Death at Gills Rock (27 page)

“I'm in this chair because of Parkinson's but long before the disease got me, I spent seven months in the hospital recovering from a broken back and two broken legs. The men who attacked me were never arrested. And that happened in New York, a place where a homosexual should've been able to hide amid the great wash of humanity. Here? In a place like Gills Rock, they had no chance. Deceit was their only option. They had to hide; they had to pretend; they had to create an elaborate cover. I salute them for pulling it off. Wives. Successful businessmen. Civic leaders. Wilkins even having a kid! An exemplary public life to shield the truth.”

“You must have thought Huntsman pulled off the biggest coup, marrying Nils's widow.”

Tweet hesitated. “To be honest, I had trouble with that. Taking care of the boy was one thing, the honorable thing, putting aside all that came before. But for Big Guy to marry Ida? That was pushing it a little too far. Unless he did it as a penance, wearing a reminder of his sin like sackcloth and ashes.” Tweet paused again. “But I doubt it. Huntsman was an arrogant son-of-a-bitch who'd do anything to protect himself.”

“Even killing a friend.”

“Nils was from the same small town. Whether he was a friend or not, I don't know. War can bring out the worst in a man, and Nils was pretty much an obnoxious jerk who couldn't shut up. Got on everybody's nerves. Probably just his way of dealing with being scared. You gotta remember, we were all just kids. We were all scared. Waiting for something bad to happen. If you've seen it, you know.”

Cubiak let his silence speak for him.

“Some guys go numb. Some hyper. Huntsman and his friends faced a double threat and maybe dying wasn't the worst of it. You fall in battle, you get a medal posthumously. The other thing, maybe you get killed for that as well, but there's no medal.” Tweet's tone was sharp and bitter.

“And Nils found them out.”

“Yeah, he did. Big Guy convinced him to keep quiet but he assumed he couldn't trust Christian to keep his word. Maybe while they were all still in the service—the men turned their backs on a lot just trying to stay alive—but once they got home?”

“Sounds like you had a ringside seat to what went on.” The perennial fourth man, Cubiak thought.

Tweet snorted. “I won't deny I was there when Nils crawled into the wrong tent. Poor sap knew nothing of life beyond how to screw his wife, catch fish, and drink. Never got a joke; half the time didn't know what the men were talking about when they got on to the raw stuff. It was actually kind of funny; I don't think he understood what the hell he'd stumbled on. He just knelt there, his knees inside the tent, his feet outside in the muck, with a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face, kind of quizzical, you know. ‘Hey, fellas,' he said. There was some quick shuffling and a little nervous banter. Huntsman pulled him in and fed him a line about getting hold of some bad hootch. Claimed that we'd drunk too much and blanked out. And a good thing he'd come along because it brought them all back to their senses. Nils didn't say anything at first, which was odd because he was one of those running-off-at-the-mouth kind of guys. He just leaned back on his haunches and listened. Then I saw this twitch in the corner of his mouth and I knew that he'd figured it out. He got kind of jumpy for a second but then he calmed down again. He even went along with the story about the bad liquor, said he'd heard other guys saying the same thing.”

“Did Huntsman believe him?”

“I don't know. I didn't. Nils realized he was on to something. Maybe he figured he could use their fear of being found out to his advantage. Only it didn't work out that way, did it?

“The next morning, the army was ordered to take Amchitka. Nils was part of the invasion force. The air force softened things up with a couple of bombing runs, but then the weather turned. Nastiest kind of storm you can imagine. What the natives call a williwaw. Went on for nearly two weeks. Enough to drive a man mad. Snow. Fog. Waves the size of houses. Everything churning upside down. Landing craft capsized or thrown into the rocks. One of the destroyers ran aground outside the harbor and had to be abandoned. Men sick. Men drowned or stranded on sheets of ice and mud.

“Enter the coast guard. Search. Find. Rescue. Total chaos and half the time you can't see a fucking thing for the fog and the dark. Not a lot of light up there in winter. I documented as much of the incident as I could. No time to think about anything. To be honest, I don't even remember seeing any of those three, and when it was all over I was shipped out.”

