Moore tapped a mic and waited for the room to quiet. “We’ve called this press conference to announce the safe recovery of Mr. Gerald Sneider.”
Most of the reporters had been at the Ross farm the previous night. Though the announcement was not news to them, the room still erupted in a buzz.
Moore went on undeterred. “I am also announcing the recovery of Verne Pickler, who was abducted and held against his will, and the arrest of two Door County residents and one former resident in the kidnapping and attempted murder of Mr. Sneider and the unlawful detention of Mr. Pickler. Charges are pending against the three suspects and will be filed on Monday.
The questions popped immediately.
When had Gerald Sneider been found? Where had he been held? What was the motive for the kidnapping? Who was Verne Pickler? How was he connected to Gerald Sneider? What else could Moore tell them about the suspects?
Moore provided few specifics.
“Are the suspects being charged as domestic terrorists?”
Moore hesitated, and a flush of color came up from his collar. “No, they are not.”
“Did federal agents locate Mr. Sneider?”
Moore gave a small smile. “Both Gerald Sneider and Verne Pickler were recovered as a direct result of action taken by Door County Sheriff Dave Cubiak.”
The news brought another murmur from the crowd, and Cubiak was aware of cameras turning in his direction.
“Where is Sneider now?”
“In the Sturgeon Bay hospital.” Under guard. That detail Moore didn’t mention.
“And the suspects?”
“For now, they are being detained in the jail across the lobby.” Moore pointed over the assembly.
Heads swiveled around and then came back. Hands were still up.
“No more questions,” Moore said and nodded to Cubiak. Let’s go.
In the jail, Cubiak listened as Moore and Harrison interrogated the three suspects, all of whom had waived the right to have an attorney present.
The feds started with Leeland.
“Whose idea was it to kidnap Sneider?” Harrison asked.
The suspect said nothing.
“Why did you kidnap him?” Moore asked.
Silence.
The session went on for some forty minutes, and during that time Leeland refused to answer any questions.
His only response came when Moore told him that his lack of cooperation wasn’t helping his situation. Hearing that, Leeland laughed.
Stephen was second up. The Door County native made up for his cousin’s reticence. Steve placed the blame for the crime on his uncle, Jon, and painted himself as an unwilling participant. The young man claimed that grief over his father’s recent death had contributed to his irrational decision to go along with the scheme. He also insisted that he’d been led to believe his uncle and cousin were just trying to scare an apology from Sneider for events that had occurred at the Forest Home many years back.
Of the three men, only Jon Ross was belligerently proud of the operation.
“Yeah, it was all my idea,” he said. “It was me that convinced Steve to lure Sneider from the game. The bastard would rot in hell before he’d have anything to do with me or my boy. ’Course he wouldn’t know Leeland, except by reputation, and he’d claim to not remember who I was, but I think that’d be a lie. So I convinced Steve to pretend he was doing an interview for that bigshot newspaper of his. I knew Sneider couldn’t resist the chance to get his name in lights again. Mr. Philantropiss, I call him.”
It was all so easy, a piece of cake, he told them. “Steve told Sneider that his editor wanted some pictures of the Packer memorabilia, and so they drove up together, Steve recording all the bullshit Sneider was dishing out. When they got to Oostburg, Steve stopped like planned and I took over. Leeland was waiting for us at the house in Ellison Bay, and once Sneider turned off the alarm we waltzed in and left the note. It was Leeland’s idea to tie the Super Bowl ring to the rope. Can’t believe the fucker has three championship rings.”
Agent Harrison asked about the spiders.
“Yeah, that was my idea, too. I knew all about how he was afraid of them ’cause of how he used to try and be brave in front of us kids, putting one fucking little spider on his hand like it was some big fucking deal. ‘OK, Gerald,’ I says to myself. ‘Let’s see how you do with a whole shitload of the little buggers.’ Turns out he didn’t do so good, did he?”
At the break Cubiak told the feds to ask about the kittens.
“The kittens were part of this?” Moore asked in a way that made it clear he recalled the circumstances of their initial meeting.
“With that guy, anything is possible. And I’d just like to know.”
When Moore posed the question, Jon Ross erupted with a good laugh. “Yeah, that’s right. I almost forgot about the damn kittens.” They always drowned the ones they’d didn’t need, he told the agents, as if he were letting them in on a private joke. When the feds didn’t react, he went on.
“Leeland insisted he had to have an alibi for the afternoon Sneider disappeared. We figured there’d be plenty of people watching the game at the Tipsy Too and that it was a good place to be seen. On his way there, Leeland was supposed to toss the litter in the bay. And what fucking good luck that the sheriff was sitting on the ledge fishing. Leeland saw the jeep and thought it’d be fun to throw the bag in right in front of him. Can’t believe the fucker went in after them, but that was good, you see, ’cause then later when he spotted Leeland’s truck in the parking lot and put two and two together, he actually came in and confronted him. The sheriff said he knew it was Leeland what tried to drown the cats. Now what better alibi can you have than your own fucking sheriff seeing you sucking down a beer when the crime of the century is being committed?”
