P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

Ross put his head in his hands.

Rafsky took a step forward, but Louis put up a hand. Ross Chapman had just opened a vein. He was vulnerable. They had to exploit the moment carefully.

Louis pulled a chair close to Ross and sat down.

“What did you want?” he asked.

Ross didn’t move.

“Senator, what did you want?”

When Ross looked up his eyes were glistening. “All we had was each other,” he said softly. “We were always together. We were best friends. Nothing about it felt wrong.”

Louis glanced up at Rafsky.

“But when we got older, things changed,” Ross said. “When I went off to college I missed her so much. But then that last summer. .”

Ross looked at the tape recorder. Louis reached over and turned it off.

“What about that summer?” Louis asked.

Ross pulled in a deep breath. “I thought it would be our last chance. I knew that if we didn’t reconnect this time we never would. That’s why I came up here.”

Louis glanced at Rafsky. Arms crossed, he was listening intently.

“But she ended it,” Ross said. “She ended everything.”

“You’re breaking my heart,” Rafsky said.

Louis shot him a look, but Ross hadn’t seemed to hear him. He was staring at the three photographs on the desk.

“I went crazy after that,” Ross said. “For a month I fucked everything that moved. But finally I couldn’t stand being here-being around her-and I went home.”

“When was that?” Louis asked.

Ross shook his head slowly. “It was right around my birthday, on August 20,” he said. “I remember because I went back to Ann Arbor and drank myself sick.”

Ross was quiet for a long time. He was staring at the bulletin board behind the desk. Or maybe the old sepia-toned photographs of Main Street. Louis couldn’t tell.

“I thought maybe things would change when Julie came home,” Ross said softly. “I thought I could talk to her, convince her that we needed each other.” He paused. “I had this crazy idea that we could run away to another country where we could be together.”

“Where were you going to go?” Louis said.

“Sweden,” Ross said. “They let siblings get married there.”

Rafsky jerked open the door. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “I’m going to go puke.”

Rafsky slammed the door behind him. Ross didn’t seem to notice. For a long time the room was quiet, then a furnace thumped on and heat poured from an overhead vent. Ross was looking at the sketch of Julie. He reached out and ran a finger over it.

“I’m not a monster,” he said.

He looked up Louis.

“Julie was only my half sister,” he said.

It was the last thing Louis had been expecting to hear. But now that the words were out there it didn’t seem so incredible. Because everything about this fucked-up family had seemed unreal.

“Explain,” Louis said.

“My father and Maisey,” Ross said slowly. “They had been having a relationship for years, since I was boy.”

Louis’s mind flashed to Maisey’s face the last time he had seen her on the dock eight weeks ago. He picked up the photograph of Julie.

The dark hair, the solemn dark eyes. Was it there? One drop, they had always said, that was all it took. He was sure he should have been able to see it, but he couldn’t. Maybe back in the fifties and sixties no one else could, either.

“Julie was born in London,” Ross said. “We lived there for two years.”

It made sense. Living abroad, it had probably been easier for Edward and Maisey to keep their secret. Whatever strange arrangements Mrs. Chapman had signed off on, Louis would never understand.

Louis set the photograph down. “How do you know this? Did your father tell you?”

Ross shook his head. “I just knew it.”

“Did Julie know?” Louis asked.

Ross looked him straight in the eye. “No,” he said.

Another black woman’s face flashed into Louis’s head. His sister Yolanda, sitting next to him on the porch, teasing him again about his hair, telling him that he wasn’t really one of them because his daddy was white. The memory was gone as quick as it had come because he had been only four. But he had somehow understood even then that he didn’t fit.

“I didn’t kill her,” Ross said. “Why don’t you believe me?”

“You’re the best suspect,” Louis said. “You had means, motive, and opportunity. And unless someone can place you in Ann Arbor all weekend twenty-one years ago, a jury will make the leap that you were on this island killing your sister in that lodge.”

Ross put his head in his hands.

The door jerked open, and Rafsky came back in the room. He looked more agitated than when he had left, rubbing the bruised knuckles of his right hand.

“You can go,” Rafsky said.

Ross looked up. “What?”

“I’m sick of looking at you.”

Ross stood up slowly, his eyes going from Louis and then back to Rafsky. “What happens now?” he asked.

“We tear your life apart,” Rafsky said. “I’ll be sending investigators downstate. We’ll be talking to your college friends, your Cranbrook buddies, old girlfriends, your wife.”

Ross’s face reddened with anger, but beneath it Louis could see his fear. “You said that if I talked you wouldn’t make me a public suspect,” Ross said.

“I never said anything like that,” Rafsky said. He opened the door. “Get out of here.”

Ross picked up his overcoat and started to put it on, then draped it over his arm. He was halfway out the door when he looked back at Rafsky.

“I want a copy of that DNA report.”

“Why?” Rafsky asked.

“I need to know I’m really the father,” Ross said.

Rafsky thought about it for a moment, then sifted through some papers in the folder and produced the lab report.

Ross took the report, stuffed it into his pants pocket, and pushed out the door. As he started across the outer office, two officers stopped to shake his hand and congratulate him on his election. Ross managed a few handshakes and abruptly broke away.

Rafsky gathered up the three photographs. When he looked up he seemed surprised Louis was watching him.

“You upset about what happened at the cemetery?” Rafsky asked.

Louis shook his head. “No, we’re good. But we need to talk about something Ross told me.”

The phone rang, and Rafsky held up a hand to Louis before picking it up. He said something, then covered the receiver, looking at Louis.

“I’m going to be a while with this,” he said. “Let’s meet at the Mustang in an hour.”

Rafsky went back to his call, and Louis left the office. He started away but then looked back. Rafsky was sitting down at Flowers’s desk, taking notes. He rose suddenly and, still talking on the phone, tacked the three photographs on the bulletin board behind Flowers’s desk-Julie, the skeleton, and the fetal bones.

Rafsky had started a murder board.

He decided he needed fresh air more than a drink. Instead of waiting for Rafsky at the bar he took a walk through town. The wind had died, and the air was icy and still. Main Street was deserted, and he kept to the middle of the street where the snowmobile tracks gave him sure footing. Louis didn’t know where he was going, but it felt good to be out, away from the weird masculine energy that seemed to dominate this island now.

Where the hell were all the women, anyway? Even the blond bartender at the Mustang had vanished, replaced by a fat guy with a beard. Louis had a flash of memory-Joe sitting by the fire reading a book. He had been sprawled on the sofa, half-asleep from sex, wine, and lasagna.

What are you reading?

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen.