“Certainly a good hiding place,” he said.
Kiel stiffened. “What are you insinuating?”
“Just stating the obvious.” Cubiak took a sip from his coffee. “Tell me about Margaret.”
“My father told me that you’d talked to him about her. So you know the story.” The journalist was back under control.
“I want to hear your version.”
She sighed and in a casual, off-hand fashion recited the details of Mrs. Fadim’s sad family saga. Almost as if the past events had nothing to do with her, the writer repeated her great-grandmother’s story about the crippled sister who disappeared and the doctor in the expensive car who took the girl away, promising a cure.
“How did you feel about Margaret?”
Kiel twitched. “To be honest, by the time I was in high school I was pretty fed up with the whole business. Growing up, I’d heard the story ad nauseam, and frankly I was tired of the shadow it cast over my existence. I wanted my own life, but Florence kept harping at all of us about how it was our responsibility to find her ‘before it was too late.’ Hell, it had been too late for years. Once the old lady’s mind started to go, the situation got even worse. She hounded us endlessly. It got to the point where I wasn’t even sure how much of the story was true or if it was true at all. I assume you’ve met my great-granny. She’s hardly a woman with a firm grip on reality.”
“Margaret looked a lot like you.”
Kiel’s gaze narrowed. “Really?”
“Your father mentioned it. He suggested that around the age of six—the age Margaret was when she disappeared—you, your birth mother, Lorene, and Margaret all bore a remarkable resemblance to each other.”
“So?”
“So when you found her photo in the box and the medical records with the initials MS, you didn’t speculate that maybe the subject was your missing great-aunt and that perhaps your great-grandmother’s story was true?”
“Of course, I did. If I could prove that the letters MS stood for Margaret Stutzman, I’d have found my big story, something that would get me recognized by the national media.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. The more I considered the possibility, the more I realized it was wishful thinking, a flight of fancy on my part. There were dozens of initials on those papers. The letters MS could have stood for anyone. Maybe they weren’t even actual initials. As for the photo, who knows for certain if it was a picture of Margaret? Lots of kids resemble each other. I came to the sad conclusion that I couldn’t prove a thing.” She paused. “I’m a journalist, Sheriff. Creative nonfiction doesn’t interest me. I write stories that are based on fact.”
“Like the glorified history of Leonard Melk and the IPM?”
Kiel blushed. “The book is a work-for-hire. It’s different. I wasn’t even going to use my name on it.”
“You took the assignment for the money?”
She snorted. “Of course, I did. I’m not a trust fundie. I have bills to pay just like most everyone else.” She glared at Cubiak. “The plumber doesn’t work for free. Do you?”
“Why didn’t you retrieve the material yourself? Why send the boys?”
She laughed again. “I see, the plot thickens. Sorry to disappoint you, but I had a deadline to meet, simple as that.”
“And the midnight drop at the tourist center? Getting Francisca to pick up the bag for you? What was that all about?”
“I told you I had a deadline. Although as far as Francisca’s concerned, I did have the ulterior motive of maybe mining her story about her brother . . . if I could locate him.”
“You told her you knew where he was.”
“I told her I might know how to find him. It’s not my fault that she misunderstood.”
“And who’d take the word of an immigrant cleaning woman over that of a Door County native?” Cubiak said.
Kiel gave a smug smile and reached for her coffee.
The sheriff grabbed the drink before she could. “Let me get you a fresh cup. Cream, no sugar, right?”
She grunted.
Cubiak took his time. He wanted her to sit and to wonder just how much he knew and how much of her story he believed. When he finally returned, she was at the one-way window trying to peer out.
He set two coffees down and waited for her to retake her chair.
“I thought we’d be finished by now,” she said as the sheriff sat and nudged one of the cups toward her.
“Unless you have something to add, we’re done with your version of events.” He waited for her to speak up, but she remained silent. “Nothing? Okay. You see, I have a different scenario of how things went.”
“Oh? Do tell.” Kiel pretended to be bored, but he sensed an undercurrent of concern in her response.
“I think this is a two-part story. There’s pre-Cleona and the discovery of Melk’s medical records from the mental hospital. That’s the period when you were busy writing the IPM history as presented by Melk and his colleagues. At the time you had two concerns: finish the assignment and get paid, nothing more. Then you drove up north for the wedding and accidentally stumbled on evidence of Melk’s early research. Let’s call it post-Cleona. From that point on, everything changed: your attitude toward Melk and your objectives both as a journalist and as a young woman personally affected by his devious actions. Follow me?”
Kiel didn’t respond.
“You’ve pretty much stuck to the facts about the pre-Cleona segment, but after that your version veers away from the truth. Once Osgood gave you the box of files, it didn’t take you long to figure out what you had. You knew that Melk hadn’t stashed all that material in a file box because he wanted to tidy up his office for the state inspectors; he was hiding records of his radical research methods. The files documented the medical tests he’d conducted on scores of unsuspecting and often underage subjects without legitimate consent. And he was doing all that at a state-funded facility. Given the lack of oversight back then, his research may not have been illegal, but it certainly constituted questionable, unethical, and perhaps immoral behavior. If word got out, it was enough to get him fired, ruin his reputation, and perhaps even threaten his medical license. But you probably figured that out on the ride back to Sturgeon Bay.”