“It’s hardly the crime of the century,” Harrison said, but the elder Ross merely scoffed.
“What’d you do with the ransom money?” Moore asked.
“We never got it. Damn kids picked it up. I know you were there. You saw what happened.”
“And you know what, I’ll give you that it was a pretty clever ploy to try and distract us that way. But we know you grabbed the bag. So where’s the money?”
“I told you, we ain’t got it.”
At that point, Cubiak joined the party.
“It’s pretty interesting about the money,” he said, picking up where Moore had left off. “Not just the business about the drop but the fact that the ransom demands were not multiples of three, which you’d expect since there were three of you. Instead, you demanded amounts that could be evenly divided by four.”
Cubiak laid down a photo of the four completed skeletons that Cate had taken that morning.
“Four victims. You wanted Sneider to have to pay for their lives, didn’t you?”
Ross’s nostrils flared. “Something like that.”
“Which also explains the spiders and the cage. Money wasn’t all. You wanted Sneider to pay with fear, and maybe even his life.”
“We weren’t gonna kill him!”
“You’ll have to convince a jury of that.” Cubiak looked thoughtful. “I’ll tell you what I don’t get, Jon, is the business with the snakes.”
“Andrew didn’t say nothing?” Ross sneered. “I’ll be damned. I can’t believe he forgot. Maybe he was just too embarrassed. The snakes were to remind him of the summer he was one of the rich-kid campers. Andrew hated snakes. One day we decided we’d do to him what his father did to us and made him sit on his bed with a snake around his ankles and another in his lap. Like we figured, he pissed his pants and worse. Before we could get him to the shower, his mother showed up on one of her surprise visits and that’s the last we seen of him at the camp.”
“Were you punished?”
“Oh, yeah. But that was one time it was worth it. Andrew was just like his father, always acting like he was better than us, and it felt good to cut him down to size.”
“I see.” Cubiak
made a show of cleaning his glasses and then adjusting them on his face. He looked at the suspect. “Did you ever get to know any of the summer kids?”
“Naw. They stuck with each other.”
“What about the boys who lived there?”
“Not much.”
“What about the boys in the boat? I need to know everything you can tell me about them.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“The kid you called Chester, did he have a last name?”
“None I ever heard.”
“You know where he was from?”
“He talked about his folks losing their farm but hell, that happened to a lot of us. That’s why some of us were there.”
“And the others. Did you know their names?”
“Just one, Tommie. The other two were new boys, barely there a couple of days. I don’t remember who they were.”
“Ages?”
Ross shook his head. “We were all just kids.”
“Anything else? Injuries, for example.”
Ross snickered. “There were always enough bruises to go around. Prick made sure of that. I got a nasty scar from boiling water.” He rolled up his sleeve to display a streak of gnarled skin that ran from his wrist to his elbow.
“What about broken bones?”
“Naw, not as I can recall. No, wait, come to think of it, Chester broke his arm the summer before. He was always complaining about how itchy it was inside the cast.”
“Which arm did he break?”
“Hell if I remember. Why you asking me all this?”
“Because I want to find out who they were.”
Ross straightened in his chair. “You can do that?”
“It’s a long shot, but we can try.”
“What happens if you do?”
Cubiak hesitated. He thought the term closure was overused but felt there were still occasions when the concept if not the word fit and this seemed to be one of them. “Then the people who knew those kids and who have been left wondering for years what happened to them will have answers.”
At the hospital Verne Pickler was arguing with the attending doctor, who wanted to keep him another night for observation.
“Tell the doc, I got a dog to take care of,” Pickler urged Cubiak, who’d just entered the room.
“I’m not concerned about your dog,” the physician said.
“Well, I am,” Pickler said.
Eventually he prevailed, and the sheriff drove him home.
Pickler seemed annoyed when Cubiak followed him into the house. “I already told the FBI everything that happened,” he said after he’d fed Maize and was settled in his easy chair with the dog at his side.
“I read your statement. But I’m more interested in things that happened when you worked at Sneider’s camp.”
“Ah.” Pickler looked down and scratched Maize’s head. “That was a long time ago.”
Cubiak held out a photo of the bones in the boat. “These are not the kinds of things you forget.”
Pickler started and stared at the picture but said nothing. Cubiak let the silence settle around them.
Finally Pickler wet his lips. “I figured it would come to this one day,” he said.
Speaking slowly, as if pulling the memories from a dark corner of the past, the former camp director at Gerald Sneider’s Forest Home for Orphaned and Needy Boys told the sheriff what happened on the night the four boys drowned. His account corroborated Jon Ross’s version of events.
“And no one tried to save them?”
Pickler brushed something from his eye. “That’s not true. Once the storm got real bad, I wanted to go out there and bring them in but Sneider wouldn’t let me. He said he needed me, but the boys, well, it didn’t matter what happened to them. They were just throwaways. Their families didn’t care about them so why should I risk my life trying to save them?”
“And for all these years, you’ve said nothing.”
Pickler offered a wan smile. “Who’d believe me, Sheriff? The next morning I went and looked for the boat but it was gone, and I figured the currents pulled it into the lake. I had no proof about what Sneider had done. It was just my word against him, and I was nobody.”
