Death in Cold Water (6 page)

Cubiak liked women with a good grip, but that morning he was too focused on the notion of two federal agents on his turf to appreciate it. What makes you think I need your help? the sheriff wanted to say. Instead, he kept them waiting a minute more than necessary before he turned and led them to his office, where he snapped the door shut, pointed them to the chairs facing his desk, and took his place behind it.

“Aren't you supposed to wait for me to call you?” he said once they were settled in.

Watching Moore survey his messy desk with disapproval, Cubiak resisted the urge to sweep the clutter and empty coffee cups into the trash.

“Under usual circumstances, yes, but this case is a bit different,” Moore said in a tone that managed to be both collegial and condescending. “In fact we've been waiting for something like this to happen. You may be aware that over the past several months, there've been threats made against both the Packers and Lambeau Field, all part of a larger pattern focused on the NFL, specifically several Midwest teams. The threats target players, management, and high-profile supporters. People like Gerald Sneider. Homeland Security has been tracking this for months.”

As if a secret signal had been sent to her, Harrison took up the story. “Late last evening, Packers headquarters received a message that could be construed as a ransom note. ‘Pay or he dies.' Since Gerald Sneider's name was on the note, the general manager called the Green Bay police chief, who immediately contacted our local office.”

Cubiak interrupted. “Was the note addressed to Sneider?”

“To be precise, it's a matter of semantics,” Moore said. He gave Cubiak a copy of the message.
Gerald Sneider, Pay or he dies
.

“This could be a message addressed to Sneider.”

“Yes.”

“Meaning pay up or some unknown person dies.”

“Unlikely, but yes.”

Cubiak smiled. “I like to be precise as well,” he said, straightening a stack of reports. “A similar note was left at Sneider's home in Ellison Bay, although without his name on it.” He filled the agents in on the events of the previous evening.

“You left this deputy Rowe with Andrew?” Moore said.

Cubiak nodded. “There's another deputy on his way up now to relieve him.”

“Good.” Moore fiddled with his phone and then looked up. “You understand that while officially Gerald Sneider is considered missing, we are operating on the plausible assumption that he has been kidnapped.”

“Fair enough, but that still doesn't explain your presence here. We don't know if he's been taken over state lines. I'm waiting for confirmation,” Cubiak stated.

Harrison pulled an envelope from her brief case. “This photo taken at 5:12 p.m. yesterday afternoon at the last toll booth in Illinois shows Gerald in his car sitting in the front passenger seat.” She laid a black-and-white print on his desk, proof not only about Sneider's whereabouts but that the FBI had more muscle than a county sheriff. “We can't make out who's driving but it's clear that Sneider's not alone.”

“That doesn't mean he's been abducted or taken across state lines. There's still another exit in Illinois.”

“If this is a terrorist operation, it doesn't matter where he's being held.”

“And you think it is?”

Moore gestured to his assistant and let her pick up from there.

“Most likely,” Harrison said. “Either domestic or foreign, we don't know yet. Point is, we don't want to alarm the public. Word will get out about Sneider being missing soon enough, but we need to keep it at that for now.”

“How much does Andrew know?”

“About the possible terror threat? Hopefully nothing.”

Harrison looked at her watch. “Perhaps you can fill us in on the situation at this end.” The impatience in her voice was hard to miss.

Cubiak ran through the previous night's events and the morning's briefing.

“Plenty left to do, then,” Moore said and smiled at the sheriff, letting Cubiak know he hadn't missed a beat.

Moore looked about his age, Cubiak thought, but had no gray in his ebony hair. Just that morning the sheriff had noticed that the white strands on his head seemed to be multiplying rapidly.

Agent Moore stood. “Let's cooperate, pool resources. We'll start by setting up phone lines. You have an incident room we can use.” It wasn't a question.

“Of course.” Cubiak rose to his feet as well. “Just so we're clear, who's in charge?”

“You, of course.”

“Of course.”

“We'll need to meet with your team.” Moore went on as if the previous question hadn't been asked.

“I told you I've already briefed them.”

“Well, we need to do it again to make sure we're all on the same page. I assume you don't mind.”

Cubiak did mind. If the terrorist threats against the league were coincidental, then the FBI was basing the investigation on the wrong premise and valuable time would be wasted. But with nothing in hand to counter their argument, he had no choice but to keep his peace.

“I've got the state boys up there now checking for prints,” he said.

Moore frowned. “And I bet they came in with their nice bright state police van! You think it's a good idea to let the public know something's going on?”

“The note that was left in Sneider's kitchen said nothing about not notifying the authorities. If need be, we could always say there'd been a burglary at the house.”

Moore shrugged. “I doubt they'll find anything worthwhile anyway,” he said.

B
y late morning, the federal agents had taken over the conference room. Moore and Harrison had set up work stations at the far end of the table, and while the two conferred in a quiet back-and-forth exchange of questions and ideas, a team of technicians worked around them installing secure communication lines and computer hookups.

Cubiak was almost at the door when he caught himself. Feeling a bit like a schoolboy who'd been instructed to check in with his teacher at every step, he backtracked through the center to let the feds know he was on his way to Ellison Bay. Moore was on his cell, listening intently, his brow furrowed. He nodded as much to the sheriff as to the phone. Harrison barely looked up from her laptop. Neither of them seemed to care. And neither told Cubiak what they were up to.

Moore looked like the type that played by the rules. He probably had to be to get anywhere in the department, which had to be a bureaucratic nightmare. But there were sticklers and there were sticklers, and he suspected that Moore was at the pain-in-the-ass end of the spectrum. He wondered how Harrison dealt with her superior, and how his predominantly male team of deputies would respond to her. A man could be too handsome and a woman too good looking, Cubiak thought.

