Death Stalks Door County

by Patricia Skalka

  “There a name for all this?”

  Jocko sniggered. “Paradise Harbor.”

  “And you think Beck’s trying to buy up the land for it?”

  “Wouldn’t put it past him. Came close to doing it before on the island. Least ways his family tried. Twenty-three square miles and they own the most of it.”

  “But you said the harbor project was a piece of fiction.”

  Jocko took a deep breath and calmed himself. “People won’t sell up. Not this time.”

  A bee buzzed outside the window.

  “You seeing to it?”

  Jocko ignored the question. “Look it there,” he said and gestured impatiently at an aging, yellowed map of the island taped to the wall. Though the print was indiscernible, Cubiak had no trouble following the line of thick red crayon that had been clumsily traced along much of the shoreline and around large sections of the interior. On the western edge, only a thin slice of land had been spared.

  “Granddaddy Beck bought it all up some sixty years ago.” Jocko sneered. “Smart businessman, knew all about getting his way. Misunderstanding, some calls it. Cheating, others say. Sort of implied he was merely buying up logging rights, long-term leasing sort of crap. Civil engineers showed up measuring surface depth. Real worried about the tunnels collapsing they said the government was down in Madison.”

  “Tunnels? What tunnels?”

  “The ones under the island. Our own little geological phenomenon. Lot of hooey. Those tunnels’ll outlast the moon. You’ll see. But it was a real bad time for most folks here. Couple hard winters. Barely any money coming in because of what the crash did to the fishing industry and tourist trade. Hell, there wasn’t nothing happening. And old Daddy Warbucks shows up with hard cash money. Some say you can’t blame the locals for selling.”

  “Not you.”

  Jocko slammed a fist against the table. “Fools, every damn one of them. Land’s the one thing you hold on to, no matter what.” He exhaled slowly and tipped back into the shadows. “Teach them that in school, they oughta.”

  “Who owned the land before?”

  “People.” Jocko’s face darkened.

  “Your family.”

  “Some. There were others, too.”

  Cubiak studied the small crescent-shaped sliver outlined on the map. “Just the homestead left then?”

  “Homestead!” Jocko bellowed. “Yeah, this little piece of shit here. And my grandpa was about to sign that last teensy bit away along with the rest when he dropped dead of a heart attack and my father—just sixteen at the time—chased Granddaddy Beck off with a shotgun. Ran him all the way back to his big fancy skiff in the harbor. Later, my daddy tried to get the other families to go in with him and sue Beck for fraud, but they were all scared and wouldn’t. He tried by himself but Beck’s lawyers trampled him in court. Greedy bastards, all of them.”

  “How many families still own land on the island?”

  Jocko squirmed. “Couple dozen. Maybe less.”

  “You could’ve been rich, had your grandfather not buckled to the Becks.”

  “Would’ve owned a bunch of land. Up here that ain’t enough to make you rich.”

  “Instead, you sit here nursing a grudge.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Plotting revenge.”

  “Hell. I wish I could plot revenge! Truth is there’s nothing I can do about all that. I don’t like it, but I know it. What’s done is done.”

  Suddenly Jocko brightened. He leaned forward conspiratorially and spoke almost gleefully. “Tell you one thing, though, it ain’t gonna happen again. Little Becky Boy ain’t gonna get away with it this time.”

  “Why not?”

  “I seen to it, that’s why not.” He splayed a grimy hand on the table.

  “You going to tell me what you did?”

  “Nope. Ain’t none of your business.” Jocko pulled a dented tin from his breast pocket and stuffed a fresh pinch of snuff into his cheek. “Way I see it, folks got a right to know about things so they can plan. Develop a strategy.”

  “And you’re playing town crier, is that it? Or is there more to it?” Cubiak stepped to the window. He could feel air leaking in along the sill where the wood had rotted and shrunk. “You live up here alone. Can pretty much come and go as you please, can’t you?”

  “Could be.”

  “Nobody’d know what you were up to half the time.”

  Jocko guffawed.

  “You were an instructor for the Survivalist Club. You have skills that can be used a lot of different ways.”