“The boys at the camp would have backed you up,” Cubiak said.
“It wouldn’t have mattered none. They were nobodies, too. Like me.”
The sheriff knew that what Pickler said was true. “Instead, you punished yourself,” he said kindly.
Pickler flinched and lowered his head. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
When he finished with Pickler, Cubiak drove back to the hospital. Visiting hours were over, but the nurse at the desk recognized him and waved him through.
“Room three-twelve,” she said.
Lisa was sitting up against a battery of pillows, an unopened book in her hands. She looked tired but smiled when she saw Cubiak.
“I come not bearing gifts,” Cubiak said with a nod toward the plants and flower bouquets that lined the windowsill and covered the small dresser. “Only good wishes. Are you okay?”
“Yes. And I’m glad you came. I’ve heard . . .”
Cubiak took her hand. “You don’t need to bother with any of that, not now. There’ll be plenty of time later to catch up. I understand it’s a girl.”
“Elizabeth Anne. For our moms. We’re calling her Libby. You can see her on your way out. The nursery is right down the hall.”
All babies look alike, Cubiak told himself when he left Lisa’s room. He could wait to see Libby. But before he realized, he was standing outside the nursery window. Libby was asleep in the first bed. Her delicate tulip lips were pressed in an almost smile and her forehead softly crinkled beneath the tiny striped cap on her head. With her infant body swaddled in a white cotton blanket, she lay before him and the world so innocent and helpless, so like Alexis, he thought.
There were three other beds behind the nursery window, four new babies in all. Life in all its mysteriousness and sweetness renewing itself.
Who knew what the future would bring these children. Surely they deserved a better fate than that meted out to the hapless boys in the doomed rowboat or to so many other children who suffered at the hands of uncaring adults. Life could be wonderful and just as easily immensely cruel. Were guardian angels real? the sheriff wondered. Looking at the infants, Cubiak said a prayer that the protectors of these children would do their jobs well.
Then he pressed a hand to the glass, by way of offering his own blessing.
THE SPECIAL ROOM
Dawn broke dull and gray over the peninsula. The low, languid clouds rationed the light allowed to seep through the blinds in Cubiak’s bedroom. Uncertain of the time, he lay under the covers and listened to the rhythmic shush of the waves rushing over the table rocks on the un-tamed beach. The sound was hypnotic and, although he’d slept longer than usual, he struggled to keep his eyes open. From the kitchen, there were other sounds, normal Sunday morning sounds: Butch bumping her metal bowl against the baseboard, demanding attention. Cate pouring water into the coffee maker.
The night before, she’d come home with him from the Ross farm, where Cubiak had helped the FBI gather evidence and she had documented more of the crime scene. There’d been no trace of the money, either there or at Fred Ross’s house, where Steve had been staying with his mother. Had Jon Ross told the truth? Probably not. The sheriff figured Ross had the money well hidden and was hoping to use it as a bargaining chip down the road.
By the time Cubiak and Cate got back, it was late and they were both wired. They stayed up sharing a bottle of wine and talking, but only about the kidnapping. In the dim morning light, Cubiak remembered how she had curled into him and they’d both fallen asleep, too tired for anything more.
“Cate.” He called her name but there was no answer.
He thought of going into the kitchen and taking her hand and asking her to come back to bed but he didn’t. Their relationship had always been compli
cated, and within the past week it had become even more tangled. Now there were new questions to be answered as well as old issues to be sorted out. He knew that Cate would want to talk first.
But even that important conversation had to wait.
Cubiak wasn’t done with Gerald Sneider yet. He still had work to do and it had to be seen to that morning. As the saying went, there’d be hell to pay when he’d finished. Of that, Cubiak was sure. He sighed and closed his eyes. He’d turn forty-six in another month and he was tired.
After a quick run with the dog, Cubiak headed to Sturgeon Bay. The hospital was on a quiet residential street near the edge of the small city. In the subdued light, the sheriff passed down roadways that were empty except for Sunday churchgoers. As he pulled into the hospital parking lot, a line of vehicles, led by the seemingly ubiquitous TV vans, rolled toward the exit. Perfect timing. The exodus signaled the end of the director’s press conference, during which she had updated the media on the condition of her headliner patient, Gerald Sneider.
Earlier that morning Cubiak had called for a status report, so he knew what she planned to say to the roomful of reporters.
“Mr. Sneider is making a remarkable recovery, far exceeding my expectations,” the director had told the sheriff. She was a noted internist who’d served on the staffs of prestigious teaching hospitals in Milwaukee and Boston before coming back to her native Door County. “You know, my father knew Mr. Sneider and thought very highly of him. Growing up, I remember listening to so many stories about the man that, for me, it’s an honor to have him as a patient.”
“I see,” Cubiak said blandly. How else could he respond? The director would have reason to reconsider her opinion soon enough.
The third-floor nurses’ station was overrun with flowers. It was “overflow” from their guest of honor, one of the nurses told him, peering from between two bundles of white calla lilies. “Room three-oh-one,” she said as she stood and cheerfully pointed to the room at the end the hall.
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