P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

Joe gave him a nod and took aim at the cabin.

Louis began crawling toward higher brush at the side of the cabin. Joe started firing.

Immediately Dancer ripped the air with bullets in the direction of the woodpile. Louis used the distraction to scurry to the side of the cabin. He pressed back against the logs.

Everything suddenly seemed sharper and louder. The rustle of the leaves sounded like someone chewing potato chips into a microphone, his breathing like wind whistling through a canyon. How could Dancer not hear him?

Move. Keep moving.

At the corner of the house Louis slid along the front of the cabin toward the door.

Joe’s bullets continued to splinter wood on the far side of the cabin, forcing Dancer to stay hidden.

Louis stopped inches from the open door and held up a hand to signal Joe to stop firing.

Suddenly, it was quiet.

One, two, three seconds.

The barrel of the rifle popped into view. Louis had only inches of steel to grab, but he went for it. The barrel was hot, but he held on and yanked it outward.

Dancer stumbled out, stunned, but didn’t let go of the rifle. Louis flung him to the porch. He hit hard but still wouldn’t let go.

“Give me the damn gun!” Louis yelled.

The rifle went off, the recoil and shock of the concussion almost making Louis lose his grip on the barrel. Furious, he ripped the rifle from Dancer’s hands and slammed the stock down against his head.

Dancer’s hands flew to his face and he rolled to his side, moaning.

Louis put a foot on his shoulder to keep him there. He jerked the radio from his jacket and radioed the station.

“Clear! We’re clear! Get that ambulance in here now!”

His heart was finally slowing, but he still had to blink to clear things in his head. Joe was kneeling by Flowers, and from somewhere down the dirt road sirens wailed.

He heard a kitten-like whimper and looked down at Dancer.

The bastard was crying. Curled up like a baby and crying.

How could he have been so stupid? He knew that anyone who showed an abnormal interest in a crime scene was someone to be treated with suspicion.

Yet he had allowed Flowers, who was blind to the idea that anyone on his island could be a cold-blooded murderer, walk into a crazy man’s line of fire.

Louis rubbed his face and looked toward the double doors of the trauma room. No one had come out or gone in for fifteen minutes. All Louis knew was that Flowers was clinging to life.

His thoughts turned to Joe.

She had been in the ladies’ room a long time. She said she wanted to get Flowers’s blood off her face and hands. But he sensed there was something else she was trying to wash away.

Maybe it was the memories of her own close calls on the job. The knife attack on the case they had worked together in Florida. The countless times she had confronted crackheads and gang thugs in Miami. And the brutal ambush during her rookie year in Echo Bay that had left Rafsky wounded. He knew she had held the bleeding Rafsky in her arms that day, just as she had held Flowers today.

The squeak of the elevator doors at the end of the hall broke his thoughts, and he looked up.

Three of Flowers’s officers stepped off the elevator, whispering to one another and shaking their heads. The tallest one, a man wearing sergeant’s stripes on his jacket, motioned for the others to stay near the elevator before he started toward Louis.

He pulled off his cap as he walked. When he stopped in front of Louis, the fluorescent light played hard against his ashen face and red-rimmed brown eyes. Louis had heard his name around the station but right now couldn’t remember it and had to look to the man’s nametag-DON CLARK.

“Mr. Kincaid,” Clark said. “How’s the chief doing?”

“No word yet. All I know is that he’s lost a lot of blood.”

Clark’s eyes moved to the trauma center doors.

“You get ahold of Detective Rafsky yet?” Louis asked.

It took Clark a moment to refocus on Louis. “Yes, sir,” he said. “We caught him in his car going to Marquette. He’s on his way back. Should be here in an hour or so.”

“Did he have any instructions for you?”

Clark shook his head. “I didn’t talk to him, Barbara did. I understand about all he said was to make sure Dancer was secure and left alone.”

“Where are you holding Dancer?”

“I was going to put him in a cell, but he’s talking to himself. So I thought we should tape him. He’s under guard in a secure room with a video camera.”

Louis nodded. “Detective Rafsky’s right about no interviews, but if Dancer asks for a lawyer, then you find him one. Watch him for suicide and keep the officers away from him.”

“Sir?”

“There’s a lot of emotion in the air right now,” Louis said. “The last thing your department needs is someone losing it and beating the shit out of Dancer. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Clark nodded. “Oh, yes, sir. But he doesn’t have a mark on him, except the bump on the head you gave him with the rifle.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

Clark wiped his mouth, and again his eyes moved to the trauma center doors.

“You okay, Sergeant?” Louis asked.

Clark nodded. “Yeah, but can I ask you something, Mr. Kincaid?”

Louis nodded.

“I’m the only officer of rank here, so I guess I’m in charge until Detective Rafsky gets back. I was wondering if you might give me a second pair of eyes right now so I don’t miss anything important in these first few hours.”

The last thing Louis wanted was to step into a case that would fall uncontested into Rafsky’s jurisdiction-the shooting of a small-town police chief whose department had no means to investigate the crime. But the last thing Clark needed was Rafsky crawling up his ass over a missed step in procedure amid the chaos.

“Okay, what have you done so far?” Louis asked.

“Well, as I said, we’re videotaping him.”

“Did you post something that said the room’s under surveillance?”

“Already a sign there. It’s the room where prisoners are held before their hearings.”

Louis nodded.

Clark pulled in a deep breath. “I got two officers securing the cabin, but I told them not to touch anything,” he said. “Pike, the crime scene fellow, showed up here at the hospital, but I asked him to get his team out there and start processing the cabin.”

“Good. What else?”

“I’ve roped off about a hundred feet in all directions from the cabin because I figure that even if this shooting doesn’t have anything to do with Julie Chapman, Dancer was protecting something, and we need to find what that is.”

This guy was sharp.

“Go on.”

“I wanted to keep the reporters away from the woods, so I created a corral for them outside the station,” Clark said. “I told them that no one would talk to them unless it was from the station steps, so they might as well wait there.”

“How many reporters are on the island?” Louis asked.

“We’ve had two hanging around for days, hoping to get a statement from the chief or from Congressman Chapman. But I already got word from a friend at the ferry in Mackinac City that two more are waiting to board.”

“Tell your officers not to talk to any of them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Louis heard the trauma center doors open and spun around. A nurse in pink scrubs was walking toward them. She carried three or four plastic bags of different sizes.

“How is Chief Flowers?” Louis asked.

She hesitated, her eyes moving from Louis to Clark. “I’m not supposed to say-”

“Come on, Candy, it’s us,” Clark said. “Screw your rules. How is he?”