Heart of Ice (31 page)

It took him a moment to spot Rafsky. He was sitting in a snowbank, staring at his shoes.

“Watch that step,” Rafsky said. “It’s a little slippery.”

Louis went to him and held out a hand. “Come on, you old drunk,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

Louis pulled Rafsky to his feet, and the two of them started down Main Street toward the Potty. Rafsky trudged through the snow like an exhausted husky pulling a sled.

“Did I show you the picture of Chloe?”

“Yeah. Keep walking.”

“Did I tell you about my papers?”

“Yeah. Keep walking.”

“I’ve spent my whole life doing this fuckin’ job,” Rafsky said. “My whole life, and sometimes I feel like I haven’t learned a fuckin’ thing.”

“Here’s the hotel,” Louis said. “Watch your step.”

Rafsky grabbed the railing and shuffled in ahead of Louis. Louis stopped in the lobby to stomp the snow off his shoes, but Rafsky just walked toward the stairs, trailing puddles. He stumbled again halfway up, and Louis had to catch him.

“Thanks. I’m sorry.”

“No problem.”

“I can’t find my key . . . where’s my key?”

“Look in your pocket.”

Rafsky patted every pocket and finally came up with his
key. Louis took it from him and unlocked the door. When he pushed it open Rafsky nearly fell inside. Somehow he found his way to the bed and plopped down, face-first, coat on and wet shoes hanging off the end of the mattress.

Louis tossed the key to the dresser, turned off the light, and started to close the door.

“Kincaid.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Kincaid.”

Louis sighed and stepped closer to the bed. Rafsky’s face was buried in the pillow.

“What?” Louis asked.

“Tell Frye . . .”

Louis waited.

“Tell Frye I forgive her.”

Louis stood by the bed, waiting, wondering if Rafsky was going to say anything else. When he heard Rafsky snoring, he turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

T
hey followed a snowplow into Cedarville. What should have been a half-hour drive from St. Ignace had taken more than an hour because of the snowstorm that had dumped six fresh inches overnight. The other side of the two-lane highway was still covered in high drifts, so Louis had no choice but to stay in the plow’s wake.

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 Michigan 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.