Claw Back (Louis Kincaid)

by Parrish, P. J.

  The sun was now just a pale pink glow above the gray horizon and out here on the exposed lake the wind hit his face like needles. But he kept moving in a tentative shuffle, trying not to think about the dark cold water beneath his feet.

  He was panting and his head was aching by time he reached the fifth tree. It still wore its web of fake silver icicles and they danced in the wind. One small blue Christmas ornament clung to a branch.

  Seeing it brought back the dream about the blue capsule and he realized now what it had meant. Just a month ago he had sat with his father in front of the TV watching a man pour hundreds of blue capsules into a huge jar sitting on a stool. No “Mayberry RFD” tonight, just Roger Mudd staring back over his shoulder into the camera and whispering as a man in a suit and horn-rimmed glasses pulled out the first blue capsule.

  September fourteenth, zero zero one.

  His father, sitting in the shadows, had said nothing, just got up and went into the kitchen. Alone, Cooper watched as they put the little slip of white paper with his birthday on it up on a big board next to the American flag. He had never won anything in his life -– except this. The luck of being among the first young men drafted into the Vietnam War.

  His eyes drifted left, again to where he imagined Canada was. He would be there soon enough, but right now he had to get to the island. He had to get to Julie.

  A loud crack, like a rifle shot.

  He froze. Afraid to look down, afraid to even take a breath. Another crack.

  Suddenly the world dropped.

  Blackness. Water. Cold.

  His scream died to a gurgle as the water closed over him.

  He groped but there was nothing but water. Everything was getting heavy and darker. He had to get some air. He pushed the duffle off and kicked upward. But his hands hit only a ceiling of ice. He couldn’t find the hole, he couldn’t see anything, he couldn’t breathe.

  He could feel his heart slowing in his chest, his blood growing colder.

  Mom, I miss you.

  Dad, I’m sorry.

  Julie...

  CHAPTER TWO

  Friday, October 21, 1990

  He stood at the railing of the ferry, the sun warm on his shoulders but the spray on his face cold.

  Twenty-one years ago he had stood at the bow of a ferry much like this one. Then, the air had been filled with the smell of diesel but now the ferry left nothing in its wake but a plume of white water and shimmering rainbows.

  Then, it had all been about leaving behind the ugly memories of his foster homes in Detroit and going “Up North” to the magic island just off the tip of the Michigan mitten. It had been about eating all the fudge his stomach could hold, seeing a real horse up close and racing the other foster kids around the island on a rented Schwinn.

  Now, it was all about her.

  Louis Kincaid looked down at Lily. She was peering toward the island so he couldn’t see her face. But he didn’t need to. He knew what this trip meant to her. He wondered if she had any idea what it meant to him.

  Only seven months ago had he found out he was a father. It had been a shock, but from the moment he saw Lily he was grateful Kyla had not done what she had threatened to do that night in his dorm room. He could still hear their angry words.

  Hers - I’ll get rid of it.

  And his - Go ahead.

  He looked down again at Lily’s crinkly curls.

  Thank God...

  The case seven months ago that had taken him back to Ann Arbor had left him no time then to get to know Lily. And once he returned to Florida the twelve hundred miles between them had felt like a million. He spent the next six months trying to convince Kyla that he wanted to be a part of his daughter’s life.

  He sent Lily postcards from every place his work had taken him, from the glamorous mansions in Palm Beach to the dilapidated Gator-Rama in Panama City. At first Lily had sent nothing back but then the letters began. Always short, always filled with drawings, always signed “Lily Brown.”

  What had he expected – Lily Kincaid?

  What was he expecting now?

  He had no idea, but he was just glad Kyla – and Lily - were finally giving him a chance.

  He hesitated then touched her hair. She looked up.

  “Are you cold?” he asked.

  She shook her head and looked back to the island. It was late October, weeks past prime tourist season for Mackinac Island. Weeks past the date he had promised her he would come for her tenth birthday. But there had been an important case to finish and testimony to give.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t come up last month,” Louis said.

