Heart of Ice (25 page)

The annual Polar Bear Dip had had its biggest turnout in ten years. A leaky pipe had caused $17,000 worth
of damage to the county government building. Seventh grader Dina Bidwell had won the Leelanau County spelling bee by correctly spelling
cockatoo
. But the big story was the inauguration of the new Echo Bay mayor this morning at the high school auditorium.

Louis sipped his coffee, staring down at the photograph of the Polar Bear men standing around the hole that had been cut in the ice of Lake Michigan. In all this time here, he had never seen news that got any spicier than old guys in Speedos.

Not that he minded. He had come to like it, in fact, this weird feeling of ease. It was cold as hell outside, but here inside Joe’s cabin he felt as if he were floating in a warm and buoyant sea. So much of it was just being cocooned here in this place. But it was more than that.

All his life he had been moving. From one foster home to another, from one job to the next, from Michigan to Mississippi to Florida and back here again. He had been moving, too, away from people—from partners who had died, from women whose faces were just blurs in his memory. Even from his foster parents Phillip and Frances. When he called them at Christmas, Frances said that they were thinking of making a trip down to Florida to look at condos. He knew damn well Phil didn’t want to move to Florida, but he also knew they were getting older and wanted to be nearer to him.

He reached across the table to the pile of mail he had brought in earlier and found the red envelope. He had already read the Christmas card inside, but he slipped it out and read it again. Glitter sprinkled to the table.

Dear Louis
,

I am sending you a Christmas card that I made myself with glitter. I hope you like it. Thank you for the pretty sweater. I wore it to school today. Momma said you were still up north working on getting the bones home to their family. I told my friends at school that I helped find some bones, but no one believed me. Boys are stupid anyway. I sent away for some pictures of Tahquamenon Falls, so we can go there next summer when you come back to Michigan for my birthday. Do you think that on the next trip I could meet your girlfriend?

XOXOXOX

Lily

Girlfriend . . .

The sweater had been Joe’s idea. When they had gone shopping in the little stores in downtown Echo Bay to look for a Christmas present for Lily, Louis had headed straight for the bookstore and picked out a kid’s science book on the origin of horses. Joe had steered him next door to a yarn boutique where she found a nubby pink girl’s sweater with white lilies knitted down the front. And she had given him a warning.

Don’t even think about getting me a DustBuster.

He didn’t. The next day, while Joe was at work, he found a women’s boutique where he picked out a silver bracelet set with a Petoskey stone. Two months ago he hadn’t even known what a Petoskey stone was. But during
one of their walks on the wintry beach Joe had told him she had been scouring the shoreline for one of the prehistoric fossils for months but had never been lucky enough to find one.

She had surprised the hell out of him by crying when he gave her the bracelet. She had worn it to the New Year’s Eve party hosted by Augie Toussaint, the
Echo Bay Banner
editor. But he had the feeling that he—not the bracelet—was the thing she was most proud to wear on her arm that night.

Girlfriend . . .

When Joe had first introduced him to people at the party she had hesitated. Finally she had just said, “This is my friend Louis Kincaid.”

It made him feel strange, to be half of a couple. Once during the party, standing there with Joe’s arm entwined in his, he had felt that old urge to pull away. But he hadn’t. Because for the first time in his life he didn’t want to move away from people. For the first time in his life he wanted to move toward them.

“So how do I look?”

Louis turned.

Joe was standing in the doorway. She was wearing her dress uniform—double-breasted dark brown jacket and pants with a crisp white shirt. Gold buttons, gold braid on the left epaulette, gold bars on the jacket cuffs, and a gold six-pointed star on her left breast pocket.

Louis stared, dumbstruck. He had seen her in her usual uniform—plain shirt, slacks, and usually a Leelanau County Sheriff’s Department ball cap over her ponytailed hair. But he had never seen her looking like this.

“Well?” she pressed.

“You look—” He shook his head. “Impressive,” he said finally.

“I feel like George Patton in drag,” she said, heading toward the coffeepot.

Her hair was done in a neat braid. She carried white gloves and the stiff gold-braided garrison hat that he had seen wrapped in plastic at the top of her closet.

