“Aren’t you gonna book me and let my father go?”
“There’s time for that.”
Roger pulled his key ring from his pocket and tossed it up and down. “You can’t hold my father. He’s innocent.”
Cubiak snatched the keys in midair and opened the door with his foot. “Everyone’s innocent until proven guilty,” he said and stepped backward onto the porch.
Cubiak found Agnes curled up on her cot, her face to the wall. Was she sleeping? She had refused to make bond and seemed to enjoy the simple routine and the relative comfort of her surroundings. For the first time she could eat without slaving in the kitchen, she’d told Cubiak. In the men’s wing, Walter also lay on his bed, hands behind his head and eyes open. His mouth twitched, as if he were uttering a prayer or hankering for a taste of whiskey. At the sound of the door lock releasing, he flung his feet to the floor and sat up. He looked almost cheerful as he greeted the sheriff.
“Morning…”
“Roger claims he did it.”
The man’s smile disappeared. “What the hell you talking about?”
“He’s at my house now. Came out and confessed this morning.”
“You ain’t arrested him?”
“Not yet.”
Walter wet his lips and screwed up his mouth. “He didn’t do it.”
“He thinks he did.” Cubiak leaned against the cellblock wall. “Even told me how.”
“Stupid fucking kid!”
“Why don’t we start all over again? Only this time, you tell me what happened Friday night when you came to and realized that Roger was gone.”
Walter rested his elbows on his knees. “It was Saturday morning.”
“All right, Saturday morning. Still dark. After Roger told you what had happened last summer with Vinter and what Big Guy said to him, you drank yourself into a stupor. When you came to and saw that the key to Marty’s boat was gone, you knew Roger had gone up to the cabin and figured he was up to no good.”
Walter nodded.
“You went after him?”
“I couldn’t. He took my keys! Probably afraid I’d get behind the wheel and kill someone.”
Or yourself, Cubiak thought. “So you waited for him. And when he got back you made him tell you where’d he gone and what he’d done.”
“He swore he’d cleared away all the pellets, Sheriff, and I believed him. Roger never lied to me. I was relieved he’d changed his mind. Proud of him for that.”
“But you had to make sure, didn’t you? Before daylight you snuck up to the cabin, using Marty’s boat, just like Roger had hours before. And when you got there, Big Guy and the others were okay, still at the table playing cards.”
“I don’t know what they were doing. The curtains were closed and I didn’t hear anything. Figured they’d fallen asleep.” Walter grabbed the edge of the mattress. “The vent was clean, like Roger said, just a couple pellets inside. Not enough to do any damage.”
“What time was it?”
“Four, four thirty, maybe. It was still dark.”
“And no one knew you were there. If anyone saw a boat on the water they’d figure it was a fisherman heading out early. You could do anything you wanted and get away with it. You had plenty of reason to want to settle the score with Big Guy and his pals. So you brushed away the last of the foam beads and filled the vent with dried leaves, thinking you’d blame the squirrels.”
“That’s right. Just like I said.”
Walter held the sheriff ’s gaze. Cubiak wanted to believe him but couldn’t be sure that he was telling the truth. He might have found more bits of Styrofoam than he admitted and if so, the men might already have been dead.
Cubiak turned toward the hallway. “What about the stuff Roger took from the coast guard station?”
“Everything’s still in the upstairs room at the garage.”
The sheriff pivoted around. “You look through it?”
“Some.”
“Take anything out?”
“No.”
“I’d like to see it. Get a search warrant and go over it myself.”
Walter fell against the wall. “Hell, Sheriff, you don’t need no warrant. Just go on in. Front door’s padlocked, but you can get in from the side. There’s a door down the gangway from the alley. Key’s on a nail under the eave, right side of the door.”
“You don’t worry about someone coming in and stealing your tools?”
Walter snorted. “I’m more worried about getting soused and locking myself out.” He crushed his hands together and looked at Cubiak. “Roger’s a good kid. You can’t arrest him, Sheriff. I did it.”
When he returned to his office, Cubiak pulled out the threatening letters that had been sent to the coast guard station chief and arranged them in chronological order across his desk while he waited for Lisa to get the number for the athletic department at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire.
He talked to three people before he was transferred to the school’s wrestling coach, who agreed to fax a copy of the squad’s away schedule from the previous fall. “I’d scan it but I can never get the damn thing to work and my secretary is out sick,” he said.
“A fax is fine,” Cubiak said.
The schedule confirmed that the dates and locales coincided with the letters sent to Chief Dotson. Cubiak studied the wall map behind his desk. Over four months the team had traveled to the UW campuses in Stevens Point and Platteville as well as to several other locations, allowing Roger to postmark his threats from towns around the state, inadvertently leaving a trail of evidence that would undermine any argument about a crime of passion. With this information available, a prosecutor would have little trouble arguing the state’s case for premeditated murder against Roger.
Cubiak shrugged into his jacket and headed out again. “I’ll be at the coroner’s—sorry, Doctor Bathard’s—if anyone needs me,” he told Lisa.
Bathard was spreading primer over the hull when the sheriff rolled back the door to the boat barn. A Mozart piano concerto flowed from the overhead speakers.
“You finished sanding the Bondo already?” Cubiak said.
“Yesterday.”
Cubiak surveyed the Parlando. There were still months of hard work to be done on the boat but already the vessel was taking on a regal air. “I thought you’d be getting things ready for Saturday.”
The coroner gave a wry smile. “I’m getting myself ready.” He stripped off his gloves and lowered the volume on the stereo. “I may have been a bit cavalier the other day, making things sound so simple and straightforward, but they’re not. Truth is I question every step I’ve taken since Cornelia died. We don’t ever know, really, the right thing to do. I can give you a dozen reasons why I shouldn’t marry Sonja, and a dozen why I should. Ultimately, I simply have to decide, yea or nay.”
“You mean you might not go through with it?” The wedding was three days away.
“To be honest, at this moment, I don’t know.”
Cubiak had never seen Bathard so indecisive and was uncertain how to respond. He needed his friend to be a rock, to show the way even if he chose not to follow. “I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing you can say.”
“Does Sonja know?”
“Sonja!” Bathard chuckled. “Sonja’s going through her own version of hellish self-examination.”
“You’ve talked about this with her?”
“It’s all we talk about. We’ll probably be talking about it as we walk up the church steps.” Bathard tamped the lid onto the can of primer. “Life is a leap of faith, son. You jump or you don’t, and right now I feel the concrete hardening around my ankles.” The coroner started toward the door. “Let’s get out of here, go to the house. I’d like a drink.”
In the library, they watched the sky fill with striations of orange and pink as the sun slipped below the horizon. Over whiskey, Cubiak told Bathard about Roger.
“It never ends, does it? And there’
s still this other business to sort out,” the doctor said.
“Walter claims the vent was clean when he got there.”
“If so, then Roger didn’t kill the men. Still, in terms of intent and action, he’s as guilty as his father, even though he said he changed his mind. It’s also possible that Walter is lying to protect him,” Bathard said.
“I’m not so sure either of them is guilty.”
“Really?” The physician swirled his glass. “I don’t follow. I haven’t had that much yet, have I?”
“Roger arrives at the cabin around midnight. He stuffs insulation into the vent, sees the men through the open curtain, has a stab of conscience, and cleans out the pellets—or thinks he has—and then he leaves. When Walter gets there it’s some four hours later. The curtains are closed so he can’t see in. He doesn’t hear anything, but the vent is clear and he assumes the men are sleeping and haven’t suffered any ill effects from the bits of insulation Roger failed to retrieve.”
“If Walter is telling the truth and not trying to protect Roger.”
