“Okay, guys, breakfast,” he said.
Cubiak lowered himself to the floor and set the bowl amid the quartet of pups.
They would need his help learning to eat solid foods, Natalie had said. The dogs didn’t know how to consume anything other than milk and weren’t strong enough to stand at the dish.
Cubiak picked up Kipper first. She’d caught up with the others and he wanted to make sure she maintained her weight. Slipping a hand under her belly, he guided her head toward the mush. She wiggled and pulled back until he dipped the tip of his finger into the gruel and held it to her mouth. She gave a tentative lick and then began to nip eagerly at his finger. As she ate, Cubiak thought about Walter. He wasn’t someone he’d peg as a murderer, but Cubiak knew that paternal instinct could overrule a sense of right and wrong, and that anger fueled by alcohol could make a man do things he wouldn’t normally consider.
Kipper was halfway through her second helping of mush when a car rolled up the driveway. A door slammed. It was probably Natalie, he thought, coming to make sure he was doing things right.
The abrupt knock on the back window meant the visitor was someone other than the vet.
“It’s open,” Cubiak said.
Solid footsteps dragged across the porch and then the kitchen door opened to Roger Nils. The sheriff wasn’t entirely surprised to see him.
Roger was pale and wild-eyed. His clothes had that slept-in look and his hands twitched at his sides. He seemed confused by the sight of Cubiak on the floor with the puppies and swayed uncertainly as if preparing to turn and flee back into the yard.
“Roger, have a seat. What brings you out here?” Cubiak said, pushing up from the floor.
The boy remained standing. Had young Nils heard about Walter and come to plead his case? To help put him at ease, Cubiak handed the boy the squirming pup. “You mind holding her for a minute while I set the food on the counter? I’ll feed the rest of them later.”
Reaching behind his visitor, the sheriff closed the door. “Coffee?”
Roger held Kipper at an awkward distance and shook his head.
“You had breakfast?” Cubiak said as he poured a steaming cupful for himself.
“I ain’t hungry.” Roger pulled the pup to his chest and began to tremble.
“Why don’t you sit down, relax a minute,” Cubiak said as he guided the boy to a chair and pried the startled puppy free.
Roger swallowed a sob. After a minute he straightened to his full height, just as Walter had done the day before. “I came here to confess,” he said.
“Confess to what?”
“Murdering those men. Big Guy, Swenson, and Wilkins.”
The sheriff was startled but reacted with studied calm. “You killed your grandfather and his friends?”
“Yes. I didn’t mean to. I mean, I did, but… then I didn’t.”
Cubiak put a mug of coffee in front of Roger and took a seat across from him. Nearby the pups frolicked, oblivious to the weighted silence in the room. “Tell me what happened,” he said.
Roger traced a finger along the grain in the top of the table. “I knew they’d be in there that night,” he said finally, his hand gliding across the oak. “And that they’d have the heater on. So I went up there and blocked the vent.”
“How’d you know to do that?”
“Basic safety stuff. My dad’s got a space heater in the garage. Used to lecture me all the time about making sure the vent wasn’t plugged up.”
“What’d you use?”
“Insulation pellets. There’s a box of it at the garage.”
“Why?”
Roger hung his head.
“When you confess to a crime as heinous as this, I need to know the reason.” Cubiak reached down and stroked Nico’s soft belly. “If you don’t tell me, I might think you’re lying to protect someone else.”
The boy looked up. “Who?”
“Your father.”
Roger blanched. “My dad?”
“Same MO, except he used dry leaves. He’s been in jail since yesterday. I thought word would have gotten around town by now.”
“I wasn’t in town. You can’t hold him. I don’t know why he confessed but he didn’t kill them. I did. I must have.”
“What do you mean, you ‘must have’? What’d you do?”
“I already told you, I stuffed the vent with insulation pellets.”
“What time was this?”
“Just after midnight.”
“You said you knew they’d be in there that night.”
“Yeah. My father showed me a copy of the Herald with that article about them. Said the three of them were at the house, celebrating and getting ready for their Friday night game.”
Roger wrapped his hands around the blue cup and frowned. When he picked up the story again, his voice was thin and tight. “I should’ve just left when I got done but I hung around a bit, to see what would happen. The front curtain was open and I could see them sitting around the table. I watched Big Guy play his cards. Like this”—he whipped his hand through the air and with a flourish threw his imaginary cards at an invisible table—“and the other two moaned and complained. Jesus, they were pathetic. Three old men. Three drunk old men.” Roger hunched over and pulled into himself. “I couldn’t do it. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I went around back and pulled the shit out of the vent and left before I changed my mind again. Next morning when my dad called and told me they were dead, I freaked. Figured I must not have cleaned everything out. I killed them, Sheriff.”
“If you say.” Cubiak sipped his coffee. “Nobody saw you going there or back?”
“No. It’s easy enough to get around without being seen.”
“Is it? I suppose you used Marty Wilkins’s boat and came up around the bay side to that little cove with the black rocks?”
Roger started. “How… ?”
“Marty took me for a ride before he left town and explained how he left the key for the boat with Walter. Figured you just borrowed it for your own little escapade.”
