Heart of Ice

by Parrish, P. J.

  Flowers was snoring in the passenger seat. He had dozed off soon after they left St. Ignace, giving in to his hangover. Louis had let him sleep because it had given him time to think.

  About Joe. About Lily. And what Rafsky had said last night: Could it be any more fucking obvious, Kincaid?

  What was obvious? That hearing Lily’s voice when he called her on Christmas Eve made his heart ache to see her again? That it had felt so right being with Joe those eight weeks in Echo Bay, even during Thanksgiving when her mother, Flo, was around? That he had never felt so comfortable living with another person before? That he loved her? That he felt like a coward because he still hadn’t told her?

  All of that was obvious. But it was also obvious that, as he had told Rafsky, he wanted his badge back. What wasn’t obvious was how he was going to reconcile the two things in life he now needed most.

  There was a single blinking traffic light ahead. They were coming into the scattering of stores that was Cedarville’s small core. Louis gave Flowers a sharp poke.

  “Chief, we’re here. Where do I turn?”

  Flowers came to life and rubbed his face, looking around. “Turn right after the bookstore,” he said.

  “Bookstore?”

  “Yeah . . . there it is. Turn here!”

  Louis skidded to a stop in front of a gray bungalow bearing the sign SAFE HARBOR BOOKS. He had to slow to a crawl on the unplowed side street as Flowers peered at the house numbers.

  “That’s it,” Flowers said, pointing to a faded two-story clapboard house. Louis pulled to a stop.

  The yard was heaped with high drifts, with no car, footprints, or any sign of life. The house was fronted with a glassed-in porch, but the panes had been covered with heavy plastic sheeting, sections of it flapping in the wind.

  “It looks abandoned,” Louis said.

  “Not for the U.P,” Flowers said. He zipped his parka and got out. Louis followed, trudging behind him through the snow.

  Flowers had run a quick record search for Rhonda Grasso this morning, but there had been no current address for her in Cedarville. Or anywhere in Michigan for that matter.

  The only things that turned up were an expired Michigan license issued in 1967 when Rhonda was sixteen and her employment record. It included two summers working in Ryba’s Fudge Shops on the island and a short stint at the post office in Cedarville.

  But Flowers had found a Chester Grasso in Cedarville. Repeated calls to Grasso’s number had gone unanswered, but they decided to make the trip anyway. Flowers said that, like Cooper Lange, Rhonda could have come home as so many Yooper kids did when they got older and eaten up by the bigger world. She was probably married and living two doors down from her childhood home.

  Louis kept back while Flowers knocked on the porch storm door. If Chester Grasso was inside he was more likely to open the door to a guy in a Mackinac Island police parka than a strange black man.

  They heard a dog barking inside. It grew more frenzied the harder Flowers banged on the storm door. The interior door jerked open, and a man poked his head out. A second later, a huge red chow chow bounded out and launched itself at the porch door.

  The man came out onto the porch and grabbed the dog’s collar. “Pearl! Knock it off!”

  The dog retreated behind the man’s legs. The man’s watery blue eyes narrowed as he stared at the police patch on Flowers’s parka. He opened the door a crack.

  “Mackinac? Whatcha doing up here?”

  “Mr. Grasso? Chester Grasso?” Flowers asked.

  The man nodded, now staring at Louis. Louis was staring at the chow chow, but it was sitting calmly behind the man.

  “We’re looking for Rhonda Grasso,” Flowers said. “We need to talk—”

  “Rhonda? Rhonda doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “Is she your daughter?”

  Chester Grasso hesitated, then gave another nod.

  “Do you know where we can find her, sir?”

  “I haven’t seen Rhonda in years,” Grasso said. “She left home a long time ago.”

  Louis stepped forward. “So you haven’t had any contact with your daughter, sir?”

  The man shook his head. He was rubbing the dog’s ears, and it leaned against his legs, its black tongue hanging from its mouth.

  “Your daughter used to work on Mackinac Island, right?” Louis asked.