Cubiak rested his elbows on the table and leaned in. “You must have gotten quite a headache trying to reconcile that Doctor Melk with the image of the good doctor that you were fabricating in the book.”
Kiel remained resolute in her silence.
“Faced with the challenge of sorting through the mass of material, you moved to the barn with it. Piece by piece you put things together: the diseases, the tests, the subjects. Did you suspect you’d come across evidence that Margaret was one of the kids involved in the nefarious experiments, or did that come as a surprise?” Cubiak went on, not waiting for a response. “Because eventually you figured out that the initials MS represented your great-aunt. You may have doubted it at first, but finding her photo confirmed your suspicions.” He raised a hand to forestall any objections.
“You’re right that there were other initials, other photos—mostly of young children, all taken decades ago. You guessed that they’d all lived in Wisconsin, so you reprinted the photos in ads that you placed in dozens of local newspapers around the state, asking anyone who recognized the children to contact you.”
Still Kiel didn’t react.
“To shore up the exposé you intended to write, you needed corroboration, other stories of young polio victims, kids stolen away from their families with the promise of a cure. Don’t bother denying it, because I’ve already talked to one person who responded to your ad, and I have the names of others as well.”
The color faded from Kiel’s face.
“Somehow your father got wind of what you were up to. Either you let it slip or he discovered the collage on the barn wall, maybe while he was checking for intruders at your great-grandmother’s request. You had no choice but to tell him about the ex
posé you intended to write, about the notoriety you’d gain, and the big advance you assumed would come your way. Your father’s a practical man. He figured Melk would sue you for libel and then where would you be? The doctor had no living relatives; he was the only obstacle. How convenient for you that he died when he did.”
Kiel didn’t flinch. She would be a good poker partner, the sheriff thought.
“I’ve done my homework, Linda. Two years ago you wrote an in-depth piece on defibrillators for a lay science publication. You knew that Melk had one, an older model that had been implanted nearly a decade ago and was up for replacement. If he’d gone in for the procedure, it’s possible he might be alive today. For the piece, you interviewed several experts on the ways that an ICD, especially an older model, could be hacked. You had all the information you needed for your plan to work.
“Last Monday Melk was set to give his farewell speech at the conference. You knew him well enough to realize the strain he was already under when you went up to him, ostensibly to show him the cover of the new book. That’s another lie, isn’t it? I’m guessing you showed him Margaret’s photo and a copy of the results of the tests he’d done using the blood he’d drawn from her. You told him that you knew about his experiments on children and were going to write a book about it. Taken together, the anxiety he felt at stepping down combined with your threat of revealing his nefarious past might have caused enough stress to trigger a heart attack. But then you moved closer to adjust his tie and to embrace him. To anyone who saw, it was a sweet gesture. In reality it was a death hug because you had preprogrammed your phone to send a malicious message to the defibrillator that momentarily reverse-engineered the device.”
“Oh, come on, Sheriff. That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Then why break into Doctor Pardy’s office looking for the device? Were you worried that she’d have it analyzed and discover the disruption?”
“You can’t blame me for that. I wasn’t even in town when her office was broken into.”
“How do you know you weren’t here? I haven’t mentioned a date.”
Kiel froze.
“You hit Melk with a triple whammy. You knew a younger and more robust person might survive such a hit, but you figured it would be too much for an old man like Leonard Melk. It appears that your assumption was correct because moments after you walked away from him, Melk collapsed. When Noreen Klyasheff got to him, he uttered a single word before he died. She thought he’d said snow. But maybe it was no—and maybe it was meant for you. ‘No, don’t ruin my name, don’t destroy my reputation.’”
Kiel smiled at Cubiak, as if she had found his account entertaining. “It’s an interesting theory, but I know as well as you that you can’t prove any of this. In fact, all you’re doing is providing more fodder for my exposé, the chapter on how I was held and unreasonably questioned by the county sheriff.”
Cubiak raised an eyebrow, but otherwise he ignored the comment.
“Under normal circumstances, the situation wouldn’t have been more than a tragic event. An elderly doctor suffers a fatal heart attack minutes before he was slated to give his farewell address to the conference. Like you said, anyone who was there would have attributed the attack to the stress of the moment or simply to his age. Sage would have taken over as head of the institute and that would have been the end of it.
“Unfortunately for you, I was at the lodge meeting a friend for lunch. If Noreen Klyasheff hadn’t screamed, perhaps I wouldn’t have known until later, if ever, what had happened.” He paused. “Just as you wouldn’t have known about Miguel, if Francisca hadn’t screamed when she saw the photo on the wall.”
A slight shift in Kiel’s posture told the sheriff he was on target.
“The files from the Northern Hospital for the Insane only go as far as the early 1950s. You had no reason to suspect that Melk continued his unethical practices after the facility burned. After all, he never went back for the material. And once he’d established the Institute for Progressive Medicine, he had his reputation to protect. It would be reasonable to assume that his past was behind him, wouldn’t it?”
Kiel didn’t respond to the question.
