Heart of Ice (8 page)

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 forward. “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.

“Let me think,” Louis said.

“You’ll never get it,” Flowers said. He grabbed the brandy snifter and, without lifting its rim from the bar, started moving it in a tight circle. When he had it going fast enough, centrifugal force drew the olive up into the glass and Flowers flipped it upright, trapping the olive inside.

“I guess I owe you a beer,” Louis said.

“I’ll take a Labatt.”

Louis ordered for Flowers, and for a while they sat in silence watching the baseball playoff game on the TV. Louis hadn’t seen the Tigers play since he was a kid. He didn’t know any of the players anymore. It made him feel like a stranger in the state he had grown up in.

“I have the Kingswood school sending us some yearbooks,” Flowers said. “They’re also trying to locate a teacher from back then, someone who might remember Julie Chapman.”

“Chief, we still need to verify who the bones belong to,” Louis said.

“Julie Chapman,” Flowers said.

Louis suppressed a sigh.

“Let’s eat,” Flowers said. “They have really good chili-cheese fries here.”

They ordered dinner and again fell into silence as they waited for their food.

“You want another?” Flowers asked, nodding toward Louis’s near-empty beer bottle.

Louis shook his head. “I’ve been trying to cut back a little.”

Flowers signaled to the bartender and ordered a shot of Jack Daniel’s for himself. “Where’s your little girl, Kincaid?” he asked.

“Her mother picked her up and took her back to Ann Arbor.”

“Divorced, eh?”

“Not exactly,” Louis said, not wanting to explain to Flowers that he never knew he even had a kid until this past spring. “What about you? You mentioned an ex in St. Louis or somewhere?”

“Kansas fucking City,” Flowers said.

“Sound a little bitter,” Louis said. “Rough divorce?”

“We’re living down in Alpena, right? I’m a patrolman for the city police, putting in all kinds of overtime just to make ends meet so she can live in this ugly old Victorian on the lake. Everything is fine for seven years. Then out of nowhere she tells me she’s not happy anymore.”

Louis picked at the chili-covered fries. He didn’t really
want to hear this, but Flowers, flush with booze, obviously needed to say it.

“So I let her go back to work at the bank,” Flowers went on. “A year later she’s made manager and putting in more hours than me, and her mother’s at the house a lot with the twin girls. It wasn’t a good time for us.”

Flowers’s eyes slid to him, then back to the empty shot glass. For a long time neither man said anything.

“Then Carol got the job offer in Kansas City,” Flowers said. “She wanted me to move there, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get on with any department there. So we split up.”

Louis wondered why Flowers had taken the job here on the island. It couldn’t be for child support because he doubted the chief made much here. More likely, Flowers felt he needed a title in front of his name to convince himself he was still in control of something, even if it was only a tiny island.

“Well, isn’t this an impressive image of quality police work.”

They both turned on their stools to see Rafsky standing behind them.

He was carrying two FedEx boxes and a manila envelope. The packages and his trench coat were spotted with rain. Louis glanced at the window. Rain rippled the glass, giving the streetlights a quivering white glow.

“How did you two make out with the ferry employees?” Rafsky asked.

“It was twenty-one years ago, Detective,” Louis said. “No one remembered anything worth following up on.”

“There was the Coffee woman,” Flowers said.

“Excuse me?” Rafsky asked.

“One old lady said she remembered a girl buying a ticket one New Year’s Eve,” Flowers said.

“She has Alzheimer’s,” Louis said to Rafsky.

“Still doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the memory stored in there somewhere,” Flowers said. “I told you, people with Alz—”

Rafsky stopped Flowers in midsentence by turning his back on Flowers and making a point to look at Louis, for the first time meeting his eyes with some level of respect.