Death Stalks Door County (12 page)

C
ubiak found Beck waiting at Jensen Station. His hair was mussed and his clothes had a slept-in look. “We need to talk,” he said, pushing away from the Mercedes and steering the ranger into a stand of maples behind the garage.

“The day Ben Macklin died, he hooked up with an old drunk named Buddy Entwhistle. You know who he is?” Beck's tone was low key but infused with a hard-to-miss undercurrent of urgency. He didn't wait for an answer. “Doesn't matter. The two were drinking at Pechta's for a couple, two-three hours before Macklin's boat blew up. Later, Entwhistle told Amelia that Benny said there were two people on Falcon Tower the morning of the business with Wisby.”

Macklin had been out fishing, Beck explained, and was heading home after selling his haul when he'd seen them. Beck glanced around, making sure he hadn't been overheard. “Well?” he said finally.

Cubiak conjured up the map he'd noticed at Pechta's the night of Macklin's unofficial wake. Could he have been right? “Well, what?” he said.

Beck scoffed. “You're a real dick, you know that? Anyways, Entwhistle tells Amelia, and Amelia passes the info on to Halverson. Not that I think two drunks ever say anything much worth repeating, but according to Entwhistle, Macklin thought they was both fucking nuts. Here's a nasty-looking set of clouds rolling in and these two dopes are up there. One on top, waving like all get out, and the other coming up the stairs.”

He pressed two fingers to the ranger's shirt.

“Remember, this was the day the kid flew off the tower. Leo thinks this could mean maybe Wisby didn't jump but was pushed. I still say he slipped and fell. Heavy dew made the wood treacherous. He climbed the railing to show off, lost his balance, and tumbled off. So what if there was a friend up there with him? The friend got scared and ran away.”

Problem was, Beck went on, Entwhistle was nowhere to be found and it wouldn't do to have him pop up and start blathering some cockeyed version of the story. “Most likely he's sleeping off another binge in some hidey-hole no one knows about. Ah fuck, it probably doesn't mean a thing. Amelia's been known to tie one on occasionally, too. She may have gotten the whole story ass-backward.”

Another uneasy silence sprang up. Beck waited as long as he could and then went on.

“I just found all this out and figured it should be looked into.” He pretended an easy, confident air as if the story was little more than a misunderstanding between friends that could easily be resolved.

“What matters is finding out what really happened to Wisby on the tower.” And the rest, too, Beck added after a pause. Halverson's been looking into it, he said, but besides arresting Petey, the sheriff hadn't come up with anything solid. “He's too stupid to find his own asshole with two hands.” Beck was fidgeting again. “I need someone I can rely on to check out Entwhistle's story,” he said as he raked his fingers through his silver mane.

Cubiak laughed. “And you're asking me? Halverson would like nothing better than to prove that I had something to do with Wisby falling from the tower, and you want me to investigate how the kid died?”

“Leo's an idiot. If you were going to go after anyone it wouldn't have been the younger brother.”

“You got that right,” Cubiak said. Given half the chance, he would have killed the entire family. “Why don't you call the governor? Ask him to send in the National Guard.”

“I don't want any outsiders involved.”

Cubiak snickered. Amid the cozy peninsula crowd, he was the consummate outsider.

“You know, Dave,” Beck went on quietly, “I've got friends in the Windy City and have learned so many interesting things about you. The wife, the kid. Bad luck. My sympathies. But then going off the deep end like you did. All those messy details. And people will talk.

“There'd be plenty of sympathy for you, at first. But before long people would start wondering. Maybe you decided to get your revenge on the Wisby family any way you could. Maybe you found out the younger kid came up here and that's the only reason you even took this fucking job. That happens, people start thinking like that, and you become a liability, bad for business. A persona non grata.”

“You threatening my job?”

“I'm trying to protect your job.” Beck paused. “It would be unofficial, of course. Leo is the sheriff by rights. You'd be freelance, a consultant answerable directly to me.”

