Death at Gills Rock (29 page)

C
ubiak waited for the warmest part of the day before heading north to Gills Rock. He was in no rush, and when he got to Ephraim, he stopped at Smithson's Bakery for pecan rolls. The village was saturated with sunlight and nestled into the hillside like a cat on a warm radiator. Signs of spring suffused the quaint little town and followed him up the peninsula, but they did nothing to lighten his mood.

At the Huntsmans' place, Ida was digging in a patch of black dirt near the house. Ramrod straight and dressed in a red plaid shirt and baggy brown work pants, she leaned into a pitchfork and broke the dense earth into loose clumps.

She must have heard the jeep because as he approached she looked up, her face flushed with exertion beneath the brim of a floppy straw hat.

“Sheriff, what a pleasant surprise.” Her words belied the strain in her voice. “Getting ready to put in the radishes. Too early yet for the tomatoes. So much to be done now that the weather's finally turned,” she went on, ignoring the bakery box in his hands.

“I brought something for coffee, if you'd like to take a break.”

Ida tossed aside her canvas gloves. “Of course.”

“We could sit in the gazebo, if it's not too cold for you.”

“Not at all. I washed the table and chairs yesterday, so they're clean. And the coffee's on. It'll just take a minute for me to freshen up.”

They were being polite, circumspect.

While he waited for her to return, Cubiak angled two chairs toward the sun and pulled the table close. A soft breeze rustled the surface water, and overhead gulls floated like plump, luminescent pillows. In the tranquil setting, Cubiak readied himself for what he was about to do.

Ida reappeared without the hat, her hair neatly combed, and a dash of pale pink on her cheeks and mouth. She set down the tray and handed him a platter for the rolls. For several minutes they busied themselves with the small chores brought on with the presence of food. Cubiak took his time arranging the pastry on the dish; he was stalling and felt that Ida was doing the same as she fussed, pouring the coffee into yellow mugs.

Finally he set down his cup and turned toward her. “I have come to you with news that will be hard for you to hear,” he began.

Following his example, Ida lowered her coffee to the table.

“Both your son and your grandson have claimed responsibility for the lethal level of carbon monoxide in the cabin that killed your husband and his two friends,” he said with all the gentleness he could muster.

She made a sound like a seal's bark. “That's absurd! They both loved Big Guy. Everyone did.”

“We both know that's not true, Ida. Far from it, I'm afraid,” he said after a moment. “Perhaps it's time for the charade to end.”

Ida started to protest.

“Allow me to tell you a story,” Cubiak said, interrupting her. He rested his arms on the table and looked out toward the sun-glazed water. “It begins many years ago when you were still living at the other end of the county and struggling with your own harsh circumstances. It's a story—a true story, I'm afraid—about three boys who grew up together in an isolated fishing village.” He couldn't help but glance back in the direction of Gills Rock. Ida did the same. “As youngsters,” he went on, his eyes still on the tiny village, “the three were close in ways that boys are, but as they grew older the friendship developed in ways they didn't understand and that made them feel increasingly out of step with their peers. They knew what their families expected of them and realized that what they wanted conflicted with the strict morals and narrow viewpoints imposed by their community and, in fact, by the larger society as well.”

Cubiak turned his attention toward Ida. She was pale and rigid and unable to meet his glance.

“They were still kids when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Within months they enlisted in the coast guard, all three on the same day, all three lying about their ages. There's a lot of fervor when war starts. Nobody knows what to expect. It seems glamorous and exciting—a chance to get out of your small town and see the world and do something for your country. I'm sure, like everyone, they thought the fighting would be over in a couple of months. And if they thought of danger, it was probably as something distant and romantic, like dying together when their ship was sunk by enemy torpedoes. They were good men but young and naïve. Living on the base they could get away with certain things, but after they shipped out circumstances changed. Suddenly they were confined in close quarters day and night, and the situation became perilous. They probably took risks. Let's assume they did, because we know that they were found out. The first man who stumbled on their secret became complicit and posed no threat. There was at least one other, maybe more, but this other man, the one who posed the greatest threat, didn't survive the conflict. The three friends made it through the war and came back as heroes with their secret intact. Once home, they slipped into the roles needed to blend in. It wasn't hard, at least from the outside. They knew what was expected and as long as they played along they could live in the two different worlds they'd created. They married but lied to their wives about war injuries that prevented sexual intimacy.”

