Louis followed Detective Bloom back into the root cellar. Bloom was shining a powerful battery-operated lantern over the stone walls as they ventured toward the back. Louis felt something brush his neck and jumped, but it was just a withered corn cob hanging from the rafter.
When the bright beam of the lantern came to rest on the bones, they stood out against the black dirt as stark as an X-ray.
Louis’s gaze traveled over the sagging wood rafters and the heap of dirt in the corner where the ceiling of the cellar had collapsed. If these bones did belong to Jean, what had her final minutes on earth been like? She had been brutally stabbed inside the kitchen, yet she had managed to crawl all the way out here, a good fifty yards from the house, before she died of her wounds.
And then to be buried and forgotten.
No, not forgotten, never forgotten. Just lost.
Did you have any other hiding places, Amy?
Momma has a hiding place.
“You think this is Jean Brandt?” Bloom asked.
Louis stuffed his cold hands into his pockets. “Who else could it be?” he asked.
“Hell, I don’t know,” Bloom said. “It could be another slave woman, for all I know. Or another old girlfriend of Brandt’s we don’t know he killed. This farm seems to get a hold on people in a way that makes them crazy. And dead or alive, they can’t seem to find their way off it.”
Bloom started back toward the door. Louis stayed for a moment, staring at the wedding ring, then turned and followed Bloom back into the dull wash of white sunlight.
The farm buzzed with cops, deputies from the county and troopers from the state. Blue cruisers and Livingston County patrol cars were wedged haphazardly on the grass. Two television vans were parked beyond the gate, reporters and cameramen craning to see over the cop who was blocking their access onto the property.
“Someone cover this asshole up with a tarp,” Bloom hollered.
He was talking about Brandt, who still lay a few feet from the root-cellar door. Dead leaves had gathered along the length of his body.
Louis hurried to catch up with Bloom. He caught him near the barn as Bloom muttered something into his radio. Louis heard Amy’s name and a crackle of static, but then Bloom veered away to finish the conversation in private. It irritated Louis, but he remained where he was, not sure he’d get any information if he pissed Bloom off.
Bloom came back to him. “The girl is okay,” he said. “The docs said they lost her once when her heart stopped, but they brought her back.”
Louis blew out a breath in relief.
“The wound itself wasn’t too deep,” Bloom said. “Her parka cushioned the thrust of the blade, and the cold water stifled the blood flow. But they also said if you and Frye had been ten minutes later, she would have died from exposure.”
Louis looked out to the fields. He had almost given up looking for her.
He turned to Bloom. “Look, if you don’t need me any more right now, I’d like to catch a ride into Howell,” he said. “I’ll bring Joe back to do her statement and answer questions.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Bloom said. “But let me tell you something first.”
Louis waited, figuring Bloom was about to chew on his ass for allowing Joe to leave the scene and for letting Amy run off and probably a dozen other things.
“You remember a man named Mark Steele?” Bloom asked.
“Yeah,” Louis said. “State police investigator. Stepped into a case I was working on up north in ’84.”
Bloom nodded. “He’s still with the MSP, and he’s a major with the professional standards section. You know what that is?”
“Internal affairs.”
Bloom nodded again. “His job is to maintain the integrity of the entire agency in any way he can. I had a talk with him about you yesterday. You curious about what he said?”
“I think I know what he said.”
“Well, then know this, too,” Bloom said. “He keeps files on people like you. And yours has a big red flag on it.”
“I haven’t broken any laws. Not now and not then.”
“You’re still trouble,” Bloom said. “You’re like some poisonous gas that sneaks in, leaves a few people dead, and disappears again.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Detective?”
“I’m telling you this,” Bloom said. “If you’ve had even a passing thought of trying to come back here and get a PI license or wiggle your ass back into a uniform, think again. That ain’t going to happen for you in Michigan. Ever.”
Bloom didn’t give him time to respond. He walked away, heading back toward the root cellar to direct the excavation of the bones.
Louis turned up the collar of his jacket and wandered toward the road.
If you’ve had even a passing thought…
He hadn’t. There had been a few lonesome nights since Joe left last January, but they weren’t enough to compel him to pull up the roots he had worked so hard to put into the Florida sand. He had connections there now — to a blind ex-cop who needed his friendship and a boy perched precariously on the cusp of manhood who needed to be caught if he fell.
