P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

“That describes Julie Chapman,” Flowers said.

“And a hundred other girls from this state who went missing over the last twenty years,” Rafsky said.

Louis took a few steps away. He was looking at the ghost stain, but he was thinking about the serial killer Joe and Rafsky had hunted in Echo Bay in 1975. That man had killed for fifteen years, and part of his signature had been to leave a bone from each victim out for animals as an offering. Also, the time period fit.

“Detective,” Louis said, “I remember reading about an old case, a serial killer who operated around Echo Bay. He abducted his victims and took them up north. He hid the remains but always left a single bone exposed.”

Rafsky had been looking at his report, and his eyes were slow to come up to Louis.

“Could this be related?” Louis asked.

Rafsky closed the folder. “The signature doesn’t fit,” he said. “The Echo Bay killer collected all the other bones in one place. And he killed only once a year, always at the same time in February. He also hung his victims in trees.”

“But how do we know Julie Chapman wasn’t kept for a month and killed in February?” Flowers asked. “How do we know-?”

“Because I know,” Rafsky snapped. He looked at Louis and took a breath. “There were other signatures, carvings in trees. This isn’t the same man.”

Rafsky turned and went back up the steps.

“Asshole,” Flowers said, starting after him. “I need to-”

“Let it go, Chief,” Louis said.

Flowers and Louis went up the stairs, catching Rafsky on the veranda.

“I’ll be in Marquette tomorrow,” Rafsky said. “I have an appointment with a forensic anthropologist. He might be able to narrow the time of death. We need to know if she’s been in that basement two years or twenty.”

“Detective,” Louis said, “as long as the father is coming here, why don’t we consider DNA testing so we can at least confirm that this is Julie Chapman?”

Rafsky hesitated, then said, “At this point it would be a fishing expedition. A very expensive one.”

Louis knew bone marrow could be used for DNA and there was plenty of that, if it was not too degraded. But Rafsky was right-that it would be expensive and there was no way the state was going to foot the bill at this point. A simple dental comparison would confirm if the bones belonged to Julie Chapman, so it made sense to continue searching for the skull.

Rafsky grunted a good-bye and left.

Louis zipped up his jacket and stood at the end of the veranda looking out at the lake. They were only a couple of miles from Main Street, yet it felt like the end of the earth. And there was a strange expectant feeling in the air, as if the old lodge itself were waiting for someone to come back.

“You think it’s here?”

Louis turned to Flowers. He was leaning on the railing, looking out at the tech with the metal detector in the front yard.

“The skull, I mean,” Flowers said, turning to Louis.

“I don’t know,” Louis said. “But I do know that this place means something to the killer.”

Flowers looked up at the lodge. “Nobody comes here. It’s just a broken-down old dump.”

Louis shook his head. “No, it’s important. It’s his Room 101.”

“What?”

“It’s from George Orwell. 1984 ?”

“Never read it,” Flowers said.

Flowers moved away, and Louis went back to looking at the lake. He could still recall the exact quote from the book-maybe because it reminded him of things in his foster homes he wanted to forget.

“The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.”

There were thousands of them. Small, black jelly-bean creatures crawling around the big plastic bin, piggybacking one another to get to that one last shred of meat left on the bone.

The beetle larvae were hungry today.

This skull would be ready by nightfall.

He pressed his face closer to the slimy plastic. The smell was strong, and the inside of his mouth filled with the sickening sensation that comes just before the vomit.

He swallowed it away and held his breath.

He should’ve taken the time to remove the brain. It stunk like hell when the beetles ate the brain.

Danny Dancer made sure the lid was secure on the bin and left the room, closing the door behind him. As he walked across the cabin the floorboards gave under his weight, reminding him again that it might not be a bad idea to work on getting healthier. After all, Aunt Bitty died at sixty-four, her veins clogged with that cholesterol stuff. He missed her, but he didn’t grieve. It was only because she died and left him the cabin that he was able to do what he did now. The cabin was way atop the island, too far from the other villagers for them to smell the beetles.

In the tiny kitchen, he opened a cupboard, pulled out an industrial-size bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and filled a large metal bowl. It was his last bottle. He would have to make a trip to St. Ignace soon to restock his supplies. There were customers waiting, and he didn’t want to get behind.

He let out a deep breath and set the bowl down on the counter. It wasn’t easy doing everything himself. He had to feed and maintain the adult beetle colony, hunt for the perfect specimens, and package and ship the orders. He wasn’t twenty anymore. His muscles were turning to blubber, and his joints were sore.

It was getting harder to do things, like building the new shelves. It had taken him a whole week to put up the three near the east window, but it had been worth it. There was now enough room to display all his favorite skulls.

He looked up at them now. He liked to sit here in the morning and watch the gold sunlight slide over the smooth skulls, turning them into pieces of art that ought to be sitting in a gallery somewhere, maybe down on Main Street for all the tourists to admire.

But he knew better than anyone that the skulls didn’t belong in some shop where moms would herd their brats away, all the while sneaking peeks back.

No, only certain people could appreciate the perfection of skulls. That’s why he sold only to universities, laboratories, and artists. That’s why he advertised only in the classified section of Bone Deep, the underground magazine for collectors of the macabre.

That’s where the best money was, from the decorators in Palm Beach who bought the skulls to put on pedestals in mansions. Or landscapers in Sedona who used them as garden ornaments. He had even sold a skull to a record producer in Hollywood who turned it into a bong.

Danny Dancer moved to the window by the front door and pulled aside the curtain, looking for strangers. He did this nine or ten times a day, sometimes more if he felt he was being watched. Though he had seen no one from his window today, this was one of those days when he felt like the skulls had eyes.

Maybe it was because he had heard this morning in town that the bones had been discovered in the basement of the old lodge. He turned away from the window, his eyes slipping to the large skull on the top shelf. It was so incredibly lovely. The eye sockets perfectly round, the teeth as white as pearls, the forehead as smooth as glass, except for that one small crack.

It was his favorite. She was his favorite. Because he had always felt it was a she.

He’d never known her name. And unlike his other skulls, he had never felt the urge to give her a name. But the police were nosing around, and maybe they’d even figure out her name. That would make her even more special.

But it would also bring trouble.

They would want her skull. The cops would want her so they could identify her. And her parents would want her so they could feel as if they had put all of her to rest. He didn’t imagine the poor girl’s mother wanted to live the rest of her life wondering where her daughter’s head was, wondering if it was buried somewhere in the mud, lost forever under the feet of hikers who plodded through the woods looking for magic that they couldn’t find in their own backyards downstate.