“Was anyone else there?”
The question hung in the air.
Francisca hugged herself and slowly rocked back and forth.
“Someone was there. You need to tell me who.”
“The journalist. I don’t know her name.”
“The young woman you saw at the lodge, the one who told you and Lupita to leave?”
“Yes. It was her. She opened the door for me. I didn’t understand what she was doing in the doctor’s house, but she didn’t seem surprised to see me.”
Because she was the woman who pretended to be the realtor, Cubiak realized. She was the one who lured Francisca to Sage’s house under false pretenses.
“Tell me what happened.”
Francisca sat up and looked at him. Her eyes were moist. She took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly.
“At first nothing. She let me in and said she’d come for some papers, that she had permission from the institute. When I asked where the real estate lady was, she said she didn’t know but that the woman would be back soon and not to worry. Then she went into Doctor Sage’s office, and I went to the kitchen to start cleaning. Someone had made coffee and left the cups in the sink, so there was a little bit of work to do there. I wiped the stove and counters and swept the floor. I dusted all the downstairs rooms and then started to vacuum. It seemed useless because everything was so clean. I was vacuuming the rug in the front hall when she came out of the office. She pulled the plug and told me to come with her, that she had something to show me.”
Francisca twisted her hands and Cubiak remembered how she had knotted the handkerchief the first time he had talked with her.
“I was scared. I wasn’t sure she was supposed to be there, and I started to think that maybe I shouldn’t be there either. She took me by the elbow and led me to the office. There weren’t any papers anywhere, nothing but a photo on the desk. It was the same picture that I saw on the wall at the conference, but bigger. Not bigger like this”—she held out her hands—“but bigger because it showed the man standing behind my brother. He was very young, very tall, and he was smiling. He didn’t look like someone who would hurt anyone.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“No. I never saw him before. I asked her if she knew who he was, and she said it was Leonard Melk. I didn’t know who that was. She said Doctor Melk had stolen my brother because he needed him for his research. She said he’d taken many other children, and adults, too. Some who had Down syndrome and some who had different diseases. Why did he do these terrible things? I asked her. She said that he was trying to find cures for many bad diseases. When I told her the doctor who took Miguel promised my parents that he knew how to cure Down syndrome and that he would bring him back when he was healthy again, she laughed. It was a lie, she said. It was the same lie he told many other people.”
Francisca looked past Cubiak at the rows of colorful brochures advertising wine tastings and kayak tours, boat rides, and gourmet restaurants. The wall was filled with literature that promised fun days and romantic nights in Door County. “A good doctor does not lie to people. He does not steal their children. This man was a monster,” she said.
Cubiak remembered what Bathard had said about the Hippocratic oath and those who abused it.
“Did you ask her if she knew what had happened to Miguel?”
“Yes, of course. I had to, even though I was frightened by what she might say. For a long time, I had believed that my brother was dead”—she shuddered and inhaled sharply—“and I had come to accept this as God’s will, but I had to know, didn’t I?”
Cubiak nodded.
“She told me that Miguel had not been cured. She told me that people like Miguel had knots in their brains. She said that the doctor gave him different medicines and then took pictures of his brain to see if any of the drugs made the tangles go away.”
A small, sad smile flitted across Francisca’s face. “I am not an educated woman, Sheriff, but I am not stupid either. I know that if someone discovered a cure for the Down syndrome, it would be very big news. There would be many stories in the newspapers and on the television. So I did not expect to hear that my little brother had been freed from his affliction. But I did not think that someone would do experiments on him. I asked her if Miguel was hurt, and she said no. She said he was alive, that he still had the disease, but that he was okay.”
Francisca’s face was wet with tears. “When I asked her if she knew where he was, she said she did. She said he was not very far away, and that if I brought the black bag to her, she would take me to see him.”
“Are you supposed to meet her and give her the bag?”