“Which means that when you left, you had no idea that anything untoward had occurred.”

“That's about the size of it. I ended up in the South Pacific and then went to work for
Stars and Stripes
. Several years after the war, I was assigned a story about the coast guard's role in the conflict. I remembered the Sturgeon Bay contingent from my days in the Aleutians and contacted the local commander for follow-up on the men who'd served there. That's when I heard the story about Huntsman and the other two and their heroic attempt to save Nils. I had no reason not to believe it. When I went through my photos looking for pictures to go along with the piece, I found the photo of the three of them in the rescue boat. Something didn't sit right with me, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that their version was a lie.”

“The boat wasn't full. There was room for Nils.”

Tweet nodded.

“What about the other men on the boat, the ones who were rescued? They'd know the whole story.”

“They were army, probably from all over the country. I recognized two of them and both were killed later. Of those who survived, there's almost no chance in hell they'd ever heard the version of the story circulating up here.”

“So there was virtually no one to dispute their story. But surely, someone must have noticed as the rescuers arrived…”

“It was complete chaos, Sheriff. There were rescue boats going and coming, and a couple hundred injured or stranded men being pulled off the rocks. All anyone cared about was getting the soldiers safely onboard. I was on deck documenting the action, and even I couldn't swear to anything. It was my camera that captured the truth.”

Behind Tweet, the lowering sun burned bright orange over the water. As if sensing the spectacle, he spun back toward the window. “I tried to forget about it but you know how these things are; they sit and fester. I knew what had become of Nils and wondered about the three of them. Eventually I poked around and discovered they were doing quite well. Huntsman had started his plumbing business. Swenson was operating a charter fishing boat, and Wilkins had a dairy farm and a small cheese factory.”

“What happened after you sent the photo to Wilkins?”

“Nothing. I kept in touch—you know, Christmas cards for a couple of years running—gave them time to get better established. When I figured they were in a position to help out a fellow soldier, I sent a letter renewing our acquaintance along with a proposal offering my consulting services. At a very reasonable fee, I might add.”

“Did you allude to the photo?”

“I never needed to. They were intelligent men. They understood the situation.”

“To anyone who cared to ask, this was strictly a business arrangement between their enterprises and yours, Great Lakes Office Support and Pepper Ridge Associates?”

“Correct.”

“With regular increases in the retainer.”

“The cost of doing business rarely goes down.” Tweet scowled. “What I don't understand is how you found out about it.”

“Wilkins's son, Marty, told me about the photo. He'd opened the envelope by mistake.”

“He understood what it meant?”

“Not at the time. He was just a kid. He gave the photo and the note to his father, but he knew it upset Jasper and he never forgot about it. After his father and the other two died, he got to thinking things over and started adding up the pieces.”

“And left it with you to wrap up.”

Cubiak shrugged. “You admit to sending the photo but still claim you never met up with them?” he said after a minute.

“Sheriff, for years they didn't even know I lived in Wisconsin. Don't look so surprised. I had reason to believe they killed Nils, someone they'd known since they were kids, to safeguard a secret. I would have been a fool to trust them with my life.”

“Then how did you communicate?”

“When I sent the picture and later initiated our business association, I was living out east. After I left
Stars and Stripes
, I took a job in Milwaukee and made arrangements with a friend to route all correspondence through him, so the letters were always postmarked from New York or wherever he happened to be at the time. He traveled a lot. Then with email, the subterfuge became unnecessary.”

“And payments were made to a bank in Chicago?”

“Yes. One with branches around the country. For years, as far as Big Guy and the other two knew, I could have been anywhere. Eventually, I discovered Door County and like so many people decided to move here. When I bought this house, I made a big splash about relocating my business to the island.”

“You didn't worry about them harming you?”

