Heart of Ice

by Parrish, P. J.

  The guard clamped a big hand on Louis’s shoulder. Louis resisted the urge to shrug it off and picked up the books and followed the guard out of the cell. The hard clang of the door brought Dancer forward.

  “Those are mine,” Dancer said, pointing through the bars at the sketchbooks.

  “I know but you can’t have them in here,” Louis said.

  “Will you take care of them for me?” Dancer asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And my skulls? You’ll find them all and take care of them, too?”

  “Yes. I promise.”

  Dancer retreated back into the shadows of his cell. As Louis walked away, he glanced back and saw that Dancer was back sitting on the floor again, staring at the tiles.

  At the door, the guard paused before he hit the buzzer and looked back at Louis.

  “You working for Dancer’s lawyer?” the guard asked.

  “No, I’m working with state investigator Norm Rafsky,” Louis said. “I’m on your side here, man.”

  “Sure didn’t sound like it,” the guard said.

  “I’m just trying to find out who killed a girl.”

  “The one whose bones they found on the island? You working that case?”

  Louis nodded.

  The guard’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Louis. Then he hit the buzzer again and the door slid open. Louis stopped at the cage to gather his pocket items and wallet. He felt eyes on him and looked back to see the guard leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest.

  “Did that retard know the girl?” the guard asked.

  “Yes. And maybe the man who killed her.”

  The guard pushed off the wall, nodding toward the sketchbook. “Can I see the picture?”

  Louis opened Dancer’s sketchbook, and the guard stared at the drawing of the boy for a long time.

  The guard looked to be around forty, the same age Julie’s boyfriend would be now. “You recognize him?” Louis asked.

  The guard shook his head. “Nah, but I heard that name before.”

  “Cooper?”

  “Yeah, Cooper the Yooper.” The guard pursed his lips. “When I was playing football for Newberry I remember there was a kid they called that. He played for LaSalle. Helluva wide receiver if I’m remembering right.”

  “Is Cooper his last name?”

  “His name is Cooper Lange,” the guard said. “Him and his old man run a bar over on High Street called the Ice House.”

  Louis gave the guard a nod. “Thanks.”

  “I got a sixteen-year-old daughter,” the guard said. “I hope you find the fucker that killed that girl.”

  35

  The bar was almost deserted, just Bald Billie and his wife, Tammie, holding down their usual spots by the waitress station and a couple of snowmobilers at the high-top in the window. Business had been slow all month after a summer that had been the worst in years.

  Not the first time Cooper Lange wondered if he shouldn’t talk to his dad about getting one of those big projection TVs like the place down on Main Street had. Serving the best whitefish sandwiches in the U.P. just didn’t cut it anymore.

  “Hey, Coop, where’s the game, man?”

  Cooper looked toward the pool table where his friend Nick was reracking the balls and grabbed the remote off the cash register. He was about to turn the channel when he saw the crawl below the newscaster.

  COP SHOOTER TRIAL SET FOR MARCH

  And then there he was. Older, fatter, and wearing orange jail clothes. But it was definitely Danny Dancer.

  Danny had been charged only with shooting the island police chief and shooting at two other cops—a black guy and a woman. But Cooper had heard the talk around the bar that Danny was connected to the bones found in the lodge. Wild rumors about his cabin in the woods, with human scalps hanging from the rafters and the stink of decomposing body parts.

  Cooper stared at the TV screen. But he was seeing Danny Dancer as he had been twenty-one years ago. The quiet blob of a boy who hung around the edges of their clique, who never spoke, never did anything but sit there drawing his pictures while the other kids drank, laughed, made out, and made fun of him.

  Retard! Retard!

  Leave him alone, damn it. He’s not hurting anyone.

  Cooper had always tried to defend him, telling the other kids Danny was harmless. But maybe he had been wrong. He had been wrong about a lot of things that happened twenty-one years ago.

  Cooper quickly changed the channel and upped the volume. The quiet was split by the thwamp-squeak-squeak-thwamp of the Pistons-Bulls game.