“Right. Walter clears out the few stray bits of insulation Roger left behind and stuffs the vent with dried leaves. But who’s to say it has the effect he thinks it has?”
“There’s no question the three men died from carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“I understand that. I’m just not sure it unfolded the way Roger thought it had or Walter claimed it did.”
“So what did happen?”
“I have an idea but nothing that’s gelled yet.” Cubiak stared at the darkening water and remembered how he’d done the same at Gills Rock the day the three men had been found dead. Now as then he’d hoped to find the answers to life’s questions among the waves.
“What are you going to do with Roger? You can’t let him stay with you.”
“I thought maybe he could stay here.”
Bathard slapped his knees. “Just what I need.”
“You’ve got plenty of room. He could help in the shop. Help set up for…”
“The wedding.”
“Yeah.”
Bathard crossed to the window. A low star glittered over the bay. “I don’t know why I’m doing this, but okay, send him over. I’ll have dinner waiting.”
THURSDAY MORNING
At the kitchen table, Cubiak opened his new laptop and logged on to the local marine weather website. Wind speed and direction, temperature, and wave height for the bay were the same as those from the previous Friday night. He called Rowe.
“You’re a boater, aren’t you?” he said.
“You kidding? I practically grew up in my dad’s outboard. Got my own twenty-five-foot cruiser. Well, actually, I own it with a couple other guys. Why?”
Cubiak scanned the wide expanse of Lake Michigan visible through the window. Four miles out, blips of light flickered like neon fireflies where the sun reflected off the dozen or so fishing boats clustered along the Bank Reef. At the dropoff, the lake depth plunged from sixty to three hundred feet, and fish stacked up along the rock wall as if vying for the chance to be plucked from the water.
“I need you to take Marty Wilkins’s boat up to Gills Rock. See how fast you can make it there and back.”
“Marty Wilkins has a boat?”
“The Can-Do, moored at Sunset Marina.”
“And I’m doing this ’cause… ?”
“I’ve got reason to believe that both Walter Nils and his son, Roger, were up to no good at Huntsman’s cabin that Friday night the men died. If what they’re telling me is true, they went up separately using Wilkins’s boat, which he left in Walter’s care. I need to know how long it takes to get there and back to see if their stories hold up. Whoever makes the trip has to be someone who can go at top speed, and I figure you’re a good candidate.”
“You got it, Chief. Around here, I can’t drive my car as fast as I want but it’s another story on a boat. No speed limit out there.”
Unfortunately, Cubiak thought, and then explained where to find the boat and the key. “Call me when you’re back,” he said. “And be careful.” He hung up the phone. Listen to me, he mused. I sound like I’m turning into an old fart.
Half an hour later, Cubiak unlocked the side door of Walter’s garage and flipped on the wall switch. Walter was not a tidy mechanic, but the full garage indicated that he was at least a competent one. Cubiak found the box of Styrofoam in the corner where Roger said it would be. He crammed a handful of the pellets into his pocket and climbed a flight of stairs along the side wall. The door at the top opened to a loft apartment lit by a row of circular skylights, like portals on a ship.
Various bits of furniture had been dropped around the room, enough to make it livable. Three boxes of coast guard memorabilia peeked from under the bed. Each was stamped Property of Sturgeon Bay Station. Someone had written Save in black marker on the tops and sides of each box and secured the lids with duct tape.
Cubiak sat on the edge of the mattress and slid one of the boxes between his feet. He expected neatly organized file folders arranged by date or locale. Instead, the contents were a jumble. Photos, charts, weather reports, newspaper clippings, letters home, a couple of programs for religious services, as well as leaflets for mess hall dances and lectures were tossed together. No time to maintain orderly records during the war, he thought. And then, well, who wanted to remember or had time to devote to past horrors once peace had been declared? He picked up a stack of material and sifted out a handful of black-and-white prints. The photos were faded and stuck together: ships and men; boats in port and on the high seas; sailors saluting the flag, standing for inspection, playing softball behind their barracks. Nothing resembled the photo Marty Wilkins had seen as a kid.
