picked up the cord, and the whir of the bed motor filled the next few seconds.

  Angled upright, Shockey’s glazed eyes went beyond her.

  “Hey, peeper…”

  Joe looked to the door. She hadn’t heard Louis come in. He had gone to rent a car so he could drive to Ypsilanti later and say goodbye to Lily. His flight back to Florida left at six tonight.

  “Hey, Jake,” Louis said.

  Then Shockey saw Amy sitting in the chair. Amy looked to Joe for permission to come forward, and Joe gave her a nod. Amy clutched her backpack a little tighter and came to Shockey’s left side.

  “Miss Joe told me you are my father,” she said.

  Shockey’s eyes cut to Joe with questions.

  “We thought you were going to die,” Joe said. “We wanted her to know.”

  Shockey looked back at Amy. His red-rimmed eyes studied her face, as if he were desperate to see some indication of how she felt about being his daughter.

  Joe decided to help him. He was pitiful.

  “Amy, why don’t you tell Mr. Shockey what happened to you when you were in the hospital?”

  Amy began her story with her abduction by Brandt in the cornfield. Joe wondered if that part would upset Shockey, but Amy recited it with such quiet poise that Joe decided not to interrupt.

  Amy told Shockey that the doctors at the hospital in Howell said she had been dead for three minutes. Shockey’s eyes never left her face.

  Her hand came down to the bed to cover his. “I went and saw Momma,” she said. “I wanted to stay with her, but she sent me back to take care of you.”

  Shockey turned away from her and focused on the blanket that draped his legs. But Joe could see his eyes well with tears.

  “Don’t cry, Mr. Shockey,” Amy said. “She wouldn’t want you to keep being sad.”

  Shockey went to wipe his face, but the IV tube taped to his hand caught on the bed rail. He moved to use his other hand, but it was completely wrapped in gauze.

  Amy picked a few tissues from a nearby box and dabbed at Shockey’s face. He closed his eyes in embarrassment.

  Joe motioned discreetly for Amy to stop. She seemed to understand and wadded the Kleenex in her fist.

  “I can leave you my books,” she said. “To give you something to read while you’re in here. Would you like that?”

  Shockey seemed grateful for a more mundane subject. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “I like to read.”

  Amy removed two books — Little Women and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — from her backpack and set them on the table.

  “Thanks… Amy,” Shockey whispered.

  Hearing her name, she smiled shyly. “I don’t know what to call you,” she said.

  Shockey looked dumbfounded. “I don’t know, either,” he said. “How about Jake?”

  Amy was clearly disappointed in Shockey’s suggestion.

  “Can we try Dad?” she asked.

  Shockey hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Yeah, we can try that.”

  Joe asked Louis to take Amy down to the cafeteria. When they had left, Joe came back to Shockey’s bedside.

  His eyes were closed.

  “Jake?”

  It took him a moment to open his eyes. He was sniffling. “I can’t even blow my own fucking nose,” he said.

  She gently maneuvered the IV line to free his one good hand. She gave him a Kleenex, and he wiped his nose with a shaking hand.

  Joe wondered how much to tell him. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Legally, Amy was a Brandt, and the sixty acres belonged to her to do with as she chose. When Joe had asked her what she wanted to do with the farm, Amy hadn’t hesitated.

  “Can we sell it? Except the cemetery, I mean. I have kin there.”

  Louis contacted the real estate agency in Hell to start the process before the place could be repossessed for taxes. The agent told him a commercial food corporation was buying up the farmland around Hell and that a quick sale was likely. The money from any sale would have to be put in a trust for Amy until she was eighteen. Joe had already contacted a lawyer in Echo Bay to sort that part out. As much as everyone wanted to believe Shockey was Amy’s father, there was still no way to prove it.

  “So, you’re bringing Amy back?” Shockey asked.

  Joe nodded. “In a month, maybe, when you’re out of here. Your doctors say you’ve got a long road ahead of you with physical therapy.”

  Shockey was quiet.

  “When you bring her back, is it for a visit or for good?” he asked finally.

  “Are you ready for ‘for good’?” Joe asked.

  Shockey looked down the length of his body, as if he were surveying the damage.

  “I want to be a father to her, but… I’ve screwed up everything I’ve ever done. She deserves someone who will love her, not a selfish asshole like me.”

  “You’re all she’s got, Jake.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “I think you can do this, Jake. Why don’t we take it one step at a time, okay?”

