by P J Parrish
“Good idea. I’ll take the shanties,” Louis said.
They split up, Jesse going to the trailer, Louis heading out over the ice toward the nearest fishing shanty.
He poked his head inside. A man jumped up from his stool, dropping his pole. “Jesus, you scared the crap outta me, officer,” the man said, clutching his coat.
Louis picked up the pole and handed it back to the man. “Sorry,” he said.
“I was just reading about that Lovejoy guy,” the man said, pointing to the Argus on the ice.
Louis introduced himself, saying he wanted to just ask a few questions. The fisherman stuck out a beefy red hand and offered his name as Art Taub.
“I guess you don’t see a lot of strangers out here,” Louis began, pulling out his notebook. “Are you out here often?”
“Nearly every day, if the wife lets me,” Taub answered, dropping his line back into the water.
“What time do you usually come out?”
“Eight, usually.”
“Do you fellows normally fish at night?”
Taub shook his head. “Early morning’s best.”
“Did you ever see Mr. Lovejoy?”
“Yeah, couple times. Mostly, I heard him.”
“Heard him?”
“His generator,” Taub said with a grimace. “He’d fire it up around six, six-thirty most mornings. He’d run the damn thing for a while, then turn it off, then run it, turn it off. Drove me nuts.”
“So he was out here by six, you think?” Louis asked.
Taub nodded. “You should talk to Elton. He can tell you what time he got his bait every morning. Elton opens at five-thirty.”
Louis paused, thinking about the New York Times in Lovejoy’s mailbox. “Mr. Taub, do you remember if you were out here the first weekend of this month?”
Taub frowned. “Yeah, yeah, I was. I remember ‘cause the wife went to Grayling to visit her mother so I was out every day.”
“Did you hear anything that sounded like a gunshot, maybe around two or two-thirty in the afternoon?”
Taub shook his head. “But I wouldn’t have paid attention because of the hunters. Probably wouldn’t have heard it anyway because of that damn generator.”
Louis nodded as he wrote. “Were you friendly with Lovejoy?”
“Nah, he was a loner, never bothered to even grunt in passing. One time I went over there to borrow some line and he told me to go buy my own. I never went back.”
“Did you see anything unusual that weekend, anything at all?”
Taub shook his head.
“Think hard, Mr. Taub.”
“Well, wait a minute, there was one thing. There was a red truck driving around over in those trees north of Will Jervey’s trailer, like he was lost. Real beat up, lots of rust. It was a Ford pickup, old model. I’d never seen it around here before.”
“What time did you see it?”
“Ah, little after six. I went in about eight to refill my thermos and it was gone.”
“Did you see the driver?”
Taub shook his head.
“Anything else?” Louis pressed.
Taub shook his head again. “Nope. It was a good day, fishing-wise, I mean.”
Louis made more notes then closed his book. He thanked Art Taub and left. There were four other huts. Two were empty, but interviews with the men in the other two yielded nothing useful. Neither men had seen a red truck or heard a shot. As Louis headed back to shore he saw Jesse coming from the trees near Lovejoy’s cabin. They met at the cruiser.
“You get anything?” Jesse asked.
“One guy said he saw a suspicious red truck,” Louis said. “What about you?”
“Nothing,” Jesse said. “I went over to Elton’s. He said Fred bought bait on Sunday the first and didn’t see him after that.”
“That supports my theory about the crosswords,” Louis said. “Unless Lovejoy used old bait.”
Jesse shook his head. “Elton says he bought fresh every day.”
Louis was frowning, looking out at the shanties on the lake.
“What’s the matter?” Jesse asked.
“The watch,” Louis said. “Fred’s watch stopped at two-thirty. But I just can’t see a killer hitting in broad daylight.”
“Especially since Pryce was hit at three in the morning,” Jesse said.
They were silent for several moments. “Maybe the watch ran for a while,” Jesse offered.
Louis shook his head. “In that water? It would freeze up right away.”