Butch nudged the sheriff ’s knee. “Excuse me, gotta let her out,” he said.
When he came back, Roger’s cup was empty.
The sheriff refilled it. “Now. Let’s start this all over,” he said as he sat down. “Why’d you do it?”
“It’s personal.”
“Murder usually is, unless it’s part of a larger crime like robbery. Murdering a family member, someone you’ve known a long time, now that’s usually a crime with roots that go way back. Personal stuff, like you said.”
Roger squirmed.
“I don’t know much about those three gentlemen, but I’m starting to get a sense of the real story behind the public image. Sorry to say I wouldn’t be overly surprised if your involvement—whatever it may be—is connected to whatever turned you from a high school wrestling champ into the bust-out you’re trying to become.” Cubiak watched the boy carefully. When Roger tensed, the sheriff knew to keep going. “Something happened between the time you graduated last June and now. I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“Possibly.” Cubiak paused. “But if I had to guess, I’d say it had something to do with Coach Vinter.”
Roger squeezed his hands until his knuckles were white. “How… ?”
“That’s not important right now. Nothing happened while you were in high school, correct?”
The young man nodded, still on high alert.
“What changed?”
“I don’t know.”
“You graduated and were no longer a student. You also turned eighteen.”
“So?” Roger looked blank.
“You became an adult. Legally at least. If something happened the summer after your birthday and with your consent, then there’s no problem,” Cubiak said, laying out the best case scenario he could imagine. “Vinter did not prey on you, didn’t force himself on you. He waited until you were of age and he approach
ed you, came on to you as it were. You were free to say yes or no. Correct?”
“No.” The response was terse, strangled.
“I see.” Then it was like with Marty, Cubiak thought. “He fed you booze, maybe drugs, too. You blacked out and woke up naked next to him.”
The color vanished from Roger’s face. His mouth was set, his eyes wide.
“You have no memory of what happened.”
The boy rocked back and forth. “How… ?” The word was a whisper.
“He did the same thing to Marty Wilkins. Years ago.”
Roger doubled over and began to sob.
Cubiak waited. He’d lost count of the times he’d sat with someone in their kitchen or living room and walked them through circumstances no one should have to deal with. It was never easy to do and hard to comprehend how one human being could brutalize another. For the pleasure of it? No, it was always for the power.
The room quieted. “You did nothing wrong, but what Vinter did was criminal. You could have pressed charges,” Cubiak said.
Roger was still alabaster but the fear in his eyes had softened. “He said that if I told anyone, he’d turn the tables and say it was me, that I’d been after him all year. He said he would see that I lost my scholarship and place on the UW roster. He actually bragged about it. ‘I can do that and you know it.’”
The boy’s voice wavered. Cubiak poured more coffee and set Buddy down in front of him.
As he talked, Roger cuddled the puppy. “I was scared. Why are you doing this, I asked him, and he snickered and said he thought it ran in the family. When I asked him what he meant by that, he laughed again and said I should go ask Big Guy.”
“Did you?”
Roger took a deep breath and nodded. “I drove up to see him the next day. Big Guy was in the Rec Room. Talking, like he always did. Telling me about the new boat he was gonna buy. About his plans for another van. There were chips at four of the spots at the table. It was gonna be him, Swenson, Wilkins, and that Joe Millard guy playing that night. I’m standing there not knowing what to say and suddenly I see everything clear as day. And I tell him about Vinter and what I’m thinking when I see this setup. He said that was too bad about the coach but I shouldn’t worry ’cause Vinter was moving and I’d probably never see him again. ‘What about you?’ I said, and he told me that how he lived his life was none of my business.”
Roger studied the floor. “Maybe he was right, except that I’d idolized him my whole life. We weren’t close but that didn’t matter. I grew up on the stories of what a terrific guy he was. I had this big chance because of him, because of wrestling, because I’d lived by that fucking pledge.”
“The pledge?”
“Yeah. From the very beginning, if you wanted to be on the team, you had to promise to fight clean. To be honest in the way you approached both the sport and your life. To be a gentleman.” Roger almost choked on the word. “A gentleman! Me? The idea went to my head, thinking that maybe I could make something of myself, be somebody, not just some grease monkey fixing flat tires for rich tourists. What a bunch of horseshit, huh? You know who wrote the pledge? Big Guy!”
Roger shot to his feet, startling Buddy and the other pups. Butch lifted her ears and made a deep, throaty sound. “To be honest about the way you lived your life! Like Big Guy? What a joke. He wasn’t up there playing with himself, you know. Eric and Jasper and god knows who else were in on it, too. They weren’t honest about anything.” The boy slumped against the counter, the piss and vinegar gone.
“You think they could have been back then?” Cubiak said after a moment.
“I don’t know. Maybe. No. I guess not.” Roger kicked the door. “Shit.”
“What happened then?”
“Nothing. I told my grandfather I was through with him, and I left.” Roger paced between the door and the sink. “Hung around town until it was time to go to Eau Claire. I was on the team but I couldn’t wrestle. Hated it. Couldn’t put my hands on the other guys without thinking about Coach Bill.”
“You had no one to talk to?”
