Heart of Ice (28 page)

“Visiting days are Saturdays and Wednesdays.”

“I have an appointment with Danny Dancer. Special
visit, granted by your sheriff as a favor to state investigator Norm Rafsky.”

The sergeant flipped through some papers on a clipboard. “You Louis Kincaid?”

“Yeah.”

“ID and sign the book.”

Louis slid his license and state police ID through and signed in. The cop pushed Louis’s license back through but fingered the state ID as if it were a counterfeit twenty before he finally gave it back.

“Dancer’s lawyer here yet?” Louis asked.

“Nope.”

When Louis called Lee Troyer this morning it had taken all his charm to convince her that all he needed was information on kids Dancer knew when he was young. She had finally agreed and told him she’d meet him at eleven. It was eleven fifteen.

“The roads are bad north of here,” the sergeant said. “It might be hours before anyone gets through. You better go in. You wait too long the inmates will be at lunch.”

“If Troyer shows up, tell her I’m here.”

The sergeant hit a buzzer, and a steel door to Louis’s left slid open, leading to a second waiting area. The guard in a wire cage handed Louis a plastic tray through a slot.

“Empty your pockets and leave the bag here.”

“I have books in here I need to take in,” Louis said, hoisting up the bag.

The cop used his pencil to point to a sign that said no contraband was allowed inside.

“I have permission from your sheriff to take the books in,” Louis said.

The cop eyed him, then picked up the phone and asked for a Captain someone. Louis waited, listening to the sounds of the jail—buzzers, shouting, clanging. This place was a stark contrast to the island station with its coffee-scented office, boxes of doughnuts, and framed pictures of the island.

Louis looked back at the cop on the phone. The officers here were different, too, a tough bunch with weathered skin and military tattoos. Louis knew he was in a place where cops were
us
and inmates were
them
and there was nothing in between.

The guard hung up the phone. “Captain says you can take the books in but you’ll have a guard with you the whole time.”

“Not a problem.”

With another buzz the second door slid open. Louis followed a guard to the end of the hall. Inside an eight-by-eight-foot cell Dancer sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at the drain. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit, had a small yellow-black bruise on his cheek, and his dirty hair hung uncombed in his eyes.

“I’m not wasting time down here babysitting your cop-shooting retard, so make this quick,” the guard said, unlocking the cell.

Louis went inside. The clang of the door closing reverberated off the walls, but Dancer didn’t look up.

“Hello, Danny,” Louis said.

Dancer didn’t answer, his attention still focused on the floor. Louis realized he was counting the red speckles in the tile.

“How many are there?” Louis asked.

“I’m not done yet.”

Louis pulled some books from the bag. “I have something to show you. Can you take a break?”

Dancer looked up at him, his eyes lighting up when he saw the sketchbooks. He held out his hand.

“I’ll give them to you in a minute,” Louis said. “Can we sit on the bunk?”

When Dancer came to the bunk and sat down a week’s worth of sweat wafted off him. Louis made a mental note to tell Lee Troyer to demand her client get special hygiene attention. And protection.

“Are my beetles okay?” Dancer asked.

“Your beetles?”

“My beetles,” Dancer said. “Is someone feeding my beetles?”

Louis hadn’t been to the cabin since that day with Rafsky months ago, but he could only assume the bins were now full of dead bugs.

“I don’t know about your beetles, Danny,” Louis said.

“I need to go home.”

“They’re not going to let you go home,” Louis said. “You shot Chief Flowers, remember? That’s why you’re here.”

Dancer looked down.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” Louis asked.

Dancer said nothing. Was he counting speckles in the floor again?

“Danny, do you understand what you did?” Louis asked.

Dancer’s eyes shot up. “I understand! I’m not stupid. I understand. I understand everything!”

To Louis’s surprise, there were tears in Dancer’s eyes. He had thought that autistics were devoid of deep emotion, but that stereotype was now gone.

“When you get out—” God, he hated lying like this. “When you get out, you can get some new beetles.”

“What about Callisto, Penelope, Lycus and—”

The damn animal skulls.

“I’m sure they’re still there in your cabin. No one would take them.”

“My skulls aren’t safe there,” Dancer whispered.