Squares of sunlight pierced the bower and blinked like fireflies amidst the fluttering branches and whorls of fresh green shoots. “If I won't?”

“Then it's adiós.”

Cubiak flexed the fingers on his bandaged hand. Tension along the cut meant it was healing. He couldn't let Beck fire him. He'd made a mess of everything. He'd lost his family, his job, his home. The only thing that he had to hold onto was his promise to Malcolm. It was what kept him going, and to keep his word, he had to keep his job for another few months, even if that meant going through the motions of cooperating with Beck.

“I'll do it,” Cubiak said finally. “But just so you know, I'm not doing it for any of the reasons you think.”

“Yeah, well, I don't give a damn why you're doing it.” Beck juggled his keys. “Entwhistle has a room somewhere in Ephraim. You can start there. Come on, I'll give you ride.”

“I can get myself into town.”

“Not in this thing you can't.” Beck kicked the right rear tire of the jeep as they walked past. “Flat as a smashed nickel. You must have picked up a nail on your way back.”

Cubiak cursed under his breath. There was only one working jack between the two park vehicles and the last place he'd seen it was in the rear of Otto's truck. “Give me a minute to change, anyway.”

“Don't bother. The uniform makes you look official.”

“Yeah? And what's a park ranger doing in town looking for one of the local lowlifes?”

“You'll think of something. Now, you coming or not?”

“What about the park? I've got work I'm supposed to do today.”

“Don't worry about that. I'll take care of it. Otto can find someone else to babysit the campers.”

Fine and fuck you, Cubiak thought, as he got in the Mercedes and slammed the door.

U
nder a cloudless sky, the bay at Ephraim assumed a blue tint of breath-taking intensity. In the calm and near perfect conditions, a flotilla of sailboats, kayaks, and one lone canoe was on the water. When the canoe disappeared around an outcropping of rocks, Cubiak stepped off the dock. He didn't like the way Beck had manipulated the meeting the previous afternoon and had no intention of helping him find Entwhistle. He'd hang around town for a couple hours and then say he hadn't had any luck.

Up and down the narrow waterfront, artists and vendors were setting up their stands, hoping to get a jump on business. Outside the Village Hall, volunteers hammered together craft booths where pioneer skills would be demonstrated throughout the five-day fest. Tourists wandered the narrow streets, inhaling the aroma of brats, grilled onions, and popcorn.

At the entertainment stage, Cubiak watched the Bay City Cloggers' rehearsal. The men wore white shirts and sky blue pants; their partners were dressed in white blouses and skirts that did little to flatter their soft, middle-aged frames. Faces furrowed in serious concentration, the cloggers focused on their leader, a plump, gleeful woman with red starched hair and fleshy arms. When she let loose with a shrill hoot, the dancers slammed their steel-cleated shoes into the wooden platform in an ear-splitting crash. A group of onlookers roared its approval and hand-clapped in time.

As the cacophonous din drew more people, the ranger walked away.

The laughter and happy chatter that suffused the village were an affront to Cubiak. Every family reminded him of what he had lost. Every couple reinforced the gnawing emptiness inside. He wandered aimlessly, occasionally nipping at the bottle tucked in his pants pocket. In a sea of determined revelers, he was a piece of floating debris, a solitary lost and despondent soul. He had felt that way before. When Lauren and Alexis died, his friends, the other cops and their wives, tried to console him. But they, too, felt defeated and helpless. Nothing they said comforted him. Nothing they did lightened the burden or eased the pain. Nothing assuaged the guilt.

C
ounseling hadn't helped either.

Session one
.

Therapist: “How are you holding up?”

Patient: “Fine.”

“Problems at work?”

“No.”

“Tell me about your dreams.”

“I don't dream.” He had nightmares. Cubiak knew he was playing word games and didn't care. The therapist trained his sad brown eyes on Cubiak, who in turn studied the psychologist's soft Italian loafers and muted argyle socks.

