How much should he tell her? He couldn’t tell her that Ross was now a suspect in Julie’s murder. But didn’t she have a right to know her suspicions about the incest had been correct? And what about the rest? Didn’t he have a right to know if Maisey was really Julie’s mother?
“You were right about Ross and Julie,” Louis said. “He confessed everything to us.”
Maisey’s face sagged, and she carefully put the books on the table, then went into the parlor. Louis followed her. She seemed to be searching for something. Finally she went to the bookcase and picked a picture frame from a group on the top shelf. It was a family portrait of all the Chapmans, taken on the front lawn of the cottage when the kids were very young.
Maisey stared at it for a moment, then put it back on the shelf. “I don’t know what to take,” she said, as if to herself. “The lawyer said it was all mine now, but I don’t know what to take.”
“Yours?” Louis asked.
She looked at him. “Mr. Edward left me this house.” Her eyes wandered around the room. “I don’t want any of this. The real estate lady said I could leave it all and she’d sell it.”
So Edward had taken care of her after all. The cottage would probably bring Maisey about a million dollars. No matter how much Ross protested that the island meant nothing to him, it had to have stung to find out the house that had been in his mother’s family for three generations was now owned by “just a housekeeper.”
Maisey picked up another frame. It held a small photograph of Julie sitting in a wicker chair holding a rag doll. Maisey used her sleeve to wipe the glass, then folded it to her chest.
“Maisey,” Louis said. “I have to ask you something.”
She looked up expectantly.
“I don’t know how—” he began. Then he let out a long sigh. “Is Julie your daughter?”
Her mouth dropped open. It took a few seconds, but then the shock faded and something else replaced it.
“How could you ask me such a thing?” she said.
It wasn’t anger he was seeing in her face. It was indignation that he knew instinctively came not from guilt but from deeply bred modesty. It was one thing for a woman like Maisey to admit that back in the fifties she had loved a man like Edward. It was something else entirely for her to hear a near stranger give words to what had to be a painful secret.
“I’m sorry,” Louis said. “I have to know.”
“Why?” she demanded.
How did he explain this? How did he explain to her that family dynamics—and race—could factor into a murder motive?
“The family is important in a murder investigation,” he said.
“Family,” Maisey said quietly, turning away. She set the frame back on the mantel and started away.
“Maisey—”
She spun around. “Mr. Kincaid, you need to leave.”
“Maisey, you don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t understand,” she said, pointing a finger at him. “You think you do because you’re black. But you’re too young, and you don’t know.”
She went out into the foyer, and he followed.
“Maisey,” he said. “Please. I need an answer.”
She was halfway up the stairs but turned and came down a few steps. Her eyes glistened, but Louis knew she wouldn’t cry until she was alone.
“I’m not Julie’s mother,” she said.
He almost said it, almost said that a simple test would prove it. But this woman had trusted him with her family’s darkest secrets. He couldn’t push this. He would have to take her word for it.
“I’m sorry, Maisey,” Louis said. “I am just trying to help you take Julie home.”
Her hand went to her chest and she wiped at her eyes. She came down the steps, reached into the box, and pulled out a small red book.
“This is Julie’s journal, the one from that summer, with her poems,” she said, holding it out to Louis. “Take it. Maybe it will help you.”
34
The ferry was moving slowly, carefully maneuvering through the channel the coast guard ice cutter had forged in the straits. The day was bright with a stinging sun, but it was too cold to be outside, so Louis stayed inside.
When the boat docked in St. Ignace Louis picked up the small bag and hurried off the ferry. It was six blocks to the Mackinaw County substation and jail. His shoes were soaked from the snow by the time he got there, and he made a mental note to buy some boots, since it was apparent he was going to be here awhile longer. Rafsky had asked him to stay on indefinitely and had even issued him a temporary state police ID.
The investigation was progressing in fits and starts, but at least they were moving forward. Rafsky was shepherding the investigators he had sent to Ann Arbor and Bloomfield Hills to dig into Ross Chapman’s life. He was hell-bent on proving Ross Chapman guilty of murdering his sister. But Louis wasn’t convinced. And it was something small that triggered his doubt, something Ross had said at the cemetery.
Lodge? What lodge?
Louis had felt from the beginning that the lodge was important to the killer. But the place didn’t seem to register on Ross’s radar.
That’s why Louis had spent last night reading the poems in the journal Maisey had given him. He was hoping to find some reference to the lodge or to the boy he was convinced Julie had been seeing that last summer on the island.
Julie Chapman’s poems were strange and often beautiful but all were painful to read. She wrote about her mother’s spiral into addiction. She wrote about her father’s long absences in words that careened from anger to aching loneliness. She wrote about feeling smothered in what she called Kingswood’s “velvet coffin.”
There was an undercurrent of repressed rage. One chilling poem called “Slammed and Damned” detailed Julie’s ostracism by a clique of girls using “slam books.” Louis had heard of slam books. They were a fad in the sixties where kids wrote anonymous biting comments about one another in spiral notebooks. Julie’s poem ended with the subject thinking about killing her tormenters but committing suicide instead.