  The ferry captain sat up smartly. “Had. Had skills.” His face grim, Jocko laid his left arm on the table, then with his right hand unbuttoned the frayed cuff and deftly rolled up the sleeve to the elbow. He extended the bare limb to Cubiak. “Go on, pinch it,” he said.

  The arm was hard plastic. The fingers immobile. Cubiak cursed himself for not having noticed.

  “Boat’s got power steering. I can operate it easily enough with this other one here.” Jocko waved his right arm. “Can’t do much else.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” But Cubiak knew it was true. He surveyed the disheveled room. Testament to a sad pastiche of a life given over to resignation and neglect, a life guided by anger and bitterness fueled by a washed-out map that kept old wounds fresh.

  In the dim light, Jocko appeared to be dozing. His head, on his chest, bobbed gently.

  Cubiak was turning to leave when he spied a black phone on the far wall. Judging from the dull finish and discolored plastic dial plate, it had to have been one of the originals installed on the island. Next to it, a small notepad hung from a tenpenny nail. The top sheet was crowded with faded pencil scrawls of names and numbers. Except for one line, scratched in near the upper edge, whose obvious freshness made it stand out from the rest. Cubiak was too far away to decipher the number, but the crisp dark digits made it clear that it was newly added to the list.

  Before Cubiak could edge closer, Jocko rumbled awake. “You don’t hurry, you’ll miss the ferry,” he barked and pointed the way back down the cramped hall.

  Paradise Harbor. Cubiak didn’t know how much credence to give to what Jocko had told him. The old man loathed Beck, despised the entire family. Not without good reason. And he was drunk, too. But he couldn’t have made up everything about Paradise Harbor, and the outing would be easy enough to trace, or would it? A little bonus from Beck and there’d be no record of the boat charter. Beck was up to something. But what? And how far would Jocko go to stop him?

  At Northport, Cubiak tried to pick up a signal on his cell and then gave up and fed a handful of coins into the outdoor phone. At the dial tone, he punched in a number from his past. Listening to the monophonic rings, he pictured the distant room where the jangling phone vied for attention. In a million years, he wouldn’t have expected to ever be making this call. The desk sergeant’s rough greeting interrupted his daydreaming, and Cubiak asked for Officer Malcolm. It was a holiday weekend, and he knew he had a good chance of finding his old partner on duty.

  “Malcolm. You mean Captain Malcolm? He’s in six.”

  Cubiak was surprised, but pleased, too. The sixth district. His buddy had done well and in short order. He asked for the number and dialed again. This time a soft-spoken secretary answered and asked for his name. “Tell him it’s an old friend from up north,” Cubiak said.

  “I’m sorry. I need a name.”

  Cubiak hesitated. She wouldn’t know who he was. Still he was reluctant to identify himself. “Jeff Hardy,” he said, pulling a name from the past, a suspect from one of the early, more complicated cases he and Malcolm had solved.

  “Thank you.”

  A series of clicks put Cubiak on hold, off hold, and then onto another open line. Malcolm, if he was there, wasn’t saying anything.

  “Malcolm, it’s me.” Cubiak spoke quietly.

  “Sweet Jesus. That you, Dave?”

  Cubiak heard his former partner’s enormous weight s
hift on a creaky chair.

  “Where you at?”

  “Up north. You know.”

  “Things working out?”

  “More or less.” He hesitated. “I’m fine.”

  “Good.” Malcolm didn’t believe him.

  They exchanged pleasantries. Cubiak learned that Malcolm’s eldest daughter had recently given birth to twins and the youngest had graduated from high school with honors. His mother had died—quickly, mercifully—and his wife was toying with the idea of going back to school to become a teacher. “At her age, can you fathom that?” he asked.

  “I need a favor,” Cubiak said.

  The captain growled.

  “Two actually.”

  Malcolm roared. “Like old times. Shoot.”

  First, Cubiak explained, he needed records of all phone calls to and from Jocko Connelly for the past four months. He could get this through the local police department, he said, anticipating Malcolm’s question, but at this stage discretion was important. He pictured Malcolm scratching notes on a piece of paper.

  “What else?”

