Heart of Ice

by Parrish, P. J.

  “I’m sorry,” Louis said.

  “For what?” Kyla asked.

  Louis didn’t know how to answer.

  “Louis,” she said. “You can’t protect them from everything. Believe me, I know. And like you said, she’s a strong little girl.”

  Lily emerged from the gift shop, holding a bag. Louis watched her coming toward them and turned to Kyla.

  “Thank you for letting me have her,” he said.

  Kyla hesitated. “Maybe next time, it can be longer.”

  Lily came up to them. “I got Daddy fudge with nuts,” she said to Kyla.

  The ferry horn blew, signaling its departure back to Mackinaw City.

  “Louis?”

  He looked down at Lily. She was holding something out to him. He knelt in front of her.

  “I got you something, too.”

  It was a small silver-and-pink thing.

  “It’s a knife,” she said.

  He took the pocketknife, turning it over in his hand. It was about two inches long and had a Pink Pony emblem on the side.

  “It’s for your keys, see?” she said, pointing at the attached ring.

  Louis looked up at Kyla, who was smiling.

  “Are you going to put your keys on it?” Lily asked.

  Louis fished his keys from his pocket and hooked the cheap little knife onto the heavy stainless-steel ring.

  “Thank you, Lily,” he said, jingling the keys. “I can really use this.”

  The ferry horn blew again.

  Lily looked at the ferry, then suddenly put her arms around Louis’s neck and squeezed him. He wrapped his arms around her back and buried his face in her hair.

  He was the one who had to push away. “You have to go or you’ll miss your boat,” he said.

  The cold air rushed in where she had been. He stood up and gave Kyla a nod. He didn’t trust himself to say anything.

  “ ’Bye, Louis,” Lily said.

  Kyla took her hand, and Louis watched them board. Lily looked back and waved before they went inside. The ferry pulled away, and he stood there on the dock until it was just a white dot in the distance.

  * * *

  His bag was packed and sitting on the floor. The door of his room was open, and he could hear the drone of a vacuum cleaner. The man at the front desk had told him he was the last guest in the Grand Hotel and that he could take as long as he wanted to check out today. Flowers had gotten him a room at the Potawatomi Hotel in town.

  There was no reason to stick around. But he had one more thing to do before he left.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the sheriff’s office in Echo Bay. The dispatcher recognized his name but told him that Sheriff Frye was on the other line and asked him to wait. Joe picked up moments later.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  There was a pause. “Don’t tell me you’re not coming,” Joe said.

  “No, no, I’ll still be there.”

  “I hear a but in your voice, Louis.”

  He took a breath. “I picked up a case up here. A homicide.”

  “On Mackinac Island?”

  He had to smile. “Yeah, I know. The chief here is in over his head. I offered to help for a couple of days.”

  In the long pause that followed he could almost feel her disappointment. They hadn’t seen each other for eighteen months. That first summer apart, her new job as Leelanau County sheriff had prevented her from making the trips to Florida she had promised. By Christmas their phone calls had dwindled, and he drifted into depression and an affair. It took him more than six months to realize what he had lost—not just Joe but himself.

  She had been the one to give voice to it: I want you to want something for yourself.

  He knew what he wanted. He wanted his badge back. And he wanted Joe back. This trip had been for Lily, but it had also been for him and Joe. He knew that if they didn’t reconnect this time they never would. But now here he was again, putting her off for work and hoping she’d understand because she was a cop.

  “I’ve never seen Mackinac Island. How about I come up there?” she said.

  “Joe, look,” he said. “Everything on the island is closing down. It would be a long drive for you, and I’m only going to be here another day, I promise.”

  Joe was silent again. Then, in a soft voice, “I want this to work, Louis.”

  “So do I, Joe. More than you know.”

  He heard her let out a long breath. “Okay. One more day.”

  They said their good-byes and hung up. Louis looked around the room, his eyes lingering on the canopy bed. He picked up his suitcase and left the room. Down in the empty lobby, he waved to the man behind the desk, then stepped out onto the veranda. The rocking chairs were gone. The black carriages and red-coated livery men were gone. He hoisted up his bag and started down the long driveway.

