Death in Cold Water (17 page)

“That your nephew's car?” Cubiak indicated the vehicle with the out-of-state plates.

“Maybe.”

“He here?”

“What if he is? Ain't against the law.”

“No. Just asking. I guess besides helping Leeland in the shed, he's keeping you apprised about things down at the department. Maybe even letting you read what he's got to say about it.”

Ross said nothing.

“I was in the area and wanted to stop by and tell you that I am truly sorry about your brother,” Cubiak said.

Ross started to dip his head in acknowledgment but caught himself and snickered instead. “My brother passed some weeks ago. You're a bit late extending your regards.”

“I am, and I apologize for that,” Cubiak replied. He waited. “You going to ask me in?”

“You know I'm not.” The man stepped forward, forcing the sheriff onto the top step.

“Then we'll talk out here.” Cubiak looked past Ross at the peeling orange paint on the front of the neglected house. Finally he pulled the old camp photo from his inside pocket and held it up, positioning it just far enough away that Ross had to tip forward for a good view.

“Which one are you?” Cubiak asked, pointing to the twin boys.

Ross jerked back as if slapped. His mouth tightened. “Don't matter, does it.”

“Probably not. But that's you and Fred in the photo, isn't it?” Cubiak said as he tucked the picture into his pocket. “You and your brother lived at the Forest Home for nine years. In fact, you were pretty much raised there. From what I've heard, it doesn't sound like a pleasant experience for the charity boys. The summer kids were pampered, but the rest of you were treated like indentured servants, I'm told.”

“We got by.”

“But not an easy life.”

“Like I said, we got by.”

“Never enough to eat. Cold in the winter. Even had to . . .”

Ross interrupted. “I ain't got time to go rehashing the past.”

“What's done is done.”

“Something like that.”

“You have much to do with Gerald Sneider?”

Ross turned but not before Cubiak saw the twitch in his eye.

“You know he's missing,” the sheriff went on.

“Asshole could fall off the earth for all I care,” Ross said and spat over the rail.

“You don't like him.”

With a smirk, the surviving brother swiped his sleeve across his mouth. “Don't like people like him.”

“Because he's rich?”

“Because he's a mean son of a bitch. Deserves whatever comes to him.”

Like you on both counts, Cubiak thought. He let the comment hang in the air for a moment before he continued. “Your sister-in-law says Fred was obsessed by memories of the camp.”

A smear of pink spread beneath the gristle on Ross's jowls. “My sister-in-law doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about.”

“She thinks that something that happened there worked on him enough that eventually it helped kill him.”

Ross sneered. “Now there's a silly woman who should keep her foolish notions to herself. Did she tell you she reads tea leaves, too, and that she believes in the nonsense she sees there? She's just mad that Fred died and I'm still here. My brother and I were twins, but I got all the good stuff, not him. He's the one who grew up fat and sick and died before his time.”

The so-called lucky twin groped for the doorknob. “That it, Sheriff? I got things to do,” Jon said as he yanked the door open and vanished back into the dim interior.

C
ubiak's refrigerator door held a menagerie of animal magnets—deer, fox, raccoon, squirrel, skunk, and beaver. The magnets stood about two inches high and were arranged in a row near the top of the door. They'd been in place when he moved in, and over time he'd pretty much forgotten them.

Driving back from Jon Ross's farm, the sheriff found himself thinking about the magnets. After he let the dog out, he pulled the fox magnet off the refrigerator and used it to pin Sneider's camp snapshot to the door. He wrote the names of the four Ross men on slips of paper and, using the other magnets, arranged them in a circle around the photo: the skunk for Jon, the squirrel for Leeland, the deer for Fred, and the beaver for Steve. On a scrap of paper he scribbled
rope
and put it off to one side with the raccoon. He wrote
bones
on another and taped it underneath the rest.

Then he opened a beer and stepped back to consider the makeshift incident board. Cubiak didn't have much to go on: one tenuous clue, ancient remains that had no apparent connection to anything, the picture of a missing man, the name of a dead man, and three potential suspects.

What now? he wondered.

W
hen Cubiak got back, he'd hoped to find Cate at home. Instead he found a book on the back porch with a note from Bathard that read, “Came across this in the library's local history room. Thought you'd be interested.”

After he finished with the refrigerator magnets, Cubiak picked up the book. It was a history of America's golden age of summer camps.

The phenomenon began in the 1920s, when camps sprang up all across the country, a direct result of the prosperity that swept the nation following World War I. The camps for boys were heralded as an antidote to the affluence and the “overcivilization” that were turning young American men into weaklings, while those for girls were meant to prepare young women for the many new opportunities they would find in the postwar world.

Many of the facilities went bankrupt with the crash of 1929, but as the nation slowly recovered from the economic upheaval, the camp movement was revitalized and went strong until World War II. In the fifties, there was another resurgence that lasted nearly a decade. Sneider's Forest Home opened during that period. The book gave it two full pages. There were photos of boys shooting arrows into targets at the camp archery range and hiking through the camp's thick woods. Ebullient letters home told parents about thrilling moonlight swims, boat races, and javelin-throwing contests. “We're learning to be brave,” a young summer camper exclaimed. The author devoted several laudatory paragraphs to Sneider's charity work but dismissed the needy boys with a few condescending sentences. The sheriff read the single throw-away paragraph a second time and tossed the book aside.

Cubiak had first visited Door County as a charity-case Boy Scout, a distinction, he realized, that gave him something in common with Jon Ross. Had Ross learned to be brave at Sneider's camp, or was that where he learned to be mean?

It was eleven when Cubiak phoned Rowe. “Sorry for the late call, but I want to go ahead with the dive. How soon can you be ready?”