“No. No. She told me I should bring the bag to Doctor Sage’s house and leave it on the closet floor in his office.”
“When?”
“Today, after two o’clock but before three. She said it wouldn’t be a problem if anyone else showed up because we both had reasons to be there.”
And you both know the alarm code, Cubiak thought.
“Did she tell you to wait there for her?”
Francisca shook her head. “She said I should leave and call her when I was back on the highway.”
“And your brother? When will she take you to see him?”
“She didn’t say a date, but she promised that she would keep her word. She said I had to trust her.”
“Do you?”
Francisca looked down at the floor and then back up at him. “Yes, of course. I have no choice.” Her words were full of hope, but her eyes were clouded with doubt.
Cubiak left Francisca at the tourist center with her broom and dusters. He also left her with the decoy black garbage bag. He didn’t tell her that the bag with the genuine material was in his car across the road and the one in the trunk of her car was crammed with old newspapers. For his plan to work, she had to believe she was transporting the documents that would lead her to her brother.
From Cate’s car, he called Rowe with the latest developments.
“Sounds like a game of cat and mouse. Which are we?” the deputy asked.
Cubiak laughed and told Rowe to put the boys’ old car in the airport lot—somewhere discreet, if possible—and then drive them back to the station.
“You want me to book them?”
“I want you to make them comfortable and assure them they are not under arrest. This is for their protection. Don’t ask, because I can’t explain. It’s just a feeling I’ve got.”
“Right.” Rowe had learned to rely on the sheriff’s instincts.
“Then get over here to the center. Drive your own car and keep tabs on Francisca. Make sure she gets to Sage’s place safely and that when she leaves she gets back home without incident.” He didn’t elaborate.
“How long should I hang around there?”
“Until you hear from me.”
“Where are you going to be?”
“At Sage’s house. I’m heading there now.”
The sheriff was exhausted and hungry. He had been awake all night and hadn’t eaten since Friday lunch. He bought a muffin and coffee at the bakery on the edge of town and headed to Brussels. He didn’t trust Linda Kiel. He didn’t know if she was working alone or had an accomplice, and he figured the best way to outsmart her was to be on the scene hours before Francisca arrived with the fake goods.
A mile from the house, he turned down a narrow lane that he had spotted his last time out that way. Twenty yards in, he abandoned the car in a thicket of bushes and started hiking to the house.
Francisca had told him that there were alarm pads on both the front and the rear doors. Using the code she had given him, Cubiak came through the back entrance and into the kitchen. He needed more coffee but was too tired to brew any and knew the aroma would linger and give him away.
He set his phone alarm to ring in one hour. Careful to make sure he couldn’t be seen from the front hall, he stretched out on the living room sofa. The sleep that came was restless, disturbed b
y the images of children standing in long rows beside tiny beds. They were barefoot and wore ragged hospital gowns, their eyes wide with fear and their faces distorted in silent screams.
At ten, he jolted awake. If Kiel kept to the plan, she wouldn’t show up for another four hours. But Cubiak suspected that she had her own timetable. He went upstairs to the guest bedroom and angled a chair toward the window so he could sit and have a sideways view of the entrance.
He didn’t have to wait long before the journalist’s black car turned in to the driveway. Cubiak shoved aside his fatigue and went on full alert. He leaned toward the window as far as he dared, but the sun’s reflection on the windshield made it impossible to see inside. The car slowed but didn’t stop. Instead it continued past the house. There was no question that Kiel was behind the wheel. She stopped out back, hiding the car where Francisca wouldn’t see it. The door slammed, and a few moments later the alarm chimed, signaling the all clear for her to enter. Then it chimed again, indicating that she had reset the alarm, just as he had done earlier.
Cubiak pictured her walking through the kitchen on her way to the rest of the house and was doubly grateful that he hadn’t bothered with coffee or even had a drink of water. He had come to appreciate Kiel’s attention to details. She would notice a hair out of place on a poodle.
