P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

“A monkey?” Maisey pulled her sweater tighter around her. “Julie wasn’t much for that kind of thing.”

Louis went to a closet and opened the door. It was empty. “There’s nothing left of her things?” he asked.

“After Julie disappeared Mr. Ross ordered that everything be taken away. He said it upset Mr. Edward too much to see the room like it was.”

Louis heard a sound, like someone calling out. Maisey stepped out into the hallway and looked toward the far end.

“That’s Mr. Edward,” she said quickly. “Do you mind seeing yourself out?”

“Not at all. Thanks for your help, Maisey,” Louis said.

She gave him a brisk nod, then went down to the first bedroom at the top of the stairs.

Louis watched Edward Chapman’s bedroom door close and stepped back into Julie’s room. He went to the drapes and pulled them open. The room looked out over the backyard. He let the drapes fall and turned to consider the room again.

There were seven bedrooms in this place. Why had Edward Chapman’s “princess” been given this small one in the back?

He went to the bookcase and scanned the titles of the books, but they all appeared to be novels. He started for the door but something tucked in the shelf of the bookcase caught his eye. It was a small ceramic horse, similar to one he had bought Lily, right down to MACKINAC ISLAND painted on the base. Just a cheap souvenir, and it seemed out of place in such a grand house, even in this plain little room.

He put it back on the bookcase and left the room, quietly making his way down the stairs.

Outside he paused to look back at the house. He saw Maisey standing at the upstairs bay window. He felt her eyes follow him as he walked back down West Bluff Road.

Louis stared out the window of the police station. This morning when he had walked up to the cottage to see Maisey, the watery horizon had been bloated with steel-gray clouds. Now it was snowing.

“Louis?” Clark came up next to him. “Dancer’s attorney wants to talk to you.”

“Attorney?” Louis asked.

“Don’t ask me what got into him all of sudden, but Dancer asked for one late last night. Mackinac County sent a public defender a few hours ago. Name is Lee Troyer.”

It was inevitable that Dancer would get a lawyer for the shooting charges, but the problem was that a good attorney would steer Dancer away from answering questions about Julie Chapman.

“Do you know where Rafsky is?” Louis asked.

“He’s over in St. Ignace, visiting the chief,” Clark said.

“How’s the chief doing?”

“I went and saw him this morning,” Clark said. “He’s mad as hell that he can’t eat or talk. But I know one thing. He’s real glad Carol is there, even though he’ll never say it out loud.”

“I understand.”

Clark smiled. “I guess when it comes to women we’re all too stubborn sometimes.”

Louis was quiet. Stubborn. Was that what it was? Last night, in the cool darkness of their hotel room, wrapped in each other’s arms, listening to the clinking of the old radiator and the faraway crash of water against the giant boulders, he had almost said it.

I love you .

Until that moment he had not realized that when Joe wasn’t with him there was a strange emptiness that nothing else-no one else-could fill.

He had been about to say it, but then Joe rolled away from him and reached for her wineglass. The moment-and his courage-was gone.

“Almost forgot,” Clark said. “Rafsky said to tell you that Dancer is being transferred to the county jail in St. Ignace first thing tomorrow.”

“Okay, thanks,” Louis said.

He headed upstairs, taking Dancer’s sketchbook with him. At the top of the stairs he was met with the pungent smell of gardenias. Lee Troyer was seated in a folding chair, head down. Everything about her seemed cut on severe angles. Even her hair looked sharp, a blond pageboy style that reminded Louis of the kid in the Dutch Boy paint commercials.

“Miss Troyer? Louis Kincaid.”

She looked up from her legal pad. “You’re the person who so roughly subdued my client on the steps of his cabin.”

“After your client shot at me and two other officers.”

Louis glanced at Dancer. He was in one of two cells, drawing.

“And you, a Miss Frye, and a Detective Rafsky questioned my client that same evening?”

“Yes. And it’s Sheriff Frye.”

“You questioned him without giving him a Miranda warning?”

“He was read his rights in the cruiser, Miss Troyer.”

“For the shooting of Chief Flowers, yes,” she said. “But you then proceeded to question him about the homicide of Julie Chapman.”

“Now wait a-”

“So,” Troyer went on, “not only was he not advised of his rights pending any charges in the Chapman case but he was also questioned by two people who have no jurisdiction on this island.”

Louis studied the woman. Was she good enough to somehow tangle up the Chapman investigation with motions and accusations, or was she grasping at legal clichés?

“Dancer was not given his rights for the Chapman homicide because at the time of questioning he was not in custody for that crime,” he said. “By voluntarily drawing a picture of the victim he brought the subject of her murder into the discussion.”

Lee Troyer squared her shoulders. “I could argue that you set my client up by giving him a sketch pad, knowing he draws obsessively.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Detective Rafsky thinks Dancer killed Julie Chapman,” she said. “Even as we speak he has officers searching my client’s property for her skull. That act makes Danny a suspect in the Chapman murder, and for you to deny he isn’t is the ridiculous part.”

She was right, but he’d be damned if he would admit it.

“Look,” Louis said. “The fact is, your client has not yet been charged with Julie Chapman’s murder and won’t be on the basis of a single drawing.”

Troyer was quiet, trying to keep her gaze level.

“Off the record,” he said, “I don’t happen to think he killed Julie Chapman, and I don’t think Detective Rafsky is going to find proof out there that Dancer killed anyone.”

Troyer looked down at her legal pad. He could see she had jotted down bullet points of her argument and was now out of bullets. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five, and he knew she had been sidetracked by Julie Chapman’s case. With the simple act of drawing a picture Dancer had elevated a small-town cop shooting to a high-profile cold case homicide, complete with a locally connected politician running for national office.

“Look, Miss Troyer,” Louis said. “You’re probably right about Mirandizing Dancer before we asked him about Julie Chapman, but that aside, if you want my advice you need to focus on the crime he is charged with-the attempted murders of three people, two of them police officers.”

“Well, I do know that, of course,” Troyer said.

“I know I have no real say here, but if you want to help Dancer you need to find him a say-what-the-defense-pays-you-to-say psychiatrist,” Louis said. “That’s the only way you’ll keep him out of prison for the rest of his life.”

“He can’t afford that, and my office can’t-”

“Then you petition the court to provide equal resources,” Louis said.

“Excuse me?”

“You argue that Dancer can’t compete with the state’s criminal psychiatrists on the public defender’s budget. If you make a good argument you can get the court to order that the state pick up the tab for your experts.”

Troyer raised a thin brow. “I never heard that kind of advice from the law enforcement side of the table before.”