Heart of Ice

by Parrish, P. J.

  “You got anything there, Henry?” Flowers asked.

  The tech shrugged. “Hairs, maybe human, maybe skunks. Some brown stuff, maybe blood, maybe dirt. Maybe nothing.”

  “You seen the state investigator yet?” Flowers asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Good, I want to go down in the basement and take a look before he arrives,” Flowers said. “You guys done down there?”

  “I think they’re done,” the tech said. “But the rest of this place is going to take days. You sure you want us scratching in every corner of every room for every hair?”

  Flowers glanced at Louis, clearly looking for affirmation, and when he got none he gave a nod. “You never know what evidence might have survived,” he said. “Just do what I asked, please.”

  When they were out of earshot Flowers said, “I heard of a case once where they kept a bag of stuff for thirty years that they vacuumed up from a rape scene. Turns out later they matched some hairs in the bag to someone.”

  “You did the right thing,” Louis said. “Until you know more about this girl and why she was here you can’t assume there isn’t evidence in other rooms.”

  The boards had been removed from the front door, but the windows were still shuttered. The electricity had been turned on, and the foyer was brightly lit by a huge driftwood chandelier.

  As Louis followed Flowers through the rooms he had the feeling that the place had been frozen in time. The walls were a mix of smooth logs, paneling, and peeling wallpaper. A single red chair with button cushions sat alone in one room, a three-legged piano stool in another. In the room where he had found the oil lamp there was a large deer head over a sooty stone fireplace.

  “What did this place look like in 1969?” Louis asked.

  “About the same,” Flowers said. “It was built just after the turn of the century as a hunting and fishing camp.”

  “When did it close?”

  “Like 1930 or something.”

  “You need to be sure, Chief.”

  Flowers glanced at him over his shoulder. “Yeah. Right. Watch that hole there. That’s where your little girl fell through.”

  They were in the kitchen now. Louis moved gingerly around the broken boards. It was easy to see the wood rot that rimmed the hole. A bright light coming from below gave him a view of the basement floor. He leaned over and peered down. It was a farther fall than he remembered, easily twelve feet.

  Flowers opened a door leading to steep wooden slat steps. Louis went down first, surprised to see the ceiling was lower than he remembered. He was starting to wonder exactly how he had found his way back out to the sunlight carrying Lily.

  At the bottom of the stairs they paused. The portable lights revealed the basement to be a large open area with stone walls and a series of small rooms. The boiler that Louis remembered seeing stood in the corner like a huge rusting robot.

  But it was the place where the bones had lay that drew Louis’s eyes. There was a faint whitish outline on the concrete floor, and, for a second, he took it for a chalk sketch left by the techs. But then he realized what it was. Sometimes, if the conditions were just right, the fluids from a decomposing body would soak into the surface beneath it, leaving a pale ghost image.

  Louis glanced at Flowers, but he didn’t even notice the stain. He was just standing there, hands on hips, surveying the scene.

  “I need to confess something to you,” Flowers said. “I’m not sure where to go from here. Any ideas?”

  “Let’s start with the basics,” Louis said. “How’s the identification going? You find anything else besides the ring that could link the bones to this Julie Chapman?”

  Flowers shook his head. “No clothes, no purse, nothing else here so far, but we’ll learn a lot more when her father gets here tomorrow.”

  “Her father?”

  The new voice made Louis turn.

  Rafsky was halfway down the stairs, and as he ventured forward his face came into the harsh light. “You called her father?” he asked.

  “Why not?” Flowers asked. “We can’t ID the bones without teeth. When we find the skull I figured her father could get her dental—”

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  Flowers glanced at Louis, then back at Rafsky. “I’m just trying—”

  “Do you know what parents go through when their children go missing?”

  “Detective Rafsky,” Louis started.

  The sharp blue eyes caught the light as they swung to Louis. “You shut up,” Rafsky said. He turned back to Flowers. “They live for any shred of news, so when you give them something you better be damn sure you’re right.”