  Cooper started to wipe down the bar. He didn’t realize he was cleaning the same spot over and over until a bright band of sunlight cut across the wood laminate.

  He looked up, squinting. A man was standing in the open doorway silhouetted against the white backdrop. He was tall and wearing a heavy parka, but it wasn’t until the door closed and Cooper could see his face that he realized he was black.

  He had seen this guy before, seen his face in the newspapers. It was one of the other cops Dancer had shot at.

  A second later, light flooded the bar again as another man pushed open the door. The light glinted off a badge hanging around his neck. He said something to the black man and looked to the bar.

  Cooper froze.

  How had they found him? How did they find out?

  The voice in his head screamed before his brain could react.

  Run!

  Cooper slammed open the door at the waitress station and ran toward the back hallway. He heard one man yell to the other but he kept going.

  At the men’s room door he looked back in time to see Nick thrust out a pool cue, and the black man went sprawling to the floor. The other guy had disappeared, but the front door was wide open.

  The alley was the only escape.

  He vaulted over some liquor boxes and shoved out the heavy back door into blinding sunlight. He flailed his arms to keep his balance as he ran down the icy alley, dodging crates and boxes. But his legs didn’t work so good anymore and he was stumbling, his mind racing with fear.

  “Stop! Police!”

  Cooper heard the pounding of footsteps behind him, but he didn’t look back. He caught the edge of a Dumpster, trying to hold on as he turned a corner, but lost his grip on the icy metal. He went sliding into a snowbank like a speed skater skidding out.

  Someone was on top of him, crushing him, pushing his face into the snow and wrenching his arms behind his back. Cooper struggled and kicked.

  “Stop fighting, man!”

  He felt the hard pinch of the cuffs on his wrists. Cooper stopped fighting. The black cop grabbed his arm and yanked him to his feet.

  Cooper gulped in air, icy water dripping in his eyes. A circle of faces and ball caps came into focus. The other cop—the older white guy—thrust out an arm.

  “Stay back! Police!”

  The crowd was from the bar, his friends, his father’s friends. People he’d known all his life, watching him get arrested. He rubbed his face on his shoulder to dry the snow.

  “You Cooper Lange?”

  “Yeah,” Cooper said.

  “Come on,” the older cop said, taking ahold of Cooper’s shirt. “You’re under arrest. Eluding a police officer and resisting.”

  “Coop! Coop!”

  It was Nick’s voice.

  “Coop, you want us to call your dad?”

  “Yeah,” Cooper said. “Yeah, do that, Nick. Tell him they’re taking me to the island.”

  * * *

  The fwump-fwump-fwump of the helicopter was heavy in his ears. He had forgotten how awful the sound was, like you were buried deep in the earth and your head was filled with dirt. The sound was triggering a cascade of images—the vivid green of the jungle below, the drab green of his uniform as he stared at his knees, the heaviness of the rifle on his shoulder, the stink of fear-sweat coming from the soldier sitting next to him.

  Cooper closed his eyes, stuffing Vietnam back
in the duffel.

  When he opened them he saw white. The helicopter was out over Lake Huron now.

  A ragged line of tiny black dots in the white. Christmas trees marking the ice bridge.

  Connect the dots . . . connect the dots.

  How had they found him? What did they know? Why in God’s name had he been so stupid to run?

  But he knew why. Because he was guilty. He could pretend all he wanted, hide away all these years, but he couldn’t escape the fact that Julie was dead and he was to blame.

  The black man was shouting something to the older cop, but the helicopter noise made it impossible to hear what they were saying. Cooper shifted in the seat, trying to ease the tension on the cuffs behind his back.

  The island was coming into view now. It looked weird from way up here, all white and bare of its cover of leaves. He could see the white hulk of the Grand Hotel up on the bluff and the curling wisps of chimney smoke from the small houses in the Village. Then the helicopter took a dip and there through the black lacy trees he saw it.

  The lodge.

  He hadn’t seen it in twenty-one years. It looked different, a cold and empty place now, nothing like it had been then.