In the lobby, the sheriff pulled down the Free Kittens sign and tossed it on Lisa's desk. “I think we can do with a few less of these,” he said, sounding harsher than he wanted to.

I
n the bright light of day, Cubiak got his first clear look at Gerald Sneider's sprawling mansion. Four stories high and built of massive brown stones, it had the heft of a fortress and the feel of a castle, with a corner turret and gargoyles jutting from the roofline. What a strange, ugly house to build in the middle of the woods, Cubiak thought.

The sheriff turned his attention to the van that was parked at the bottom of the stairs. The field response team from the Wisconsin crime lab went where needed, and more often than not the Door County sheriff had to wait his turn along with law officials from several other jurisdictions. Not so when a situation involved someone with the stature of Gerald Sneider. That morning his request had leapfrogged to the top of the assignment list.

The sheriff recognized the senior investigator, a man he knew only as Jenkins. “Any luck?” Cubiak asked as the team loaded the last of its equipment into the van.

Jenkins tossed the dregs of his coffee into a bush and shook the sheriff 's hand. “We got four sets of prints, each of them found pretty consistently throughout the house. We got a match for Andrew and another from the master bedroom that we figure is the father's. We'll need elimination prints for the cook and the housekeeper to wrap up.”

“What about the breakfast nook?”

“Wiped clean.”

Cubiak told Jenkins about the ransom note. “I didn't want to leave it here overnight. It's waiting for you in Sturgeon Bay. I'll need the usual rundown: paper, paint, and so on.” He hesitated. “As of this morning, the feds are in on this; they may have already taken it.”

The investigator took a long pull on his cigarette.

“Those things'll kill you,” Cubiak said, aware of the half-empty pack on his dash and his only partially successful attempts to quit.

“Yeah, I know.” Jenkins ground the butt under his boot and then dropped the crumpled filter into his pocket. “Place is weird, don't you think? The upstairs, I mean,” he said, glancing back at the house.

Cubiak hadn't seen the second floor yet, but he remembered that Rowe had used the same word to describe it.

“Then there's the locked room on the third floor. The son, Andrew, said it hadn't been used in years and claimed he didn't know where to find the key. I didn't think it was worth breaking down the door to see what's inside, at least not yet, and figured you'd want to sort that out with him. At any rate, we're heading to Algoma from here, so we won't be that far away if you need us back any time soon.”

“Right,” Cubiak replied, but he was wondering about the locked room.

He called his deputy and told him what Jenkins had said. He also told him about Agents Moore and Harrison. “They'll need to talk to you about last night. When you're done with them, I want you to help verify Andrew's movements starting with Sunday morning and going through the day until you stopped him for speeding. Pay special attention to the time he says he spent with the stamp collector.”

The tech team had left the main door ajar. When Cubiak pulled it shut he felt the unnatural, heavy silence of the house close in. Even the soft murmur of the fountain seemed to fade. His crepe soles squeaked on the floor of the grand foyer. Cubiak stopped at the foot of the double staircase and looked up. All families had their secrets. What tales were hidden behind the walls of the private quarters on the second floor?

The sheriff took a thick Oriental runner up one side of the staircase. From the top landing he could see straight through a row of arched windows to the bay beyond. A long hallway extended out in each direction. There were two doors to the right and three to the left. Five rooms, just as Rowe had said the night before. Cubiak started with the east wing.

An engraved gold plaque hung on the door of each room. Cubiak opened the one marked Lawrence of Arabia. No kidding, he thought, as he took in the sand-colored floor, the bed camouflaged as a Bedouin tent, and the silhouettes of camels parading the walls.
Weird
indeed, Cubiak thought. Next door was the tropical green Easter Island room with its replicas of the iconic statues and a four-poster bed made to look like a thatched hut. In Venice, a gondola bed rode atop a floor painted in a wet, rippled effect. The concepts were tacky but executed with an eye on detail and no concern for expense.

As he moved from one bedroom to the next, Cubiak thought of the barren, white-walled room of his youth with its narrow bed and tall, painted dresser, the bookcase filled first with plastic cowboys and model airplanes and then piled with books as he outgrew childish playthings. Growing up, he'd always wished for something bigger and more elaborate but now he wasn't sure.

The first door in the west wing opened to the tapestried and mirrored Versailles boudoir with its gold bidet and collection of porcelain pitchers. Finally, Cubiak came to Kilimanjaro, the master bedroom that had disturbed Rowe. Sneider's enclave was easily twice the size of the others and even more bizarre than the deputy had described. A zebra skin rug spread out in front of the massive fireplace. Ancient tribal weapons filled one wall. Exotic carved masks hung alongside several trophy heads of leopards and lions. On a platform two steps up from the floor, animal skins covered the sprawling bed.

Why were the rooms decorated that way? the sheriff wondered. Were they reminders of places Sneider had visited or fantasy visions of places on his travel bucket list? Or was there some other bizarre meaning behind the elaborate themes? Cubiak couldn't imagine Sneider's wife sleeping in the hunter's paradise. Perhaps Venice had been hers. In which room had Andrew spent his childhood?

The aroma of fresh brewed coffee drew Cubiak downstairs, where he found Andrew and the relief deputy.

“Okay for me to be here? I ran out of beans at my place,” Andrew said as he reached for a third mug. He was dressed in baggy green sweat-pants and shirt and looked more like the estate gardener than the heir.