Death in Cold Water (8 page)

“Backroom deals?”

“There were always rumors. You know how it is.”

“What did he get in return?”

“You tell me. He loved the sense of power that went with the money, but there were other businessmen involved and who knows what kind of agreements and deals they came up with behind closed doors. He never really talked about it, at least not to me.”

Cubiak let the thought settle: First, the child Andrew, loved but ignored by his parents. Later, as an adult, shut out of his father's business dealings. “There were no previous threats against your father, which you know of?” he said after a moment.

“No. Never anything like that. The past year or so, there was some concern that terrorists would try to disrupt one of the big games, but nothing ever came of it.”

“How'd you know about that?” Cubiak asked.

“I overheard talk about it early on at a preseason dinner. One of the coaches gets chatty when he's had a few too many. Besides it's been on the news, too. I heard it mentioned on one of those radio talk shows.”

“Your dad had no personal enemies in the organization?”

“He was strictly backroom. Didn't keep his opinions to himself, which didn't make him the most popular guy. But enemies? No.”

Cubiak circled back to the photos. “The early players didn't make a lot. There could be resentment about the salaries being paid today,” he said.

“Those guys are probably all gone now.”

“They have family, descendants.” Cubiak let the thought hang in the air. “What about some of the later players who might be struggling with injuries or concussion issues?”

“There've been a couple of guys who threatened lawsuits against the league, but not the team, not as far as I know. Anyway there's no way anyone could hold my father responsible in those situations.”

“People with grievances, whether perceived or real, don't always think logically.”

Andrew pressed his hands to his knees and leaned back into the soft cushions of the sofa. “I guess not. But it's all different now, you know. It's big business. It wasn't always like that. At the start, the guys were in it for the love of the game. Many of them had full-time jobs and played for the thrill of it. There wasn't much money and there was very little fame. Sometimes they'd pass the hat to cover expenses. Of course, that changed over time. But even after my father got seriously involved, there was still a sense of family, and for some of the younger players my father was a parental figure. Anyone on the squad facing difficult circumstances could rely on my dad for help. He knew from his own experience what kind of odds some of them were up against.”

Andrew heaved himself to his feet and lifted a framed photo from the desk. “I told you he was an orphan. Grew up at the Child Care Center in Sparta. He didn't have an easy time of it, a bit of a troublemaker, he admits. But when he turned twelve he was apprenticed out, luckily to a good family that ran a big nursery. The parents were older and pretty strict. They kept him in line but they taught him a lot about growing trees and running a business, skills that he put to good use later on. He was grateful for that opportunity and always felt he had a debt to pay to society.” Andrew showed the picture to Cubiak.

“That's him,” he said, pointing to a tall, well-muscled man with close-cropped hair and a smooth, unlined face. The young Gerald Sneider squinted into the sun. He was hatless and unsmiling, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and his hands resting on the shoulders of two gangly boys who were part of a larger group of ten or so ranging in age from around six to midteens, as near as Cubiak could gauge. They crowded around a large, neatly hand-painted sign that read, “The Door County Forest Home for Orphaned and Needy Boys—Fresh Air, Clean Water, A New Start.”

“Most people don't know it, but my father's generosity went well beyond the Packers. Not only did he start the camp, but he pretty much paid for it out of his own pocket.”

I'd be one of those needy kids, Cubiak thought, staring at the photo and the somber, well-scrubbed boys with the haunted look of kids who knew what it was to be hungry. “A place like that takes a lot of money,” he said.

“Which my father had plenty of. Got rich in logging, but he supplemented the budget during the summer by taking in sons of the wealthy. For four months of the year, the home was run like a summer camp with the full-time residents helping out as needed.”

“Who runs it now?”

“Oh, the place is long gone, burned down about forty years ago.”

“He didn't rebuild?”

Andrew shook his head. “Times had changed. By then there were more social services and opportunities for kids in need.”

“Where was the camp, up around here somewhere?”

There was a sharp knock on the door and before Andrew had a chance to answer the sheriff 's question, Gwen Harrison entered the room.

If Harrison was impressed by the plush surroundings, she didn't let on. The agent strode in with the confidence of one who owns whatever space she happens to be in at the moment. In one quick glance, she seemed to take in everything, and Cubiak wondered if, like he, she had the kind of mind that retained visual cues and images.

“Sheriff.” She dipped her head at Cubiak, her manner aloof but not unfriendly. Then with hand outstretched she approached Sneider's son. “You must be Andrew.”

“Indeed.” He tossed the photo to the desk and sucked in his paunch. “And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” he said just as she flashed her ID. “Oh. I see.”

Cubiak tried not to smile at the man's knee-jerk reaction to Agent Harrison. Were all men so transparent? Had he reacted similarly? he wondered, chagrined to realize that probably he had. At some basic biological level men were wired to stand tall and to puff out their chests in the presence of feminine beauty, no different than male butterflies or gnus.

“Nothing's been touched?” she said to the sheriff, echoing Moore as she looked around the room again, this time more deliberately.

“Just waiting for you,” Cubiak replied.

Andrew scowled and sagged, forgetting or forsaking the urge to impress. “I have to show the feds my father's private files?”

“That's why Agent Harrison is here.”

“Seems like an invasion of privacy.”

Ignoring the men, Harrison walked to the windows and took out her phone. Then she started texting, a signal to Cubiak that she expected him to handle the uncooperative local. The sheriff looked at Andrew. “Your father is missing and may be the victim of a crime. His files and personal papers may contain clues that will help us get to the bottom of this.”

