Heart of Ice

10

He had walked right past it the first time, mistaking the wooden carved sign for just another one of the historical markers that seemed to be fastened to every old building on the island.

The two-story white clapboard house looked more like a bed-and-breakfast than a police station. Inside, the disconnect continued as Louis stood in the tiny foyer facing a Dutch door. Its top half was open to reveal what he assumed was the heart of the Mackinac Island Police Department.

It was a narrow, long room, its walls lined with built-in desks topped with what looked to be the latest in computers, printers, and other electronics. The place smelled pleasantly of hazelnut coffee and chimney smoke, although there was no fireplace that Louis could see.

The officer sitting at the computer looked up. “Yes, sir?”

“Louis Kincaid. The chief’s expecting me.”

The officer went to an office at the rear of the room. Louis could see Flowers inside at his desk.

Louis looked down at the file folder he was carrying. It was the Bloomfield Hills case file. He and Flowers had stayed at the Mustang until after dark. Flowers had switched to soda water, and while he ate his dinner he read the file, scribbling notes on bar napkins.

Around eight, he’d received a radio call for a domestic fight in the village and had told Louis he needed to answer this call personally because he knew the couple. He slid the case file to Louis and asked if he wanted to take it back to the hotel and give it a look.

Louis had taken it, knowing Flowers wanted backup ready in case Edward Chapman started asking some tough questions.

It appeared the Bloomfield Hills cops had done a good job. The story that unfolded was a simple one. It was the weekend before New Year’s Eve 1969. The parents were out of town; the housekeeper was visiting family in Grand Rapids; and the older brother, Ross, was at the University of Michigan. Julie had declined to go with her parents to California, telling her father she wanted to spend the holiday with her brother. Ross reported she had not told him of her intent to come to Ann Arbor and that she had never arrived.

The police had investigated her family, compiling a complete dossier. They had also talked to Julie’s friends-of which there were few-and investigated Detroit-area sex offenders. They had followed hundreds of leads and had received tips of sightings as late as 1977. But in the end, despite the family’s high profile, the case had gone cold.

The officer appeared back at the Dutch door. “The chief will see you now.”

The officer buzzed the door open, and Louis started back to the chief’s office. A black woman sitting in a chair in the corner gave him a long once-over before returning to her paperback.

Flowers’s office was tiny, with none of the usual plaques and commendations hanging on the walls. Instead, there was a map of Michigan, some sepia photographs of the island, and a prominent picture of the five-man Mackinac Island Police Department on bicycles.

It was only after Flowers had closed the door that Louis noticed the old man.

He was sitting in the corner, a frail man with sparse gray hair and pale skin, almost lost in the bulk of his blue sweater. There was a tiny breathing device in his nostrils with thin tubes running back behind his ears. Louis saw the portable oxygen canister near the chair and looked to Flowers.

“Kincaid, this is Edward Chapman, Julie’s father,” Flowers said. “Louis Kincaid is the man I was telling you about, Mr. Chapman.”

The old man extended his hand, and Louis shook it. Given his appearance, the man’s grip was surprisingly strong. Louis remembered a detail from the family dossier, that Edward Chapman had been an executive vice president with Ford, in charge of overseeing the company’s European operations. The Chapmans had led a high-profile life in Europe when Julie was very young. But Edward Chapman had taken an early retirement not long after his daughter disappeared. As Louis considered the fragile man before him, he thought-not for the first time in his career-about the toll murder took on those left behind.

Flowers shifted in his chair, clearly uncomfortable. “I was just telling Mr. Chapman that it was, well, premature of me to have called him because we are not sure the remains are those of his daughter,” Flowers said.

“And I was telling the chief that it doesn’t matter,” Chapman said quickly. “If there is even the smallest chance that this is Julie, then I want to be here.”

The smallest chance.

