P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

Dancer bolted from the chair, but Louis caught the back of his overalls and yanked him back. Dancer fell, tipping over the chair. His notebook skidded across the floor.

Joe picked it up. Dancer’s eyes were riveted on her. Louis tapped the table to get Dancer’s attention.

“Danny,” Louis said. “You didn’t answer me. Do you have a skull named Julie?”

Dancer wrapped his arms around himself and lowered his head. He began to rock gently.

“Louis?”

He looked back at Joe. She had the notebook open.

“May I speak with both of you?” she asked Louis and Rafsky.

Dancer didn’t look up as they left, closing the door behind them.

“I think Dancer’s autistic,” Joe said.

“Autistic?” Louis asked.

“He has many of the symptoms,” Joe said. “The rocking motion, the recoiling from touch. And he has trouble looking people in the eye.”

“The man runs a business,” Rafsky said. “Autistic people aren’t that high-functioning.”

“You’re wrong. There’s a wide spectrum to autism and often they’re highly intelligent,” Joe said. “Those names he mentioned, they’re Greek. The name he has for his bear skull, Callisto, is from Greek myth about a girl who was changed into a bear.”

Rafsky let out an annoyed breath.

Joe held out the notebook. “Look at this.”

Louis looked at the notebook page. It was a sketch in brown crayon of Joe. It was a perfect likeness right down to the tiny mole near her left eye. Louis knew Dancer had seen Joe only once before she walked in this room-for those seconds outside his cabin as he fired his rifle and maybe as he sat in the back of the SUV before the police took him away. How had he so accurately captured her likeness?

Joe flipped the page. “And look at this one.”

Another crayon drawing, and this time Louis felt as if he were looking at himself in a mirror. Again every feature was perfectly rendered.

Louis looked up at Joe. “How the hell-?”

“Autistics sometimes have remarkable talents,” she said. She turned to the next page.

Julie Chapman stared back at them.

It wasn’t the somber senior class portrait that had been printed in the newspapers. It was a different Julie. A dazzling smile, windblown hair, long-lashed eyes dotted with carefully drawn little stars.

“May I question him?” Joe asked Rafsky.

Rafsky’s eyes went from the drawing up to the window. Dancer was still rocking, head down.

“Go ahead,” he said.

They went back into the room. When Joe sat down across from Dancer, he looked up. He held out his hand for the notebook but Joe shook her head.

“Who is this?” Joe asked, showing him Julie’s picture.

Dancer’s mirror eyes clouded.

“Who is this, Danny?”

“It’s Julie Chapman,” he whispered. “But I didn’t know it was her until I knew it was her.”

“You mean you didn’t know her name?”

“Not until the newspaper told me it was her.”

“Why did you draw her?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I saw her in the newspaper.”

Joe leaned over the table. “But she didn’t look like this in the newspaper,” she said. “You drew her very happy with a big smile. Where is she in this picture, Danny?”

“Bonfire. Bonfire on the beach.”

“When?”

“Summer.”

“Which summer?”

“Just summer.”

“Were you friends with her?”

“No, she never talked to me.”

“How old were you the summer Julie went to the bonfire?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was your aunt Bitty alive that summer?” Louis asked, hoping Dancer could give them some point of reference.

Dancer didn’t look up at him. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Do you have other drawings of Julie?” Joe asked.

“Lots of them. At home.”

“Do you have photographs of her?” Joe asked.

“I don’t understand.”

“Photographs,” Joe repeated. “Your picture of her is very accurate. Did you take pictures of her to look at later so you could draw?”

“Yes, photographs here,” Dancer said, pointing to his temple.

“What do you mean?”

“My camera is up here,” Danny said, tapping his head again. “My brain-camera takes the picture and later if I want to draw it I just go get it.”

Joe stared at him for a moment, then flipped back a couple of pages in the notebook. “When did your brain take this picture of me?”

Dancer slumped. “When you were scared. I’m sorry I scared you.”

Joe held up the sketch of Louis. “When did your brain take this picture?”

Danny wiped his nose with his sleeve. “When he was trying to help Chief Flowers.”

Joe started to flip back to Julie’s sketch, but Rafsky stepped in. He took the notebook from Joe, and she sat back in the chair.

“You’re a liar, Dancer,” he said. “You can draw Julie Chapman at seventeen because you knew Julie Chapman when she was seventeen. You watched her. She was pretty, you liked her, and one day you decided you wanted to fuck her.”

“Don’t curse,” Dancer said softly. “Aunt Bitty said don’t curse.”

“When she left the island you decided to go get her back,” Rafsky said. “You drove downstate and brought her back up here to that lodge.”

“No,” Dancer said.

“Then you murdered her,” Rafsky said.

Dancer pressed deeper into the corner, murmuring incoherently.

“And you waited,” Rafsky said. “You waited and watched her as she rotted away. And when she was nothing but bones you took what you wanted.”

Dancer wrapped his arms up over his head and began to rock.

“Look at me, Dancer.”

Dancer was crying softly.

Rafsky straightened and gave the notebook back to Joe. “He’s done,” he said. He looked at Louis. “You two can stay if you want. I’m out of here.”

He left the interview room.

Joe watched Rafsky, then with a glance at Dancer, she rose. Louis followed her out into the hallway. When Louis looked back at Dancer through the wiandow, he was curled up on the floor, arm under his head.

“Maybe I can try later,” Joe said.

Louis shook his head. “We’re all tired. I say we call it a night.”

Joe was looking at something in the notebook. Louis saw it was a drawing of Rafsky.

“I think Rafsky’s burned-out, Joe,” Louis said. “I’m worried about what he might do.”

She closed the notebook. “I’m worried, too.”

It was only nine thirty, but it felt much later. It was, she knew, the stress of the long day. A day that had started with the warmth of the sun on her face as she looked out over Lake Huron and ended with the cold of the water on her hands as she washed away Chief Flowers’s blood.

Joe finished rubbing lotion into her hands and came out of the bathroom. Louis was hunched over the desk, and except for his reading glasses had nothing on except a towel around his waist. When they had arrived back at the hotel neither had said a word as Louis moved his things into her room. There had been no need for words, either, when they made love or afterward as they lay in each other’s arms listening to the rain. Words didn’t seem to have a place at the end of this day.

“The bathroom’s all yours,” she said.

He was busy writing something and gave a grunt but didn’t look up.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Postcards.”

“What?”

He turned and held up one. “It’s for Lily. I’m writing out a week’s worth tonight so I can mail one every day.”

“That’s cheating.”

“I know, but I might not have time later.” He held her gaze for a moment. “You okay?”