Under the old oak tree, he stopped walking and looked out over the barren land.
This wasn’t his place in the world, and he knew that. Despite the fact that he’d spent most of his childhood here and went to school here. Despite the fact he had once dreamed of wearing a badge here. Despite the fact that the woman he loved now lived here. Despite the fact that he now had kin here.
“You’re Kincaid, right?”
Louis turned. A state trooper was standing there. He had Amy’s backpack in his hand.
“We found this out by an old tractor in the fields. My boss said you might want it back. We figured it belongs to the girl.”
“Thanks.” Louis took the bag and looked toward the TV vans and the clot of reporters.
The trooper started toward his cruiser.
“Hey,” Louis called out. “Could you give me a lift?”
“Sure.”
Inside the cruiser, Louis sat staring out the windshield at the old farmhouse. The fog had burned off, and the sun was now high in the sky, outlining the house’s unforgiving angles in sharp relief.
“Which way you heading?” the trooper asked.
“Just get me out of here,” Louis said.
Louis and Joe spent the next morning in Adrian filling out statements and giving taped testimony. Joe called Mike to tell him she had been involved in a fatal shooting that was probably going to get publicity. She promised him she would still be back in Echo Bay for the hit-and-run trial on Monday morning. She didn’t tell him she was bringing a sixteen-year-old girl home with her.
Shockey had made through it another night. Louis had learned he was awake and talking, anxious to know what was going on with the case. They hadn’t had time yet to go by and update him. Their first stop after Adrian was Saint Joseph Hospital in Howell to pick up Amy.
Louis stood at the door and watched as Joe helped her settle into the wheelchair. Amy was clutching the mud-stained backpack and the tattered stuffed rabbit. Louis thought she seemed a little subdued. Maybe it was just the painkillers, but he guessed it also had something to do with the fact that Joe had told her Owen Brandt was dead.
They hadn’t told her about Jean yet.
Phillip Ward, the Livingston County ME, had compared the skull found in the root cellar with Jean’s dental records and confirmed that it was Jean. Joe and Louis decided they would tell Amy on the way back to Ann Arbor.
When they got down to the hospital lobby, the nurse held the wheelchair while Louis helped Amy from it. Joe reached into the Bronco and pulled out a new jacket. This one was denim and lighter than the parka. Amy looked at it and smiled.
“I don’t need a jacket, Miss Joe,” she said. “It’s nice today.”
Louis looked up. He hadn’t noticed, but she was right. The sky was blue and cloudless, and the sun was generous.
Joe started to help Amy into the backseat, but Amy hesitated. “Wait,” she said. “I haven’t apologized to you for leaving. I won’t do it again. I promise.”
Joe looked at Louis. His subtle nod told her there was no reason to wait.
“Amy,” Joe said. “We found your mother.”
Amy’s eyes widened. “Where?”
“In the root cellar on the farm,” Joe said.
Amy sat back in the seat, hugging the rabbit to her chest. “She was in there the whole time?”
“It looks that way.”
Amy was quiet. There were no tears, just a faint sadness and, to Louis’s amazement, a quiet kind of joy.
“You know the hiding place you spoke of during your sessions?” Joe asked. “We think maybe the root cellar was it. Did you know it was out there?”
Amy pushed her hair from her face. “I must have,” she said. “Because I told — I told him that’s where she was.”
Louis noticed Amy’s hesitation when she said “him,” and he wondered how long it would take before she would stop thinking of Owen Brandt as her father.
“I told him she was there, but I don’t know why I said that,” Amy said.
Joe glanced at Louis.
“So, you don’t remember ever being inside the cellar, maybe when you were little?” Louis asked.
Amy’s sigh was heavy. “I don’t know.”
Louis thought it made sense that at some point, Jean Brandt had taken her daughter to the root cellar to escape one of Brandt’s rages. Maybe Amy would remember it someday. But he saw no point in pressing it now.
“Where is Momma now?” Amy asked.
Joe had been about to close the door and hesitated, again glancing at Louis. “She’s not far from here, at the medical examiner’s office,” she said.
“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.