Jesse turned suddenly and started to get in the cruiser. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Louis asked.
“To find out.”
“Find out what?”
But Jesse had already started the cruiser. When Louis got in, Jesse was radioing Dale, telling him to pull Lovejoy’s watch out of evidence and find out what make and model it was. By the time Jesse swung the cruiser up in front of Red’s Drug Store, Louis realized what was up. He waited in the cruiser until Jesse emerged with a bag holding a duplicate Timex. Jesse seemed so excited by his experiment Louis didn’t have the heart to discourage him. He would let him play Columbo; maybe it would give him some confidence.
Back at the station, Louis watched while Dale scavenged a thermometer from the first-aid kit and Jesse filled the Pyrex coffeepot with ice cubes from the refrigerator. In minutes, the two had their experiment set up on Louis’s desk.
“Check the temperature,” Dale said, caught up in Jesse’s experiment.
“Louis, get the watch,” Jesse called out.
Louis unwrapped the new gold-plated Timex and handed it to Jesse. They waited until the water in the pot had dropped below freezing. Louis stepped back, shaking his head.
He watched as Jesse dropped the watch in the water.
“What time you got, Louis?” Jesse asked.
“Five straight up.”
The seconds ticked off as Jesse and Dale peered at the watch in the water.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Louis looked to the door. Gibralter was standing there, staring at Jesse and Dale huddled over the coffeepot.
Jesse jumped to his feet. “A test.”
Gibralter came over to the desk and looked down at the glass bowl. “What kind of test?”
“We’re trying to find out how long this watch will run in ice water.”
“Why?” Gibralter demanded.
“Louis thinks Fred — ”
Gibralter’s eye flicked to Louis and then back to Jesse. He reached in the coffeepot, pulled out the watch and tossed it on the desk.
“Every minute you waste could cost another officer his life,” Gibralter said, leveling his gaze at Jesse. “I told you to go through the case files. Now go do your damn job.”
Jesse wet his lips. “But — ”
“Do your job, Harrison,” Gibralter repeated, enunciating each word, as if to a child. Without looking at Louis, he went into his office, slamming the door.
Louis looked at Jesse. He was just standing there, his face red with embarrassment. Dale and Florence were watching, their eyes wide in sympathy.
“Fuck,” Jesse muttered, wandering off.
Louis looked down at the watch. The face was clouded with condensation. He picked it up.
It had stopped at 5:04.
CHAPTER 12
The sound of bells tolling. A white meadow, snow, and a stand of pines in the distance. A white church, with a steeple piercing a cobalt blue sky. And a line of blue moving slowly, swaying, emerging from the church. A coffin...they were carrying a coffin out into the snowy meadow as the bells tolled.
Louis woke with a start. Bells...the phone.
Wiping a hand over his eyes, he turned over and grabbed the receiver. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely.
“Louis?”
“Yeah.” He reached for his watch and squinted at the dial. It was after ten. He had slept through the morning.
“Louis, this is Phillip.”
>
“Phillip?” He blinked at the sound of his foster father’s voice and pulled himself up on one elbow. “Phillip! Jeez, it’s good to hear from you.” He reached down to pull the covers over his bare chest. The room was freezing cold.
“You sound strange. Don’t tell me I woke you up.” The voice on the other end of the line chuckled.
“No, no. Well, yeah, you did. But that’s okay. I’m off today.” Louis’s eyes swept over the crumpled bed. He spotted his chambray shirt crumpled in the blanket at the end. He squinted and saw two glasses on the bureau, half-filled with tawny liquid.
“I know. I called the station. They gave me your number.”
Louis suppressed a sigh. He had forgotten to call his foster parents and tell them he had finally gotten a phone.
“Look, Louis,” Phillip went on, “I won’t waste time busting your chops about why we haven’t heard from you in weeks.”
“Thanks,” Louis said softly. Leave it to Phillip Lawrence to cut through the bullshit. He hated talking on the phone more than Louis did.