  “You already apologized,” Lily said.

  “I know. And I know how much you wanted to come to Mackinac Island. But we’re here now.”

  Lily leaned her head back to look at him. Her caramel-colored skin was damp with mist, her ringlets frizzed around her forehead. She was a pretty girl with Kyla’s broad forehead and full pink lips. But it was her gray-felt eyes – his eyes - that brought a catch in his throat. He couldn’t read the look in her eyes now but felt the need to explain one more time.

  “I was testifying in a trial,” Louis said. “Trials are important things, not just to the person in trouble but for the prosecutors, too. You can’t just not show up if you’re a witness.”

  “Was it a murder trial?”

  This was the first interest she had shown in his work.

  “No,” he said, “it was insurance fraud. Do you know what that is?”

  “Some kind of cheating?”

  “Yes, it’s when --”

  “Daddy solved a murder this week.”

  She didn’t wait for his reaction, just turned away and waved to the other ferry that was crossing their wake.

  Louis sighed. Lily’s stepfather, Eric Channing, the man who had raised her, was a police officer in Ann Arbor. He was a good man –- no, he was more than a good man. He had been the one who convinced Kyla to tell Lily about Louis.

  Louis and Lily hadn’t discussed their relationship during the five-hour drive up north. She had talked about school and ballet classes, her mother’s hat business. And about how Daddy had just been promoted to detective and how he now handled the important gross stuff like robberies and shootings and that she sometimes worried about him getting hurt. She’d also let it slip that her mother had told her that private eyes like Louis didn’t have to worry about getting hurt.

  Louis had been tempted at that moment to tell her about his plans.

  He had taken the first steps to go back into uniform. Filled out the application for the Florida police academy to be recertified. Approached Sheriff Lance Mobley about a job with the county. Bought a second gun. Cleaned up his credit. He even joined a gym because he knew that going back in at thirty put him up against ex-Marines and kids who had been pumping iron in their basements since they were twelve.

  He hadn’t planned to tell anyone until he had a badge on his chest. But he didn’t like that Lily had turned away from him when he talked of his work.

  “Look! Look!” Lily squealed. “I see the horses!”

  They were close enough to the island now to see the sign for the old Chippewa Hotel. The engines cut off and Lily broke away from him, heading toward the gangplank. He kept her bright yellow sweatshirt in view and finally caught up with her on the dock. As they walked up to Main Street, her eyes widened.

  Victorian storefronts advertising fudge, souvenir T-shirts, fancy resort clothes and oil paintings of Creamsicle-colored Lake Michigan sunsets. A horse and carriage clopped along the street right in front of them and Lily watched as if it were Cinderella’s coach.

  “Where’s the cars?” she asked.

  “They don’t allow any cars on Mackinac Island.”

  “We have to walk everywhere?”

  He pointed to the bike rental shack and her eyes lit up. She took off again and he followed her, watching as she wandered down the rows of bikes. She looked up at him.

  �
��These are all old,” she said softly.

  “Well, we’re not entering the Tour de France,” Louis said.

  His words were out before he thought about it and he didn’t know her well enough yet to tell if he had hurt her feelings.

  Those gray eyes slid up to him. “I bet you think I don’t know what that is.”

  He sighed. “Knowing your mother I bet you know exactly what it is. Now pick out a bike. Please.”

  She settled on a purple Huffy with a white basket. Louis chose the largest mountain bike, glad he had borrowed his landlord’s bike last week to practice. Lily sped off ahead of him, the sun glinting off the silver barrettes in her hair as she wound her way through the pedestrians, bikers and horses.

  They kept to the eight-mile road that circled the island, biking past the ramparts of an old fort, ancient limestone formations, and steep hiking paths that led up into the dark pines. And always, there on their right, was the deep blue expanse of Lake Huron.

  Suddenly Lily stopped her bike.