  On Cadotte Avenue, heading down toward town, he saw only one other person, a bicyclist pulling a cart filled with cords of firewood heading toward the Village.

  He turned onto Main Street, walking down the middle of the empty road, passing men on ladders taking down the baskets of geraniums from the lampposts. Many of the stores had already closed, and the few that were open had signs in the windows—EVERYTHING MUST GO.

  Almost overnight the island had changed. It looked like a deserted amusement park, and in that moment Louis realized his memories of this place had been distorted, refracted through his need to believe that the real world stopped at the ferry dock, that all ugliness could be forgotten and all hurts could be healed.

  Everything did have to go, even illusions.

  The wind coming off the lake had the feel of winter. He turned up the collar of his jacket and headed toward his hotel.

  9

  It was near three by the time Louis met Flowers at the docks. They took the ferry to St. Ignace. It was a good-size town, sitting in the shadow of the magnificent suspension bridge that linked the lower part of the state to the Upper Peninsula. Unlike Mackinaw City, its gaudy tourist-trap cousin on the southern end of the bridge, St. Ignace had the feel of a real town, with modest homes and a downtown of mom-and-pop restaurants and taverns where HUNTERS WELCOME signs hung in the windows. Unless you lived in St. Ignace or had a summer home there overlooking the lake, there was no real need to detour off I-75.

  After Flowers picked up a loaner car from the state police post they headed out, bound for a map-speck place sixty miles north called Paradise.

  They had spent most of the morning working the phones, talking to the captains of the ferries who had serviced the island twenty-one years ago. The men were easy to locate through the company records and the mariner’s union. Finally, one of the captains pointed out to them that they should probably talk instead to the ticket-booth attendants.

  Flowers’s dispatcher, Barbara, had been able to locate addresses for only nine. None of them recalled anything special about New Year’s Eve 1969 except that it had been a particularly brutal winter.

  The last woman on the list was Edna Coffee. On the phone she told Louis that she vaguely remembered a young girl traveling alone one winter, but she wanted to see a photo to jog her memory. So Louis and Flowers made the ninety-minute drive through the woods of the U.P. to Paradise.

  Edna Coffee was eighty-six and living with her son. She seemed delighted to see them and demanded that her son, Jeff, bring out cookies and tea. Jeff stoically retreated to the kitchen while Edna jabbered about the weather, her arthritis, and her two parakeets, Basil and Birdie. After Jeff returned with the tray, Louis and Flowers politely drank tea and ate cookies before Louis was finally able to turn the conversation to the purpose of their trip.

  When he showed Edna Julie’s photograph, she stared at it for a long time, then nodded.

  “I remember her,” she said, stabbing a finger at the photograph.

  “How can you be so sure, Mrs. Coffee?” Louis asked.

  “It was Christmas Eve, I remember that.”

  Flowers came fo
rward. “You mean New Year’s Eve?”

  Louis shot him a look to be quiet.

  Edna’s eyes went from Louis to Flowers and back to Louis. “Yes, that’s right. It was New Year’s Eve. And it was really cold.”

  Louis pulled out his notebook. “Did you talk to her?”

  Edna was nodding. “Really cold, colder than normal. I remember the captain coming into the booth and telling me the straits were freezing over and to be sure to tell anyone who was going over that they might not be able to get back.”

  “You have a good memory,” Louis said.

  Edna looked up at her son lingering by the door. “Tell him that.”

  The son couldn’t quite hide his impatience. “Don’t start, Mom, please.”

  Edna ignored him, looking at the photograph again.

  “Did you talk to her, Mrs. Coffee?” Louis asked again.

  Edna’s Coke-bottle glasses came up. “Talk? No, just to give her a ticket, that’s all.”

  “How many tickets?”

  Edna stared at him. “One.”

  It had almost come out as a question. Louis closed his notebook.