“How long will the mayor’s swearing-in take?” he asked.

“I don’t know. His wife is holding a lunch afterward. I can’t get out of it.”

He held up a hand.

“What are you going to do today?” she asked.

“I was thinking about doing the laundry.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry about leaving you alone so much.”

“Joe, don’t be ridiculous. You have a job to do.”

“I know, it’s just—”

The phone rang. Joe grabbed the receiver off the wall.

She listened for a moment. “Yes, he’s here,” she said, looking at Louis. She put a hand over the receiver. “It’s Rafsky.”

She handed him the receiver, then ducked beneath the coiled cord to put the cap on her coffee and wrap her doughnut.

Louis drew a breath, readying his words. A couple of days after he had arrived in Echo Bay, he had called Rafsky’s office, intending to tell him that he had ordered the second test—the paternity test—to compare Ross’s DNA to that of the fetal bones. But Rafsky had been on family
leave, and Louis had no home phone number for him, which made it all too easy to forget about it.

“Hey, Rafsky,” he said.

“ ‘Hey’? That’s all you have to say to me—hey?”

Louis blew out a breath. “Look, I called your office, but you weren’t there and—”

“And you couldn’t be bothered to track me down?” Rafsky said.

Louis looked up at Joe. She was watching him quizzically.

“Ordering a test without telling me is bad enough. But telling them you were
me
? That’s low, Kincaid, even for a fucking PI.”

“Cheap shot, Rafsky. Look, I know it wasn’t a smart thing to do—”

“Actually it was,” Rafsky said. “That’s why I’m letting you off the hook.” He paused. “The first test I ordered, the familial test, is still pending, thanks to you pushing it lower down the list. But I just got the results this morning on the paternity. Ross Chapman is the father.”

Louis leaned back in the chair.

Maisey had been right. Ross Chapman sexually assaulted and impregnated his own sister.

“Bastard,” Louis said softly.

“Listen,” Rafsky said. “This isn’t information we need out there right now. Not until we know if it had anything to do with her murder.”

“I understand.”

“So how quick can you get back to the island?” Rafsky asked.

Louis glanced at Joe. She was standing nearby, holding
her travel mug and hat, obviously anxious to hear what Rafsky wanted.

He covered the receiver. “There’s been an unexpected development,” he said to her. “Rafsky wants me back on the island to help him finish the case.”

For a moment she said nothing, and he wondered what was behind the play of emotions on her face. Maybe a little jealousy that she wasn’t going to be part of it. Clearly disappointment that he was going to leave. But there was something else there, too, and he knew what it was because he was feeling it as well—uncertainty about where they as a couple were going to be after this case was over.

Joe stepped forward and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Go,” she said. “You have a job to do, too.”

W
hen Louis got off the ferry the blast of wind hit him like a hard slap in the face. He set down his duffel and zipped up his down parka. The coat had been a Christmas gift from Joe, and he was damn glad to have it now. He spotted the Mackinac Island police SUV sitting on Main Street, its exhaust pluming in the icy air.

He was surprised to see Rafsky behind the wheel as he got in, tossing his duffel in the back.

“Where’s the chief?” he asked.

“He’s home,” Rafsky said. “He’s not a hundred percent yet. His ex-wife is still here taking care of him.”

Rafsky put the SUV in gear, and they started away from the docks. Main Street was snowed over and crisscrossed with snowmobile tracks. The lamplights blinked on, a concession to the gloom of the early January afternoon. Louis had forgotten how early darkness came in winter this far north.

They were headed away from town. “Where are we going?” Louis asked.

“The airport.”

“Why?”

“To intercept Ross Chapman,” Rafsky said. “His plane lands in thirty minutes.”

“How’d you get him to come up here?”

“I told him we found Julie’s skull and made a positive ID from the dental records. I told him he had to come up here and sign the papers to claim the remains.”

“You lied,” Louis said.

“I had to. I need to question him about Julie, and if he knew he was a suspect he’d never come.”

“You can’t get him on incest. The statute of limitations has run out. You’re going for murder?”