  Flowers’s face had gone tight.

  Louis felt a twinge of sympathy for Flowers, but Rafsky was right. Flowers should have researched other missing girls, talked to someone at Kingswood to see if the ring had ever been lost or given away. He should have waited until he had the Bloomfield Hills police report in his hands. On the basis of just the ring he had assumed the bones belonged to Julie Chapman, and now there was no way to take back whatever hope he had given her family.

  Rafsky suddenly turned to Louis. “What are you doing here?”

  “Chief Flowers hired me on as a consultant,” Louis said.

  Rafsky shook his head slowly, drew a deep breath, and opened the envelope he was carrying. “I have the preliminary lab reports from Marquette.”

  “I’ve been waiting on those all morning,” Flowers said.

  “You don’t wait, Chief Flowers,” Rafsky said. “You get off your ass and get them, even if it means driving to Marquette yourself.”

  Flowers started to say something, but Rafsky cut him off.

  “Every bone was here,” Rafsky said.

  “Except the skull,” Louis said.

  “Which means the body was not ravaged by animals,” Rafsky said. “Other bones would be missing and the skeleton would be scattered. Except for the slight disturbance from your daughter’s fall, the skeleton was intact.”

  “So the killer decapitated her and took the head?” Flowers asked.

  “The ME hasn’t been able to determine yet whether the head was cut off at the time of death or detached naturally during decomposition.”

  “Either way, where the hell is it?” Flowers asked.

  Rafsky gave him a hard stare. “It’s too early to speculate.”

  “What else did you get from Marquette?” Louis asked.

  Rafsky’s eyes slid to Louis, then back to his report. “The skeleton is a Caucasian female about five-five in height, approximate age sixteen to twenty-five, with no other injuries or signs of disease.”

  “That describes Julie Chapman,” Flowers said.

  “And a hundred other girls from this state who went missing over the last twenty years,” Rafsky said.

  Louis took a few steps away. He was looking at the ghost stain, but he was thinking about the serial killer Joe and Rafsky had hunted in Echo Bay in 1975. That man had killed for fifteen years, and part of his signature had been to leave a bone from each victim out for animals as an offering. Also, the time period fit.

  “Detective,” Louis said, “I remember reading about an old case, a serial killer who operated around Echo Bay. He abducted his victims and took them up north. He hid the remains but always left a single bone exposed.”

  Rafsky had been looking at his report, and his eyes were slow to come up to Louis.

  “Could this be related?” Louis asked.

  Rafsky closed the folder. “The signature doesn’t fit,” he said. “The Echo Bay killer collected all the other bones in one place. And he killed only once a year, always at the same time in February. He also hung his victims in trees.”

  “But how do we know Julie Chapman wasn’t kept for a month and killed in February?” Flowers asked. “How do we know—?”

  “Because I know,” Rafsky snapped. He looked at Louis and took a breath. “There were other signatures, carvings in trees. This isn’t
the same man.”

  Rafsky turned and went back up the steps.

  “Asshole,” Flowers said, starting after him. “I need to—”

  “Let it go, Chief,” Louis said.

  Flowers and Louis went up the stairs, catching Rafsky on the veranda.

  “I’ll be in Marquette tomorrow,” Rafsky said. “I have an appointment with a forensic anthropologist. He might be able to narrow the time of death. We need to know if she’s been in that basement two years or twenty.”

  “Detective,” Louis said, “as long as the father is coming here, why don’t we consider DNA testing so we can at least confirm that this is Julie Chapman?”

  Rafsky hesitated, then said, “At this point it would be a fishing expedition. A very expensive one.”

  Louis knew bone marrow could be used for DNA and there was plenty of that, if it was not too degraded. But Rafsky was right—that it would be expensive and there was no way the state was going to foot the bill at this point. A simple dental comparison would confirm if the bones belonged to Julie Chapman, so it made sense to continue searching for the skull.