In a poem called “Lost in the Mist” the narrator was a color-blind girl who lamented that she was “not black, not white, but just shades of gray.”
And then there were the poems about Ross. None of them mentioned him by name and none used the word incest. Still they were almost unbearable to read. One called “Tick Tock” was about a clock that ran backward “to the time when I was new, back to the time before there was you.” Another called “Night Creature” was about a sharp-clawed beast slipping into her bed and tearing her open with “claws like razors, a tongue like a blade.” The hardest one to read was “Twelve.” Louis had memorized the last lines.
Your fingers are ice on my body
Your heart is ice on my soul
I let you take
What should have been mine to give
Louis had almost stopped reading after that. But then he got to the poems that dated to Julie’s final month on the island. They seemed as if they were written by a different girl.
The tone was brighter, almost hopeful. One poem called “Phoenix” was a long tale about a girl whose home burned down, but she hatched out of a golden egg and flew away to make a new life on a tropical island. But there was nothing in any of the summer poems that spoke about being in love and nothing about a special boy.
Except for maybe one poem. It was called “Centaur” and it was about a creature, half man and half horse, that was “wise and gentle” and carried the girl away from earthly tormenters.
Was “Centaur” Julie’s island love?
It was a long shot, but the poem was why Louis was now on his way to see Danny Dancer. His plan was to show Dancer the poem and hope it triggered him to remember an image from his own sketchbooks.
At the county building, a sign on the front door directed Louis to the jail around the side. The desk sergeant behind the Plexiglas spoke without looking up from his paperwork.
“Visitin
g days are Saturdays and Wednesdays.”
“I have an appointment with Danny Dancer. Special visit, granted by your sheriff as a favor to state investigator Norm Rafsky.”
The sergeant flipped through some papers on a clipboard. “You Louis Kincaid?”
“Yeah.”
“ID and sign the book.”
Louis slid his license and state police ID through and signed in. The cop pushed Louis’s license back through but fingered the state ID as if it were a counterfeit twenty before he finally gave it back.
“Dancer’s lawyer here yet?” Louis asked.
“Nope.”
When Louis called Lee Troyer this morning it had taken all his charm to convince her that all he needed was information on kids Dancer knew when he was young. She had finally agreed and told him she’d meet him at eleven. It was eleven fifteen.
“The roads are bad north of here,” the sergeant said. “It might be hours before anyone gets through. You better go in. You wait too long the inmates will be at lunch.”
“If Troyer shows up, tell her I’m here.”
The sergeant hit a buzzer, and a steel door to Louis’s left slid open, leading to a second waiting area. The guard in a wire cage handed Louis a plastic tray through a slot.
“Empty your pockets and leave the bag here.”
“I have books in here I need to take in,” Louis said, hoisting up the bag.
The cop used his pencil to point to a sign that said no contraband was allowed inside.
“I have permission from your sheriff to take the books in,” Louis said.
The cop eyed him, then picked up the phone and asked for a Captain someone. Louis waited, listening to the sounds of the jail—buzzers, shouting, clanging. This place was a stark contrast to the island station with its coffee-scented office, boxes of doughnuts, and framed pictures of the island.
Louis looked back at the cop on the phone. The officers here were different, too, a tough bunch with weathered skin and military tattoos. Louis knew he was in a place where cops were us and inmates were them and there was nothing in between.
The guard hung up the phone. “Captain says you can take the books in but you’ll have a guard with you the whole time.”
“Not a problem.”
With another buzz the second door slid open. Louis followed a guard to the end of the hall. Inside an eight-by-eight-foot cell Dancer sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at the drain. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit, had a small yellow-black bruise on his cheek, and his dirty hair hung uncombed in his eyes.
“I’m not wasting time down here babysitting your cop-shooting retard, so make this quick,” the guard said, unlocking the cell.
Louis went inside. The clang of the door closing reverberated off the walls, but Dancer didn’t look up.
“Hello, Danny,” Louis said.
Dancer didn’t answer, his attention still focused on the floor. Louis realized he was counting the red speckles in the tile.
“How many are there?” Louis asked.
“I’m not done yet.”
Louis pulled some books from the bag. “I have something to show you. Can you take a break?”
Dancer looked up at him, his eyes lighting up when he saw the sketchbooks. He held out his hand.
“I’ll give them to you in a minute,” Louis said. “Can we sit on the bunk?”
When Dancer came to the bunk and sat down a week’s worth of sweat wafted off him. Louis made a mental note to tell Lee Troyer to demand her client get special hygiene attention. And protection.
“Are my beetles okay?” Dancer asked.
“Your beetles?”
“My beetles,” Dancer said. “Is someone feeding my beetles?”
Louis hadn’t been to the cabin since that day with Rafsky months ago, but he could only assume the bins were now full of dead bugs.
“I don’t know about your beetles, Danny,” Louis said.
“I need to go home.”
“They’re not going to let you go home,” Louis said. “You shot Chief Flowers, remember? That’s why you’re here.”
Dancer looked down.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” Louis asked.
Dancer said nothing. Was he counting speckles in the floor again?
“Danny, do you understand what you did?” Louis asked.