“I’ll go your cabin. And I’ll pack up Callista—”

“Callisto. Cal-lis-
toe
.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll pack them and store them. Okay?”

Dancer looked away again. His fingers were wrapped tightly around the edge of the bunk as if he were afraid he would fall off.

“Did you hear me? I said I’d get them,” Louis said.

“You repeat yourself a lot,” Dancer said.

“I’m sorry. But I’ll get them.”

“You got to get them all.”

“I will.”

“All of them.”

“Yes, all of them.”

Dancer was quiet again, his attention back on the floor. Louis set the sketchbooks on the bunk, keeping Julie’s journal in his hand.

“Do you know what poetry is, Danny?”

No answer.

“Do I have to repeat myself again?” Louis asked.

Dancer shook his head. “ ‘The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go
before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.’ Robert Frost.”

Greek mythology and American poetry. Aunt Bitty must have been a remarkable woman.

“Yes, that’s good,” Louis said. “Now, do you remember talking to us about Julie Chapman?”

“Bones now. Julie Chapman is just bones.”

“Yes,” Louis said. “But you and Julie had something in common. You and she were sort of the same. Do you want to know how?”

Dancer’s head came around slowly. Louis had wondered if Dancer understood that he wasn’t the same as everyone else, and now he had his answer. Dancer’s eyes were wide with curiosity as to how he and someone like Julie Chapman could be anything alike.

“Julie was a lonely girl who got her feelings out by writing poems,” Louis said. “That’s how she coped with her life and her sadness. She put her heart into her poetry.”

Dancer just stared at him.

“You cope by drawing pictures,” Louis said. “Your pictures are your . . . friends, sort of, people you could have around you but who you didn’t have to talk to.”

For a split second there was a hint of a smile but then Dancer turned away. “I can’t draw here,” he said.

“I know,” Louis said. “Maybe we can fix that. But today I want to do something else with you, something that will help us find out who killed Julie. Are you okay with that?”

The guard’s voice boomed from across the hall. “Hey, how about hurrying up this little shrink-rap session. I got other work to do.”

Dancer suddenly slid off the bunk to the floor, hugging himself like a sulking child.

Louis glanced at the guard. “Thanks a lot.”

The guard looked at his watch.

Louis leaned down to Dancer’s ear. “I want you to listen to me,” he said. “I’m going to read one of Julie Chapman’s poems to you, because I think you will understand her words better than I can.”

Danny put his forehead on his knees.

Louis opened Julie’s book to the poem “Centaur.” Then he leaned back down to Dancer, keeping his voice low.

“ ‘You came to me in the golden rays of the sun, half a horse and half a man . . .’ ” Louis began.

“Like a centaur,” Dancer said.

Louis looked up. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Finish the poem,” Dancer said.

“ ‘Your brown velvet flanks so strong and smooth,’ ” Louis went on. “ ‘Your gentle eyes of sea-foam hues. You carry the wilderness in your soul, you carry me away and melt the black ice of my heart.’ ”

“Give me a fucking break,” the guard said.

Louis rose quickly and went to the bars. “You’ve got no idea what I’m doing or why I’m doing it. Now shut the fuck up or go find something to do.”

“All right, smart-ass,” the guard said, reaching for his keys. “You’re done here.”

Louis glared at the guard. Damn it, he shouldn’t have mouthed off to him. He couldn’t risk getting thrown out now. The closer Dancer got to trial, the harder it was going to be to get permission for another visit.

The guard unlocked the door. “Let’s go.”

Pissed, Louis turned back to gather up the books. But Dancer was flipping pages in one of his sketchbooks. Louis held a hand up toward the guard.

“Give me ten seconds, man. Please.”

Dancer finally stopped turning pages and stood up, drawing back into the shadows. Louis looked down at the open book on the bunk.

It was a head-and-shoulders portrait drawn in pencil. The boy had light wavy hair, a hint of a smile, and was wearing a madras shirt. Dancer had concentrated most on the boy’s eyes, carefully shading them and pressing the pencil tip deep enough to literally carve the eyelashes in the paper. There was something very feminine, very romantic in the pose, and Louis thought he knew what Dancer had captured—the moment this boy fell in love with Julie.

“Cooper the Yooper,” Dancer said. “Cooper the Yooper.”