Session two
.

Therapist: “What would you like to talk about?”

Patient: [
Shrug
.]

The therapist didn't work hard to disguise his impatience. Halfway through the second appointment, Cubiak stood up, thanked him, and walked out. Stone faced. Emotions pummeled into a thimble, ingested whole. Alone. Alone with his guilt. He sped recklessly down dimly lit side streets until he reached the shabby neighborhood tavern where his father's ghost waited. “Ah, now you know,” Papa uttered in grim satisfaction as his son inhaled a triple shot of vodka and ordered another.

H
e had to accept and move on. Intellectually, Cubiak knew this was true. But emotionally, he couldn't. He tried, but every attempt failed. Eventually he tired of the angry inner voice and turned a deaf ear to the ranting. In denial he found some relief, and for a long time he convinced himself he had dealt with the loss. But he hadn't bargained for the enduring pain and the relentless ache that became his constant companions.

His work suffered. He skipped shifts or showed up intoxicated. Pressured by his superiors, he eventually agreed to resign. Though he was several months short of being fully vested, police officials made helpful accommodations that resolved the issue in his favor and allowed him to leave the force with a substantial lump sum. The money could have paid off the house. Instead, it bought boatloads of vodka. He clambered on board, capsized, and lost everything, except the pain and guilt that were seared into his heart.

In the bright sunlight of a Door County afternoon, Cubiak blinked and remembered the day his world disintegrated, the day his blind stupidity prevented him from keeping his word and sent his wife and daughter off by themselves to endure death by battering.

H
ey, Sarge, what
is
that
smell
. Man, that's
terrible
.”

Cubiak chuckled.

“
What you laughing at?
”

“Nothing.”

“Man sitting in a
frying pan
getting
poached
and
laughing while it's happening
is either going crazy or he's laughing at
something
.”

Cubiak appraised his reflection in his partner's mirrored sunglasses. “I'm laughing at you. Not at you. With you,” he said. “It's the way you talk.”

A Bible-thumping, hand-clapping Pentecostal who took not the Lord's name in vain, who persisted, even in hell's most abominable holes on earth, to keep his language, his mind, and his soul pure, Malcolm spoke only in italics.

“Oh,
that
.”

“Yeah.”

“Well all
right
. Least you's laughing at
something
.” The temperature in the stakeout car jumped up a notch as a rough-edged, desertlike breeze swirled the stink past Malcolm again. “
So?
”

“It's a dead skunk. Probably killed by a stray dog. Or a stray bullet.”

“
Here?
We are sitting in the
middle of Chicago
and you're telling me there's skunks around
here
?”

“There's all kinds of animals in the city.” Cubiak glanced back to the smeared windshield and the local drug house under their surveillance. “You're just too used to dealing with the two-legged variety.”

Malcolm started to close the car window and then reconsidered. With the sun frying the blotched roof of the rusty black Mustang, the heat inside the car might be more oppressive than any odor. He slumped farther into the driver's seat. They were one of several dozen undercover police teams that, operating under the extra precaution of radio silence, were scattered across the tattered Lawndale neighborhood in the mayor's latest assault on narcotics. These much ballyhooed crackdowns came as regularly as local elections. The downtown spin doctors had dubbed this one “Operation Clean Sweep.” So far, lots of brooms, very little sweep.

Cubiak worked his shoulders. Sweat spread a delicate, liquid spider-web down his back. He momentarily projected himself into a cool shower and fancied a cold beer in hand. Or ice cream. He squinted down the street. It wasn't a pleasant vista. They were in deep on the West Side, an area torched during the King riots and then left to wither in slow decay. There were four buildings on the entire block. Three were vacant and in danger of imploding where entire sections of masonry had been worked loose and removed. One was a rundown tenement, a lifeless facade save for a torn, yellowed sheet in an open second-floor window. From inside, a high-pitched, grating Motown refrain boomed into the street.