Andrew frowned. “I doubt it.”

“At any rate, you don't have a choice. In a situation like this your father's life is an open book where the authorities are concerned. Yours, too, for that matter. If you want to be helpful, which is to your benefit, I suggest you can start by giving Agent Harrison your father's appointment calendar and the keys to any locked drawers in this room.”

R
oad construction detoured Cubiak off Highway 42 and onto 57. The alternate route back ran near The Ridges, where Cate was shooting. It was still lunchtime and, hoping that they could have a quick bite together, Cubiak called to see if she'd eaten. She hadn't, and so he stopped in town for sandwiches. When he arrived, he found that Cate had walked to the small beach north of the village and that she'd brought Butch with her.

“The poor thing seemed restless. I think the kittens are stressing her a bit and I figured she could stand a break,” Cate said as the dog scampered away. They ate sitting on a log that had come ashore in a recent storm and watched Butch trundle back and forth across the sand.

Cubiak reached for Cate's hand. “I'm glad you're back,” he said.

She smiled. “Me, too.”

“I missed you.” Cubiak wanted to say more but Butch was barking, demanding attention. She'd wandered into the rolling mounds of soft dunes along the road and raced back toward them. Almost smiling, she bounded down the sand with a small branch in her mouth. When she reached Cubiak, she dropped the stick at his feet and waited patiently while he stripped off the leaves. He hurled the twig into the water, and the dog leapt into the waves. For several minutes the game went on.

Overhead, tiers of cloud pillows floated against a backdrop of brilliant blue.

“It's a Georgia O'Keeffe sky,” Cate said as she looked across the bay. “You've seen the painting at the Art Institute.”

Was it a question or a statement? Cubiak wasn't sure. He hadn't been to the Art Institute since he was a kid on a school field trip but was embarrassed to admit as much to Cate. True, he had seen pictures of the famous painting but he wasn't sure if that counted.

“I . . . ,” he said and stopped. The beach was suddenly empty. The dog had disappeared. “Where's Butch?” he said.

“There,” Cate said. She pointed to the far end of the sand where Butch had emerged from a patch of tall grass bearing another treasure.

The new stick was long and slender. As the dog ran toward them it shimmered pearly white in the sun. Delighted with her performance, Butch deposited the stick at their feet and sat panting.

“Good girl,” Cubiak said.

He stroked the top of Butch's head as Cate bent over for a closer look.

“Oh, God,” she said, pulling back. “I think it's a bone.”

They were both silent a moment. Then Cate spoke again. “Do you think it's human?”

Cubiak went down on one knee and picked it up. “It might be,” he said.

“How'd it get here?”

“Probably washed ashore from somewhere out there.”

Wordlessly they looked toward the water. From the beach, the shoreline followed a spit of land that extended out toward the lake and then curled down into a long tail that ran parallel to the beach before it tapered off in a pile of rocks and scrub trees. The sheltered bay lay inside the curving sweep of terrain, but on the far side, the vast expanse of Lake Michigan stretched to the horizon.

“So many shipwrecks, and with the currents . . .” Cate's voice trailed off.

“It could be from anywhere,” the sheriff said, completing her thought.

Holding the bone seemed an oddly intimate act. Cubiak loosened his grip. The piece was solid and surprisingly heavy. It was narrower at one end and slightly bowed where it grew wider at the other end. The surface was gouged and pitted, worn by repeated contact with underwater rocks and stones on the beach. There were two nicks in the middle. Teeth marks, Cubiak thought as he touched them gently. They were too worn down to have been made by Butch and probably were the work of other dogs or carnivores on the prowl. “It's pretty worn, probably bleached by the sun, too,” he said.

Cate knelt beside him. “In Paris there are a couple hundred miles of underground tunnels filled with millions of human bones.”

Cubiak stared at her.

“In the 1800s, the cemeteries were poisoning the water supply and had to be emptied. At night processions of carts moved through the city, bringing the remains to the tunnels where the priests used them to build altars and shrines. It's eerie but also very beautiful.”

“Sounds macabre.”

“Their way of laughing at death.”

Again they both looked down at the bone that lay across Cubiak's calloused palm.

“Maybe it's not human. Maybe it's from a large animal,” he said, but he spoke without conviction.

“Should we bury it?”

“No.” Cubiak stood, brushing sand from his knee. He didn't know why but the bone seemed important, not something to be ignored. If it was from an animal, he'd discard it later, but if it was from a human, it deserved to be treated with respect.

“I want you to photograph it here on the beach. I'll look around the dunes in case there's more. Then I'll take it to Emma Pardy to see what she has to say.”

T
he medical examiner was at her desk, frowning at her computer monitor. Pardy wore her uniform of the day: jeans and a cotton sweater, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her Harvard diploma shared the wall with her children's finger paintings and a family photo taken out west where there were mountains.

“What's going on?” she said when he walked in. “I was at the court this morning and there seemed to be an unusual amount of activity on your side of the building.”

“Big case. A missing person,” Cubiak said as he slipped into the visitor's chair Pardy pointed him to.

“Must be someone important.”

“Gerald Sneider.”

“Never heard of him.”

“That's because you're not from around here,” Cubiak responded. Then he ran through the highlights of Sneider's pedigree and a condensed version of the situation.

When he finished, Pardy gave him a quizzical look. “FBI? And how's that going?”