P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

Joe stood up and was coming toward him, pointing at her watch and then the ferry. He waved her back.

“You’ve got to do something,” Maisey said.

“Maisey, I-”

“I didn’t protect her,” she said. “That’s something I have to find a way to live with. But it’s not right that Mr. Ross doesn’t have to pay for what he did to her.”

The ferry horn blew again.

“Maisey,” he said, turning back to her. “I have to go. I can’t do anything right now.”

“But you will?”

He didn’t know what to say. “I’ll think about it and call you. When are you going home?”

Her eyes clouded. “I won’t be going back to Bloomfield Hills. Mr. Ross let me go.”

“What?”

“He told me he didn’t need my services after this week.”

He remembered she had no family of her own. “Where will you go?” he asked.

She gave a small shrug. “My brother’s widow lives down in Grand Rapids, and she might take me in until I figure things out. Mr. Ross gave me six months’ salary.”

Louis fished in his jeans pocket and came out with a business card and a pen. He wrote Joe’s phone number on the back. “You call me when you get wherever you’re going, okay?” he said.

She took the card and put it in her coat pocket. “I have to get back now,” she said. “Mr. Ross wants to leave today, and I’ve got to close down the house.”

Her eyes held his for a moment, then she retied the plastic rain bonnet over her hair. She touched his arm.

“Please don’t forget about Julie,” she said.

She set off back down the dock. Louis watched her until he lost sight of her green plaid overcoat.

Joe came up to him. “What was that all about?”

“I’ll tell you on the ferry.”

He picked up his duffel, and they went out into the rain.

At the gangplank, he stopped suddenly. “I have to make a call,” he said.

“Louis-”

“I have to call someone. Go ask the captain if he can wait five minutes.”

Louis went quickly back inside the office. The old guy manning the desk looked up from his newspaper.

“Can I use your phone?” Louis asked.

“Be my guest.” The guy swung the old black rotary phone toward Louis and went back to his paper.

Louis pulled out his notepad and flipped through the pages. He found the number of the lab in Marquette and dialed. He was trying to remember the name of Rafsky’s friend at the lab when a woman answered.

“Dr. Bloodworth’s office.”

“Is the doctor in? This is-”

“No, I’m afraid he’s out of the office today. I’m his assistant. Is there something I can help you with?”

“I’m calling about the Chapman case. Julie Chapman. You’re doing a DNA test.”

“Yes, the bones found on Mackinac Island.”

Once he told this woman who he was there was no way she would do what he wanted.

“This is Norm Rafsky,” he said.

“Oh, yes, Detective. What can I do for you?”

“I need another test done. I need you to test the fetal bones for paternity. I want them compared with the sample we took from Ross Chapman.”

“We’ll need you to fax the lab order.”

“No problem. One more thing. I’d really appreciate your giving this test priority, even if you have to move it ahead of the familial test.”

“We can do that, Detective.”

He thanked the woman and hung up. He was skating on thin ice here, and he knew it. Not only was Rafsky going to be pissed when he found out but Louis also wasn’t certain ordering the second DNA test was even legal. Ross had given a sample of his own DNA only to identify his sister and had never given his permission to do a paternity test. Even if the paternity test was legal, it would never hold up in court if it came to that.

The ferry horn blasted twice.

Louis started to dial Rafsky but set the receiver down. It could wait for now; he didn’t want to interrupt Rafsky’s granddaughter’s birthday party.

When he went back outside Joe was waving him frantically from the ferry.

He hustled on board. The engines kicked to life, and the ferry began its retreat from the dock. He stayed out on the deck, watching the island slowly dissolve into the mist. He thought of Lily and how this place had looked when they first saw it, a riot of color and life. Now it looked empty and cold.

He’d have to deal with Rafsky soon, but his part of this was over. He’d spend the holidays with Joe and then he had to go back to Florida and learn how to be a cop again. Whatever happened now was up to Rafsky alone.

It was snowing again. The tracks that he had left this morning on his walk down to the mailbox were already gone. Louis turned away from the window and went back to the kitchen to refill his coffee mug and add four sugars.

He sat down at the small table, staring contently off into space as he stirred his coffee. The sound of the shower running started up from the next room, and he knew Joe was finally awake and getting ready to go in to the station. In the eight weeks he had been staying at her cabin he had learned a lot about her-that she could sleep through any noise, including the two alarm clocks she used. And that she could-in defiance of everything he had ever learned about women-get dressed in ten minutes.

He knew she wasn’t going to have time for breakfast, so he poured coffee into her travel mug and grabbed a chocolate doughnut from the Entenmann’s box on the table. Finally, for something to do while he waited for her, he pulled the copy of the Echo Bay Banner closer and scanned the front page.

The annual Polar Bear Dip had had its biggest turnout in ten years. A leaky pipe had caused $17,000 worth of damage to the county government building. Seventh grader Dina Bidwell had won the Leelanau County spelling bee by correctly spelling cockatoo . But the big story was the inauguration of the new Echo Bay mayor this morning at the high school auditorium.

Louis sipped his coffee, staring down at the photograph of the Polar Bear men standing around the hole that had been cut in the ice of Lake Michigan. In all this time here, he had never seen news that got any spicier than old guys in Speedos.

Not that he minded. He had come to like it, in fact, this weird feeling of ease. It was cold as hell outside, but here inside Joe’s cabin he felt as if he were floating in a warm and buoyant sea. So much of it was just being cocooned here in this place. But it was more than that.

All his life he had been moving. From one foster home to another, from one job to the next, from Michigan to Mississippi to Florida and back here again. He had been moving, too, away from people-from partners who had died, from women whose faces were just blurs in his memory. Even from his foster parents Phillip and Frances. When he called them at Christmas, Frances said that they were thinking of making a trip down to Florida to look at condos. He knew damn well Phil didn’t want to move to Florida, but he also knew they were getting older and wanted to be nearer to him.

He reached across the table to the pile of mail he had brought in earlier and found the red envelope. He had already read the Christmas card inside, but he slipped it out and read it again. Glitter sprinkled to the table.

Dear Louis ,

I am sending you a Christmas card that I made myself with glitter. I hope you like it. Thank you for the pretty sweater. I wore it to school today. Momma said you were still up north working on getting the bones home to their family. I told my friends at school that I helped find some bones, but no one believed me. Boys are stupid anyway. I sent away for some pictures of Tahquamenon Falls, so we can go there next summer when you come back to Michigan for my birthday. Do you think that on the next trip I could meet your girlfriend?