He knew she was talking about being black, or half-black half-Asian. Loon Lake wasn’t like some backwater boonie in the South but it was undeniably white. White in its racial makeup and white-bread in its small-town mind-set. He had come to feel like an outsider in the short time he had been here. He could only guess how a lonely woman like Jean Gibralter could survive.
He moved to hold her, to comfort her the way she had him, but he stopped. There was no future for them. He knew that now, even if he hadn’t been so sure an hour ago. His anger toward her had dissipated but he knew he wasn’t beyond judging. Even after this ugly mess was over if she decided to leave her husband, he was not sure he could give his heart to her again. He wasn’t sure he could trust her again.
“I think I’d better go,” she said, rising.
She went quickly to the door, putting on her coat. He rose and watched as she pulled on her gloves. She looked up.
“I’m sorry, Louis. I’m sorry I lied to you,” she said.
The door opened, a flurry of snow blew in and she was gone.
Louis swung the Mustang around a turn and up the hill. The bald tires spun on the snowy road but finally caught hold. The car moved slowly up through the pines.
A small sign marked the entrance to the driveway – LITTLE EDEN – and the pines parted to reveal a clearing with a large log cabin in the center.
Louis pulled up in front and cut the engine. He frowned, seeing the smoke curling from the chimney and the shiny white Ford Bronco parked at the side. He picked up the raid file from the passenger seat and searched for the owner’s name. Eden, David and Glenda. Damn, they were here now? He hadn’t counted on having to deal with anyone.
He had decided to come to the cabin only that morning, not telling anyone at the station. It had been an impulse, partly to get Zoe out of his head, but mainly because he was hoping to find something to back up his suspicions before he went to Steele. But as his eyes traveled over the cabin he knew he had no idea what he was looking for.
The front door opened and a man stood behind the storm door, staring at the Mustang. Louis got out and started up the shoveled walk. The man didn’t seem to relax any seeing Louis’s uniform.
“Mr. Eden?” Louis asked.
He cracked open the door. “Yes?”
Louis held out a hand. “Officer Kincaid, Loon Lake police.”
The man shook his hand tepidly. He was about fifty, balding, beefy, and swathed in a red sweater with reindeers prancing across his chest. He had the buffed-pink look of a successful middle-aged man, buttressed by his wealth and unaccustomed to such sordid things as visits from cops. Louis remembered reading the Edens were from Dearborn, the man a management type with Ford. He wondered why he hadn’t sold the cabin after the raid.
“I’m sorry to bother you this morning, Mr. Eden,” Louis said. “I didn’t know anyone would be here.”
“We don’t come much anymore,” Eden said, “just over the holidays.”
A woman’s face appeared behind him. “What is it, David?” she asked.
“Nothing, Glenda. Go back inside.”
She gave Louis a blank look and retreated. “What do you want, officer?” Eden asked.
Louis took off his sunglasses, remembering something his lieutenant back in Ann Arbor had told him, that nobody liked talking to a cop in sunglasses. He realized he disliked it when Jesse wore his.
“I would like to look around,” Louis said.
“What is this about?”
“Just a routine follow-up, sir.”
“It was five years ago,” Eden said.
“I know, sir. We’re closing the case officially. I just need to take some notes.”
“Is this really necessary? I don’t want my family upset.”
“I don’t need to come inside, Mr. Eden, or talk to anyone. This will only take a minute, I promise.”
David Eden hesitated then gave a curt nod.
“Thank you, sir.”
Louis could feel the man’s eyes on him as he went back to the Mustang. Finally he heard the door close.
Louis gathered up the raid file and stood back to look at “Little Eden.” The property was large, enough so that no other cabins were visible. The woods in front had been cleared to provide an impressive view of Loon Lake below. The cabin itself was a new prefab structure, the kind built from blueprints bought from the back of a home-decorating magazine, and it had the contrived rustic charm of a Disney World exhibit. It was secluded and private, a perfect place for a gang to hole up, even if it didn’t look like the kind of place where two kids would die.
Louis dug through the file, finding the diagram that detailed the positions of the bodies and the officers. It gave no sense of what the place really looked like. But it was always like this. The dry starkness of reports and diagrams never prepared you for the physical reality of a crime scene. That’s why he had always liked to see the places where things happened, like Pryce’s house. Maybe it was just vibrations, intuition, like Jesse had said. Whatever it was, it always helped clear his thinking.