“By then we were all old men, and I was sick. It didn't seem to matter so much. If anything, it seemed we were waiting to see who'd check out first.” Tweet chortled. “I was invited to the ceremony for the cutter, you know. In fact, the chief had arranged to borrow one of my coast guard uniforms and a few other items as well. Turns out there aren't very many men still living who were in the campaign, so, you see, I would have been a bit of a celebrity along with Huntsman and his cronies. I was looking forward to the day, wondering what it would be like for them to sit on the dais with someone who knew the real story of their Aleutian heroics.”

As he spoke, the sun dropped from view, like a ball toppling off behind a ledge. The room dimmed and then slowly brightened as a set of antique table lamps lit automatically.

“I'd like to see the photo,” Cubiak said.

Wordlessly, Tweet rolled to a tall bookcase and pressed his hand to the fluted casing. A shelf filled with John le Carré spy novels opened, revealing a hidden wall safe. Inside was a brown envelope. He handed it to Cubiak.

“You'll have to undo the clasp… ,” he said, holding up a palsied hand.

Cubiak pulled out a grainy black-and-white photo and held it under one of the table lamps. The enlarged image was full of shadows. Three men stood along the gunwale, looking up, their faces blurred by falling snow. Behind them six soldiers wrapped in blankets huddled on benches, with room for more. “I can't see any of the faces clearly,” he said.

“You don't have to.” Tweet rode up to the sheriff 's side. “That's Huntsman,” he said, pointing at one of the men standing. “See the zigzag on his left shoulder? He tore his jacket the week before and sewed it up with fishing line he got from one of the locals. He'd learned from his mother, a seamstress. We razzed him about it because he did such a neat job. There's no question that it's him. He knew it. And he knew that I knew it, and that this photo proved it. There are only two other men in coast guard uniforms in the boat.” He tapped a finger on each. “It can't be anyone else but Wilkins and Swenson.”

“I assume the negative is in the safe?”

“Oh, it's safe all right, but it's not here.”

“You're a cautious man.”

Tweet held out his hand and Cubiak returned the photo.

“How many prints are there?” the sheriff said.

“Three. This one. The one I sent to Wilkins. And one that was in a bundle of material I donated to the Sturgeon Bay Coast Guard Station.”

Cubiak raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Why not? It was just one of dozens of photographs I packed up for them for the archives. Maybe I like to take chances. Maybe I thought it was right that the official documents contain evidence of their duplicity, even if no one knew what it meant.”

“When did you do this?”

“Last summer. The chief posted a request in
Stars and Stripes
asking for photos and such to be donated for the ceremony. I'm sure he amassed a lot of material. It was a crapshoot, what would be put on display and what wouldn't.”

“You wanted to tempt fate—see if someone else picked up on the significance. What if one of the three saw it, what then? Your game would be up.”

Tweet shrugged. “So what? I'd gotten all I wanted. I reached the point where the money wasn't important anymore. Besides, they were getting on, and when they died the deals would have come to a halt anyway.”

“Several cartons are missing from the station archive room. Did you know that?”

“What do you mean missing?”

“Gone. Misplaced or stolen. Three of them ended up in Walter Nils's garage. His son, Roger, took them. The boy had his own reason for wanting to discredit Big Guy and the other two. There's nothing to indicate that he came across this particular photo or recognized Huntsman—how could he? Nor that Walter saw the photo and understood what it meant. But Ida might have. A lot of dreg gets past the censors in letters home from the field. It's not inconceivable that she knew about the patched jacket. What if Roger had found the photo and showed it to her?”

“He didn't need to.”

“What do you mean?”

Tweet returned to his place by the window and stared out at the darkening water. After a long silence, he started to talk. “Ida Huntsman is one of the finest women I've ever known.” His voice was soft.

Not sure he'd heard right, Cubiak moved closer. “You knew Ida?”

Tweet's head bobbled. He seemed to be struggling to keep his eyes open. “She was a volunteer reader for a local program for invalids. I had a relapse last fall and was bedridden for several months. I let the doctor talk me into signing up for the program, and as luck would have it, I got Ida.”