“Please, Sheriff, get to the point.”

“Once they established their ruse, they had to maintain it. They assumed leadership roles in the community and their church, even as they pursued occupations that allowed them to work alone and in isolated circumstances. This made them answerable to no one much of the time and allowed them to do as they pleased and involve others as they wished.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because there's a part of the story I don't think you know. One of the men who eventually came into the circle was an athletic coach. By then the three childhood friends were successful businessmen. As part of their largesse, they established a program for young boys, a wrestling program.”

Ida gripped the arms of the chair. “Oh my god, they didn't…”

“No, they did not. Pedophilia is something quite different. The program itself was a good thing for the community but there were ripple effects that they couldn't control.”

“Go on,” Ida said, barely above a whisper.

“Marty Wilkins came to see me last week.”

“Marty.” Ida tensed. “Someone did something to Marty?”

“The coach.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, that poor boy. That's why he went away?” she said after a moment.

“Yes. Vinter threatened to blame him if he told anyone and to expose his father and the other two. Marty figured no one would believe him. He'd only end up being run out of town and ruining his father's reputation. Rather than take that chance, he left home.”

The breeze had stiffened, and Cubiak saw that Ida was shivering. “Perhaps we should go inside,” he said.

She didn't protest and walked meekly at his side, his hand at her elbow. In the yellow kitchen he helped her to a chair and brought her a glass of water. At the stove, he put on the kettle for tea. Ida seemed suddenly worn down and fragile; if she was aware of him scouting through the cabinets, she did not protest. He found the pink cup and saucer on a low shelf, and when he set the tea on the table, she reached for it eagerly.

“You added sugar,” she said with a quick uptick to her mouth. “I like sugar in my tea.” She held the cup with two hands and drank until it was half empty. “There's more to this story, isn't there? More I need to know.”

Cubiak had settled in across the table. At her signal, he continued. “Sadly, yes.”

“Coach Vinter?” Ida tightened her brow in concentration and then slumped into the chair. “Roger!” she said and looked to Cubiak for confirmation.

He nodded and she began to cry.

Cubiak slid the napkin holder closer. To give her a private moment, he busied himself fixing more tea. When he sat down again, her eyes were dabbed dry and her ramrod posture had returned. “I knew something was wrong. He was such a good boy.” Ida moistened her lips. “So it was just like with Marty. The same thing all over.”

“Essentially, yes. Vinter told him he thought it ran in the family and drew the line all the way back to Big Guy. Roger knew Terrence and his friends had recruited the coach and he figured they knew what he was doing, so he blamed them.”

“Did they?” She choked on the question.

“I don't think so. There's nothing to indicate that they did. But Roger wanted to punish them. Last fall when he traveled with the team, he sent anonymous notes to the Sturgeon Bay coast guard chief hoping to discredit them and force the cancellation of the ceremony. After he dropped out, he got a job painting the station and stole some of the archive material. He realized he couldn't stop the event but figured he could make it harder for the coast guard to honor Big Guy and the others. The
Herald
article put him over the edge.”

“But you said Roger tried to kill Big Guy. How? What did he do?”

Cubiak told her about the pellets, Roger's change of heart, and Walter's part in the events of the fateful evening. “To understand the whole story, we have to go back to the beginning. To the war. To Charles Tweet. And to Christian Nils. You know Tweet's version, of course.”

Ida turned a ghostly white.

“I went out to Chambers Island yesterday.”

“Of course.” She pulled a napkin from the holder and neatly folded it in half. “Nils knew about them, too.”

“That's what Tweet says.”

