Death at Gills Rock (21 page)

“Wrestling was the thing that brought us together. Walter was older than me, and since we didn't go to the same grammar school there wasn't that much chance for us to meet up before that. I was in the public school, just one room for all of us. Walter went to the Catholic school in town. And I had all my farm chores. So we didn't see much of each other until we signed up for the after-school program.

“By my senior year in high school I'd been wrestling for”—he held up a thick hand and counted off the years—“one, two, three, four… six and a half years. And, man, I loved it. Everything about it. All the crazy shit we had to do to come in at weight. I'd swear, I think every week I had to put on that plastic suit and run laps around the gym to sweat out a pound or two. When I couldn't run anymore, I'd have the guys stack a bunch of mats on me, so I'd keep sweating. You know, we'd even go into the bathroom before a weigh-in and spit out saliva to get rid of an extra few ounces. That's how strict things were. Afterward, we'd pig out on burgers and fries, all the greasy shit.”

As he talked, Marty grew increasingly agitated. “It was nuts, but we were in it together and that made it all right. And the coach? He was right there with us. Pumping us up, telling us how special we were. Making us feel like we could take on the world.”

Suddenly, Marty hunched over, silent again. “Right,” he said. He sat up and swiped at his mouth. “I turned eighteen that first semester senior year, beginning of November.” He gave Cubiak a meaningful look. “You know what that means?”

“You were of legal age.”

“Right. Old enough to buy a beer. Old enough to be drafted.”

“And old enough to be a consenting adult.” The comment came out before Cubiak had a chance to consider the implications.

“Yeah. That, too.”

The cabin filled with a heavy, sad silence.

“Who was it?” Cubiak said finally.

Several minutes passed. Marty squirmed as if both the cold and the truth were penetrating through the layers of clothing and emotional denial he wore. “The coach. Bill Vinter.”

Marty's right heel began to thump against the floor. He clamped his hand on his knee, holding it down, and worked his mouth as if rehearsing what to say next. “You have to understand that Vinter
was
the program. He'd shaped it from nothing and then moved up to the school with it. Sure, we all worked hard for the individual glory and the team, but really, we worked for him. For that word of praise, that pat on the back. His approval meant everything, and suddenly it all turned to shit.”

His face etched with misery, Marty glanced at Cubiak and then trained his eyes on the floor. “I never saw it coming. Once a month or so Vinter would have the team over to his house for pizza and movies. His wife was always around, his kids, too. Senior year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, he invited me over to talk about new strategies for the team, and I didn't think anything of it. No one else was home, but that didn't bother me. It was late afternoon and he had all this food laid out. Not just leftovers, fancy stuff I didn't even know the name of. We talked wrestling and he started pouring me beers, one after the other. I was no stranger to drinking but it was a six-pack, maybe more. I don't know how much.”

Marty pressed his fist to his mouth, as if trying to keep from saying more. After a moment, he gave up and went on. “I must have blacked out because when I woke up, it was light again. I was undressed and lying next to Vinter in his king-size bed. Funny how at first the bed was the only thing that registered. I'd never even seen one like that. Then it hit me. The coach was naked, too. I didn't know what he'd done. What I'd done! He must have put something in the beer. I crawled out of the bed and started to get dressed. Vinter woke up and started clapping. Thanked me for a real good time. I felt all crazy. I wanted to kill him but I couldn't move. I started yelling at him. He got up and shoved me into a chair. Said if I had any funny ideas about telling anyone what we'd done—not what he'd done to me, but what
we'd
done—that he'd blow the whistle on my father and Big Guy and Eric and tell everyone how'd I'd been coming on to him all year.

“I didn't understand half of what he was saying. Later, it hit me, what he'd meant. He'd ruin me; he'd ruin everyone.”

Marty fell back against the bulwark and looked at Cubiak. “I'd no idea about my dad and his friends. The three of them grew up together, you know. I always thought that was why they spent so much time hanging out with each other. Childhood friends who'd never outgrown their childhoods. I didn't know what to do, Sheriff. I loved my father, and all of a sudden I couldn't look him in eye. I didn't know who the fuck he was! I was so confused, but I knew I couldn't hurt him. I couldn't let Vinter say those things, even if they were true.