  Shockey nodded slowly.

  Joe found Louis and Amy in the cafeteria. They were sitting in a booth near a window. Louis had a coffee cup in front of him. Amy had a Coke and Hostess Sno Balls, another new delicacy in her rapidly expanding list of approved food.

  Joe slid in next to Louis. To her surprise, he took her hand. The beginning of the goodbye, she knew. She had told him she had to be on the road by eleven in order to make it home before dinner. She needed time to pick up a few things for Amy: extra sheets, pillows, and something else to eat besides yogurt and coffee.

  Joe’s eyes drifted to the window. She wished they had said their goodbyes last night back at the hotel, when they were alone. But Amy had been excited about her trip and hadn’t retreated to her adjoining room until well after one a.m. By the time she dozed off, Louis was asleep, too.

  It was Joe’s first real sense of what it must be like when a child was a regular part of your life. Everything — from what kind of groceries you bought to when you made love — was rearranged around the needs of someone else.

  She turned back to see Louis watching her over the rim of his coffee cup. They had never really talked about him and Lily, either, and she suspected he had much the same thoughts and doubts. But now there was no time to talk about any of it.

  “You sure you won’t come with us?” she asked.

  As he lowered the cup, his eyes left hers. “I need to get home, Joe. Maybe…”

  “What’s a few more days?” she asked. “I’ll be done with the case by Friday, and we can take a day trip somewhere.”

  He was quiet. Amy was peeling the rubbery pink frosting from her Sno Ball, discreetly eavesdropping. Joe wondered if she recalled the strange conversation they’d had on the terrace at the hotel.

  You can’t see him right now. But you have to just kind of believe. He’s there.

  Joe reached across the table to touch his hand. “When can you come?” she asked. “I’d love for you to meet Mike and the others. And see where I live.”

  “We’ll see,” he said. “Maybe this summer.”

  Joe withdrew her hand and sat back in the booth. She had learned a long time ago that this wasn’t a man who responded to pressure or nagging. And she wasn’t a woman who begged.

  She glanced up at the clock over the cash register. “We have to get going,” she said. “Are you ready, Amy?”

  She nodded. “I don’t want the rest of this, anyway. It’s too gooey. Can we get a Big Mac on the way?”

  “Maybe,” Joe said.

  They stood up. Amy grabbed her backpack but instead of cuddling it against her chest, she strapped it over her shoulders the way other teenagers did.

  Amy hesitated, then stuck out her hand to Louis.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Kincaid,” she said. “Thank you for finding Momma. And thank you for making me come out of the cupboard.”

  “Y
ou’re welcome, Amy. Very welcome.”

  Amy looked at Joe and, with a dip of her head, walked away to leave her and Louis alone. Joe pushed her hair back and faced him.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you… whenever.”

  “Drive carefully,” he said.

  He wrapped a strong arm around her neck and pulled her close and kissed her. There was need in his embrace. And she thought for a moment, he might…

  Then he let her go.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Louis ducked through the door of Halo Hats. The same sweet smell and tinkle of the bell greeted him. Grandma Alice was behind the counter. The caftan had been replaced by a purple suit and a matching felt hat adorned with a taffeta bow and a clump of lavender netting.

  It was Sunday. He realized they were all on their way to church. But Grandma Alice’s eyes held no benevolence.

  “Hello, Louis.”

  He turned.

  Lily had stepped out from behind a rack of hats.

  His first thought was of a baby chick, a ball of precious yellow fluff. She wore a dress of some kind of filmy material, the stiff flounce of a skirt topped off by a little white fur jacket. A yellow straw bonnet held her curls back from her face.

  Her face…

  Already he was trying to memorize it, because no photograph would ever do it justice.

  The solemn gray eyes met his, and there was a single thought in his head. It was a very forgiving world that allowed a guy like him to play any part in the creation of something so perfect.

  Kyla suddenly appeared from the back room, and a step behind came Channing. Kyla wore a peach-colored suit with a matching hat. Channing’s suit was dark blue over a starched white shirt topped off with a perfectly knotted turquoise tie. Grandma Alice moved to them, completing the family portrait.

  “Don’t we all look pretty?” Lily asked.

  His heart gave. “Yes, you do.”

  “We’re going to church,” she said.

  “I kind of figured that.”

  She brightened suddenly. “Do you want to come with us?” she asked.

  “Well, I-”

  “You can come like you are. God doesn’t care if you don’t have a tie.”