“But it does make it easier to guilt you into coming down to dinner,” Phillip added.
“Dinner?” Louis said, surprised. “Where are you?”
“We’re at Higgins Lake. We brought the motor home up for the week.”
Louis laughed. “That old piece of shit? I’m surprised it made it this far.”
“Oh, I got rid of the Winnebago. Got a brand-new Gulf Stream Super Coach. The galley’s bigger than our kitchen. Frances is happier than a clam.”
Louis smiled, remembering a trip they had taken to Saugatuck in the Winnebago the summer of his thirteenth year. Frances tried to cook a chicken on the tiny stove.
“So, when can you come?”
Louis rubbed a hand over his face, trying to clear his head. What day was it? He had spent yesterday with Jesse in the station, going through case files. It has been Jesse’s day off, but he had come in anyway, desperate to find something after the watch scene with Gibralter. But after hours of going through the files they had found no one who could be considered a threat.
“Louis? You there?”
“Yeah, Phil.”
“How about tonight? Fran’s making a Christmas ham.”
Christmas...it was two days away. He had forgotten that, too. “Sure, I’m off today, I’ll be there,” he said.
He grabbed a pen off the nightstand and wrote directions to the campsite on his palm. He said good-bye and hung up, rolling onto his back and pulling the blanket up over his naked body.
He shivered, giving in to his mild feeling of guilt. He hadn’t called the Lawrences since he left Detroit and he had seen them only three times since his return from Mississippi last February. They hadn’t pressed and he was grateful. He knew that they loved him. They had been his parents, without being his mother and father. They had always instinctively honored the emotional buffer he had installed around himself. And he had loved them all the more for that. But right now, he was feeling more than a little guilty. They deserved better.
A snow blower started up somewhere off in the distance. He didn’t want to get up. He felt lazy, satiated with the languid energy of a good night’s sleep. He pulled the sheet over his cold nose. A smell drifted up to him, the sweet-musky smell of sex.
Zoe...
He closed his eyes. Zoe...snow...glow. He smiled.
Glow...go...slow.
Slow...don’t...go...Zoe.
He flipped over on his stomach, burying his face in the pillow, inhaling her smell, reliving in his head the chaotic choreography of their lovemaking.
Finally, with a sigh, he heaved himself out of the warm bed. He shivered and started to the bathroom. It was an hour’s drive down to Higgins Lake and he had to stop in town and find something that would pass as Christmas presents.
“So, how’s the job going?”
Louis poured himself another glass of brandy and sat back in the kitchen booth. “Good. Not what I expected exactly, but it’s a good, honest department.”
Phillip smiled. “I guess so. When I called, somebody named Dale McGuire answered. When I told him who I was he acted like I was his long-lost cousin or something.”
Louis laughed. “Dale’s very...social.”
“So they’re treating you good there?”
Louis considered the question for a moment. Phillip was asking, without asking, if things were different than they had been in Mississippi. It had always been that like between them, this odd dance they did about race. They were white; he was half white, half black. They had always dealt with it obliquely, a thing seen always from the corner of the eye, never straight on. Sometimes it bothered Louis. Sometimes he was grateful for it.
Like now. He hadn’t told Phillip everything that had happened to him down in Mississippi, just that his color had been “a problem.” He hadn’t told him that for the first time in his life, his color had nearly cost him his life.
Phillip Lawrence, he knew, would not ask either. It was part of the emotional buffer. It was part of their dance.
“It’s different here,” Louis said finally.
Phillip accepted the answer and took another sip of his brandy. “Thanks for the Courvoisier,” he said. “Don’t usually get this kind of good stuff.”
“I bought it for myself,” Louis said with a smile as he poured himself another three-finger shot. Phillip watched him carefully.
“And thank you for the White Shoulders, dear,” Frances chimed in from the stove.
Louis smiled up at her. Booze and perfume weren’t the most original presents, but then Loon Lake wasn’t exactly a Turkish bazaar. “Thanks for the sweater. I needed it,” he said.