  Chester Grasso’s eyes came alive a little. “Yeah, yeah, she did. Not a lot for a kid to do in a town like this, so she used to go live over there during the summers.” He paused. “Rhonda was a hard worker, and she made enough to buy herself a used Impala when she was just seventeen. After that, she wasn’t home a lot.”

  “Did you know a girl named Julie Chapman, Mr. Grasso? Did your daughter ever mention her?” Louis asked.

  “No, don’t remember her talking about a Julie anybody.”

  “What about Cooper Lange?”

  Grasso shook his head. “What’s this all about, anyways? Is Rhonda in some kind of trouble?”

  “No, sir,” Flowers said. “We’re investigating the disappearance of this girl, Julie Chapman, and we just need to talk to Rhonda.”

  “Well, I can’t help you,” Grasso said. “Like I said, Rhonda moved away a long time ago.”

  “Do you remember the date?”

  Chester scratched his jaw. “It was after she graduated, I remember that much.”

  “Where did she go?”

  Chester shrugged. “She just left one day. She talked a lot about going up to live with her brother in Sault Ste. Marie.”

  Louis had his notebook out. “What’s his name?”

  “Fred,” Grasso said. “His name is Fred. He used to work at Algoma Steel up there.”

  “We need his address,” Louis said.

  Chester looked down at his dog. “Don’t got it. I haven’t talked to Fred in years.”

  Flowers let out a breath, glanced at Louis, then back at Grasso. “Well, thank you—”

  “Wait, Chief,” Louis said. “Mr. Grasso, is this the same house Rhonda lived in?”

  Grasso nodded. “Yup.”

  “Could we see Rhonda’s room?”

  “Her room?” Chester Grasso ran a hand over his whiskered jaw. “There’s nothing in her old room.”

  “Your daughter left nothing here?” Louis asked.

  “My wife . . .” He cleared his throat. “Rhonda was, well, she had a wild streak to her. I always said she was just a little high-strung, but Dot said she was boy crazy and Dot was always after her. They were always going after each other. You know how mothers and daughters can be.”

  Louis saw Flowers nodding.

  “When Rhonda ran off for good, Dot sort of went nuts,” Grasso said. “She packed up all of Rhonda’s things and cleaned out her room. It was like she was so mad at her she just didn’t want to look at anything to do with her, you know? There’s nothing left of Rhonda here, except some old boxes.”

  “Can we look through them?” Louis asked.

  Grasso closed the storm door a little. “I don’t think—”

  “Mr. Grasso,” Louis said. “Wouldn’t you like to see your daughter again?”

  Chester Grasso’s face went slack.

  “When we find her we can ask her to contact you,” Louis said.

  The chow chow whimpered, pushing its head under Grasso’s hand. He ignored it, his eyes on Louis.

  “The boxes are in the garage out back,” he said, nodding toward the left. “I can’t help you because my hip’s gone, but you’re free to go look. The man-door’s open.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Louis said.

  Grasso stayed at the door, watching them as Louis and Flowers trudged through the drifts, going around the side of the house.

  “When we get back we need to run a search on the brother. Maybe we can get an address through his old company,” Louis said.

  “Algoma Steel,” Flowers said. “That’s in Canada.”

  There were two Sault Ste. Maries, one in Michi
gan and the other across the river in Canada, Flowers had to remind him. Maybe that was why they hadn’t found anything on Rhonda yet.

  “Remember when Lange said he and Julie were going to run away to Canada?” Louis said. “He said he had a friend there. Maybe it was Rhonda’s brother.”

  Louis found a small door on the side of the garage and pushed it open. The interior was dark. Louis couldn’t see a light switch, but as his eyes adjusted he could make out the shapes of a tool bench, a snowmobile half covered by a stiff tarp, broken furniture, fishing poles, and a battered metal canoe suspended by straps from the rafters. A dirty Chevy Fleetside pickup took up the center. The place was stacked with so much junk it was hard to move.

  “You see anything?” Flowers asked.

  Louis headed toward some cardboard boxes stacked against the far wall near a small window. “Yeah, over here.”

  Flowers came over to him. “Shit,” he said, looking up at the stack.

