Death at Gills Rock

by Patricia Skalka

  The door closed. Cubiak put aside the clipping St. James had brought and turned to the envelope Rowe had left for him. Inside were two folders. The first held copies of the bank statements for the Huntsmans’ joint savings and checking accounts and an individual money market account in Big Guy’s name. The couple had a bucket of money to play with and weren’t shy about spending it, but Cubiak found nothing irregular.

  Material in the second folder indicated that Huntsman’s business did very well. Deposits were substantial and steady. Besides payroll checks and routine expenses, Big Guy had authorized a monthly electronic transfer of two thousand dollars to Great Lakes Office Support and another for thirty-five hundred to Pepper Ridge Associates. Huntsman had six employees and a company headquartered in a metal barn. What kind of office support did he need that ran to twenty-four thousand dollars a year? And what did Pepper Ridge do to earn nearly double that? Big Guy could afford the expense, but what was he getting in return? Or were the payments part of a scheme to launder dirty money?

  Cubiak was operating on four hours’ sleep. As his attention drifted, he propped his elbows on the desk and rested his head in his hands. If he could close his eyes for just ten minutes, he’d be okay.

  A thud on the door ended the reprieve. Cubiak jolted to attention. The wall clock had jumped forward twenty minutes. “Yeah, come in,” he said, trying to look busy.

  The door banged open. The man who walked in was tall and wide, the opposite of his earlier visitor. “Marty Wilkins, prodigal son,” he said. He spoke like a man accustomed to making himself heard over the roar of an angry ocean.

  “Marty, thanks for coming in. Sorry about your father.” Cubiak stood and motioned toward a chair.

  Marty snared the sheriff ’s hand in a crushing grip. “Appreciate it,” he said, ignoring the invitation to sit. “I’m heading out tonight. Don’t have a lot of time, and what I do have I ain’t spending in here. You like, we can talk on my boat.” He juggled a handful of keys and eyed the four walls as if expecting them to close in.

  “Give me ten, and I’ll meet you in the lot,” Cubiak said.

  Marty filled the front seat of a moss-green Hummer. Despite the chill, he had the windows down, listening to Dylan at full volume. The man’s got a soul, thought Cubiak, trailing him to the highway. After a short, swift drive, the Hummer pivoted onto an unmarked dirt road and kicked up dust for a mile before it roared up to the Sunset Marina. Unlike so many Door County harbors, this one was filled with workhorse vessels, not a pretty boat in sight. Before Cubiak was out of the jeep, Marty was halfway down the last pier, where the smallest and meanest looking of the lot was docked. At the end of the wharf he high-stepped over the side of the Can-Do and started freeing the mooring lines. “Welcome aboard, Sheriff,” he said, kicking a patched vinyl cooler out of the way.

  “Where we headed?” Less than graceful, Cubiak negotiated the divide between dock and boat.

  Wilkins waited until the sheriff was steady on his feet before he started the engine and eased away from the pier. “Out there,” he said, lifting his chin in a forward motion as he steered the boat into a narrow channel. “You ever been out on the bay?”

  “No.”

  “It’s nice.”

  As they came around the low breakwater that protected the opening to the channel, Marty opened the throttle and pointed the power boat into the chop. “This baby’ll handle anything,” he said. He spoke with the swagger of a man who liked things to move fast.

  The sheriff lurched across the cockpit. “How come you got a boat here? I thought you were never around?”

  “Oh, I get back every now and then. Not too often, though. When I’m gone I got a friend who uses it.”

  Cubiak regained his balance. “Walter Nils?”

  “Yeah. How’d you guess?”

  The sheriff shrugged.

  After that the men fell silent. Facing into the breeze, Wilkins steered with one hand on the wheel and one on the throttle. Cubiak gave up trying to stand and lowered himself onto a bench. He was colder than he’d been in a long time and eyed the cabin, but figuring that the ride might be even rougher inside he lifted his collar, lowered his head against the wind, and fought the urge to cross himself. Despite the bad conditions, he was relieved that they never lost sight of shore. Past a trio of white barns, Wilkins steered toward the open water. “That’s where the Lindy Lou went down. A thirty-five-footer, made for the ocean. I was just a kid. Sudden storm came up and swamped the boat out from under the crew. Good sailors, the whole bunch, and one an Olympic swimmer. Two made it to shore; two didn’t. Bodies washed up there.” He swiveled back toward the three buildings that suddenly looked inconsequential compared to the vast expanse of Green Bay.