“And he didn't approve.” She folded the napkin again.

“No. Very much so, no.”

“They
knew
him. And they left him to die.” Ida tossed the napkin aside and stared out the window at the water. “Why? He was harmless, as innocent of the world's ways as they.”

“War strips away a man's innocence.”

Ida reeled on him. “You sympathize with them?”

“I'm just trying to understand what they did and why. War makes men desperate to survive. They were practically still kids themselves. They panicked and probably in that moment saw Nils as the enemy.”

“They didn't know what he would do!”

“They made assumptions.”

“They killed my husband to protect their own skins.”

“They failed to save him. It's not the same.”

“It is to me.”

“Christian might have died anyway.”

“We'll never know though, will we?” Ida got up and paced the tidy kitchen. “They made themselves out to be heroes. I believed them! Everyone did. I married Terrence partly because I had no options but also because I felt I owed him something for trying to save Christian. All those years.” She made a barking, braying sound. “Then Tweet showed me that horrible photo. I felt as if I had been shat upon.”

“You could have gone to the chief in Sturgeon Bay and told him the truth.”

“I had no proof. You couldn't distinguish faces in the photograph. The only clue was the patched jacket and that wouldn't mean anything to him.”

“It would to Walter.”

“The patched jacket was part of the family folklore, one of those things that gets mentioned around the table at Christmas.” Ida spoke listlessly, as if in a trance. “Except he couldn't have known about the photo.”

“I'm afraid he might have.”

Ida stumbled to the table and dropped into a chair.

“Tweet included the photo in a bunch of pictures he sent to Gary Dotson, tempting fate as it were. Walter went through some of the stuff Roger took. If the photo was in there, he might have seen it and decided to avenge you and his birth father by stuffing the vent with leaves during the Friday night card game.”

Ida frowned. “I thought the squirrels did that.”

“That's what Walter wanted everyone to think.”

“But you said Roger confessed, too.”

“He did. He plugged the vent first but then he changed his mind. Once Walter got him to own up to what he'd done and to what had happened with Vinter, he took matters into his own hands. He already knew about Marty and decided things had gone on far too long. He acted out of guilt and remorse for what happened to Roger.”

Cubiak gave Ida a few moments to take in what he'd told her. Then he added, “But their actions didn't kill the three men. I had my deputy check it out. Filling the outside vent with either Styrofoam or dried leaves doesn't cause enough carbon monoxide to back up into the cabin to be lethal.”

Ida's blue eyes flashed. “Then they're both innocent. They can't be charged with murder or even attempted murder if no one died as a result of what they did.”

“It doesn't work like that in Wisconsin. State law says that if a person intends to kill and takes steps they think are needed, then they've committed the crime, whether anyone dies or not.”

“That's absurd. A good lawyer is all they need.”

“There could be mitigating circumstances. It might also help if the person who actually committed the crime confessed.”

“You've as much as said it was an accident.”

“I said clogging the vent didn't kill them. Something else happened inside the cabin, and I think you know what.”

Ida feigned amusement. “Are you going to tell me another story?”

“I'll give you the condensed version. Tweet showed you a copy of the photo. You recognized the three, and after he told you when and under what circumstances he took the picture, you understood the implication. You may have decided then to take your revenge but you needed to wait for the right occasion. That Friday evening was ideal. The
Herald
article, the drop in temperature, the three men celebrating together and getting drunk and careless. You said you didn't have a key to the cabin. But for the sake of the story, I'm presuming you did and that you let yourself in. You had your rifle with you and confronted them at gunpoint. You told them you'd seen the photo or maybe you even got a copy from Tweet. Let's say you did and that you showed it to them and forced a confession out of them. You knew how the damper worked, so you closed it and turned the heater on high. Then you stood there and watched while they suffered and died. As a final sign of contempt and perhaps to confuse matters, you laid the three jokers on the table. When you were finished, you opened the damper again. On your way out you closed the curtains and then locked the door from the outside with your key, leaving Terrence's key in the lock on the inside.”