  Rafsky grunted a good-bye and left.

  Louis zipped up his jacket and stood at the end of the veranda looking out at the lake. They were only a couple of miles from Main Street, yet it felt like the end of the earth. And there was a strange expectant feeling in the air, as if the old lodge itself were waiting for someone to come back.

  “You think it’s here?”

  Louis turned to Flowers. He was leaning on the railing, looking out at the tech with the metal detector in the front yard.

  “The skull, I mean,” Flowers said, turning to Louis.

  “I don’t know,” Louis said. “But I do know that this place means something to the killer.”

  Flowers looked up at the lodge. “Nobody comes here. It’s just a broken-down old dump.”

  Louis shook his head. “No, it’s important. It’s his Room 101.”

  “What?”

  “It’s from George Orwell. 1984?”

  “Never read it,” Flowers said.

  Flowers moved away, and Louis went back to looking at the lake. He could still recall the exact quote from the book—maybe because it reminded him of things in his foster homes he wanted to forget.

  “The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.”

  7

  There were thousands of them. Small, black jelly-bean creatures crawling around the big plastic bin, piggybacking one another to get to that one last shred of meat left on the bone.

  The beetle larvae were hungry today.

  This skull would be ready by nightfall.

  He pressed his face closer to the slimy plastic. The smell was strong, and the inside of his mouth filled with the sickening sensation that comes just before the vomit.

  He swallowed it away and held his breath.

  He should’ve taken the time to remove the brain. It stunk like hell when the beetles ate the brain.

  Danny Dancer made sure the lid was secure on the bin and left the room, closing the door behind him. As he walked across the cabin the floorboards gave under his weight, reminding him again that it might not be a bad idea to work on getting healthier. After all, Aunt Bitty died at sixty-four, her veins clogged with that cholesterol stuff. He missed her, but he didn’t grieve. It was only because she died and left him the cabin that he was able to do what he did now. The cabin was way atop the island, too far from the other villagers for them to smell the beetles.

  In the tiny kitchen, he opened a cupboard, pulled out an industrial-size bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and filled a large metal bowl. It was his last bottle. He would have to make a trip to St. Ignace soon to restock his supplies. There were customers waiting, and he didn’t want to get behind.

  He let out a deep breath and set the bowl down on the counter. It wasn’t easy doing everything himself. He had to feed and maintain the adult beetle colony, hunt for the perfect specimens, and package and ship the orders. He wasn’t twenty anymore. His muscles were turning to blubber, and his joints were sore.

  It was getting harder to do things, like building the new shelves. It had taken him a whole week to put up the three near the east window, but it had been worth it. There was now enough room to display all his favorite skulls.

  He looked up at them now. He liked to sit here in the morning and watch the gold sunlight slide over the smooth skulls, turning them into pieces of art that ought to be sitting in a gallery somewhere, maybe down on Main Street for all the tourists to admire.

  But he knew better than anyone that the skulls didn’t belong in some shop where moms would herd their brats away, all the while sneaking peeks back.

  No, only certain people could appreciate the perfection of skulls. That’s why he sold only to universities, laboratories, and artists. That’s why he advertised only in the classified section of Bone Deep, the underground magazine for collectors of the macabre.

  That’s where the best money was, from the decorators in Palm Beach who bought the skulls to put on pedestals in mansions. Or landscapers in Sedona who used them as garden ornaments. He had even sold a skull to a record producer in Hollywood who turned it into a bong.

  Danny Dancer moved to the window by the front door and pulled aside the curtain, looking for strangers. He did this nine or ten times a day, sometimes more if he felt he was being watched. Though he had seen no one from his window today, this was one of those days when he felt like the skulls had eyes.

  Maybe it was because he had heard this morning in town that the bones had been discovered in the basement of the old lodge. He turned away from the window, his eyes slipping to the large skull on the top shelf. It was so incredibly lovely. The eye sockets perfectly round, the teeth as white as pearls, the forehead as smooth as glass, except for that one small crack.