“Journalists are curious by nature. They have to be to get their stories. So there we were, in case your memory has gotten foggy: Melk is lying on the floor dead, and another scream comes from down the hall. I leave to investigate, and you find an excuse to follow. What was it you told Rowe, that you needed to use the ladies’ room? Under the circumstances, he couldn’t refuse to let you leave, and there was no one he could ask to escort you. You were on your honor to return, which you did, but not before lingering long enough outside the Forest Room to hear the gist of Francisca’s revelation. You’d been at the conference all morning, moving from one presentation to another. You’d probably seen the photo before, but it meant nothing. It was simply the picture of a young subject in a vitally important research project. The identity of the man standing behind the boy wasn’t important. But Francisca’s story changed all that. I’m guessing you’d seen the uncropped photo during one of your sessions with Doctor Sage, which means that both of you knew that Melk was the doctor standing behind Miguel.”
Cubiak studied his notebook. The page was blank, but Kiel wouldn’t know that. She would think he was checking his facts. He waited a moment and then went on.
“Melk’s early modus operandi was clear: he sought out uneducated, immigrant families, people who didn’t speak English and didn’t know how or were too scared to contact the authorities. By the time the Northern Hospital for the Insane, the base of his operations, was destroyed, his target population had largely dwindled, and he needed a new source for his victims. After hearing what Francisca said, you realized what he’d been doing. You didn’t have to connect the dots; from what you gleaned listening in at the door, the situation was obvious. Melk had found a ready supply of test subjects just across the border. Like your great-aunt Margaret, the kids he used for his research into Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s were stolen in plain sight from their homes and brought to the U.S. by any means possible. For a while, I was stumped trying to understand how he managed to do that. The kids didn’t have passports; but, in fact, that was better for him because there was no paper trail to worry about. But without proper documents, he couldn’t fly them into the country. He had to find a different way. You figured it out, didn’t you?”
Kiel sat motionless.
“No? Well, let me tell you.” The sheriff glanced at the notebook again. “I talked to an old friend who works in border patrol. He said that years back it wouldn’t have been that difficult to smuggle kids into one of the Canadian ports on the west coast. Assuming that’s what Melk did, he’d transported them across the country from there and then had them brought by boat either to the Upper Peninsula or Green Bay or even directly to Door County—the way the rumrunners brought booze into the country during Prohibition. Things are different now with Homeland Security on the job, but for decades there were hundreds of miles of unsecured water all around here.”
Cubiak stood and stretched and then sat down again. “You probably couldn’t wait to tell Doctor Sage what you’d overheard that morning. When you did so, did he pretend to be shocked by the revelation, or had he suspected all along that his mentor was an unscrupulous opportunist and that he was tainted by association? Either way, once the story about Melk was public, Sage knew that he would be reviled and that his work would be viewed with disdain and suspicion. How much did he offer you to keep quiet, or did you put a price on your silence?”
The young journalist refused to be rattled. “You should be a novelist, Sheriff. You’ve got a terrific imagination.”
Cubiak gave her an amused smile before he turned serious again. “More to the point, how much did your father have to do with your blackmailing scheme?”
Kiel stiffened. “Keep my father out of this,” she said.
“By your own admission, you went to see Sage on Tuesday mornin
g. That afternoon, he withdrew fifty thousand dollars from his brokerage account at the Bank of Sturgeon Bay. Over the next twenty-four hours, he liquated another seventy-five thousand in assets. Interestingly, the total adds up to the amount of money your father owed the casino. Let me put the question to you again: how much did your father have to do with the blackmailing scheme—and with Doctor Sage’s murder?”
Kiel was on her feet, shouting at the sheriff.
“Sage committed suicide.” She stabbed a finger at Cubiak to emphasize her point. “How dare you accuse me or my father of having anything to do with his death? The man shot himself in the heart!”
“Sit down.”
Kiel shuddered. The muscles in her shoulders twitched. She brushed a strand of hair off her face and stared at him, wild-eyed.
“We won’t continue until you take your seat.”
While she fumed, Cubiak reopened the notebook and pretended to read. He could hear her fast breathing.
Then she mumbled under her breath.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said and dropped back into the chair.
The sheriff gave her a few moments to cool off before he looked up. “Why would Sage kill himself?” he said finally.
“Isn’t it obvious? He was ruined. You said as much yourself. His work was tainted. He’d been duped by Melk for years. He knew no one would believe that he wasn’t complicit with his mentor. More than half his early research subjects were underage Mexican kids, and the rest were from Central America, where Melk had probably gotten hold of his subjects the same way he did Francisca’s brother,” Kiel said.
Cubiak switched the scenario. “Melk started his Alzheimer’s research while Sage was still in medical school. By the time he finished his residency and joined the institute, the tests had been underway for nearly a decade and it was another fifteen years before Sage took over as head researcher. According to Francisca, Melk tricked her family into signing a letter of consent for Miguel. He probably did the same with other families, but Sage wouldn’t have known any of this. If he checked the paperwork at all, he’d find a folder of documents that looked legitimate. There’s no question that if the story came out he’d have a lot of explaining to do, but he was a smart man. He’d find a way to escape any culpability.”
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