Since last night in the bar, Louis had been thinking about pushing for DNA analysis to identify the bones but had decided to wait. He wondered how much Flowers knew about the technology. His own exposure was limited to what he had read and the one case he had worked recently in Palm Beach. The remains of an illegal immigrant worker had been found and there were no records or family to identify him. They had talked about using DNA to identify him, but the police department had no interest in footing the high cost of the test. Louis suspected money would be no such barrier to a man like Edward Chapman. But he had to talk to Flowers about it first.

“You said you had Julie’s ring,” Chapman said.

“We think it is her ring,” Flowers said. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a small manila envelope. He took out the ring and set it on the desk.

Chapman reached beneath his sweater and pulled out a pair of glasses, slipping them on. He peered at the ring for a long time, then set it down on the desk. “I don’t know if this is hers,” he said softly. He looked up at Flowers. “Do you have anything else, maybe her clothes?”

Flowers glanced at Louis before he answered. “We didn’t find any clothes with the remains. I’m sorry.”

Chapman stared at Flowers, then his eyes closed. For a long moment the only sound in the room was the soft hiss of his oxygen. He opened his eyes. “I brought her dental records. We can use those, can’t we?”

“We didn’t find her skull,” Flowers said. “Again, I am so very sorry about this, Mr. Chapman.”

Louis realized the black woman out in the reception area was watching them intently.

“Can I see Julie?”

Louis’s eyes shot back to Mr. Chapman and then to Flowers.

“Mr. Chapman, I don’t think-”

“I want to see her,” Chapman said. “I want to see my daughter. Even if there’s only bones.”

Flowers drew in a breath. “We had to send the remains to a lab in Marquette. We will have them back soon.”

Chapman took off his glasses with shaking hands. He stared at the small gold ring on the desk, then looked up at Flowers with brimming eyes. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

Louis looked to Flowers, who gave him a silent signal that it was okay to take the lead.

“You can help by telling us about Julie,” Louis said. When Chapman hesitated Louis went on. “Let’s start with the day she disappeared. We have the police report, but sometimes family members can provide details that might have been missed.”

Chapman wiped at his eyes. “It was the holidays, the week after Christmas,” he said. “Her mother, Ellen, had been in ill health, and I thought a vacation somewhere warm would be good for her, good for the whole family, really. We decided to go to Pasadena. Michigan was playing in the Rose Bowl, and we were alums, you see, so we thought it might be good for us.”

He stopped, shaking his head. “But the kids. . well, neither of them wanted to go. Ross was studying for finals and didn’t want to be away. Julie told me she would go stay with Ross in Ann Arbor and they would watch the game on TV. So I didn’t worry about her.”

“Ross was nineteen at the time?” Louis asked.

Edward Chapman nodded.

“He’s a state congressman now,” Flowers said to Louis. “He’s running for U.S. senator.”

The Senate. The case had attracted only local interest so far, but that was going to change fast. “Is your son coming to the island?” Louis asked.

Chapman’s eyes were slow to focus on Louis. “Yes,” he said. “He’s been busy with his campaign, but he told me he’d be here as soon as he could.”

“That weekend you went to California,” Louis said. “When did you realize your daughter was missing?”

“Not until we came home,” Chapman said. “Until we called Ross we didn’t know she had never even made it to Ann Arbor. Ross said Julie never called him about coming.”

Louis had read this detail in the report last night, and it had struck him then that maybe Julie Chapman had lied to her parents about her plans. It didn’t mean she wasn’t abducted, but it raised questions.

“Mr. Chapman, do you think your daughter lied to you about going to stay with her brother?” Louis asked.

Chapman was staring at the ring again and looked up quickly.

“Perhaps she was going to go somewhere or see someone you didn’t approve of?”

Chapman shook his head. “Julie never lied. Maybe she just changed her mind about going to Ann Arbor. Maybe she wanted to surprise Ross. Maybe. .” His voice trailed off. “Julie never lied to me.”

“Mr. Chapman,” Flowers said, “I have teenage daughters, too, and sometimes they get secretive.”

Chapman stared hard at Flowers.

Flowers glanced at Louis and shifted in his chair. “Why don’t you tell us more about Julie?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“What was she like?”

“She was a good girl,” Chapman said.

