Death in Cold Water (29 page)

“Oh, yeah. But that was one time it was worth it. Andrew was just like his father, always acting like he was better than us, and it felt good to cut him down to size.”

“I see.” Cubiak made a show of cleaning his glasses and then adjusting them on his face. He looked at the suspect. “Did you ever get to know any of the summer kids?”

“Naw. They stuck with each other.”

“What about the boys who lived there?”

“Not much.”

“What about the boys in the boat? I need to know everything you can tell me about them.”

“There's nothing to tell.”

“The kid you called Chester, did he have a last name?”

“None I ever heard.”

“You know where he was from?”

“He talked about his folks losing their farm but hell, that happened to a lot of us. That's why some of us were there.”

“And the others. Did you know their names?”

“Just one, Tommie. The other two were new boys, barely there a couple of days. I don't remember who they were.”

“Ages?”

Ross shook his head. “We were all just kids.”

“Anything else? Injuries, for example.”

Ross snickered. “There were always enough bruises to go around. Prick made sure of that. I got a nasty scar from boiling water.” He rolled up his sleeve to display a streak of gnarled skin that ran from his wrist to his elbow.

“What about broken bones?”

“Naw, not as I can recall. No, wait, come to think of it, Chester broke his arm the summer before. He was always complaining about how itchy it was inside the cast.”

“Which arm did he break?”

“Hell if I remember. Why you asking me all this?”

“Because I want to find out who they were.”

Ross straightened in his chair. “You can do that?”

“It's a long shot, but we can try.”

“What happens if you do?”

Cubiak hesitated. He thought the term
closure
was overused but felt there were still occasions when the concept if not the word fit and this seemed to be one of them. “Then the people who knew those kids and who have been left wondering for years what happened to them will have answers.”

A
t the hospital Verne Pickler was arguing with the attending doctor, who wanted to keep him another night for observation.

“Tell the doc, I got a dog to take care of,” Pickler urged Cubiak, who'd just entered the room.

“I'm not concerned about your dog,” the physician said.

“Well, I am,” Pickler said.

Eventually he prevailed, and the sheriff drove him home.

Pickler seemed annoyed when Cubiak followed him into the house. “I already told the FBI everything that happened,” he said after he'd fed Maize and was settled in his easy chair with the dog at his side.

“I read your statement. But I'm more interested in things that happened when you worked at Sneider's camp.”

“Ah.” Pickler looked down and scratched Maize's head. “That was a long time ago.”

Cubiak held out a photo of the bones in the boat. “These are not the kinds of things you forget.”

Pickler started and stared at the picture but said nothing. Cubiak let the silence settle around them.

Finally Pickler wet his lips. “I figured it would come to this one day,” he said.

Speaking slowly, as if pulling the memories from a dark corner of the past, the former camp director at Gerald Sneider's Forest Home for Orphaned and Needy Boys told the sheriff what happened on the night the four boys drowned. His account corroborated Jon Ross's version of events.

“And no one tried to save them?”

Pickler brushed something from his eye. “That's not true. Once the storm got real bad, I wanted to go out there and bring them in but Sneider wouldn't let me. He said he needed me, but the boys, well, it didn't matter what happened to them. They were just throwaways. Their families didn't care about them so why should I risk my life trying to save them?”

“And for all these years, you've said nothing.”

Pickler offered a wan smile. “Who'd believe me, Sheriff? The next morning I went and looked for the boat but it was gone, and I figured the currents pulled it into the lake. I had no proof about what Sneider had done. It was just my word against him, and I was nobody.”

“The boys at the camp would have backed you up,” Cubiak said.

“It wouldn't have mattered none. They were nobodies, too. Like me.”

The sheriff knew that what Pickler said was true. “Instead, you punished yourself,” he said kindly.

Pickler flinched and lowered his head. “I didn't know what else to do.”

W
hen he finished with Pickler, Cubiak drove back to the hospital. Visiting hours were over, but the nurse at the desk recognized him and waved him through.

“Room three-twelve,” she said.

Lisa was sitting up against a battery of pillows, an unopened book in her hands. She looked tired but smiled when she saw Cubiak.

“I come not bearing gifts,” Cubiak said with a nod toward the plants and flower bouquets that lined the windowsill and covered the small dresser. “Only good wishes. Are you okay?”

“Yes. And I'm glad you came. I've heard . . .”

Cubiak took her hand. “You don't need to bother with any of that, not now. There'll be plenty of time later to catch up. I understand it's a girl.”

“Elizabeth Anne. For our moms. We're calling her Libby. You can see her on your way out. The nursery is right down the hall.”

All babies look alike, Cubiak told himself when he left Lisa's room. He could wait to see Libby. But before he realized, he was standing outside the nursery window. Libby was asleep in the first bed. Her delicate tulip lips were pressed in an almost smile and her forehead softly crinkled beneath the tiny striped cap on her head. With her infant body swaddled in a white cotton blanket, she lay before him and the world so innocent and helpless, so like Alexis, he thought.

There were three other beds behind the nursery window, four new babies in all. Life in all its mysteriousness and sweetness renewing itself.

Who knew what the future would bring these children. Surely they deserved a better fate than that meted out to the hapless boys in the doomed rowboat or to so many other children who suffered at the hands of uncaring adults. Life could be wonderful and just as easily immensely cruel. Were guardian angels real? the sheriff wondered. Looking at the infants, Cubiak said a prayer that the protectors of these children would do their jobs well.

Then he pressed a hand to the glass, by way of offering his own blessing.