  It was his favorite. She was his favorite. Because he had always felt it was a she.

  He’d never known her name. And unlike his other skulls, he had never felt the urge to give her a name. But the police were nosing around, and maybe they’d even figure out her name. That would make her even more special.

  But it would also bring trouble.

  They would want her skull. The cops would want her so they could identify her. And her parents would want her so they could feel as if they had put all of her to rest. He didn’t imagine the poor girl’s mother wanted to live the rest of her life wondering where her daughter’s head was, wondering if it was buried somewhere in the mud, lost forever under the feet of hikers who plodded through the woods looking for magic that they couldn’t find in their own backyards downstate.

  Well, let her mother wonder.

  She wasn’t going home.

  Danny Dancer went to the shelf and carefully took the skull in his hands. Then, hit with an impulse he had never had before, he gave the skull a kiss on the forehead.

  “No,” he whispered. “You’re staying right here.”

  8

  The ferry was coming closer. There wasn’t much time now. Louis looked down at Lily standing at his side.

  “Bet you’ll be glad to see your mom,” Louis said.

  Lily didn’t respond, didn’t even look up at him.

  The ferry was docking. Louis didn’t see Kyla but it was too cold to be out on the deck.

  “Where’s Lucy?” Louis asked, although he already knew the answer. He had helped Lily pack up all her things just an hour ago back at the Grand Hotel.

  “I put her in my suitcase,” Lily said.

  “Good.”

  Kyla was the only person who got off. She spotted them and started down the dock. She was wearing a burgundy raincoat and heels, a dark blue silk scarf flowing behind her in the stiff breeze. Her eyes bypassed Louis and lasered in on Lily’s splinted arm. She dropped her purse on the dock and swept Lily into her arms.

  “Oh, my baby, I missed you,” she said.

  Lily couldn’t say a thing, smothered up in Kyla’s bosom. When Kyla f
inally let her go, Lily pulled back and smiled. Louis felt his heart give a little at the warmth of it.

  Kyla touched the splint. “Does it hurt much?”

  Lily shook her head. “The doctor lady gave me painkillers.”

  Kyla’s eyes shot up to Louis.

  He pulled two vials from his pocket. “She didn’t need them. Here’s what they gave her.”

  Kyla rose slowly and took the vials. She looked tired. “Thanks,” she said softly.

  She touched Lily’s hair. “Baby, can I have a few minutes to talk to Louis?”

  “I forgot to buy a souvenir for Daddy. Can I go get him some fudge?” Lily asked, pointing to the ferry gift shop.

  Kyla started to say something, then bit it back. Louis dug in his pocket and handed Lily a ten-dollar bill. She ran off to the shop.

  “She seems all right,” Kyla said, watching her go.

  “She’s a strong little girl,” Louis said.

  Kyla looked back at Louis. “You didn’t tell me how this happened,” she said.

  Louis took a deep breath. “Okay, she . . . we were exploring an old house. The floorboards were rotted, and she fell.”

  Kyla’s face tensed, but Louis didn’t give her a chance to say anything. “She fell into the basement. I got down there and got her out as quick as I could.”

  Kyla let out the breath she had been holding.

  “There’s one more thing,” Louis said, glancing toward the gift shop. “There were some bones in the basement. Human bones. She fell on them.”

  “What?”

  He held up his hand. “We talked about it,” he said. “She’s okay, Kyla. Believe me, if I thought there was anything really wrong with her because of this, I would tell you.”

  He had expected a burst of fury, anything but what he was seeing on Kyla’s face now. She looked confused, then she shook her head as she looked at the gift shop.

  She turned back to Louis. “Human bones?”

  “Not a body, Kyla. Just dried-up old bones.”

  Kyla pushed the hair off her face, then slowly she nodded. “Okay,” she said softly. “Okay.”