Roger grabbed a chair, swung it around, and dropped down. “I didn’t know anyone except the other guys on the team, and I sure as hell wasn’t gonna say anything to them. Then I came back home one weekend and heard about the cutter launch and the big ceremony being planned. I couldn’t believe it. My life was falling apart and Big Guy and those other two were gonna be held up like heroes. I couldn’t stand the thought and knew I had to do something to try and stop it.”
“Chief Dotson got a half-dozen threatening messages last fall. You sent those, didn’t you?”
Roger looked surprised. “Yeah. The team had a heavy traveling schedule and every time we were in a different town, I mailed a letter to the station chief. I wanted him to think there were people around the state who were unhappy about this, hoping he’d change his mind.”
“But he didn’t, and in the meantime, you dropped out of school.”
Roger gripped the chair and leaned back. “I had to. I’d flunked all my classes and lost the scholarship. There wasn’t anything else to do but leave, and I had nowhere to go except to come back here.”
“Did you tell Walter what happened?”
“Hell, no! Not then. I knew he was disappointed, so I tried to make it up somehow. Got a job delivering pizzas and then working at the coast guard station. Pretty crazy, huh? I blame Big Guy for ruining my life and then find myself fixing up things for this big event where he’ll be one of the stars. What the fuck, I thought. One day I found these cartons in the storage room. I’d heard that some of the stuff was gonna be put on display and figured if I couldn’t stop the event, I could try and sabotage it. So I took a couple of the boxes.”
“Where’d you put them?
“In the loft at the garage. I didn’t want my roommates to find them.”
“What’s in the boxes?”
“A lot of papers. Old pictures and shit. I didn’t really pay that much attention at first.”
“Your dad found the stuff ?”
“Yeah. He was really pissed at me, too. Kept bugging me about walking off with the archives. I told him I just borrowed some stuff ’cause I wanted to know more about the coast guard and local history. He knew I always liked history in school and at first he bought it. Then he got on me about taking it back, but by that time I’d stopped working at the station. He couldn’t understand any of it. He was really disappointed that I quit school, kept saying he didn’t want me to be a bust-out like him. He was on my back about it all winter, telling me to talk to someone and reapply.
“That Friday evening, I was at the garage going through all those records and shit, getting really pissed off. Every time I saw a picture of Big Guy, the other two were with him. Jesus, it was so fucking obvious. Then my dad came in with the Herald. He was already half in the bag and mad, too. When he saw what I was looking at, he grabbed a couple of the photos and tore them in half. ‘Fucking hypocrites,’ he said. I’d been drinking some myself and wasn’t exactly sure what he meant but somehow we both started going on about Big Guy. Suddenly my father got real quiet and looked at me kind of funny. ‘You gonna tell me what the hell’s been going on or do I have to guess?’ he said.”
“You told him?”
“Yeah. Everything.” Roger played with his thumbnail. “I don’t know why. Should have just kept quiet about it but I guess I finally had to tell someone, so I told him.”
Just as Marty had so many years before. “How did he take it?”
“I never saw him so out of control. He started throwing things and yelling. Cursing the coach and Big Guy, blaming himself. Said he’d failed me and begged me to forgive him. I kept pouring him shots just to calm him down. Finally he passed out.”
“And you?”
“I filled my pocket with Styrofoam and took the boat up to Gills Rock.”
Cubiak dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. When they popped up, he put the toast on the table with jars
of peanut butter and cherry jam. “Here, I already ate,” he said.
Roger forgot that he wasn’t hungry.
“Then on Sunday night you came back and vandalized the shed, just to muck things up a bit,” Cubiak said.
Roger grimaced, his mouth full of food.
“And the boat?”
“I didn’t go near the Ida Mae. I wouldn’t do that, not to something with my grandma’s name on it.”
“Did you write the note?”
The last of the food disappeared off the plate. “What note?”
“There was a message left in Ida’s mailbox,” Cubiak said as he cleared the table.
“What’d it say?”
Under the gush of running water, the sheriff ignored the question and thought about what he was going to do with Roger. Cubiak didn’t want to lock him up with Walter where the two could compare stories. He also wanted to keep the boy—he couldn’t help but think of Roger as still a kid—out of the legal system. Walter had a paltry record, several drunk and disorderly conduct charges. But Roger had a clean slate. There’d been no trace of Styrofoam pellets in the vent the morning the bodies were discovered. Cubiak was sure the boy was telling the truth but worried that according to the letter of the law it might not be enough to keep him from being prosecuted.
He held out his hand. “Give me your keys.”
“My keys. What for?”
“I’m leaving you here—call it house arrest. If you give me the keys to your car, I’ll feel better knowing you’re not about to take off and that if you do, you won’t get very far.”
“You want me to stay here?”
“Yes.”
Roger brightened. “Not worried I’ll trash the joint or rob you blind?”
“Nothing worth stealing. Besides, the puppies will need feeding in another couple of hours and I don’t have anyone scheduled to come in. The instructions and everything you need for their food are there,” he said, pointing to the counter. “You just have to remember to hold them up, otherwise they’ll fall face first into the bowl. They can’t stand on their own yet.”
Death at Gills Rock Page 17