“On Monday, I quit the team. But it was hard even to walk into the building. I kept replaying all those years when the bastard had his hands on me—that's what a wrestling coach does, isn't it?—and then I started imagining what had been going through his mind, what he'd really been after. Freaked me out. I couldn't focus on school. Started cutting classes. Drinking, a lot. All that shit people say happens is true. I kept wondering
Why me?
What was wrong with me? What had I done? Like being a kid all over again thinking everything's your fault.

“After Christmas break, I dropped out and enlisted in the navy. Did one tour in Hawaii then re-upped and was sent to Nam. Fucking nightmare but it finally made me forget. After that I joined the merchant marine and went as far away as I could. Stayed away, too.”

“If you were drugged and coerced, it was a criminal offense.”

“Yeah, but his word against mine.”

“You never told anyone?”

Marty reared to his full height. “I couldn't take that chance. And who would have believed me? Coach Bill was like some kind of god to people on the peninsula. Like I said, his word against mine, and I'd had a couple run-ins with him earlier in the season. No, I didn't tell anyone.”

“Not even Walter?”

“Not then. I hadn't seen Walter in a while. He'd gotten married and moved to Sturgeon Bay. I'd heard things weren't going really well and didn't want to bother him with my problems. My first time back, maybe ten years later, I tried telling him but he wouldn't listen. Said I was nuts.”

The boat rocked beneath them.

“Wind's shifting,” Marty said.

Cubiak pictured monster waves forming on the bay. “Maybe we should go back.”

Marty muttered something but didn't move, and Cubiak knew the man had more to say. His only option was to wait, bad weather or not.

The sheriff managed to get the last two beers from the cooler. He handed one to Marty and cracked the other for himself.

“Off duty, Chief ?”

“Thirsty.” The beer was icy cold and nearly tasteless. “Too bad you didn't get back to town for the funeral,” Cubiak said, fishing for something that would get Marty going again.

“Oh, I was here. I just didn't go in for the service.”

“You got the message in time?”

“Yeah. I was working a rig off the Texas coast.”

“Your mother thought you were halfway around the world.”

Marty took a swallow of beer and set the can between his boots.

“I didn't see you anywhere around.”

“Nobody did. I didn't want to be seen. Camped out on the boat. The morning of the funeral, I took it up the bay side and beached it on the stretch of rocks near the park.”

The cove with the black rocks, near the path to the cabin, Cubiak thought. “Why not go to the funeral if you were there in time? At least for your mother's sake. Or Walter's.”

“I don't know. Just couldn't bring myself to, I guess. All that pomp and circumstance.”

Marty pulled at the corners of his mouth and then settled his gaze on Cubiak.

“There's something else. Something from when I was a kid. I'd pretty much forgotten about it, but just being here again… well, there it was staring me in the face.”

Cubiak stayed silent. Too many words from him might derail Marty.

“May not mean anything. It was all a long time ago. But during the funeral, I went into town. Figured what the hell, why not, I was there and anyone who knew me well enough to recognize me after all this time would be at the church. Anyone else would think me a stranger. Place's changed a lot, especially with the ferry dock being moved. I didn't know about that. More new houses than I would have thought. And a war memorial down by the marina. Nothing fancy, a pillar with names of the guys from Gills Rock that had been killed in all the wars up till now.”

Cubiak nodded. He'd seen the obelisk.

“You heard of Christian Nils? His name's there, too. Nils, they called him. Walter's real dad. You know, he died before Walter was even born.”

“I know.”

Marty snagged his beer and guzzled. “Like I said, all this happened a long time ago. I was seven, maybe eight, when I sent off a stack of cereal box tops for membership in a national adventure club. There was a form that had to be sent in; it looked real official so when I filled it out I used my real name, Jasper Martin Wilkins. In a couple weeks, a big manila envelope came in the mail, addressed to Jasper Wilkins. I thought it was for me and ripped it open.