For a slight young woman, she had a heavy step, and he had no trouble following her progress as she moved from one room to another. She walked fast, like someone taking a cursory glance around the premises. Then he heard the sound of drawers being opened and closed, papers being tossed on the floor. She was in Sage’s office. What was she looking for? he wondered.
Moments passed.
“Ah!” Followed by a sharp laugh. The sound of victory. Then silence descended on the house, and the two waited.
Kiel stayed on the first floor, perhaps sitting in the dead doctor’s chair. Cubiak remained upstairs and wondered what would happen next.
A few minutes before two, Kiel’s phone rang, playing a silly girlish tune. Apparently she hadn’t expected the call.
“What?” Her voice was loud and harsh. “Don’t be so fucking greedy. You’ll get the rest when I get my advance.”
By then the afternoon sun had reached the guest bedroom window and raised the temperature beyond the point of discomfort.
At 2:20, Kiel’s phone jangled again. This time her response was sugary.
“Oh, good,” she said. “Aren’t you sweet to help me?” And then she added, “Of course, I will. I promised, didn’t I?”
Ten minutes later, Francisca’s car pulled in to the driveway. She stopped in front of the house and entered as she normally did. Cubiak strained to listen. He knew she was going straight to the office, but she walked so softly he had difficulty following her progress.
Then he heard the telltale squeak of the door to Sage’s office.
“Buenos días,” Kiel said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.
Cubiak jumped to his feet.
Francisca yelped in surprise, and the office door slammed shut.
As the sheriff raced down the stairs, he heard Kiel yelling inside.
“What is this shit? Where’s my stuff?”
“I don’t know!” It was a wail of truth.
Cubiak pounded on the door.
“Where is my brother?”
“Fuck your brother,” Kiel said.
“Where is Miguel?”
Cubiak kicked the lock free and lunged into the office.
The trash bag had been ripped open and the newspapers strewn across the floor. Kiel had pinned Francisca to the wall. The journalist slapped her and raised her arm to take another swing when the sheriff grabbed her wrist and pulled her away.
Kiel swore and struggled to get free.
Francisca crumpled to the floor, sobbing.
The sheriff shoved the journalist into Sage’s chair.
“I have your stuff,” he said.
Kiel turned red with rage.
As he helped Francisca to her feet, a car pulled up outside.
Cubiak wasn’t expecting anyone else and feared that Kiel’s accomplice had arrived. He put a hand on her shoulder to keep her from bolting out of the chair. Then he kicked the battered door shut and stepped in front of Francisca to shield her from danger.
Footsteps came down the hall, and Rowe burst into the room with his gun drawn.
“We don’t need that,” Cubiak said.
The deputy holstered his weapon and took in the scene. The newspapers on the floor. Kiel in the chair. The frightened woman who peeked out from behind the sheriff.
“Thank goodness you’re safe,” he said, addressing Francisca. Then to Cubiak, he said, “Sorry, sir. She went home first, and I lost her when the bridge went up. She was already on the other side.”
“It’s okay,” the sheriff said.
Three bridges connected the Door County peninsula to the mainland. More than once he had ordered them raised to keep a suspect from escaping. In a situation like today’s he couldn’t put them out of commission for hours without wreaking havoc with traffic. Rowe had had no choice but to take his chances tailing Francisca.
“I’m bringing Kiel in for questioning.”
The journalist glared at him. “You’ve got nothing on me,” she said.
Cubiak ignored her and told Rowe to follow with Francisca.
“We’ll need a statement from you. Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble,” he said, motioning her out of the room.
Francisca looked at the sheriff with eyes rimmed red and full of fear. When she spoke, her voice was a whisper.
“My brother.”
Cubiak rested a hand on her shoulder. Miguel’s fate was not his concern, but he couldn’t ignore Francisca’s torment. He was sure that the missing girl Margaret had perished in the fire at the Northern Hospital for the Insane, but he had no idea what had happened to Francisca’s brother. Kiel said Miguel was alive, but how would she know?