  Louis had already started working his way through the boxes. The first two were filled with old linens and clothes. A third held dishes, mismatched glasses, and bowling trophies. The fourth was flattened from the weight of the others. A faded ink scrawl on the top read RHONDA.

  Louis pulled it out. The yellowed, cracked tape gave easily. There were clothes on top, and Louis set them aside. He pulled out a small red box with a plastic handle, but it was filled only with old records. Louis glanced at the top one—Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” single—and handed the box off to Flowers. A battered loose-leaf binder came out next, its blue surface scarred with faded peace signs and other doodles, the inside papers just routine schoolwork.

  Louis’s hopes rose when he pulled out a macramé purse, but there was nothing in it but a bottle of Oh! De London perfume that filled the garage with a powdery scent.

  Louis tossed the purse back in the box. “That’s it,” he said.

  Flowers was about five feet away, tugging on another box buried under two tires. “I found two more with RHONDA on them.”

  Louis went to help him drag the top box into the thin light under the window. When he opened the flaps, he let out a long breath. It was filled with papers.

  “Maybe we should just take this one with us,” Flowers said.

  Louis pointed at the bottom of the box. It was sodden from sitting in a puddle. The second, smaller box, also with RHONDA scrawled on it, was also wet.

  “I’ll go ask the old guy for some garbage bags,” Flowers said.

  Flowers left. Louis blew on his cold hands and began sorting through the papers in the first box. More schoolwork, tattered copies of ’Teen, Tiger Beat, and 16 Magazine, pages pasted with photographs of fashion models, a Sears catalog, an application for a beauty school in Ishpeming, a crumpled report card from Cedarville High School. Louis held it up to the light, squinting to read it without his glasses. Rhonda Grasso had flunked algebra and science and had skated by English, home economics, and gym with C’s. She had fourteen absences for the six-week marking period. Louis tossed it back in the box and dug deeper, finally unearthing a pack of old envelopes bound with a faded blue ribbon. There were about thirty, all addressed to Rhonda at the Cedarville house, all with a return address on Clayton Street, San Francisco. He opened the top envelope.

  It was a single piece of unlined paper, the writing too small and faded for Louis to read—except for the LOVE, DIRK at the end. Louis stuck the letter in his parka. It was the longest of long shots, but maybe Rhonda, like so many other troubled kids, had decamped to Haight-Ashbury in 1967.

  Louis dug back into the box, looking for something, anything, that might connect Rhonda to Julie.

  Photographs.

  He pulled out a handful. They were old snapshots, most faded to orange. He sifted through them quickly, discarding the ones that looked like family pictures or shots from school events. Then, suddenly, there she was.

  Not Julie but Rhonda. He didn’t need his glasses to tell it was her. It was a close-up, as if the photographer had surprised her. Her head was thrown back, exposing her neck. She was smiling broadly, blond curls wind-whipped around her face, eyes like blue pilot flames.

  Louis stared at the photo, stunned by how accurate Danny Dancer had been in capturing Rhonda’s likeness.

  He heard a rustling, and a second later Flowers appeared with a black garbage bag.

  “Look,” Louis said, handing him the photo of Rhonda.

  Flowers took it and let out a low whistle.

  Louis went back to plowing through the box, pulling out more snapshots. There were plenty of other teenagers, many of young men or Rhonda with a young man. None had names on the back.

  He dug out another handful. Street scenes, blue water, and horses. The photos were of Mackinac Island. He tossed the landscapes in the box and sorted through the rest. He stopped.

  It was a group shot, six teenagers standing in front of a grassy knoll. Louis couldn’t make out their faces. He held it up to Flowers.

  “Is that Rhonda?” he asked.

  Flowers took the photo. “Yeah,” he said. “This was taken up at Fort Holmes.” He pointed to tiny lettering on the photograph’s edge. “ ‘July 1968.’ ”

  Louis stood up. “The summer before Cooper met Julie. Is that Cooper Lange next to her?”

  “Looks like him.” Flowers was sniffling from the cold. “Come on, let’s pack this up and get out of here.”