“What?” Louis said. “Is Cooper his name?”

“Cooper the Yooper, Cooper the Yooper . . .”

The guard stepped in the cell. “Let’s go, mister. Now.”

“Danny, is Cooper the boy’s last name?” Louis pressed.

“I said let’s go!”

The guard clamped a big hand on Louis’s shoulder. Louis resisted the urge to shrug it off and picked up the books and followed the guard out of the cell. The hard clang of the door brought Dancer forward.

“Those are mine,” Dancer said, pointing through the bars at the sketchbooks.

“I know but you can’t have them in here,” Louis said.

“Will you take care of them for me?” Dancer asked.

“Yes.”

“And my skulls? You’ll find them all and take care of them, too?”

“Yes. I promise.”

Dancer retreated back into the shadows of his cell. As Louis walked away, he glanced back and saw that Dancer was back sitting on the floor again, staring at the tiles.

At the door, the guard paused before he hit the buzzer and looked back at Louis.

“You working for Dancer’s lawyer?” the guard asked.

“No, I’m working with state investigator Norm Rafsky,” Louis said. “I’m on your side here, man.”

“Sure didn’t sound like it,” the guard said.

“I’m just trying to find out who killed a girl.”

“The one whose bones they found on the island? You working that case?”

Louis nodded.

The guard’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Louis. Then he hit the buzzer again and the door slid open. Louis stopped at the cage to gather his pocket items and wallet. He felt eyes on him and looked back to see the guard leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest.

“Did that retard know the girl?” the guard asked.

“Yes. And maybe the man who killed her.”

The guard pushed off the wall, nodding toward the sketchbook. “Can I see the picture?”

Louis opened Dancer’s sketchbook, and the guard stared at the drawing of the boy for a long time.

The guard looked to be around forty, the same age Julie’s boyfriend would be now. “You recognize him?” Louis asked.

The guard shook his head. “Nah, but I heard that name before.”

“Cooper?”

“Yeah, Cooper the Yooper.” The guard pursed his lips. “When I was playing football for Newberry I remember there was a kid they called that. He played for LaSalle. Helluva wide receiver if I’m remembering right.”

“Is Cooper his last name?”

“His name is Cooper Lange,” the guard said. “Him and his old man run a bar over on High Street called the Ice House.”

Louis gave the guard a nod. “Thanks.”

“I got a sixteen-year-old daughter,” the guard said. “I hope you find the fucker that killed that girl.”

T
he bar was almost deserted, just Bald Billie and his wife, Tammie, holding down their usual spots by the waitress station and a couple of snowmobilers at the high-top in the window. Business had been slow all month after a summer that had been the worst in years.

Not the first time Cooper Lange wondered if he shouldn’t talk to his dad about getting one of those big projection TVs like the place down on Main Street had. Serving the best whitefish sandwiches in the U.P. just didn’t cut it anymore.

“Hey, Coop, where’s the game, man?”

Cooper looked toward the pool table where his friend Nick was reracking the balls and grabbed the remote off the cash register. He was about to turn the channel when he saw the crawl below the newscaster.

COP SHOOTER TRIAL SET FOR MARCH

And then there he was. Older, fatter, and wearing orange jail clothes. But it was definitely Danny Dancer.

Danny had been charged only with shooting the island police chief and shooting at two other cops—a black guy and a woman. But Cooper had heard the talk around the
bar that Danny was connected to the bones found in the lodge. Wild rumors about his cabin in the woods, with human scalps hanging from the rafters and the stink of decomposing body parts.

Cooper stared at the TV screen. But he was seeing Danny Dancer as he had been twenty-one years ago. The quiet blob of a boy who hung around the edges of their clique, who never spoke, never did anything but sit there drawing his pictures while the other kids drank, laughed, made out, and made fun of him.

Retard! Retard!

Leave him alone, damn it. He’s not hurting anyone.

Cooper had always tried to defend him, telling the other kids Danny was harmless. But maybe he had been wrong. He had been wrong about a lot of things that happened twenty-one years ago.

Cooper quickly changed the channel and upped the volume. The quiet was split by the
thwamp-squeak-squeak-thwamp
of the Pistons-Bulls game.