“I’ll do everything I can to find him,” he said. Or to learn what happened to him, he thought.
20
A STORY IN TWO PARTS
Late Saturday afternoon, a demure Linda Kiel faced Cubiak across the interview table. On the ride to the justice center, she had taken control of her rage, and now she sat with her hands folded primly on the shiny surface. After they arrived, she had asked for permission to use the restroom, and a few minutes later she emerged with her face scrubbed, her hair fluffed, and her blouse neatly tucked into her jeans. She had said yes to the offer of coffee although the cup remained untouched. She had rejected the suggestion that she needed legal counsel. An empty chair rested along the back wall should she change her mind and decide to call a lawyer.
Cubiak had read the journalist her rights. The recorder was running.
Kiel spoke up immediately.
“I’ve done nothing wrong and want it on record that I have agreed to questioning of my own free will. I have nothing to hide.” The statement was a polite echo of her earlier outburst.
She looked at Cubiak as if expecting him to contradict her. When he remained silent, she went on.
“I acknowledge using my great-grandmother’s barn without her permission, but that hardly constitutes trespassing since I am included in her will as an heir to any and all of her property, including the barn and the land surrounding it.”
Cubiak didn’t react. He wondered what she would say when she learned that her father had sold her inheritance out from under her.
“I also acknowledge using an unconventional method of recovering the material from said barn, but there was nothing illegal about my actions. The material is mine. It was freely given to me by a Paul Osgood in the town of Cleona. I have every right to use it in any manner I wish.”
“Perhaps you do,” Cubiak said.
Her eyes flashed. “Then why am I here?”
“Two people are dead, and I’m trying to sort out the details.”
She bristled. “I had noth
ing to do with any of that. You have no right to accuse me.”
“I haven’t accused you of anything. But tell me, what made you go all the way up to Cleona earlier this year, in March to be exact, where Leonard Melk, one of the deceased, had worked as a young physician? Wasn’t the book you were writing about him nearly finished by then?”
She smiled. “It was. But I didn’t go all the way up there, as you say, with the intention of poking into the doctor’s past. He’d told me about his position at the mental hospital in Cleona. In fact, it’s listed on his vitae. I had nothing to learn by going there,” she said.
“Then why did you go if you weren’t still researching the book?”
She laughed. “Oh, that. It was pure coincidence. I drove up there with my boyfriend, for his cousin’s wedding. The party went on all hours on Saturday, and on Sunday he was too hungover to get out of bed. I didn’t know any of the other guests and didn’t have anything to do while he slept it off, so I drove out to the old hospital and looked around. I’d heard about the fire and didn’t expect to find much of anything, but I thought I could absorb some local color, maybe a hint of how things used to be. I was about to leave when Osgood walked out of the woods and nearly scared me half to death.”
“You didn’t find his story odd, about Melk giving his father the records to hide from the authorities?”
Kiel didn’t take the bait.
“Is that what he told you? The version I got had more to do with tidying up a messy office, so he could pass inspection,” she said.
“You believed that?”
She shrugged. “Why not? To be honest, I didn’t give a damn why Melk did what he did. I wanted to see the files. When I interviewed him for the book, he said he couldn’t trust his memory when it came to discussing his early days as a doctor, and I hoped to glean an anecdote or two to fill out the first couple of chapters.”
“And did you?”
“Yes. In fact, I did.”
“Why put the material up on the barn wall?”
“The files were a mess. It really did look like he’d just thrown everything into a box, like he said. I needed to get it organized and started working on it at my place. But I didn’t have enough room to spread out. I was trying to figure out where to go with it when I remembered the barn. When we were kids, Nana always let me and my cousins play there. She even gave us chalk so we could draw pictures on the walls. It seemed like the perfect space to use.”
Death by the Bay Page 19