  “Did the swimmer make it?”

  “Nope. Gave her lifejacket to her friend. Silver medalist died. Friend lived.” Marty looked at the sheriff. “You a good swimmer?”

  “No.”

  “Then you get the jacket,” he said and grinned.

  A few minutes later, Marty slowed and pivoted the boat toward a long, curved finger of land. A wave hit broadside and sprayed icy water over the cockpit. As they entered a narrow inlet, he nodded toward the hatch. “You go on in. I’ll be right after.”

  Cubiak didn’t argue. The cramped cabin was dim and musty but the lack of wind made it feel warm. He dried his face on paper toweling and perched on the edge of a red plaid berth, arms crossed and tight to his chest. What the hell was he doing out here? he wondered. He couldn’t see what Marty was up to but he felt the boat settle. The engine faded and he heard the splash of an anchor thrown overboard.

  Marty clambered down and tossed the small cooler onto the square of counter alongside the miniature sink. Shivering like a large wet dog, he unzipped the cooler and took out a beer. “Want one?”

  Cubiak shook his head. “I’m on duty.”

  “Yeah, and probably freezing your balls off, too.” Marty raised the beer in a mock salute and drank. “Working the North Atlantic you learn how not to be cold if you wanna drink. But you didn’t come out here to listen to tales of adventure on the high seas, did you? I’m guessing you wanna know about my old man and those other two, and why someone might have wanted them dead.”

  Cubiak forgot about being cold. “Officially, their deaths were an accident.”

  Ducking under the low ceiling, Marty slid past the sheriff and dropped onto the couch opposite. Elbows to his knees, he stared at the floor. “Yeah, right. I got that. But three men can make a lot of enemies,” he said at last.

  Was Marty referring to Bruno Loggerstone’s charge of soft blackmail or was there something else? Cubiak figured the best way to find out was to play dumb. “Hardly seems likely for such highly respected members of the community.”

  Marty laughed, but the sound was dry and mirthless. “Yeah, they did a good job polishing their public image, didn’t they? The three small-town heroes. Decorated war veterans, respected family men, successful business leaders whose money supported the local volunteer fire department and a whole rainbow of amateur athletic programs for kids. You know about the county’s wrestling program? Huntsman started it when I was in sixth grade, but my old man and Swenson were on board from the get-go.”

  “You wrestled, I understand.”

  “Yeah, sure, almost all the boys did. I liked everything about wrestling, but mostly the chance to make friends my own age. Farm life is pretty isolated. And my mother was a real hard-ass most of the time. My dad tried to make up for her, but she got down on him for being too soft with me. That’s what she called it, being soft. He was always good to me, I gotta give him that. When he wasn’t working, he took me fishing and camping. Showed me how to fix stuff around the farm, too.” Marty held up his hands. “Guess I owe my mechanical know-how to him. After I started wrestling, he came to every match. He didn’t really know the rules and didn’t pay much attention but I didn’t care. It was just nice that he was there. He and Eric Swenson would sit together be
hind the bench and shoot the breeze with Huntsman.”

  “Sounds like he was a good father.”

  “Yep.”

  “Like Huntsman.”

  Marty scraped his hands through his tangled hair. “You gotta be kidding. Big Guy put on quite a show, that’s for sure. Fooled me when I was a little kid. Couple of times when I was younger, we were invited to their house for a cookout or something, like on the Fourth of July. Man, what a difference from things at my house! Big Guy and Ida being sweet to each other and joshing around with Walter. Like Ozzie and Harriet on TV. That was the family I wanted to be part of. That’s what I thought until Walter eventually owned up to Huntsman being a mean son-of-a-bitch. He used to talk about how if his real father hadn’t been killed in the war, things would have been different for him and his mom. Walter liked my dad. I think one of the reasons he wanted to be friends with me was so he could hang out at my house and hear a kind word from my father every once in a while.”

