Death in Cold Water (23 page)

Ross frowned. “Why me? The town is crawling with reporters.”

“True enough, but you're the hometown boy. Only seems fair to give you a leg up on the competition.”

Ross bent over his empty glass as if considering the offer. “Do I have a choice?”

Cubiak's quick smile was the only answer he gave.

Ross snorted and grabbed a fistful of popcorn as he slid off the stool. He took a moment to find his balance, then fished a ten from his wallet, tossed the money on the bar, and walked toward the door with Cubiak on his heels.

T
he sheriff was still cold from his morning on the water, but he made the drive to Baileys Harbor with the windows down, hoping the fresh air would help sober up his passenger. When Cubiak pulled up to the marina at the edge of town, Steve Ross looked around in alarm.

“What are we doing here?” he asked.

“Fishing,” Cubiak replied as he cupped Steve's elbow and steered him toward the dock.

Cate and Rowe were waiting alongside the
Speedy Sister
. “You all know each other?” Cubiak asked, and then made introductions.

With the diving gear and Cate's tripods and camera bags on board, they were forced to squeeze into the cockpit, all uncomfortably cozy.

“Where we going?” Steve Ross asked, shivering in his thin jacket. He tried to sound nonchalant but his voice broke.

Cubiak pointed across the bay to the salvage barge that lay in the water like a big brick. “There. Everyone ready?” he said.

Ross stared gloomily ahead. Cate nodded, her face unreadable. If she had questions, they were hidden behind a mask of professionalism. Rowe turned the engine key. Ignoring the No Wake signs posted around the harbor, he roared away from the dock, driving fast the way he liked.

As they bounced over the waves, Ross lost his balance and lurched, first to one side and then to the other. No matter what he did to try and find his equilibrium he was always one movement behind.

“Spent a lot of time on the water, did you?” Cubiak said.

Ross gave him a sharp look, the kind that said water sports were for rich snobs and not the likes of him. It was the same attitude Cubiak would have assumed at one time, but since he'd started sailing with Bathard he'd gained a new respect for the water and for those who worked and played on it.

Balance wasn't an issue for Cate. Oblivious to the roll and bounce of the boat, she stood as if on solid ground and calmly attached a massive telephoto lens to her camera. Cubiak had seen a photo of a young Cate on the deck of her grandfather's two-masted schooner. She'd been born with sea legs.

Waslow waited on the bay. He had the mooring lines ready, and when the
Speedy Sister
came alongside he tossed the lines aboard and quickly secured the boat to the barge. Then he helped transfer people and gear from Rowe's sleek motorboat to his bulky salvage vessel. No doubt, the old man's boat was an odd sight in the idyllic bay. Cubiak wondered who was watching from shore and what they were thinking of the strange congregation he had assembled on the water.

The clouds had pushed down, dimming the light and releasing a cold mist that slowly seeped through hats and jackets, chilling them as they stood on the
Helen of Troy
. His uncle had named the vessel after his wife, who was from East Troy, Rowe had explained. The deputy was right about the barge being nothing much to look at.
Helen of Troy
was a floating workhorse. The deck was twice the length of the cruiser, with a small pilot house at the fore and an assortment of lines and metal bars piled along the back. On the port side, a dual-cabled electric winch was bolted to the deck. Waslow had been hauling rocks for a sea wall, and the cargo had left him and everything on the boat covered with fine white dust.

With the equipment, five people were a crowd on the barge. Milling about, they tried to stay out of each other's way. Cate busied herself with her cameras; Steve paced a circle in one corner while he tried to shake a signal into his phone; Rowe remained uncharacteristically quiet as he suited up. An anxious Cubiak watched the darkening sky.

Only Waslow, who stood at the helm of the clunky craft, was at ease. Glancing back at his passengers, he wore his curiosity openly. Rowe and the diving equipment, well, that went with the territory. But a photographer? And that local boy, Ross, whose father had just died. The sheriff, even. Why were they on board? Cubiak could read the questions in the captain's eyes but said nothing. Along with the rest of them, the old captain would find out soon enough.

The sheriff directed Waslow toward the red flag. When they were ten feet from the marker, the seaman cut the engine and let the barge ride the rolling waves in silence.