“Can you be more specific?” Flowers asked gently.

Chapman seemed confused. “She was very smart, an excellent student. She was polite, funny, and shy. She loved to ride horses and she wrote poetry.”

“Poetry?” Louis asked.

Chapman was slow to focus on Louis. “Yes. She won a school prize once.”

“Do you still have any of her poetry?” Louis asked.

“Why would you want that?”

“It might help us understand her,” Louis said.

Chapman hesitated, then nodded. “If you think it might help,” he said. “I’ll have the notebooks sent up. I don’t know what you think you might find in them, though. They’re just poems.”

Just poems, Louis thought. Julie Chapman was shy and had attended an all-girls school. When a seventeen-year-old girl lies to her parents about where she is going, it’s usually about a boy. The Bloomfield Hills police had found no evidence of a boyfriend. But if one did exist Louis had a hunch he’d find him in Julie’s poems.

Louis was quiet, his eyes on the photographs of Mackinac Island on the wall over Flowers’s desk. And maybe he would find him here.

Twenty-one years ago, the police hadn’t asked about the summer home because there was no connection to the island. But now there was-the bones in the lodge.

“Mr. Chapman, did your family spend the summer of 1969 here on the island?” Louis asked.

Chapman had been looking out the window, and it took a moment for him to turn back to Louis.

“Yes,” he said. “We always came up north for the summer. We’d open the cottage on Memorial Day and close it on Labor Day.” He paused. “But that last summer. . things didn’t work out like I planned.”

When he fell silent Louis said, “Please go on, sir.”

“I thought it was important that we all be here that summer,” Chapman said. “The kids were getting older, and I had this idea that we needed that one last summer together as a family. But I was called away unexpectedly to Paris and didn’t make it.”

“So that summer before Julie disappeared, just your wife and the children came up here?” Louis asked.

“No, Ellen was ill. So the kids came up with Maisey.”

Louis recognized the name from the police report. Maisey Barrow had been the family’s housekeeper. He was about to ask if the housekeeper could be contacted, but suddenly Edward Chapman began to gasp for breath.

Flowers jumped to his feet, but before either he or Louis could make a move toward Chapman, the office door opened.

The black woman who had been sitting outside was at Chapman’s side in an instant. She checked the tubes in his nose and then adjusted the gauge on the oxygen tank.

“Try to relax, Mr. Edward,” she said.

Chapman’s watery eyes were riveted on her as he struggled to control his breathing. It took at least a full minute but finally the color began to return to Chapman’s face.

Louis realized he had been holding his own breath and slowly let it out.

The black woman looked at Flowers. “I need to take him home,” she said.

Flowers glanced at Louis and nodded. “We’re finished for now,” he said.

She took Chapman’s elbow and helped him to his feet. He looked at Flowers and whispered something to the woman. She frowned but nodded.

“Mr. Edward wants to help you,” she said. “We’ll be at the cottage if you need him. But right now, he needs some rest.”

“I appreciate it, Mr. Chapman,” Flowers said.

The woman led Chapman out of the office. Louis watched them leave, then turned back to Flowers.

“You handled that well,” he said.

Flowers rubbed his face as he sank back down into his chair. The phone rang, and Flowers looked out to the dispatcher, who mouthed the word Rafsky.

“Fuck,” Flowers whispered. He hit the speaker button on the phone.

“Chief Flowers here.”

“I’m in Marquette,” Rafsky said. “I have some news.”

Flowers rolled his eyes.

“The medical examiner took a second look at the bones,” Rafsky said. “He overlooked something the first time.” There was a pause. “Am I on a speakerphone?”

“Yeah, Kincaid’s here with me.”

Another long pause.

“You going to tell us the news?” Flowers said.

“There were more than two hundred and six bones. The extras were fetal bones. I’m on my way back. I’ll be there by five.”

Rafsky hung up.

Louis picked up the small gold ring, turning it so he could see the initials J.C. He looked up at Flowers. “Looks like the perfect daughter wasn’t so perfect.”