  “She was a pretty thing, with long dark hair,” Edna said. “She seemed a little nervous-like, especially when I warned her there might not be a ferry coming back because of the lake icing up.”

  “Do you remember if she was with anyone?”

  Edna’s eyes clouded over, and for a moment she looked lost in a haze.

  “Mrs. Coffee,” Louis pressed. “Was she with a man?”

  Edna blinked as she tried to focus on Louis again. “Man? No, there was no man.” She held out the photograph, and Louis took it.

  Flowers had been standing by the fireplace and came forward. “Do you remember if she had anything with her?”

  Edna looked up at him. “Like what?”

  “A suitcase, maybe?”

  Edna stared at him for a moment. “No . . . don’t remember seeing any suitcase . . . but I was in the booth, so I didn’t see much more than her face.” Edna looked upset, like she was disappointed she wasn’t being more helpful. Or maybe because she realized her memory wasn’t as good as she thought.

  She looked at Louis. “You want to see my parakeets?”

  “No, we really have to get back to St. Ignace,” Louis said.

  Edna’s eyes dimmed behind her thick glasses. She stared hard at Louis for a moment, as if she was trying to figure something out.

  Louis rose. “Thank you, Mrs. Coffee. You’ve been a big help.”

  He started to the door with Flowers.

  “She had a monkey.”

  Louis looked back at Edna. “A what?”

  “I remember she had a monkey,” Edna said. “She was carrying a stuffed monkey.” Edna gave him a satisfied grin. “That’s not something you’d forget, is it?”

  “No, ma’am, it’s not,” Louis said. “Thank you again.”

  At the front door, Edna Coffee’s son stopped them.

  “She has Alzheimer’s,” he said quietly.

  Louis and Flowers exchanged glances.

  “She hasn’t remembered anything with clarity for years,” the son said. “The parakeets died five years ago. Some days she doesn’t remember who I am.” He let out a sigh. “I’m sorry. I should have said something before you came all the way up here.”

  Flowers cleared his throat. “That’s all right. We appreciate your letting us talk to her.”

  “She loves having visitors,” the son said. “All her friends are gone now, and no one comes. Thank you for being nice to her.”

  * * *

  Louis and Flowers stood on the St. Ignace dock, silent and shivering as they watched the sun slide into the cloud bank behind the bridge. They had missed the ferry and now had to wait a half hour for the next one.

  “Edna thinks Julie came up here alone,” Flowers said.

  Louis glanced at him. “Her son said—”

  “My mom had Alzheimer’s. Usually they can’t remember what they had for breakfast, but sometimes they can remember every detail about something that happened thirty years back.”

  “You’re dreaming, Chief.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Okay, let’s go out on a limb here and say Edna really remembers seeing one girl on one ferry twenty-one years ago,” Louis said. “Then let’s go even farther out on the limb and say she’s right that Julie was alone. So why did a seventeen-year-old come up here on New Year’s Eve all by herself? And how’d she get here? According to the missing persons report she didn’t have a license, so she didn’t drive.”

  “We haven’t checked bus tickets.”

  Louis pulled up the collar of his jacket. “I think she was brought here by someone else, no matter what Edna thinks she remembers. I would bet my last dollar on it.”

  Far out on the lake, the ferry was coming into view. Flowers said nothing as he watched it.

  “You found no clothes, Chief,” Louis said, feeling the need to press his point. “She was nude. Nothing says abduction and rape more than that.”

  Flowers nodded slowly. “Okay, so let’s say she was abducted. But why would the killer go more than two hundred miles downstate to grab a girl, then bring her all the way up here? And why to the lodge? You’re the one who says the lodge means something.”

  Flowers was right that it didn’t make sense for the killer to go through so much trouble to bring Julie to the island. But he was also right that the lodge meant something important. If the killer was from the island, why didn’t he just murder a local girl? Why Julie Chapman? Had he known her during her last summer on the island? Had he become obsessed with her, enough to drive five hours downstate and five hours back just to bring her to the lodge to kill her?