  The memories had always been there, as if they were asleep. But now they were awake and they were shouting in his ears. He shut his eyes.

  * * *

  “So, did you fuck her?”

  Cooper looked up at the tall detective.

  They had kept him in this small room for an hour now, his right wrist cuffed to the metal loop bolted on the table. He was sweating from the heat pouring out of the ceiling vent and his mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. He hadn’t told them anything, and now the cop whose name was Rafsky was getting pissed.

  Cooper’s eyes slid to the black man—Kincaid, Rafsky had called him. He thought he saw a look of sympathy in Kincaid’s eyes, but he had to be wrong. These men were convinced he had killed Julie. And because he had run he was under arrest. He was trapped.

  Rafsky leaned on the table, his face close to Cooper’s. “I asked you if you fucked Julie.”

  Suddenly he couldn’t stand it anymore. “Don’t say it like that,” he said.

  Rafsky pulled back, moving out of view. “How should I say it?” he said. “How about . . . did you bang your little girlfriend? Did you take her to that lodge and pop her little cherry?”

  “Shut up!” Cooper shouted.

  Rafsky was suddenly back in front of him, hands on the table. “Then talk to us, Lange.”

  Cooper hung his head. He heard the scrape of a chair and looked up to see Kincaid sitting across from him.

  “You loved her, didn’t you?” Kincaid said.

  Cooper hesitated, his eyes sliding up to Rafsky.

  Kincaid caught the look. “Detective, I think Mr. Lange would like something to drink.” He glanced at Cooper, who nodded.

  Rafsky left and the room was quiet. Kincaid was just sitting there watching him. Despite the heat, the guy didn’t seem to be breaking a sweat. Cooper used his free arm to wipe his brow.

  He didn’t know what was going on here. He didn’t know how they had found him or what they knew about him and Julie. The only thing he knew was that he felt a sudden overwhelming weariness. It had been more than twenty years, and he was so tired of carrying this around, so tired of having no one to talk to about it.

  As he looked into Kincaid’s calm gray eyes, he saw something that told him it was finally safe, safe to risk a walk across the ice.

  “Tell me about that summer,” Kincaid said.

  “I met her at the stables,” Cooper said.

  Kincaid moved the tape recorder closer and sat back in his chair.

  “She was alone and was sort of quiet and shy,” Cooper went on. “She said she wanted to go riding, and I asked her if she knew about horses. She laughed a little and said she used to have one.”

  Cooper took a deep breath.

  “She was so pretty but so . . .” Cooper couldn’t find the right word because he had never found out what it was that caused that swirl of sadness in her eyes.

  “So you hooked up for the summer?” Kincaid asked.

  Cooper nodded. “I knew she was a West Bluff girl, and I thought I didn’t have a chance with her. But she kept coming back to the stables. Then one day I took her up to Fort Holmes. I kissed her there.” He paused. “I got the feeling it was the first time for her.”

  Kincaid was staring at him oddly now. “When did it become sexual?” he asked.

  Cooper wiped his sweating face. “In August,” he said quietly.

  “You took her to the lodge?”

  Cooper nodded, the images flooding back in a torrent now. “She didn’t want her family to know. I couldn’t take her back to my room in the employee dorm. It was the only place we could be alone.”

  “How’d you get in?” Louis asked.

  “There was a broken window in one of the front rooms. The shutter half off the hinges, so we snuck in. I had a transistor radio. Julie brought blankets and candles.”

  He was surprised to feel a small smile coming to his lips. “It’s a weird old place, but Julie made it beautiful. She called it Pelion. I never knew what she meant.”

  “It was the home of Chiron,” Kincaid said.

  “Who?”

  “He was a mythical creature, a centaur.”

  The door opened, and Rafsky came in. He was holding a folder and set a can of Vernors on the table. Cooper popped the tab with his free hand and guzzled half the can.

  “He was telling me about Julie,” Kincaid said.

  Rafsky said nothing, just took his spot against the wall again. Cooper waited until Kincaid’s eyes came back to him.