She smiled and bent to poke her head into the oven. The smell of baked ham filled the motor home. The radio was playing softly, Christmas carols. Frances began to hum along.
“I’ve been reading about your case in the Free Press,” Phillip said. “Tragic.”
“Yeah,” Louis said, taking a quick drink.
“Are you close to catching anyone?”
“No, not yet,” Louis said. He glanced up at Frances. She had stopped humming.
“You’re being careful, aren’t you?” Phillip asked.
“Of course. We all are,” He took another swift drink. He glanced to his left, out the window, unable to meet Phillip’s eyes. The window was fogged and he wiped it with his shirtsleeve. He could see out across Higgins Lake. It was much bigger than Loon Lake. To the north, he could see gray clouds moving down toward them. Snow clouds.
Frances set a plate in front of him. He looked down at the careful arrangement of crackers around a crock of bright-yellow cheese. He looked up at her.
“Win Schuler’s?” he asked with a smile.
“What else?” she said, smiling back.
He dug a cracker into the soft cheese and took a bite. The tang of the cheese brought back a flood of memories. He had eaten only Velveeta before the Lawrences had taken him to Win Schuler’s for his tenth birthday. He had never seen a salad bar before that, never been to a restaurant. He had been paralyzed with the choices. Frances had coaxed him to try the cheese. He loved it. He still did.
“Have you made any new friends, dear?” Frances asked, going back to her post at the sink.
Louis shook his head slowly, smiling. “You mean women.”
“Well, okay...women,” she said, nodding.
“Fran, leave the man alone,” Phillip said, scooping a cracker into the cheese.
“It’s okay, Phil,” Louis said, still smiling. “Fact is, there is someone.”
Frances smiled. “Oh, Louis! I’m so glad. What’s her name? When can we meet her?”
“Zoe,” Louis said. “And not for a while.”
“Zoe,” Frances repeated. “Is she foreign?”
Louis grinned. “I guess you could say that.”
Phillip reached across the table for a pack of cigarettes and matches. Frances saw him and frowned just at the moment he looked up at her
.
He let out a sigh. “Come on, Fran. It’s twenty degrees out there.”
“I don’t care. You’re stinking up my new home with those things.”
Phillip looked at Louis. “You want to keep me company?”
“Sure,” Louis said, picking up his glass.
They put on their coats and went outside. Louis watched as Phillip lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He blew out the smoke in a slow stream, ending almost in a sigh.
“You shouldn’t smoke so much,” Louis said.
“You shouldn’t drink so much,” Phillip replied.
Louis looked away out over the lake and then back at Phillip. He leaned against the motor home, holding the glass down at his side. They were silent for several minutes.
Louis raised his glass and drained the brandy. He looked over to see Phillip looking at him.
“It’s bad, isn’t it,” Phillip said.
Louis knew he was talking about the murders, but he didn’t know what to say in response. As much as he loved Phillip, he had never been able to share his feelings with him easily. Even now, their relationship ripened as it was to adult status, he couldn’t bring himself to open a vein and let his fear bleed out for Phillip to see.
“It’s hard on the nerves,” Louis said. “But we’ll get him. I know we will.” He paused. “They put me in charge of the investigation,” he added, a touch of pride in his voice.
“A promotion already?” Phillip asked.
“Not really. Peter Principle more like it.”
“So, have you found anything yet?”
Louis told him about the piece of fabric and the other tenuous clues. He told him about the watch experiment and his theory about the timing of the two murders. Before he realized what was happening, he was spilling out all the details of the case, including his doubts about Jesse’s stability. It felt good. He needed to talk to someone outside the department. And as much as he had wanted to he couldn’t share it with Zoe.
Phillip listened attentively. Finally, Louis stopped, noticing that Phillip was standing awkwardly, a slight grimace on his face.
“Something wrong?” Louis asked.
Phillip rubbed his thigh. “Cold makes the leg hurt, that’s all.”