The three dead veterans had served aboard the USS Arthur Middleton. Cubiak found a reference to the ship in the second box along with a stack of photos, all of them taken in a tropical setting, Hawaii perhaps or one of the other Pacific ports. The only photos linked to the Aleutian Campaign were shots of the military facilities on the islands. He unearthed no photographic documentation of the battles fought. At the bottom of the carton, in a manila envelope, he found the photos of the three friends that Roger had described, but these were pictures taken at their induction.
The contents of the third box covered the war in Europe and the Mediterranean: the D-Day invasion at Normandy, Operation Torch in North Africa, and photos and several dozen diaries and letters the sailors or their families had donated to the military. Nothing pertained to Huntsman, Swenson, and Wilkins. The three from Gills Rock had not fought in those theaters.
Cubiak took the cartons to headquarters and called the station chief.
“Roger Nils stumbled on the archives when he was working at the station. The kid’s something of an amateur historian and took three of the boxes without thinking. He was curious and wanted to learn more about the war. Hard to tell if anything’s missing. The items aren’t organized.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Dotson said. “I’ll send someone over, get it off your hands.”
“Actually, I’m kind of curious myself and wouldn’t mind having a little more time to go through it all.”
Cubiak sensed the officer’s hesitation. “I was special forces. Kuwait. Hard to get a feeling for what it’s like to serve aboard ship,” he said. “Five days, that’s all, and I’ll bring everything back. That gives you time to sort out what you need for the exhibition.”
Once Dotson agreed, Cubiak ended the conversation before the chief could talk about pressing charges against Roger for theft.
An hour later, Rowe called.
“That is one sweet boat Marty’s got. Really souped-up. Going full throttle, I made it up and back to Gills Rock in just about one hour. Into the headwind, thirty-five minutes. With it at my back, twenty-five.”
“You thought it would take longer?”
“Oh, yeah. No question. Even in my boat, which is pretty fast, I figured an hour fifteen at least.”
&
nbsp; “Would the trip take longer at night?”
“Maybe for someone who’s not familiar with the bay, but if you’re from around here and know the route it wouldn’t make much difference. Plus the boat’s got more than enough lights.”
“Where are you now?”
“The marina. I called as soon as I got back, like you said.”
“Do me a favor, okay? Gas up and wait for me.”
“You going out?”
“Maybe.”
Cubiak was going out, as Rowe had guessed. The question was whether he trusted himself to pilot Marty’s power boat or wanted his deputy at the helm. The marine forecast was reassuring but Cubiak needed to check conditions for himself. At several spots on the way to the marina, he glimpsed Green Bay through the trees. No whitecaps.
By the time the sheriff reached the harbor, the sun was out and Rowe was sprawled in the cockpit of the Can-Do, his hat off and his face open to the rays. The boat rocked as Cubiak climbed aboard, and the deputy bolted upright, grabbing the two cups at his side.
“Chief ! Here, careful it’s hot. Light on the cream, just the way you like it,” he said, handing one of the cups to Cubiak.
The sheriff sat across from Rowe, their knees nearly touching. Cubiak didn’t want the coffee but took an obligatory sip. “Much traffic out there?”
“Just a tanker heading to Green Bay.”
“No fishermen?”
Rowe slapped his cap on. “Not that I saw. The commercial boats would’ve come in already and it’s too early in the season for the charters.”
“Up at the tip, when you turned into the bay toward the cove, how much of the town did you see?”
“Nada. There’s a spur that juts out near the park. It blocks everything.”
Just as it had when he stood on the stone beach, Cubiak thought, shielding his eyes as he twisted and looked toward the harbor entrance. The water in the channel was flat.
“That it, then? I still got those reports to finish,” Rowe said.
“The reports can wait. I need you to go back up to Huntsman’s place and do one more thing.”
Death at Gills Rock Page 18