Dancer’s eyes shot up. “I understand! I’m not stupid. I understand. I understand everything!”
To Louis’s surprise, there were tears in Dancer’s eyes. He had thought that autistics were devoid of deep emotion, but that stereotype was now gone.
“When you get out—” God, he hated lying like this. “When you get out, you can get some new beetles.”
“What about Callisto, Penelope, Lycus and—”
The damn animal skulls.
“I’m sure they’re still there in your cabin. No one would take them.”
“My skulls aren’t safe there,” Dancer whispered.
“I’ll go your cabin. And I’ll pack up Callista—”
“Callisto. Cal-lis-toe.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll pack them and store them. Okay?”
Dancer looked away again. His fingers were wrapped tightly around the edge of the bunk as if he were afraid he would fall off.
“Did you hear me? I said I’d get them,” Louis said.
“You repeat yourself a lot,” Dancer said.
“I’m sorry. But I’ll get them.”
“You got to get them all.”
“I will.”
“All of them.”
“Yes, all of them.”
Dancer was quiet again, his attention back on the floor. Louis set the sketchbooks on the bunk, keeping Julie’s journal in his hand.
“Do you know what poetry is, Danny?”
No answer.
“Do I have to repeat myself again?” Louis asked.
Dancer shook his head. “ ‘The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.’ Robert Frost.”
Greek mythology and American poetry. Aunt Bitty must have been a remarkable woman.
“Yes, that’s good,” Louis said. “Now, do you remember talking to us about Julie Chapman?”
“Bones now. Julie Chapman is just bones.”
“Yes,” Louis said. “But you and Julie had something in common. You and she were sort of the same. Do you want to know how?”
Dancer’s head came around slowly. Louis had wondered if Dancer understood that he wasn’t the same as everyone else, and now he had his answer. Dancer’s eyes were wide with curiosity as to how he and someone like Julie Chapman could be anything alike.
“Julie was a lonely girl who got her feelings out by writing poems,” Louis said. “That’s how she coped with her life and her sadness. She put her heart into her poetry.”
Dancer just stared at him.
“You cope by drawing pictures,” Louis said. “Your pictures are your . . . friends, sort of, people you could have around you but who you didn’t have to talk to.”
For a split second there was a hint of a smile but then Dancer turned away. “I can’t draw here,” he said.
“I know,” Louis said. “Maybe we can fix that. But today I want to do something else with you, something that will help us find out who killed Julie. Are you okay with that?”
The guard’s voice boomed from across the hall. “Hey, how about hurrying up this little shrink-rap session. I got other work to do.”
Dancer suddenly slid off the bunk to the floor, hugging himself like a sulking child.
Louis glanced at the guard. “Thanks a lot.”
The guard looked at his watch.
Louis leaned down to Dancer’s ear. “I want you to listen to me,” he said. “I’m going to read one of Julie Chapman’s poems to you, because I think you will understand her words better than I can.”
Danny put his forehead on his knees.
Louis opene
d Julie’s book to the poem “Centaur.” Then he leaned back down to Dancer, keeping his voice low.
“ ‘You came to me in the golden rays of the sun, half a horse and half a man . . .’ ” Louis began.
“Like a centaur,” Dancer said.
Louis looked up. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Finish the poem,” Dancer said.
“ ‘Your brown velvet flanks so strong and smooth,’ ” Louis went on. “ ‘Your gentle eyes of sea-foam hues. You carry the wilderness in your soul, you carry me away and melt the black ice of my heart.’ ”
“Give me a fucking break,” the guard said.
Louis rose quickly and went to the bars. “You’ve got no idea what I’m doing or why I’m doing it. Now shut the fuck up or go find something to do.”
“All right, smart-ass,” the guard said, reaching for his keys. “You’re done here.”
Louis glared at the guard. Damn it, he shouldn’t have mouthed off to him. He couldn’t risk getting thrown out now. The closer Dancer got to trial, the harder it was going to be to get permission for another visit.
The guard unlocked the door. “Let’s go.”
Pissed, Louis turned back to gather up the books. But Dancer was flipping pages in one of his sketchbooks. Louis held a hand up toward the guard.
“Give me ten seconds, man. Please.”
Dancer finally stopped turning pages and stood up, drawing back into the shadows. Louis looked down at the open book on the bunk.
It was a head-and-shoulders portrait drawn in pencil. The boy had light wavy hair, a hint of a smile, and was wearing a madras shirt. Dancer had concentrated most on the boy’s eyes, carefully shading them and pressing the pencil tip deep enough to literally carve the eyelashes in the paper. There was something very feminine, very romantic in the pose, and Louis thought he knew what Dancer had captured—the moment this boy fell in love with Julie.
“Cooper the Yooper,” Dancer said. “Cooper the Yooper.”
“What?” Louis said. “Is Cooper his name?”
“Cooper the Yooper, Cooper the Yooper . . .”
The guard stepped in the cell. “Let’s go, mister. Now.”
“Danny, is Cooper the boy’s last name?” Louis pressed.
“I said let’s go!”
Heart of Ice Page 22