  Marty lobbed the empty can into the sink. “Get me another one of those, you don’t mind,” he said over the echoing ping of the tin cylinder rattling against the metal bowl.

  “Wrestling was the thing that brought us together. Walter was older than me, and since we didn’t go to the same grammar school there wasn’t that much chance for us to meet up before that. I was in the public school, just one room for all of us. Walter went to the Catholic school in town. And I had all my farm chores. So we didn’t see much of each other until we signed up for the after-school program.

  “By my senior year in high school I’d been wrestling for”—he held up a thick hand and counted off the years—“one, two, three, four… six and a half years. And, man, I loved it. Everything about it. All the crazy shit we had to do to come in at weight. I’d swear, I think every week I had to put on that plastic suit and run laps around the gym to sweat out a pound or two. When I couldn’t run anymore, I’d have the guys stack a bunch of mats on me, so I’d keep sweating. You know, we’d even go into the bathroom before a weigh-in and spit out saliva to get rid of an extra few ounces. That’s how strict things were. Afterward, we’d pig out on burgers and fries, all the greasy shit.”

  As he talked, Marty grew increasingly agitated. “It was nuts, but we were in it together and that made it all right. And the coach? He was right there with us. Pumping us up, telling us how special we were. Making us feel like we could take on the world.”

  Suddenly, Marty hunched over, silent again. “Right,” he said. He sat up and swiped at his mouth. “I turned eighteen that first semester senior year, beginning of November.” He gave Cubiak a meaningful look. “You know what that means?”

  “You were of legal age.”

  “Right. Old enough to buy a beer. Old enough to be drafted.”

  “And old enough to be a consenting adult.” The comment came out before Cubiak had a chance to consider the implications.

  “Yeah. That, too.”

  The cabin filled with a heavy, sad silence.

  “Who was it?” Cubiak said finally.

  Several minutes passed. Marty squirmed as if both the cold and the truth were penetrating through the layers of clothing and emotional denial he wore. “The coach. Bill Vinter.”

  Marty’s right heel began to thump against the floor. He clamped his hand on his knee, holding it down, and worked his mouth as if rehearsing what to say next. “You have to understand that Vinter was the program. He’d shaped it from nothing and then moved up to the school with it. Sure, we all worked hard for the individual glory and the team, but really, we worked for him. For that word of praise, that pat on the back. His approval meant everything, and suddenly it all turned to shit.”

  His face etched with misery, Marty glanced at Cubiak and then trained his eyes on the floor. “I never saw it coming. Once a month or so Vinter would have the team over to his house for pizza and movies. His wife was always around, his kids, too. Senior year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, he invited me over to talk about new strategies for the team, and I didn’t think anything of it. No one else was home, but that didn’t bother me. It was late afternoon and he had all this food laid out. Not just leftovers, fancy stuff I didn’t even know the name of. We talked wrestling and he started pouring me beers, one after the other. I was no stranger to drinking but it was a six-pack, maybe more. I don’t know how much.”

  Marty pressed his fist to his mouth, as if trying to keep from saying more. After a moment, he gave up and went on. “I must have blacked out because when I woke up, it was light again. I was undressed and lying next to Vinter in his king-size bed. Funny how at first the bed was the only thing that registered. I’d never even seen one like that. Then it hit me. The coach was naked, too. I didn’t know what he’d done. What I’d done! He must have put something in the beer. I crawled out of the bed and started to get dressed. Vinter woke up and started clapping. Thanked me for a real good time. I felt all crazy. I wanted to kill him but I couldn’t move. I started yelling at him. He got up and shoved me into a chair. Said if I had any funny ideas about telling anyone what we’d done—not what he’d done to me, but what we’d done—that he’d blow the whistle on my father and Big Guy and Eric and tell everyone how’d I’d been coming on to him all year.

  “I didn’t understand half of what he was saying. Later, it hit me, what he’d meant. He’d ruin me; he’d ruin everyone.”