“Tomorrow, if conditions improve. The lake was pretty rough today. But Friday for sure.”

Despite the three beers the sheriff had nursed through the evening, he had difficulty falling asleep, and once he did he dreamt of Cate. She was one of the privileged girls at an exclusive Door County camp for young ladies where he worked in the kitchen. While Cate and the other girls dined in a spacious room lit by chandeliers, he sat on a stool in a gloomy narrow room surrounded by a high concrete wall and peeled buckets of potatoes. Only a dream but not that far removed from their realities.

T
he high-pitched screech of a seagull in distress rattled Cubiak awake. He could ignore his several alarms when he remembered to set them but not the bird's urgent and prolonged squall. The bed was empty and the room cold. When he'd turned down the heat the night before, he'd forgotten to toss the quilt on top of the thin wool blanket that he and Cate had been using. Trying not to think about where she might be, Cubiak rubbed his hands warm and listened to the raucous bird. There are those who would take the shrieking as an omen, but he didn't believe in such things.

Eventually the bird quieted, and Cubiak made his way to the kitchen. From the window he checked the weather. Beneath a red sky, a ridge of black clouds blotted the horizon, and sharp, short waves churned the lake. The sheriff texted Rowe:
OK today?
The reply was immediate and what he expected.
Too rough
.

Tomorrow, then, Cubiak thought, as he opened the door for Butch. Seeing his breath crystallize in the cold air, the sheriff remembered that the weatherman had predicted plummeting nighttime temperatures. A record low, the forecaster had said. Had the kidnappers paid attention to the forecast? he wondered. If Sneider was being held outdoors or in an unheated room, they might be in a race against time.

While Butch whined at the door to be let in, Cubiak studied the refrigerator door. He hoped his array of possible clues would inspire some new insight, but he came away feeling at even more of a loss on how to connect the bits to each other.

In a nod to the cold weather, Cubiak cooked oatmeal, drank an extra cup of coffee, and dug through the hall closet for his winter jacket. He skipped his morning run and headed to the office. Maybe today he'd get there before the feds.

The sheriff was turning into his spot when another vehicle came up behind him. He hoped it was Rowe coming in early, but no such luck. Wrong car, wrong plates. The morning sun reflected off the tinted windows, making it impossible for him to see the driver, but this early he figured it was Moore. He seemed the type to be up at dawn. As Cubiak stepped from the jeep, the front door of the other car swung open, and a familiar pair of shiny black shoes hit the pavement. But they were heels, not wingtips.

“Morning, Sheriff,” Agent Harrison said. She smiled at him, bright-eyed and uncharacteristically chipper. “Finished your run early?”

Cubiak grunted, miffed that the feds were aware of his routine. Suddenly he wished he had gone for a run that morning and not wimped out because of the cold. Harrison was bare legged and hatless. Her only shield against the weather was a fringed plaid shawl wrapped tightly around her ubiquitous suit coat. Cubiak unzipped his jacket.

“Big day, today. I can feel it in my bones,” the FBI agent said as she got in step alongside the sheriff. “If I'm reading this situation right, and I think I am, the perps will contact Andrew Sneider today and tell him where to make the drop.”

“Right on schedule.”

The sheriff meant to be sarcastic but if Harrison caught his meaning she ignored it.

“Something like that. I'm guessing he'll hear from them by twelve, maybe three,” she said. “They usually don't wait more than a day or two, and it's already Thursday. They're anxious to get hold of the money and be finished with the whole business.”

Oblivious to the icy gusts that had dogged them from the lot, Harrison stopped outside the door. “For your ears only. We've got a couple of people in our sights. Not locals.”

“The Madison link.”

“All indications point in that direction. Quigley's in Green Bay now coordinating efforts with the district office.”

“You think they're holding Sneider somewhere down there?”

“Probably not. They don't shit where they sleep—pardon my language. If anything, they're keeping him ensconced as far away from their home base as possible.”

“So we wait for the signal from Agent Moore and then coordinate our approach.” He saw her look away. “Or we just sit tight while your team closes in.”

Harrison pressed a finger to Cubiak's shirtfront. “You got it.”

The sheriff 's pique ratcheted up and then Harrison turned away, forcing him to follow her into the lobby. “We've got trained officers and resources . . . ,” he said. Cubiak was about to go on, arguing for greater involvement, when he noticed a man with a mangy dog at the reception desk. The man was waving his arms and demanding to see the sheriff, while Lisa was trying to lower a bowl of water to the floor. In her condition, this was not an easy maneuver.

“Jesus,” the sheriff said, muttering under his breath.

Harrison smirked and uttered a quip about lost animals when the man turned and started hurrying toward them, dragging the dog along.

As Harrison clicked down the hall away from the lobby, Cubiak waited.

“Sheriff. Bob Franklin.” The man held out his hand.

“This isn't the animal rescue society,” Cubiak said curtly.

“I know, of course not. But this here's Verne Pickler's dog. I found her tied up by the canal. Hungry and thirsty. Wet, too. Looks to me like she's been there a couple of days.”

“Who's Verne Pickler?”

Franklin rubbed his skull and tottered unsteadily.

Was the man drunk? Annoyed, the sheriff went on. “Maybe Verne forgot to come back for her. Why don't you go ask him? Better yet, I'll have my assistant call him. You got his number?” Cubiak glanced toward the desk but Lisa wasn't there. That was unlike her to disappear without a word. Was she okay?

“I did call him,” Franklin replied, suddenly composed. “And I went over to his house, too, but he wasn't home. You don't understand, Sheriff. Verne's a real animal lover. He'd never leave Maize like that.”