“Okay here?” he called to no one in particular.

Cubiak looked to Rowe, who gave the nod for Waslow to drop anchor.

The deputy took another minute to check his gear. When he was ready, the three of them—sheriff, diver, and captain—conferred in hushed tones. This was the first Waslow was hearing of the trapped boat, and he listened quietly as the sheriff explained the boat's discovery and position. Of the three, the salvage captain was the expert in the recovery process and would know how to proceed.

On his first descent, Waslow said, Rowe should try and dislodge the boulders that kept the boat trapped under the ledge. If he couldn't push them away, they'd hook up a cable from the barge and use the winch. After the rocks were moved, Rowe would dive again and hook the barge's two cables to the boat, fore and aft or as close as he could get to those two areas. The winches would do the heavy work, of first tightening the cables and then dragging the boat out from under the ledge. Once the boat was clear, they'd depend on Rowe to evaluate its condition, and they could decide what to do from there. On his third dive, Rowe would either drill the boat full of holes that would drain the water as it was lifted, or he'd attach flotation bladders that would help raise it to the surface.

“All ready to go then?” Cubiak said.

Under the lowering sky, Waslow and Rowe nodded, and then with a minimum of fuss, the deputy went over the side.

As Rowe swam toward the marker, the others quietly formed a line down the side of the barge and watched: Waslow near the bow, then Cubiak, Cate, and finally a reluctant Ross.

No one said a word. Beneath their feet, rising waves slapped against the hull. Overhead, a curious gull circled and screeched. Rowe dropped from sight and no one moved. Moments passed and still they remained staring at the water.

A sharp ugly bleat from Ross's phone broke the spell. Turning quickly, the young man stabbed a hand into his pocket, but almost instantly Cubiak was on him. Before Ross could step away, the sheriff reached past him and knocked his cell to the deck.

Ross dove for the phone but Cubiak got to it first. “It's your cousin,” he said, holding the screen for Ross to see.

“So what?” Ross tried to look unconcerned, but his eyes had narrowed and his skin gone pale.

“We're incommunicado out here,” Cubiak said.

Ross started to protest, then gave an exaggerated shrug. “Whatever.”

The sheriff maneuvered the young man to the stern. “That's hardly the response I'd expect from an eager reporter. In fact, I'd have thought you'd be in contact with your editor and not your cousin. But then again, you're not really on assignment, are you?” Cubiak said, his voice low and hard.

Ross's features tightened.

“You must think you can use this story to leap from writing obits to getting on the news desk.”

“Something like that,” Ross replied and held out his hand.

“Not yet,” Cubiak said, pocketing the phone.

Ross glared. “You can't do that.”

“Try me,” Cubiak said.

A shout from the water made the sheriff step away.

Rowe had surfaced. Moments later he was alongside the barge. The deputy gave a thumbs-up sign. “The boulders are out of the way,” he said.

Waslow turned on the motor that controlled the winch and lowered the first hook into the water. As Rowe grabbed the hook and began swimming it back, the barge captain slowly released the cable, giving the deputy as much line as he needed. Once again, Rowe disappeared beneath the surface.

Fog started coming in.

“I can't shoot much in this,” Cate said.

“Get what you can,” Cubiak said. He watched the marker. Still no sign of Rowe. What was taking so long? Should he postpone the operation?

By the time Rowe returned for the second hook, the fog had thickened. But the deputy brushed aside Cubiak's concerns about the weather. “It doesn't bother me down there. We're okay,” he assured.

Again they waited: Waslow at the winch, the engine idling. Cubiak following the cables into the water. Cate with the camera around her neck. And Steve Ross distancing himself as much as possible.

A shout. It was Rowe calling from the fog. “Now. Go,” he called out.

Waslow reengaged the motor and the gears began to rotate. With a low grinding screech, the teeth of one metal wheel interlocked with those of another and almost imperceptibly, the cables grew taut. When they were fully extended, the barge lurched and Waslow idled the engine, careful to keep the steel lines rigid. The mist momentarily parted, and Cubiak saw Rowe dive and then surface again. Treading water, he circled one hand slowly over his head, a signal to the captain to start the delicate process of dragging the sunken boat closer to the barge.