  Marty fell back against the bulwark and looked at Cubiak. “I’d no idea about my dad and his friends. The three of them grew up together, you know. I always thought that was why they spent so much time hanging out with each other. Childhood friends who’d never outgrown their childhoods. I didn’t know what to do, Sheriff. I loved my father, and all of a sudden I couldn’t look him in eye. I didn’t know who the fuck he was! I was so confused, but I knew I couldn’t hurt him. I couldn’t let Vinter say those things, even if they were true.

  “On Monday, I quit the team. But it was hard even to walk into the building. I kept replaying all those years when the bastard had his hands on me—that’s what a wrestling coach does, isn’t it?—and then I started imagining what had been going through his mind, what he’d really been after. Freaked me out. I couldn’t focus on school. Started cutting classes. Drinking, a lot. All that shit people say happens is true. I kept wondering Why me? What was wrong with me? What had I done? Like being a kid all over again thinking everything’s your fault.

  “After Christmas break, I dropped out and enlisted in the navy. Did one tour in Hawaii then re-upped and was sent to Nam. Fucking nightmare but it finally made me forget. After that I joined the merchant marine and went as far away as I could. Stayed away, too.”

  “If you were drugged and coerced, it was a criminal offense.”

  “Yeah, but his word against mine.”

  “You never told anyone?”

  Marty reared to his full height. “I couldn’t take that chance. And who would have believed me? Coach Bill was like some kind of god to people on the peninsula. Like I said, his word against mine, and I’d had a couple run-ins with him earlier in the season. No, I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Not even Walter?”

  “Not then. I hadn’t seen Walter in a while. He’d gotten married and moved to Sturgeon Bay. I’d heard things weren’t going really well and didn’t want to bother him with my problems. My first time back, maybe ten years later, I tried telling him but he wouldn’t listen. Said I was nuts.”

  The boat rocked beneath them.

  “Wind’s shifting,” Marty said.

  Cubiak pictured monster waves forming on the bay. “Maybe we should go back.”

  Marty muttered something but didn’t move, and Cubiak knew the man had more to say. His only option was to wait, bad weather or not.

  The sheriff managed to get the last two beers from the cooler. He handed one to Marty and cracked the other for himself.

  “Off duty, Chief ?”

  “Thirsty.” The beer was icy cold and nearly tasteless. “Too bad you di
dn’t get back to town for the funeral,” Cubiak said, fishing for something that would get Marty going again.

  “Oh, I was here. I just didn’t go in for the service.”

  “You got the message in time?”

  “Yeah. I was working a rig off the Texas coast.”

  “Your mother thought you were halfway around the world.”

  Marty took a swallow of beer and set the can between his boots.

  “I didn’t see you anywhere around.”

  “Nobody did. I didn’t want to be seen. Camped out on the boat. The morning of the funeral, I took it up the bay side and beached it on the stretch of rocks near the park.”

  The cove with the black rocks, near the path to the cabin, Cubiak thought. “Why not go to the funeral if you were there in time? At least for your mother’s sake. Or Walter’s.”

  “I don’t know. Just couldn’t bring myself to, I guess. All that pomp and circumstance.”

  Marty pulled at the corners of his mouth and then settled his gaze on Cubiak.

  “There’s something else. Something from when I was a kid. I’d pretty much forgotten about it, but just being here again… well, there it was staring me in the face.”

  Cubiak stayed silent. Too many words from him might derail Marty.

  “May not mean anything. It was all a long time ago. But during the funeral, I went into town. Figured what the hell, why not, I was there and anyone who knew me well enough to recognize me after all this time would be at the church. Anyone else would think me a stranger. Place’s changed a lot, especially with the ferry dock being moved. I didn’t know about that. More new houses than I would have thought. And a war memorial down by the marina. Nothing fancy, a pillar with names of the guys from Gills Rock that had been killed in all the wars up till now.”

  Cubiak nodded. He’d seen the obelisk.

  “You heard of Christian Nils? His name’s there, too. Nils, they called him. Walter’s real dad. You know, he died before Walter was even born.”