  Louis slipped the group shot and the close-up of Rhonda into his parka pocket. Flowers held the garage bag open while Louis dumped in the contents of both wet boxes.

  A small metal box missed the bag and fell to the floor. It was an old Band-Aid tin. Flowers was about to throw it in the bag, but Louis stopped him.

  “Open it.”

  Flowers shook it. “It’s empty.”

  “Open it anyway.”

  Flowers popped the top and shook the tin over his palm. Six tiny pieces of fabric fell out.

  “What the hell?” Louis said.

  Flowers fingered them and chuckled. “Fruit loops,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Man, I haven’t seen these since I was a kid.”

  “What are they?” Louis asked.

  Flowers paused. “Where’s that group picture?”

  Louis fished it from his pocket and held it out. Flowers pointed to one of the boys. “See the shirt this kid is wearing? There were little loops on the back. Girls would cut them off and collect them.”

  “What for?”

  “Conquests. Guys notched their belts. Girls collected fruit loops.”

  Louis was thinking about Danny’s sketch of Cooper. He was almost positive Lange had been wearing a madras shirt. He retrieved his glasses from his parka pocket and held the group photograph up to the window.

  Cooper Lange at age eighteen—blond and slender, wearing chinos, a T-shirt, and a confident smile. He looked like the whole world was spread out before him. He looked nothing like the faded man who had sat hunched in the interrogation room.

  And Rhonda . . .

  She was dressed in tight white shorts and a pink blouse tied below her breasts. One of her long tan legs was bent like a model’s, and her arm was draped over Cooper Lange’s shoulders.

  Her father had described her as “boy crazy,” but it was more than that. Even at sixteen, Rhonda Grasso was a girl at ease with her sexuality.

  “Chief,” Louis said, holding out the photograph, “I think we might have a triangle—Rhonda, Cooper, and Julie.”

  Flowers looked up, letting the garbage bag fall. He came over and took the photograph, looking at it for a long time.

  “If it was, it was a pretty ugly triangle,” he said softly.

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “Yeah, but you’ve got to understand what it’s like up here,” Flowers said. “The locals are stuck here all winter and then summer comes and the fudgies take over. They make a big mess, then leave everything for us to clean up. If a townie girl like Rhonda thought a Bluff girl l
ike Julie wanted her guy, she wouldn’t give him up easily.”

  Flowers handed Louis the photograph and went back to bagging up the papers.

  Louis started to put the photograph away, then stopped. He stared at Rhonda Grasso, thinking about Danny Dancer’s description of her—eyes like ice, heart like ice—and he had the feeling he was looking at a killer.

  38

  The first thing Louis did when they got back on the island was drop Flowers off at his home. It was clear the trip had taken all the starch out of him. Louis caught a glimpse of Carol waiting for him at the front door as he trudged up the walk. She waved to Louis, wrapped an arm around her ex-husband, and ushered him into the house.

  Louis turned the police SUV around and started back to town, eager to tell Rafsky about Rhonda Grasso. But then he stopped at an intersection, remembering his promise to Danny Dancer.

  I’ll take care of your skulls.

  Dancer’s cabin was just up the road from Flowers’s house. What the hell he was going to do with the damn skulls, he had no idea.

  A few strands of yellow crime scene tape hung limply from the trees. Apparently it had been enough to keep trespassers out, as Louis saw no fresh footprints close to the cabin and no sign anyone had poked around. The evidence tape that sealed up an active crime was gone from the front door, so Louis knew the police and DA were finished. He could enter without disturbing anything.

  The door was locked. The shutters had been taken down, so Louis tried the front window. It took him a while to get the frozen window open, but finally he was inside.

  He hadn’t been back since the shooting. Parts of that day were a little fuzzy, blurred by the memories of bullets whizzing over his head and Flowers bleeding in his arms. Yet the place seemed less gruesome. Then he knew what it was—the stench was gone. All the beetles were dead.

  Louis looked around. The cops had cleared the shelves of Dancer’s sketchbooks. But his other books remained and Louis took a moment to scan the titles: Greek Mythology for Children, The Road Less Traveled, and a third book, The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self.

  So Joe’s hunch had been right.