Heart of Ice

23

The fog grew thinner as they climbed higher. The only sounds were the steady thuds of Sergeant Clark’s footsteps behind him and the soft jingle of his keys.

Ross glanced back, but Clark didn’t meet his eyes. Last night he had come to the cottage and efficiently briefed Ross on the chief’s shooting and Dancer’s arrest.

But now he was clearly uncomfortable, and Ross knew why. Clark wasn’t like Rafsky or Kincaid. Clark was a local who knew how to treat people.

They made the turn onto West Bluff Road.

People who lived up here.

Ross thought back to the press conference. It had been his campaign manager’s idea, to use the spotlight of the chief’s shooting to get some camera time. But he hadn’t been prepared when the reporter blurted out, “Have you seen it?”

Julie’s skull. He felt a rise of bile in his throat and swallowed hard. This was so ugly, and it was only going to get worse. He had to stay in control somehow.

Ross stopped and turned to Clark. “Sergeant,” he said. “This man Dancer. Tell me more about him.”

“Well, sir, I’m not at liberty to discuss the case.”

“I just want to know what kind of man he is.”

Ross saw Clark’s eyes flick over to the big shuttered houses. “He’s lived here his whole life, sort of a hermit. Some folks say he’s retarded. They also know he’s been sneaking in and out of the old lodge.”

“What about these skulls of his? Did you see them?”

Clark hesitated and ran a hand under his nose as he gave a small nod. “Yeah, I saw them. His cabin is filled with them and all these bugs that eat the skin away. None of the skulls are human, though, sir.”

“Does Detective Rafsky think this man killed my sister?”

“I don’t know, sir, but he’s got a lot of people digging up Dancer’s yard.”

Ross nodded slowly. He looked down the road to the last house. “Thank you, Sergeant. I can make it from here.”

Clark turned and started back down the road. Ross headed to the cottage.

Inside, the house was chilly, the drapes drawn. Ross knew Maisey closed them to keep the house warm, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped. Like the house down in Bloomfield Hills, the island cottage was old and drafty. Sometimes he felt as if he’d been raised in a chill, which was one reason that when he married he built a big modern house in Rochester, with three fireplaces and two furnaces.

Ross took off his raincoat and hung it on a coatrack in the foyer. He heard the creak of footsteps above and looked up the staircase. The lights were on in the front bedroom. He needed to go up and see his father, but he needed a drink first.

He went to the parlor and switched on a lamp. He poured a half glass of Hennessy and sat down in the chair by the phone.

Maisey had left a small pile of messages. He took a quick drink and sifted through them.

Six calls from four different reporters, including a name he didn’t recognize from the Washington Post. Two messages from the Reptile-as he called his campaign manager-asking when he was coming back to Lansing. And two messages from Karen, one reminding him that the boys’ Cranbrook tuition was due and the other warning him that she wasn’t going to the Michigan Leadership Conference dinner alone.

Karen. .

Image was everything to her, and she was so good at burnishing it. Everything from what pictures of the family were released to the press to the color of his ties. It was a talent she had gotten from her mother, a distant relative of the Piedmont family, who had made a fortune building tract homes in the suburbs during the fifties. Karen’s parents didn’t have money but nonetheless Karen had been raised to believe privilege was her right. That mind-set led her to a college junior named Ross Chapman, a Ford executive’s son with a bright future.

And when Ross chose politics over business it had been a pregnant Karen who told him that she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life living in Lansing married to a state representative. If Ross wanted politics, then he better want it all, because she wanted to live in Georgetown, host cocktail parties for diplomats, and get invitations to inaugural balls.

Ross took another swallow of brandy and closed his eyes.

But the images wouldn’t go away.

Retard.

Bugs eating skin off skulls.

A skeleton like a baby bird.

This was beyond ugly. It was grotesque. Not even Karen would be able to paint over it.

Everything would come out, and Ross knew exactly what would happen when it did. He understood the “disgust factor,” understood that a man like Dancer was irresistible to the public and media. The story would play out in endless loops on Court TV and in the National Enquirer.

It wouldn’t stop with Dancer. If it went to trial, Dancer’s defense attorneys would go after Julie, paint her as a troubled runaway with no close friends, a girl with an absent father and a drugged-out mother. A girl who teased the retarded kid, ended up pregnant, and got what was coming to her.

Ross looked toward the stairs.

Dad. .

He hadn’t told him about the pregnancy. Or any of the other things Clark had told him. In his darkest moment he had hoped this would all somehow stay quiet until after his father died. But he couldn’t chance that any longer.

He downed the last of the brandy and pushed himself from the chair.