Rafsky nodded. “Why not? We’ve got Maisey, who said he was fucking his sister for years. She gets pregnant. Abortion is illegal. By December she starts showing. He’s a nineteen-year-old prince and now all he can see is his life going down the toilet. He does the only thing he can do.”

Louis didn’t say anything because this was exactly what he had been thinking about all night. It was why he hadn’t slept.

In the orange glow of the dash lights Rafsky’s profile was etched with deep lines. It was obvious Rafsky hadn’t slept, either.

“Does Flowers know about this?” Louis asked.

Rafsky was silent for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “I haven’t told him anything. I haven’t even told him about the DNA paternity test yet.”

“Why not?”

Again it took Rafsky a second to answer. “I don’t think the chief should be around when we question Chapman.”

“It’s still his case.”

“He’s a fuckup, Kincaid,” Rafsky said. “I like the man, but he’s a fuckup. We’re going to get only one shot to question Chapman, and we’ve got to do this right.”

It started to snow. Louis watched the wipers slap the flakes away. Rafsky was right. Not so much about Flowers but about Chapman. Once he knew he was a murder suspect he would wrap himself in lawyers and public-relations hacks. And he was coming back here now only because he thought he was finally going to be able to bury Julie forever.

When they got to the airstrip Rafsky parked in the small lot facing the runway. Everything was gray and still as they watched for a speck in the sky. There was a strange tension in the car.

“What’s going on with Dancer?” Louis asked.

“His lawyer’s still trying to prove he’s nuts.”

Rafsky went silent again.

“What about Edward Chapman’s doctor in Bloomfield Hills? Did he find anything suspicious?”

“No.”

Louis suppressed a sigh. “Anything from the lab in Marquette on the lodge processing?”

“No.”

The SUV was silent again. Rafsky was staring up at the darkening sky. Louis thought about asking him to turn up the heat but just burrowed down into his parka and closed his eyes.

“He’s here,” Rafsky said.

The Learjet touched down in a spray of snow. When the airplane door opened and the steps unfolded, Rafsky pushed from the SUV. Louis was going to stay inside, but there was something about Rafsky’s quick—no, angry—walk that made Louis follow. Ross was alone, no aide, no entourage. He didn’t even have an overnight bag with him.

Louis watched Rafsky carefully. Nothing but politeness for Chapman, a smile, a handshake. After a few seconds Ross ducked his head against the wind and walked with Rafsky toward the SUV.

Louis opened the door to the front passenger seat and got in. No way was this prick riding in front.

Ross gave Louis a look as he slid into the backseat. He filled the SUV with the smell of lemon cologne.

Fresh snow speckled the windshield as they drove from the airstrip. Louis peered up at the sky. The clouds to the west, where the storms came in off Lake Michigan, rolled toward them like a swell of blue-gray smoke.

“Thanks for picking me up,” Ross said. “I was wondering if I was going to have to rent a damn horse or something.”

Rafsky said nothing as he turned the SUV back onto Garrison Road, his eyes darting between the windshield and the rearview mirror. Louis glanced in the backseat. Ross had a small black book in his hand and was checking his watch and making notes. Not one iota of curiosity about his sister’s skull or why he was being allowed to finally bury her.

“Excuse me, Detective Rafsky,” Ross said, leaning forward. “Do you know how long all of this will take?”

“Why?” Louis asked. “You got somewhere you need to be?”

“No, not tonight,” Ross said. “But I have an interview in Detroit with the
Free Press
at eight in the morning and a phone interview with the
Washington Post
at noon.”

“Freshmen senators must be busy guys,” Rafsky said.

Ross gave an awkward laugh. “It’s been hectic, yes,” he
said. “My wife and I have been in Washington all week trying to find a decent place to live. We found a nice town house in Georgetown, but it’s a little small and things are a lot more expensive than in—”

Rafsky slammed on the brakes. The SUV skidded a few feet, then spun a hundred and eighty degrees, coming to a stop right in front of the iron gates of St. Anne’s cemetery.

“Jesus Christ,” Ross said, his hand gripping Louis’s headrest. “What happened?”

Rafsky sat there, both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead.

“Do you know where you are, Mr. Chapman?” Rafsky asked.

“Who cares? Why are we stopped?”