The sheriff had removed himself from the line of command and left all communication between Waslow and Rowe. Directives and questions, more hand signals going back and forth between the man on the barge and the man in the water. Slow. Fast. Wait. More.

Cubiak squeezed Cate's hand. Her fingers were cold.

“It's not going to be pleasant, is it?” she said, turning so her question went only to him.

“No.” Then, under the angry cry of a seagull, he added, “I'm sorry.”

She gave a quick, resigned smile. “It's okay. It's what I do.”

Suddenly Rowe reappeared. He was nearly at the barge. He pushed the mask back off his face and signaled Waslow to stop.

The deputy looked bewildered. He backstroked away from the barge, pulled the mask back on, and dove again. Moments later, he bobbed back up. Treading water, he pointed at a dark shadow barely beneath the surface. Then he went down again.

Cubiak fell to his knees and grabbed onto the barge's low side wall. Rowe was close enough that the sheriff could see him circling around just beneath the surface.

Suddenly Rowe shot through and tore off his mask. He was ashen.

“Oh, God,” he said, his cry plaintive.

Cubiak leaned forward and stared into the bay. The water was clear but in the dim light all he could see was a low dark shape, a nothing shape really, something more like a telephone pole or a long piece of blackened driftwood than a rowboat. What had Rowe seen that had startled him so?

The sheriff was aware of Cate kneeling beside him with her camera pointed at the water, the shutter clicking.

Behind him, Waslow reengaged the winches. Slowly he reeled in the cables, dragging the salvage boat closer. Rowe remained in the water, shaken but able to monitor and guide the recovery process. When the sunken boat was within a few feet of the barge, he signaled Waslow to start bringing it up.

Cubiak tensed. The small vessel had been underwater for years, decades even. Its planks weakened, the caulk that held them in place had eroded. Waslow was working as carefully as possible, but it was Rowe who seemed to have taken charge. Diving repeatedly, he propelled himself from the bow to the stern of the recovered vessel, bracing the boat with his hands, doing everything he could to guide it safely upward.

At another signal from Rowe, Waslow cut the winch engine. The motor pulsed and then went silent. In the afternoon stillness, the bay was eerily quiet.

For the first time the rowboat was clearly visible.

Alongside the salvage vessel, the little wooden boat appeared especially small and fragile, more like a toy than the real thing. There were no oars and, oddly, no benches, just the shallow hull with its planks blackened with age. In contrast to the dark wood, the bones heaped across the bottom looked startlingly white.

There were more bones than the sheriff could count, and they were more or less arranged in four separate mounds. They were human bones, a fact confirmed by the four skulls that lay among them. Not large. Child size.

Tufts of seaweed clung to the boat, and in the gently undulating water the kelp billowed like gossamer wings ready to carry the victims away from this watery grave.

Cubiak crossed himself. He wanted to turn away but did not. He was certain that they'd found the source of the remains that had been discovered on the beach. The bones had not drifted to shore from a distant shipwreck in the lake. They had floated up from the bottom of the rowboat and been carried the short distance across the bay to the shore.

The sheriff thought of his daughter and how he had cradled her in his arms as she lay dying, never knowing if she was aware of or had gained any comfort from his touch. Whoever these children were, they had died a miserable, terrifying death, the water chilling their flesh and sucking the air from their lungs, with no one but each other to hear their final frightened cries for help.

Had they been passengers on a sinking ship who'd been put in the rowboat and set off from the doomed vessel with the wild hope that they would reach safety? Were they local boys or summer friends who had foolishly rowed out together on a whim, full of their own bravado and confident that no harm would come their way? Or had something far worse prompted this tragedy?

Cate touched his arm. “What do you think happened? Why didn't they jump out and swim to shore?” she asked.

“Maybe they were scared, or they couldn't swim. Or maybe . . .” Cubiak got one of his bad feelings. He looked away. After a moment, he turned back to Cate. “I don't know what happened, but instinct says they'd do everything they could to survive. It's almost as if they were trapped and couldn't get out,” he said.