The door to his father’s room was open. His father was reading in a chair facing the window. Maisey was folding towels at the bed, and she glanced at Ross but said nothing as he came in.

“Hello, Dad.”

His father looked up, tucked his book between his thigh and the chair, and removed his glasses. “Ross. Where have you been?”

“At the police station.” Ross leaned down and touched his father’s hand. “How are you feeling, Dad?”

“Pretty good, considering,” Edward said.

“We should talk, then,” Ross said. “I have some things to tell you.”

“I have something to ask you first,” Edward said. “Maisey tells me you held a press conference this morning. Is that true?”

Ross glanced at the housekeeper. “Word travels fast,” he said.

“It’s a small island, Mr. Ross,” Maisey said, without looking up.

“Why did you do that?” his father asked.

“Dad, I just thought-”

“You thought you could use the press to your advantage,” Edward said. “This is your sister, for God’s sake!”

“They wanted to know how the family was doing,” Ross said evenly. “I couldn’t just walk away from them.”

Edward shook his head and looked out the window. It put his face in the hard granite light. Ross had noticed how quickly his father seemed to be aging, especially the last few months. His heart, the doctor had told him last month, had become as thin as paper.

“Tell me about this man they arrested,” Edward said. “Did he kill my Julie?”

My Julie. Not just Julie. Not even our Julie. My Julie.

Ross eased in front of his father and sat on the window seat. Choosing his words carefully, he told his father what Clark had said about Dancer. Even though he was careful to tell his father that the police had no proof Dancer had killed Julie, he could see that his father was putting things together in his head-and he was horrified.

“Do you need some water, Dad?” Ross asked.

Before his father could answer, Maisey was there with a glass and a pill. She waited while Edward took the medication before going back to her folding.

Ross glanced after her, knowing she was taking her good old time to eavesdrop. He thought about dismissing her before he told his father about Julie’s pregnancy, but it didn’t matter. Dad would tell her later. He had been telling her everything for years.

“Dad, there’s something I haven’t told you yet,” Ross said.

“What can be worse than what I know?” Edward asked softly.

“Julie was pregnant when she was killed.”

Edward dropped his glass of water in his lap. Ross looked to Maisey. She was frozen, dumbfounded.

“Maisey, bring a towel,” he said.

She grabbed one and hurried over. She took the wet blanket and book and brought Edward a fresh coverlet.

As she turned to leave, Ross caught a look from her that at first he wasn’t sure how to read. Then he remembered. It was the same look she had always given him when he was a boy and he had done something to disappoint his father.

Edward’s mumblings brought his attention back to his father. “I just can’t believe it,” his father whispered. “My little Julie. My baby, my baby.”

Ross said nothing.

“How do they know?” Edward asked.

“What?”

“How do they know she was pregnant?”

“The police found fetal bones.”

Edward shut his eyes, and for a long time the two of them just sat there.

“How far along was she?” Edward said.

Ross was stunned his father had even asked. Before, whenever something bad had touched the family, his father would tell everyone that no one should speak of it. Like when Uncle Rawlins was arrested for embezzling. Or when Ross’s mother started walking around like a zombie from taking the pain pills.

“What does it matter?” Ross asked.

“It matters to me,” Edward said.

Ross sighed. “Four to five months.”

“Then she got pregnant that summer,” Edward said slowly. He looked back out at the gray windows. “This man they have arrested, this Dancer, do they really believe he. . do they think he raped her?”

“They don’t know yet,” Ross said. “Apparently Dancer is mentally ill, so it’s possible.”

“If Julie was raped that summer by this. . this man, she would’ve. .” His voice trailed off, and he was quiet for a long time. “She would have told me,” he said softly. “If something like that had happened to her, she would have told me.”

A drawer closed loudly behind Ross. He looked over his shoulder to see Maisey watching him.

“Maisey, leave us alone, please,” Ross said.

The housekeeper took her time folding one last towel before she left the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Edward’s gaze drifted back to the window. The rain started up again, spotting the glass and turning the lake and trees into a blur of gray and green.

“Did you know your sister wrote poetry?” Edward asked.

“I’m sorry,” Ross said, needing a second to come back to the moment. “What did you say?”

“Poems, she wrote poems,” Edward said. “Do you remember those red leather journals I gave her every Christmas? She wrote poems in them. I found the journals after she disappeared, years later when we were packing up her things. But I was too consumed by my grief to understand how important they were.”

“What do you mean?” Ross asked.

“I don’t think I would have even thought about them even now if the police hadn’t asked to see them.”

“The police? Why would they want to see them?”

“They think they could reveal something about what happened up here that summer.”

Ross rose slowly and took a few steps away, trying to think. Julie wrote poems? Why didn’t he know about this?

