Death at Gills Rock (25 page)

“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.”

A
t 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.

H
alf 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.

A
n 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.”

“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.”

C
ubiak 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.”

“I was just there!”

“And what you did verified one part of the equation. There's still the question of whether stuffing the vent with Styrofoam or leaves could increase the amount of carbon monoxide in the cabin to dangerous levels.”

Rowe didn't look any too happy. “I don't know, Chief. I'm not sure about wanting to be a guinea pig for some kind of experiment.”

“Come on, Mike, I'm not asking you to inhale the stuff. Get a gas mask and carbon monoxide detector from the fire department and then here's what you're gonna do.” Cubiak gave Rowe the pellets from his pocket and explained how Roger said he'd stuffed the vent with them and then changed his mind and what Walter had done to block it with dried leaves. “Maybe they're both telling the truth or maybe Walter is still covering for Roger. He claims the men were alive when he got there but the curtains were closed, so he couldn't know for certain,” the sheriff said.

At the Rec Room, Rowe was to turn the space heater on, set the meter in the cabin, shove as many of the pellets as he could into the vent hood, and then check the meter every thirty minutes for four hours and record the readings. “Make sure the windows and door are closed and the heater is cranked up. When you're done testing the pellets, air out the room so the meter's back to zero. Then replace the pellets with dried leaves and grass and repeat the process. Just make sure you're wearing the mask whenever you go in and you'll be okay. No taking chances, got it?”

“Yeah. But, Chief, what do I say if someone sees me and asks what I'm doing?”

“Tell them you're following my orders.”

“You gonna be okay out there?” Rowe said, pointing toward the bay.

“Alone? Sure I'll be fine.”

“Where you headed?”

“So you know where to send the rescue team?” Cubiak put up a hand to stop Rowe's protest. “Chambers Island,” he said.

H
e felt like Ahab.

Little matter that there was a fresh-water bay, not an ocean, beneath the hull, and that the vessel wasn't battling mountainous waves but slicing through the flat surface of a placid inland waterway. Holding tight to the wheel of the
Can-Do
, Cubiak was buoyed by a refreshing sense of mastery and freedom.

The sheriff remembered asking Ida Huntsman if she'd resented having missed the intimacy of sex during her lengthy marriage to Big Guy, and she'd said no because she had good memories and a good imagination. Cubiak had no seafaring memories but a good enough imagination to project himself into the spirit of a legendary sea captain on the hunt. Rowe had said that on the water, he could go as fast as he wanted. Piloting the boat, Cubiak understood the urge.

At the marina, he'd approached Marty's boat with trepidation and under Rowe's fretful gaze, he'd lurched away from the dock in clumsy fits and starts before crawling through the narrow channel to the bay. Once on open water, he waved to his deputy, but as soon as he was out of sight, Cubiak put the throttle in neutral and searched for a life vest. He started to slip one on, then changed his mind and dropped it at his feet within easy reach.