“There was an old photo inside. The picture was pretty grainy but I knew it was my father and the other two, Huntsman and Swenson. They were in uniform so it had to be during the war and they were standing in this boat, looking up at whoever was holding the camera. There were half a dozen soldiers behind them, too, huddled on benches. There was a note with the photo: ‘Where is he?' it said.

“I was in the kitchen looking at the picture when my dad walked in. ‘What's that?' he said, and I suddenly realized that it was his mail, not mine. When I gave it to him he went all white, like he'd seen a ghost. Scared me to see him like that. Then, like remembering I was there, he tried to act real casual. ‘Just a joke from an old service buddy. Don't mean nothing.' He shoved the picture and the note back into the envelope and threw it in the trash. Told me go out and do my chores. When I finished, I came back inside and looked—I was curious. But the envelope was gone.

“My prize came a couple days later, a cheap piece of junk, not at all what I expected. I threw it away and forgot all about it and the photo until the other day. Seeing Nils's name again triggered something in my head. Brain's funny that way, letting things get away on you, stuff you don't understand or want to think about.”

The wind rose and something banged on the foredeck.

“You see a lot moving around the world the way I do. After a while, things I didn't understand as a kid started to make sense. The Rec Room, for one, the fact that there was often a fourth man hanging out with my father and the other two. Sometimes it was Vinter.

“So when did this start? I wondered. What if there'd been a fourth man before the coach? And what if that man had been Christian Nils, and something went wrong between them? You know the unofficial coast guard slogan?” Marty sat up and intoned solemnly: “‘You've got to go out but you don't have to come back.' You know what that means: you answer the call no matter what, with no regard for your own safety.”

“Like when they tried to save Nils.”

Marty tried to cross one leg over the other but gave up and planted both feet back on the floorboards. “That was the story after the war when they came home. They were the local heroes who risked their lives trying to save their friend. And I liked that. I liked that my dad was a war hero. And Big Guy? He married Nils's widow, making himself even more of a hero. Everyone here bought into their version of what happened. Claimed they couldn't bring him back because there wasn't room in the boat. But that's just it—the boat wasn't full. Not in that photo. What if the
he
in the note was Nils? What if they decided he didn't have to come back?”

Cold as he was, Cubiak felt a deeper chill. “You don't know that the note was about Nils.”

“I don't know that it wasn't.”

“You don't even know when the picture was taken.”

Marty cracked his knuckles. “Sure I do. The army had a reporter named Charles Tweet from
Stars and Stripes
documenting the campaign. It was in the
Herald
toward the end of that story about the three of them. He was probably the one who took the picture. Who else would be out there with a camera?”

Cubiak swore to himself. How could he have missed that?

“That's why I didn't go into the church for the funeral. I couldn't stand the phoniness of it all.”

“If you're right.”

“Even if I'm wrong about Nils, they're still phonies. My father included, God rest his soul.” Marty stood and stretched as much as a big man could in the cramped quarters. “And if I'm right, they're a lot worse than that.”

T
he wind at their back, the two men reached the marina quickly. As Marty tied up the boat, Cubiak tossed the cushions into the hold. “Anyone else know about the photo?” he said.

“No one.”

“You didn't tell Walter?”

“I never told anyone. Who knows? I was just a kid, maybe I imagined the whole thing.”

Or maybe not, Cubiak thought. If the photo did exist and it proved that the three friends had left Nils to die, then the
Stars and Stripes
reporter who took it had a powerful hold over them. Bank records showed that for years Huntsman had been paying fifty-five hundred dollars a month to Great Lakes Office Support and Pepper Ridge Associates. Earlier Cubiak thought these could be fronts for laundering money but maybe they were covers for blackmail payments to the army journalist.

On the dock, Marty handed the key to Cubiak. “I ain't gonna be around for a long time. No use it just sitting here. You can share it with Walter.”