“I was just reading a few of them this morning,” Edward said softly. “The ones she wrote that last summer here.”

Ross turned back. His father’s profile was silhouetted against the gray window.

“I was reading them, and I realized Julie had left a piece of herself for me to hang on to, a piece of her heart to help fill the hole in mine,” Edward said.

Ross looked at his shoes, biting back his words, words he had wanted to say for a long time. Was now the moment? Did it matter anymore?

“Dad,” Ross said softly, “don’t you realize. . have you ever realized that you never really knew either of us? Julie and I were just pictures in your wallet, something you could pull out when the other men talked about their families.”

When Edward turned to him Ross was surprised to see no anger in his father’s eyes, just a sort of sad resignation. Edward looked away toward the windows. For a long time it was quiet, just the splatter of rain against the glass and the soft hiss of the oxygen. Ross felt suddenly very tired, and right at this moment all he wanted to do was get away. Away from this house, away from his father, away from this damn island.

“I think she fell in love that summer.”

Ross’s eyes shot back to his father.

“It was there in her poems,” Edward said. “It had happened here that summer. She found someone to love.”

Ross came back to stand in front of his father.

“I want to know who the father of her baby is,” Edward said.

“What?”

“I don’t think this man Dancer is the father of Julie’s baby. I think she fell in love with someone and maybe his name is in her poems somewhere. I want to find out who he was. I want to talk to him.”

Ross almost said it: You can’t accept rape, so you believe in love.

Edward was looking around the room. “Maisey?”

“She left, Dad.”

Edward tried to get up from his chair. “I need something. .”

Ross put a hand on Edward’s shoulder and eased him back into the chair. “What do you need? I’ll get it.”

“My address book. It’s over on the desk.”

“Why do you want-?”

“Just do what I ask, Ross!”

Stunned by the anger in his father’s voice, Ross got the book from the desk. He handed it to his father, who put on his glasses with shaking hands.

“What are you looking for, Dad?” Ross asked.

“John Manning’s phone number.”

“Dr. Manning? What do you need him for?”

“He can tell me about testing the bones.”

“What bones?”

“The baby’s bones. Maybe they can be tested to find out who the father is.”

“Dad, listen to me,” Ross said.

Edward ignored him as he flipped through the address book.

“Dad, please, will you just listen to me for a minute?”

Edward looked up.

“Did Julie say in the poems who the boy was?”

Edward looked confused for a moment. “I don’t remember.”

Ross knelt down in front of Edward. “Dad, I know you think this will bring you some sort of comfort, but the fetal bones can’t be tested.”

“How do you know that?”

“The police told me there probably isn’t enough genetic material to determine paternity.”

“Of course there’s enough,” Edward said. “They use marrow. Don’t baby bones have marrow?”

“I’m just telling you what-”

Edward went back to flipping through the address book. “Dr. Manning can tell us for sure. We went to school together. I know he would help me with this. He can get the university to-”

Ross pressed his hand down over his father’s.

“Dad, stop it. Even if it could be done, it would be very expensive.”

Edward slowly pulled his hand away. “Money? Is that what you’re worried about?”

Ross sat back in the window seat, forcing himself not to look away from his father’s glare.

“All the money,” Edward said. “All the money I’ve given you for your campaign and you’re talking to me about what something costs?”

Ross stood up slowly and moved behind the chair so his father couldn’t see him. There was nothing more to say, nothing more to do. He started toward the door. Then he stopped and turned back.

“Dad, where are Julie’s journals?” he asked.

His father didn’t turn. “Why do you ask?”

“I’d like to read her poems.” He paused. “I miss her, too, Dad.”

“Not now, Ross,” Edward whispered. “Please leave me be.”

Ross left the bedroom and went down the stairs. Maisey came out of the parlor and with barely a glance went up the stairs.

He went back into the parlor. He poured himself another brandy and took a chair near the phone. He stared at his messages for a moment, then pulled the phone into his lap. He dialed his office in Lansing, not his secretary’s line but his private number, the one he had given out to only two people.

Only one new message. The Reptile.

Ross, where the hell are you? The last poll is bad, buddy. You’ve dropped two and Burkett’s right on your ass now. I need you back here now. You’ve got to be visible, Ross. You don’t win an election hiding out on an island. Your sister will still be dead after November sixth.

The message ended. Ross hung up the phone and sat back in the chair, the phone in his lap.

The hell with him. The hell with them all.

Ross reached for the brandy, took a drink, then set it aside. He picked up the receiver and dialed the number he had memorized. There was no answer. Ross shut his eyes but didn’t hang up. On the twelfth ring, someone picked up.

“Hello?”

“I need to see you,” Ross said. “Right now.”