  Louis pulled up behind her. They were about three-quarters around the island. There was no one else on the road and the whisper of the surf was the only sound.

  “Look at that,” Lily said.

  Louis looked up to where she was pointing. Up on a bluff was a huge log building. It looked like an old hunting lodge with a high peaked roof, dormer windows and verandas wrapping two of the three stories. A rusted iron fence rose from the weeds in front.

  “It looks like a haunted house,” Lily said.

  “Could be,” Louis said with a smile.

  “Can we go up there?”

  Louis remembered enough about Mackinac Island to know that most visitors kept to the lakeside road. Only the adventurous and well-muscled took their bikes into the hilly woods. He looked down at Lily, meeting her expectant eyes.

  “It doesn’t look like there’s any way up,” Louis said.

  “Maybe there’s a back way,” Lily said.

  She jumped back on the bike and was off, her skinny legs pumping. About fifty yards up the road, she pointed left and turned.

  Her sweatshirt was just a blur of yellow in the dark woods as Louis followed her up the dirt road. At the top, he stopped to catch his breath. The trees were thick, the air at least ten degrees cooler here out of the sun.

  There was no sign of her.

  “Lily!” he called.

  “Over here!”

  But he couldn’t see her. He rounded a curve and pulled up at a chain link fence. There was a big red sign: NO TRESPASSING. He was at the back of the old lodge. Lily’s purple bike was lying in the weeds near a gap in the fence.

  Damn it.

  “Lily!” he shouted.

  Nothing.

  He dropped his bike and ducked through the fence. As he trotted through the weeds, he caught sight of an empty swimming pool littered with leaves but he was sure she had gone to the lodge.

  He jumped onto the wide wooden veranda. All the windows were shuttered. He went to the front of the lodge. The heavy wood front door was boarded shut and padlocked. There was one window with no shutter but covered with two boards. He peered through the crack between them. He could make out a table with an old oil lamp but no sign of Lily.

  Where the hell had she gone? His heart was racing. He had never felt this kind of fear before. He didn’t even understand it.

  He spun toward the yard but there was nothing to see but the iron fence and beyond that the lake.

  “Lily!”

  No sound except the buzz of insects.

  He headed around the side of the lodge, going so fast he almost missed it -- a small metal door about five feet from the ground. It was ajar and there was a cinderblock beneath it. It was a milk chute.

  He jerked the door open and stuck his head inside.

  “Lily! Answer me!”

  “I’m here.”

  Her voice was small and far away but he let out a huge breath of relief.

  “Come back to the milk chute. Now!”

  “But there’s a reindeer head.”

  “What?”

  “Come in and look. There’s a reindeer head over the fireplace. Come look, Louis!”

  “I can’t. Now get back here now!”

  “Oh, all right.”

  Louis stayed at the chute, peering into the gloom for that spot of yellow sweatshirt.

  A sharp crack, a muffled scream.

  Louis tried to wedge into the chute.

  “Lily!”

  Nothing.

  “Lily!” he screamed.

  He frantically scanned the back of the house. No way in.

  He ran back to the front, back to the one window that wasn’t shuttered. He ripped the two boards off and used one to smash the glass. Inside, he took a second to get his bearings then headed toward the back where he figured the milk chute was. The dark hallways were narrow and he kept calling Lily’s name. But there was no answer.

  Then he saw it –- a ragged hole in the floor boards. He dropped to his knees but it was pitch black below.

  “Lily!” he shouted. “Lily!”

  A muffled, kitten-like cry from below.

  “Lily! Are you okay?”

  “I’m scared.”

  He let out a painful breath. “Are you okay?”

  “My arm hurts.”

  He could hear her crying now.

  “Don’t cry,” he said quickly. “I’m coming down to get you. Don’t move!”

  “Okay.”