  “Did she ever talk about her family?”

  “No, never,” Cooper said. “I asked her about them once, and she just shut down. I didn’t ask again. I figured she was worried I would ask to meet them or something.”

  “What happened at the end of summer?” Kincaid asked. “Did you just split up?”

  Cooper shook his head. “She left suddenly. I heard it was because her mother was sick and she had to go home. I stayed here until the stables closed in October. We promised to write, but Julie didn’t want her parents to know, so we sent the letters to each other through a girlfriend.”

  Kincaid sat forward. “Rhoda?”

  How did they know about her?

  “Rhonda,” he said slowly. “Her name was Rhonda Grasso.”

  Kincaid wrote the name in a notebook. “Do you know where we can find her?”

  “She was from Cedarville and worked here during the summers like me,” Cooper said. “She was part of the summer crowd we hung with. She and Julie were friends, and she volunteered to help us.”

  “I need her address,” Louis said.

  “I lost track of her a long time ago.”

  “What about Julie’s letters,” Louis asked. “Do you still have them?”

  Cooper shook his head. “I didn’t keep them.”

  Rafsky came forward. “When was the last time you heard from Julie?”

  Cooper picked up the Vernors and drained it. His hand shook as he set the can down. How much should he tell them? Would it make any difference now? Julie was dead. He himself might as well be.

  “I called her on December 1, 1969,” he said.

  “Why are you so sure about the date?” Rafsky asked.

  “It was the night of the draft lottery,” Cooper said. “I drew the lowest number.”

  Cooper could tell Rafsky knew what this meant and that Kincaid had no idea. “I had to talk to her, so I broke my promise to never call her house. I told her I was going to Vietnam. She cried. I couldn’t get her to stop. Maybe that’s why I said it.” Cooper let out a long breath. “I don’t know now why I did, but it came out.”

  “What did you say?” Kincaid asked.

  “I asked her to run away with me to Canada.”

  Kincaid and Rafsky exchanged looks.

  �
��I didn’t have any money, but I had a friend up there who I knew would help us out,” Cooper said. “I told Julie she had to find a way to get to St. Ignace, and she said she would take the bus. But then she said she wanted me to meet her on the island at the lodge.”

  “Why?” Kincaid asked.

  “She said she had hidden something there and she had to get it. She said it was a surprise for me.”

  “What was it?”

  “I never found out. I never made it to the lodge.”

  Cooper shut his eyes.

  A loud crack, like a rifle shot.

  Suddenly the world dropped.

  Blackness. Water. Cold.

  “Mr. Lange?”

  Cooper opened his eyes. Kincaid was staring at him.

  “I had to cross the ice bridge to get here,” he said. “I fell through. I was lucky. An ice fisherman saw me go in and pulled me out.”

  The room was still hot but Cooper felt a shiver go through him. It was quiet for a long time as he waited for one of them to say something, to tell him he was free to go. Now they understood why he ran.

  “So when you fell in,” Rafsky said, “were you coming or going from the island?”

  Cooper blinked. “I told you—”

  “Prove you weren’t leaving the island.”

  “The hospital, there’s a record I was there—”

  Rafsky leaned close. “Prove to me you didn’t meet her at the lodge. Prove to me you didn’t kill her.”

  “I loved her!” Cooper’s eyes shot to Kincaid, then back to Rafsky. “Why would I kill her?”

  “Because when you got to the lodge she gave you your little surprise,” Rafsky said. “She told you she was pregnant.”

  Cooper was stunned into silence. “Pregnant? That’s not possible,” he said finally. “I was always careful. I always used a condom.”

  Rafsky set a photograph on the table.

  “This is Julie,” he said.

  He slapped down a second photograph. “This is her baby.”

  Cooper stared at the photograph of the tiny bones. He felt a tear in his chest and choked back a sob. He reached out toward the photograph but couldn’t pick it up.

  “You’re right, Lange,” Rafsky said. “You were careful. The baby wasn’t yours.”

  Cooper looked up at him. “I don’t understand.”