  The ferry pulled up to the dock. Louis and Flowers waited for the three passengers to disembark before slipping into the glass-enclosed interior.

  “Chief,” Louis said, “Edna said something about people not getting back off the island. What did she mean?”

  “The straits freeze up, and the ferries can’t run between the mainland and the island,” Flowers said. “Usually in late January or early February.”

  “How do folks get off the island then?”

  “If they’ve got money they can rent a plane. But regular folks use the ice bridge.”

  “There’s a bridge somewhere?”

  Flowers smiled. “When the lake freezes over, some fool on the island goes out on the ice with a spud bar to test the thickness. If he makes it across to St. Ignace he radios back and they mark off the ice bridge.”

  “Mark it off?”

  “They take discarded Christmas trees out and plant them in the ice as markers to let others know where it’s solid enough to cross.”

  “How far across is it?”

  “About four miles. It’s safe usually, but sometimes the currents can cause the ice to shift and break up. I’ve helped pull more than a few snowmobilers out, and we’ve had a few folks just disappear on it.”

  Louis looked out at the water. This ice bridge would have been a good way to get to the island unseen.

  “Chief, I don’t believe Edna Coffee. Maybe the killer brought Julie to the island across the ice bridge.”

  Flowers said nothing, and Louis knew he was seeing this grotesque scene in his head—a terrified girl dragged in the cold darkness over four miles of ice.

  * * *

  Edward Chapman, Julie’s father, had left a message he wouldn’t be on the island until tomorrow morning. Rafsky left a message that he had personal business in Marquette and would be out of contact all day. Barbara the dispatcher had left Flowers a fresh stack of former ferry employees and their phone numbers.

  Louis took the list and walked back to the Potawatomi Hotel.

  He called Joe’s office and left a message that he was still coming tomorrow. When he hung up he looked at his room.

  As much as he wanted to help Flowers, he wasn’t going to miss this place. The carpet was circa-1970 green
shag, the bed was lumpy, and when he opened the window he got a faint odor of horseshit. He was sure that was why the place was nicknamed the Potty.

  Rafsky had scored the Potty’s presidential suite. When Louis asked the clerk what made the suite special he was told it came with a kitchenette.

  After a hot shower, Louis took a few minutes to write out a Potawatomi Hotel postcard to Lily, then spent an hour calling ferry workers. No one remembered anything unusual about a teenage girl making her way to the island on any given New Year’s Eve. Louis was crossing them off the list when his phone rang.

  “Let’s have dinner,” Flowers said.

  “Where?”

  “Mustang Lounge.”

  “Do I need cowboy boots?”

  “If you got ’em, wear ’em.”

  “I was kidding, Chief.”

  “So was I. It’s a few blocks down. Can’t miss it.”

  Ten minutes later Louis walked into the Mustang Lounge. It was a decent-size place, cut into several smaller rooms all walled in shiny pine logs. A pretty blonde in a tight T-shirt tended the small bar, chatting with Flowers while she cut limes.

  Louis slid onto a stool next to Flowers and ordered a Heineken, the first beer he’d had since he picked up Lily in Ann Arbor. The blonde gave him a smile with the beer, then wandered off.

  When Louis looked back at Flowers, he was bent over the bar, carefully folding a cocktail napkin. He then went about meticulously shredding and fluffing its edges.

  “What are you doing?” Louis asked.

  “Napkin art,” Flowers said. “Look.”

  Flowers held up the napkin. He had created a stemmed rose, complete with petals.

  “You spend way too much time in these places,” Louis said.

  “Not much else to do here.” Flowers took a brandy snifter from the overhead rack and an olive from the garnish tray. He set the olive on the bar and placed the snifter upside down over the top of it.

  “Bet you the next round you can’t put the olive in the upright glass without touching the olive or letting the olive touch any other object,” Flowers said.

  Louis stared at the olive under the glass. He should know this. He used to play all kinds of bar games in college.

  “Can’t figure it out, can you?” Flowers asked.