  He jumped to his feet, scanning the dark room. It looked like it was a kitchen but with no light he couldn’t be sure. And because the shutters were on the outside, he couldn’t even break the window. His mind raced and then suddenly he remembered the oil lamp he had seen through the window. He ran back to the front and grabbed the lamp. He shook it and let out a breath of relief when he heard a sloshing sound.

  Matches...goddamn it, matches.

  He took the lamp to the kitchen and started yanking open drawers. Nothing. He was about to give up when he spotted a small tin box on the wall near the stove. He thrust a hand in the bottom and pulled out a handful of wood matches.

  “Louis?”

  “I’m coming, honey!”

  It took four strikes against the fireplace to finally light a match. The old kitchen shimmered pale gold and he dropped to his knees at the hole in the floor.

  He carefully lowered the oil lamp into the darkness.

  A spot of yellow. Then Lily’s tear-streaked face looking up at him.

  Oh my God.

  She was lying on a bed of bones.

  READ AN EXCERPT FROM DEAD OF WINTER

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was just a dull thud, a sound that drifted down to him as he lay in the deepest fathoms of his sleep. He struggled up to the surface and opened his eyes with a start. Darkness, and then, emerging from the shadows, a bulky form and a glint of light. He let out a breath. Just the oak bureau and his badge lying on top.

  The sound had probably come from his dream, and the thought made him relax back into the pillows. But his ears remained alert for foreign sounds amid all the familiar groans and squeaks of the house.

  He glanced over at Stephanie, snoring softly by his side. She always kidded him about his excellent hearing. “Tommy, baby, you can hear the snow falling,” she said. Hell, sometimes he thought so, too. He pulled the quilt up over his wife’s shoulder and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  He rose, shivering in the cold air, and went to the window. He pulled back the drape. Sure enough, it was snowing. Already covered the yard, leaving pillows of meringue on the kids’ swing set. He gazed at the softly falling snow. First big snowfall of the season. It was beautiful.

  His eyes narrowed. There was a truck parked across the street, a few houses down in front of the McCabe house. The headlights were off but he could see the trail of smoke coming from the exhaust pipe. He squinted, trying to remember if he’d seen it before. It looked to be brown although it was so dirty he cou
ldn’t really tell. He felt his body tense slightly, that involuntary response to an unknown situation.

  It was probably nothing. Maybe someone visiting the McCabes. But except for the Christmas lights around the front door, the McCabe house was dark. He squinted to see who was in the car and thought he picked out two forms. Shoot, it was probably that crazy teenager Lisa, necking with some boy just to make her old man mad.

  He glanced back at the clock on the bureau. Three-ten. Late for a Sunday night, even for Lisa.

  He shivered again and he knew it wasn’t from the cold. It was his body sending out its old signals, that familiar release of adrenaline.

  Stephanie gave out a soft moan and he looked back at her. It occurred to him, as he watched her, that he should have told her what was going on. He had never held back things from her before and he shouldn’t have now. But she was so happy in this place and he hadn’t wanted to give her a reason to worry. This isn’t like Flint, he had told her not long after they had arrived. They don’t hurt cops in a place like this.

  He hadn’t really wanted to leave his old job, especially to work in this speck of a town in the Michigan woods. But the bullet had had taken in the shoulder by that crack-crazed kid had been the last straw. We’re safe here, baby, he told her, we’re safe here.

  He moved silently to the closet. He ran his hand along the top shelf until found his service weapon, a .357 Colt Python. He checked the cylinder and with a glance back at Stephanie tiptoed out of the bedroom.

  The gun was cold; he could feel it against his thigh through the thin cotton of his pajamas as he crept down the hall. Outside the kids’ room, he paused. The baby had colic and it occurred to him that it might have been just the child’s restless thump that he had heard. He strained his ears in the darkness. Nothing.

  Downstairs in the foyer, the white tiled floor shimmered with a kaleidoscope of color, created by the Christmas lights outside, refracted through the leaded-glass panel of the front door. He stopped. No sound. He looked out the small window in the door but couldn’t see the truck. He let out a breath of relief and turned away from the door.