  Cubiak gave him the names of the drug dealers he’d coaxed from Barry. “They’re supposedly from Milwaukee but operating up here as well. I’d appreciate it if you could find out how nasty they get about overdue debts?”

  “I know a couple guys up there. I’ll see what I can dig up. What’s this all about?” Malcolm said.

  Cubiak ran through a summary of recent incidents. When he finished, he knew he owed his former partner more. “The victim at the tower was Larry Wisby, the younger brother,” he said.

  “Wisby. Oh, Lord, and how you doing with that?”

  Cubiak caught both sympathy and an insistence on truth in Malcolm’s tone. “Getting by. I won’t try and fool you, it’s not been easy. I saw the parents at the inquest.”

  “This investigation you’re working on, it’s official ?” Malcolm asked after a marked silence.

  “More or less.”

  “And you need this pronto, on a holiday weekend ?”

  “Wouldn’t be right if it was any other way.”

  Malcolm tapped a pencil on the desk. “I got a press conference with the alderman in a couple minutes, then events that’ll last most of the day tomorrow. I’ll do what I can after. Can’t promise anything. Call me at ten Saturday. No, darn that won’t work. I’ll call you. Noon. You going to be all right?”

  “Yes, Malcolm. I’ll be fine.”

  “Good to hear from you, buddy. I’m praying for you, you know that.”

  “Yeah, I know that. Thanks.” Cubiak dropped the receiver onto the hook. He felt better already. Halfway to the jeep, he realized he’d forgotten to congratulate Malcolm. “Damn,” he muttered.

  Halverson’s report on the tower incident lay on the front seat of the jeep. The sheriff ’s prose was overblown and flowery but one fact stood out clearly. Wisby’s jacket wasn’t black; it was dark blue.

  Cubiak tossed down the document and sped away from the ferry landing. Putting aside Barry’s paranoia, it was possible that the boy was the intended victim of the first and third killings. The ranger didn’t buy the drug connection; Barry was too small time for that kind of retribution. Factoring in Benny Macklin’s death strengthened the argument that the killer was a local. But why shift the target so abruptly from Barry to a trio of out-of-town tourists?

  Paradise Harbor was significant, Cubiak was sure of it. How much of Jocko’s version was fact and how much exaggeration, he didn’t know. But even drastically downsized from the boatman’s grand proportions, the project required immense real estate holdings. Thanks to his grandfather, Beck already owned sizable swaths of Washington Island. Still, he would have to employ extreme measures to get the land on the peninsula. Destroying the tourist trade was an obvious ploy and if Beck was behind the rampage, making Barry look like a target was a smart way to divert suspicion.

  Cubiak mentally crossed off Jocko’s name from his list and added Beck’s.

  Something didn’t sit right. Was Beck playing him for a fool? Had he been put in charge of the investigation because Beck figured that as an outsider he would never sort things out?

  As he neared Ephraim, a firecracker boomed. Then another. Amateur stuff to whet the appetite for the elaborate display scheduled for Saturday’s Fourth of July celebration. Again thousands would throng the little village. Sitting ducks.

  Cubiak frowned. Whom had Jocko called?

  Streaks of hot pink and orange laced the western sky as Cubiak crossed the historic steel bridge in downtown Sturgeon Bay on his way to Bathard’s office. One more indistinguishable cog in a long line of traffic, he imagined the other cars filled with tourists, cameras at the ready, flocking toward the Green Bay shoreline in anticipation of another magnificent Door County sunset. In a different lifetime, he’d owned a camera, a nice one. Where was it? Probably tucked away in an unopened box in the back of his closet. There might be pictures in it of Alexis and Lauren, frozen in time. He would grow old but they would never change. He would never know his daughter as a petulant adolescent or a wistful young woman, never see Lauren with wrinkles.

  The emptiness overwhelmed Cubiak. He knocked on Bathard’s door, no longer remembering why he’d wanted to see him.

  The coroner was equally subdued, and while the desk clock ticked through several minutes the two men sat in strained silence. Finally, Bathard spoke. “Yesterday you rather facetiously included me in your panoply of suspects and said that Cornelia is about the only person not under suspicion.”

