P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

“Kincaid. . you’re the one who found the bones?” Rafsky asked Louis.

“I did,” Lily said.

“I’ll explain later,” Flowers said.

Rafsky’s eyes dropped to the photographs on the table. He picked them up and gave them a glance before moving on to the folder with the crime scene photos.

“This all you have?” he asked.

“I have plenty more at the station,” Flowers said.

Rafsky was trying to put the photographs back in the folder. Louis noticed that he had to brace the folder against his chest and that his right hand had a slight tremor.

“I’ll need to see the lodge,” he said. “Can you get me a car?”

“I can get you a golf cart,” Flowers said.

Rafsky glanced at his watch. “What hotels are still open here?” he asked.

“The Potawatomi Hotel over on Astor Street stays open year-round,” Flowers said.

Rafsky gave a nod and left. Louis watched him through the window. He was standing in the street as if he was trying to figure out which way to go. The man’s name was still hanging on the edge of his memory.

Norm Rafsky.

Suddenly it all came back. Joe’s description of the state investigator with the ice-blue eyes. It took a few more seconds for Louis to retrieve the details of the story Joe had told him about her rookie year as a police officer in northern Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula. She had pursued a monstrous serial killer and witnessed the assassinations of two fellow officers and the wounding of a state investigator.

The investigator had been Norm Rafsky.

“Louis?”

He looked over at Lily.

“Can we go look at the horses now?”

“Sure we can. You finished?”

Lily nodded and slid out of the booth. Louis looked down at Flowers.

“I’m going to stay and get a burger,” Flowers said.

“We’ll be here one more night if you need me,” Louis said. He started to reach for the check, but Flowers grabbed it.

“Lunch is on me,” he said.

Louis nodded. “Thanks.”

Outside they paused on the sidewalk. Gray clouds had rolled in.

“I think it might rain soon,” Louis said. “We better go find the stables.”

Lily didn’t answer, didn’t even look up at him. She was just standing there, clutching the stuffed rabbit.

Thirty minutes ago she was eating her pancakes and singing to Lucy. Now she looked-what? He had never been able to read kids, and he sure couldn’t read Lily right now.

He dropped to one knee. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

She was looking back at the restaurant. He tipped her face toward his.

“Tell me the truth.”

“Why don’t you help Chief Flowers?” she asked.

He let his hand drop and just stared at her.

“I don’t think he knows how to do it,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Make sure the bones get home.”

“Chief Flowers will take care of the bones.”

“But he sent them to a lab.”

Louis couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“We found her, Louis,” Lily said. “It’s up to us to make sure she gets home okay.”

Louis sat back on his haunches. He had to force himself not to look away from her because he was remembering that day seven months ago when she had asked him why he had never tried to find his real father. He told her then that it was complicated. But for her it had been simple, just like this was now.

But it wasn’t simple. In two days he was supposed to be in Echo Bay. Joe had arranged to take a week off so they could try to rebuild the bridge that had been so damaged by their separation. But he also knew that Flowers needed some help, and that without it this guy Rafsky would eat him alive.

Louis zipped up Lily’s sweatshirt. He stood up and took her hand. “Come on,” he said.

He led Lily back into the restaurant. Flowers was just digging into his burger when he saw them coming. He set it down and looked up at Louis.

“Okay, Chief,” Louis said. “I can give you a couple of days.”

As the Ford Explorer pulled away from the docks, Louis couldn’t resist a look back.

He knew Lily was in safe hands. Chief Flowers had suggested that his dispatcher, Barbara, watch Lily while he and Louis went back to the lodge. The deal was sealed when Flowers told Lily that Barbara was taking her own daughter down to the docks to watch the first of the horses leave. Every October, as the island began to shut down for the winter, most of the horses were led in teams from their stables to the docks, where they were loaded onto ferries and taken to a farm in the Upper Peninsula. For Lily, the prospect of saying good-bye to the horses trumped any reservations she had about leaving Louis for a few hours.

After dropping Lily off at the docks with Barbara, Louis and Flowers headed out of town in the direction of the Grand Hotel. Just before the hotel’s entrance road Flowers stopped the SUV.

“I was thinking about what you said about the victim being a long way from home,” Flowers said. “I asked around and found out Julie Chapman’s family has a cottage on the island.”

“That could help explain why she ended up here,” Louis said.

“Want to see the Chapman place?” he asked.

Before Louis could answer, Flowers swung the Ford left. The Grand Hotel, its awnings furled and its flagpoles bare, loomed above them until the road narrowed as they passed between two stone pillars. To the left was an unbroken panorama of water and sky. But it was the view to the right that riveted Louis’s attention.

Victorian mansions, lined up like giant dollhouses, one after another. They were almost absurd in their elaborate beauty, multistoried monstrosities with great yawning porches and peaked towers topped with widow’s walks. All the homes seemed to be closed up for the season, their porches shrouded in heavy plastic as if some giant had Saran-wrapped them for storage.

Flowers pulled to a stop in a cul-de-sac. “This is it.”

The Chapman “cottage” was not the largest of the bunch, but to Louis’s eye it was the strangest. It sprawled over its lot as if the builder had had no master plan but just kept adding rooms at whim. It also looked older-or maybe just more neglected-than its pristine neighbors. Its white paint had gone gray, and the lawn needed mowing. The only sound was the clang of halyards on the empty flagpole.

“Does the family still come here?” Louis asked Flowers.

Flowers shrugged. “I don’t know anything about them, but Barbara’s lived here all her life and says that after the daughter disappeared in 1969 they closed it up and no one came back for years. Barbara remembers that the father came back once or twice after his wife died but he kept to himself.”

“No other kids?”

“An older brother, but he’s never been back.”

“It looks like no one’s been here in a while,” Louis said.

“Barbara heard rumors that the place might be going on the market,” Flowers said. “But it’s been in the family for generations, so I guess the old guy can’t bring himself to sell it.”

Louis looked at the house. The dark windows stared back at him, the furled awnings sitting like questioning brows above.

“We’d better get going,” Flowers said.

He turned the Ford around and soon they were heading deeper into the island’s wooded interior. Some bikers stared at the sight of the SUV, but most of the pedestrians just waved. There were only about five hundred permanent residents on Mackinac, Flowers explained, and everyone knew everyone else’s name, face, and business.

“This is the Village, where the locals live,” Flowers said as he slowed to go through a small residential area. “That’s my place over there.”