D
awn broke dull and gray over the peninsula. The low, languid clouds rationed the light allowed to seep through the blinds in Cubiak's bedroom. Uncertain of the time, he lay under the covers and listened to the rhythmic shush of the waves rushing over the table rocks on the un-tamed beach. The sound was hypnotic and, although he'd slept longer than usual, he struggled to keep his eyes open. From the kitchen, there were other sounds, normal Sunday morning sounds: Butch bumping her metal bowl against the baseboard, demanding attention. Cate pouring water into the coffee maker.

The night before, she'd come home with him from the Ross farm, where Cubiak had helped the FBI gather evidence and she had documented more of the crime scene. There'd been no trace of the money, either there or at Fred Ross's house, where Steve had been staying with his mother. Had Jon Ross told the truth? Probably not. The sheriff figured Ross had the money well hidden and was hoping to use it as a bargaining chip down the road.

By the time Cubiak and Cate got back, it was late and they were both wired. They stayed up sharing a bottle of wine and talking, but only about the kidnapping. In the dim morning light, Cubiak remembered how she had curled into him and they'd both fallen asleep, too tired for anything more.

“Cate.” He called her name but there was no answer.

He thought of going into the kitchen and taking her hand and asking her to come back to bed but he didn't. Their relationship had always been complicated, and within the past week it had become even more tangled. Now there were new questions to be answered as well as old issues to be sorted out. He knew that Cate would want to talk first.

But even that important conversation had to wait.

Cubiak wasn't done with Gerald Sneider yet. He still had work to do and it had to be seen to that morning. As the saying went, there'd be hell to pay when he'd finished. Of that, Cubiak was sure. He sighed and closed his eyes. He'd turn forty-six in another month and he was tired.

A
fter a quick run with the dog, Cubiak headed to Sturgeon Bay. The hospital was on a quiet residential street near the edge of the small city. In the subdued light, the sheriff passed down roadways that were empty except for Sunday churchgoers. As he pulled into the hospital parking lot, a line of vehicles, led by the seemingly ubiquitous TV vans, rolled toward the exit. Perfect timing. The exodus signaled the end of the director's press conference, during which she had updated the media on the condition of her headliner patient, Gerald Sneider.

Earlier that morning Cubiak had called for a status report, so he knew what she planned to say to the roomful of reporters.

“Mr. Sneider is making a remarkable recovery, far exceeding my expectations,” the director had told the sheriff. She was a noted internist who'd served on the staffs of prestigious teaching hospitals in Milwaukee and Boston before coming back to her native Door County. “You know, my father knew Mr. Sneider and thought very highly of him. Growing up, I remember listening to so many stories about the man that, for me, it's an honor to have him as a patient.”

“I see,” Cubiak said blandly. How else could he respond? The director would have reason to reconsider her opinion soon enough.

The third-floor nurses' station was overrun with flowers. It was “overflow” from their guest of honor, one of the nurses told him, peering from between two bundles of white calla lilies. “Room three-oh-one,” she said as she stood and cheerfully pointed to the room at the end the hall.

A department deputy lingered outside the door, but at the sight of Cubiak, he snapped to attention and saluted. “Morning, sir. Congratulations, sir.”

The sheriff couldn't help but smile though he shook his head sternly. Rowe's bad habits were taking hold throughout the ranks.

Not bothering to knock, Cubiak entered. The hospital director hadn't exaggerated when she described Sneider's recovery as remarkable. The patient in room 301 was not the shriveled, nearly comatose man Cubiak had pulled from the silo and saved from drowning less than thirty-six hours earlier.

Freshly showered and shaved, his mop of silver hair neatly parted on the side, the aging tycoon reclined against a bank of pillows that had been artfully arranged against the raised hospital bed. No skimpy hospital gown or ordinary fare for “the guest of honor.” Sneider sported a blue silk dressing gown over matching pajamas. A pair of leather slippers rested on the floor alongside the bed. In the corner, an air filtering machine hummed quietly, sucking in dust motes and errant germs. The window ledge and the floor beneath it brimmed with flowers that perfumed the room.

Andrew sat amid the blooms, framed by two large sprays of blood red roses. An ironic touch, thought Cubiak.

He had the feeling he'd interrupted an important conversation. The senior Sneider had been looking at his son expectantly and words seemed to hang in the air, but all that was brushed aside when Cubiak appeared.

“Ah, Sheriff ! The man of the hour. Do come in,” Sneider said, his voice strong and firm.

Cubiak had never heard Sneider speak. After Thursday's phone call, Andrew said his father sounded weak and scared but this was the robust voice of confidence.

Andrew had been right when he said his orphaned father had inherited all the best genes from his unknown parents. In the hospital's artificial light, his gaunt cheeks and the thin blue vein that ran across his forehead stood out, but otherwise he seemed hearty and in good cheer as he held up his hand and beckoned Cubiak closer. “You are a welcome sight for sore eyes. I owe you my life, saving me from that pack of miscreants. If you had been an hour later, even thirty minutes more . . .” The former kidnap victim trailed off, shuddering.

The sheriff stepped over the threshold and pulled the door in, careful to leave it ajar. “I did my job,” he said.

Sneider gave a barking laugh. “Your job! Listen to him, Andy. He did his job, indeed. We need a world full of men who feel that way. No, sir, Sheriff. You did far more than your job.”

As the former kidnap victim talked, his son rose and moved to his side as if trying to add his gratitude to the thanks the old man was proffering. “Yes, indeed, you have proven yourself a man to be reckoned with,” Sneider said. He paused again, and then like a prince judging a man's worth, he added, “A man to be rewarded.”