  The physician swiveled toward the wall and pulled a worn Door County High School yearbook from a low shelf. “There is something you need to know,” he said. Bathard flipped the book open to a double-page spread of photos and laid it down so Cubiak could see the pictures clearly. The black-and-white shots captured the fresh-scrubbed, wholesome look of a small-town high school prom. Looking at the carefree teenagers, the ranger imagined Alexis grown up. Then the coroner tapped the photo in the upper-right corner. It was a picture of the prom king and queen.

  Cubiak recognized the teenage boy, good looking and arrogant even then. “Beck?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the girl?”

  Bathard exhaled sharply. “You can’t tell because of the ravages of the disease, but Cornelia is considerably younger than I. That’s her. The bookish beauty with the jock. Her friends nominated her on a lark. That she won surprised everyone. An intoxicating moment, no doubt, for someone always outside the limelight. But she was ill prepared, out of her league. She had no experience with the likes of Beck and the ‘in crowd,’ as it were. She was an innocent, a young lady who assumed her date would act the gentleman. Suffice it to say, he did not. For Cornelia, the consequences of that one night were unfortunate, if predictable. Her family took care of everything, all very quietly to avoid the hint of scandal, but the procedure was botched and as a result, Cornelia was left unable to conceive. She told me this before we married; she blames herself, not entirely but more than she should.”

  The coroner looked at Cubiak. “I always found it quite remarkable that she was able to forgive him.”

  “And you?”

  “She made it a condition of our staying together. Doesn’t mean I have to like him though. Truth is, I never could stomach the bastard.” Bathard slammed the book shut. “Life’s not fair, son. Most times you go with the hand you’re dealt. Or at least you try.”

  “I wish I’d known this earlier.”

  “Would it have altered your investigation in any way?”

  Cubiak pinched the back of his neck. That afternoon he’d discovered the deep animosity between Beck and Jocko. Now this, between Beck and Bathard. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Of course.” The coroner offered a thin, rueful smile. “You came on official business, didn’t you? Shall we get on with it?”

  Cubiak remembered why he was there. “I’m looking for information about a harbor.”

  Bathard looked puzzled. �
�Plenty of harbors on the peninsula, none of them especially noteworthy.”

  “I’m interested in a new harbor. Is there one being planned, as far as you know?”

  The coroner held out his hands, palms up. “Nothing. And I’m a member of the county planning board. If someone has an initiative going, then it’s only very preliminary or speculative and, possibly, illegal, given existing zoning restrictions. It certainly lacks legitimacy at this stage.”

  Cubiak recounted his conversations with Barry and Jocko.

  The coroner scoffed. “Barry could be making it up. Or he misunderstood. You know how kids are. On the other hand, if what Jocko says is true, maybe Beck is up to something. I wouldn’t put anything past him.” Bathard tapped the desk. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Whatever it is, I’m to be in charge of security.”

  “Congratulations.” The coroner’s hand strayed to the pipe rack. He chose one with a dark bowl that looked like burled ash and lifted it carefully from the stand.

  “Barry seems to think that’s why I was hired. Claims his father was behind it.”

  “Could very well be.”

  “I don’t like being used.”

  “No one does.” Bathard opened a worn leather pouch and dropped slivers of tobacco into the bowl.

  “I don’t like things being done behind my back.”

  “I wouldn’t worry, it’s only conjecture.”

  Before he left, Cubiak asked Bathard about Halverson. The story was pretty much what he expected. As a boy and even a young adolescent, Halverson had sustained a series of suspicious injuries. Bruises, broken bones.

  “His mother claimed he was just a clumsy kid, told me he fell a lot. Whenever she brought him to the office, Leo never said a word, just sat on the exam table and looked scared while I checked him over. I suspected he was being abused at home, probably by his father, who was a notorious alcoholic, but the mother wouldn’t cooperate—you can only imagine why—and without corroboration my hands were tied. The situation would be different, now, of course,” Bathard said.

  “One day Frank reported to work drunk and managed to overturn a forklift truck and get pinned underneath, sustaining irreparable damage to the spine. As it was wont to do, Beck Industries settled the matter privately with the family, no unpleasant questions asked or issues raised. If there’s an upside to the whole sorry mess, it was that Leo’s health improved overnight.