P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

Far out on the lake, the ferry was coming into view. Flowers said nothing as he watched it.

“You found no clothes, Chief,” Louis said, feeling the need to press his point. “She was nude. Nothing says abduction and rape more than that.”

Flowers nodded slowly. “Okay, so let’s say she was abducted. But why would the killer go more than two hundred miles downstate to grab a girl, then bring her all the way up here? And why to the lodge? You’re the one who says the lodge means something.”

Flowers was right that it didn’t make sense for the killer to go through so much trouble to bring Julie to the island. But he was also right that the lodge meant something important. If the killer was from the island, why didn’t he just murder a local girl? Why Julie Chapman? Had he known her during her last summer on the island? Had he become obsessed with her, enough to drive five hours downstate and five hours back just to bring her to the lodge to kill her?

The ferry pulled up to the dock. Louis and Flowers waited for the three passengers to disembark before slipping into the glass-enclosed interior.

“Chief,” Louis said, “Edna said something about people not getting back off the island. What did she mean?”

“The straits freeze up, and the ferries can’t run between the mainland and the island,” Flowers said. “Usually in late January or early February.”

“How do folks get off the island then?”

“If they’ve got money they can rent a plane. But regular folks use the ice bridge.”

“There’s a bridge somewhere?”

Flowers smiled. “When the lake freezes over, some fool on the island goes out on the ice with a spud bar to test the thickness. If he makes it across to St. Ignace he radios back and they mark off the ice bridge.”

“Mark it off?”

“They take discarded Christmas trees out and plant them in the ice as markers to let others know where it’s solid enough to cross.”

“How far across is it?”

“About four miles. It’s safe usually, but sometimes the currents can cause the ice to shift and break up. I’ve helped pull more than a few snowmobilers out, and we’ve had a few folks just disappear on it.”

Louis looked out at the water. This ice bridge would have been a good way to get to the island unseen.

“Chief, I don’t believe Edna Coffee. Maybe the killer brought Julie to the island across the ice bridge.”

Flowers said nothing, and Louis knew he was seeing this grotesque scene in his head-a terrified girl dragged in the cold darkness over four miles of ice.

Edward Chapman, Julie’s father, had left a message he wouldn’t be on the island until tomorrow morning. Rafsky left a message that he had personal business in Marquette and would be out of contact all day. Barbara the dispatcher had left Flowers a fresh stack of former ferry employees and their phone numbers.

Louis took the list and walked back to the Potawatomi Hotel.

He called Joe’s office and left a message that he was still coming tomorrow. When he hung up he looked at his room.

As much as he wanted to help Flowers, he wasn’t going to miss this place. The carpet was circa-1970 green shag, the bed was lumpy, and when he opened the window he got a faint odor of horseshit. He was sure that was why the place was nicknamed the Potty.

Rafsky had scored the Potty’s presidential suite. When Louis asked the clerk what made the suite special he was told it came with a kitchenette.

After a hot shower, Louis took a few minutes to write out a Potawatomi Hotel postcard to Lily, then spent an hour calling ferry workers. No one remembered anything unusual about a teenage girl making her way to the island on any given New Year’s Eve. Louis was crossing them off the list when his phone rang.

“Let’s have dinner,” Flowers said.

“Where?”

“Mustang Lounge.”

“Do I need cowboy boots?”

“If you got ’em, wear ’em.”

“I was kidding, Chief.”

“So was I. It’s a few blocks down. Can’t miss it.”

Ten minutes later Louis walked into the Mustang Lounge. It was a decent-size place, cut into several smaller rooms all walled in shiny pine logs. A pretty blonde in a tight T-shirt tended the small bar, chatting with Flowers while she cut limes.

Louis slid onto a stool next to Flowers and ordered a Heineken, the first beer he’d had since he picked up Lily in Ann Arbor. The blonde gave him a smile with the beer, then wandered off.

When Louis looked back at Flowers, he was bent over the bar, carefully folding a cocktail napkin. He then went about meticulously shredding and fluffing its edges.

“What are you doing?” Louis asked.

“Napkin art,” Flowers said. “Look.”

Flowers held up the napkin. He had created a stemmed rose, complete with petals.

“You spend way too much time in these places,” Louis said.

“Not much else to do here.” Flowers took a brandy snifter from the overhead rack and an olive from the garnish tray. He set the olive on the bar and placed the snifter upside down over the top of it.

“Bet you the next round you can’t put the olive in the upright glass without touching the olive or letting the olive touch any other object,” Flowers said.

Louis stared at the olive under the glass. He should know this. He used to play all kinds of bar games in college.

“Can’t figure it out, can you?” Flowers asked.

“Let me think,” Louis said.

“You’ll never get it,” Flowers said. He grabbed the brandy snifter and, without lifting its rim from the bar, started moving it in a tight circle. When he had it going fast enough, centrifugal force drew the olive up into the glass and Flowers flipped it upright, trapping the olive inside.

“I guess I owe you a beer,” Louis said.

“I’ll take a Labatt.”

Louis ordered for Flowers, and for a while they sat in silence watching the baseball playoff game on the TV. Louis hadn’t seen the Tigers play since he was a kid. He didn’t know any of the players anymore. It made him feel like a stranger in the state he had grown up in.

“I have the Kingswood school sending us some yearbooks,” Flowers said. “They’re also trying to locate a teacher from back then, someone who might remember Julie Chapman.”

“Chief, we still need to verify who the bones belong to,” Louis said.

“Julie Chapman,” Flowers said.

Louis suppressed a sigh.

“Let’s eat,” Flowers said. “They have really good chili-cheese fries here.”

They ordered dinner and again fell into silence as they waited for their food.

“You want another?” Flowers asked, nodding toward Louis’s near-empty beer bottle.

Louis shook his head. “I’ve been trying to cut back a little.”

Flowers signaled to the bartender and ordered a shot of Jack Daniel’s for himself. “Where’s your little girl, Kincaid?” he asked.

“Her mother picked her up and took her back to Ann Arbor.”

“Divorced, eh?”

“Not exactly,” Louis said, not wanting to explain to Flowers that he never knew he even had a kid until this past spring. “What about you? You mentioned an ex in St. Louis or somewhere?”

“Kansas fucking City,” Flowers said.

“Sound a little bitter,” Louis said. “Rough divorce?”

“We’re living down in Alpena, right? I’m a patrolman for the city police, putting in all kinds of overtime just to make ends meet so she can live in this ugly old Victorian on the lake. Everything is fine for seven years. Then out of nowhere she tells me she’s not happy anymore.”

Louis picked at the chili-covered fries. He didn’t really want to hear this, but Flowers, flush with booze, obviously needed to say it.

“So I let her go back to work at the bank,” Flowers went on. “A year later she’s made manager and putting in more hours than me, and her mother’s at the house a lot with the twin girls. It wasn’t a good time for us.”