Death Stalks Door County

 

 

 

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DEATH
STALKS DOOR COUNTY

A DAVE CUBIAK DOOR COUNTY MYSTERY

PATRICIA SKALKA

TERRACE BOOKS

A TRADE IMPRINT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

 

 

Terrace Books
A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor
Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
uwpress.wisc.edu

3 Henrietta Street
London WC2E 8LU, England
eurospanbookstore.com

Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Skalka

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Skalka, Patricia, author.
Death stalks Door County: a Dave Cubiak Door County mystery /
Patricia Skalka.
pages     cm
ISBN 978-0-299-29940-8 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-299-29943-9 (e-book)
1. Door County (Wis.)—Fiction.     I.   Title.
PS3619.K34D43          2014
813´.6—dc23
2013033800

Drawing by Carla-Marie Padvoiskis
Map by Julia Padvoiskis

  For Ray In loving memory

 

 

Door County is real. While I used the peninsula as the framework for the book, I also altered some details and added others to fit the story. The spirit of this majestic place remains unchanged.

H
e ran in the early morning, floating like a specter amid the tall, wet pines of the Wisconsin forest. His thick hair curled from the mist. His lungs burned. His breath stank of beer and cigarettes. At the road, he stopped and swiped his glasses on his baggy sweatshirt. Late June, and the damp, cold spring had yet to give way to summer.

Three months earlier, Dave Cubiak had left Chicago, steering a small rental car north along the Lake Michigan shore, across the Illinois state line, and up two hundred miles to the Door County peninsula. He was forty-two, a former cop undone by the deaths of his wife and daughter, who had been killed in an accident he believed he could have prevented.

The move was supposed to be a fresh start.

Instead, it was a mistake.

Grief stricken, guilt ridden, and often drunk, Cubiak felt like a blot on the tourist landscape, a reclusive misfit among the friendly locals, people who waved even to strangers. He had committed to staying one year and had nine months to go. The time it took to grow a baby, to figure out what next.

Cubiak adjusted his glasses and bent over, his hands on his knees. For a moment, he thought of his mother and felt ashamed. He had failed her; he had failed everyone.

A sharp wail shattered the stillness, and through old habit Cubiak straightened, trying to pinpoint the source. A seagull wheeling over the bay? In his new job as park ranger, he'd sometimes watch the plump birds dive-bombing the water, full of avian bravado. Perhaps the sound had been made by a red fox on the prowl. Or the wind. Silence again. The forest gave away nothing.

He studied the dirt path on the other side of the blacktop. The trail was the quickest route to Jensen Station, where the Peninsula State Park rangers lived and worked, but he was in no hurry to return to his temporary home. The longer he stayed out, the longer he could avoid his querulous boss, Otto Johnson, park superintendent.

Cubiak opted for the road.

Turning left, he plodded through a series of gentle curves. Halfway around the final bend, he stopped. Twenty feet ahead, a bleached red pickup idled alongside the pavement. The ranger squeezed his eyes shut. Too late. He'd taken in everything. The truck with the dented door gaped open. Otto Johnson slumped against a corner of Falcon Tower, and a body sprawled at the park super's feet. Male. Average height. Slim, youthful build. Dark hair. Jeans. Shiny black jacket.

As a homicide detective, Cubiak had been exalted for his ability to absorb the details of a crime scene and to play them back with excruciating clarity. Although his photographic memory failed with the printed page, it performed with camera-like accuracy in the places where people did their dirty deeds. Including the segment of pavement half a block from his house where the battered bodies of his wife and daughter had sprawled in twin pools of blood.

Cubiak forced his eyes open. “Fuck,” he said.

Johnson started and pushed away from the tower. Rain or was it tears glistened on his weathered face. “Looks like some kid took a nose dive off the top.” The park super stuck out his chin as if challenging his new assistant to disagree.

Cubiak said nothing.

“He's cold. I can't find a pulse,” Johnson went on. “You want to check?”

“No.” Damp with sweat, Cubiak shuddered. He didn't need to look any closer. The odd twist to the victim's neck told him enough.

“Maybe you should.”

Cubiak shook his head. He hadn't been near a dead body in two years, not since his family had been killed. “Have you called the sheriff ?”

“Can't. Radio's busted. You'll have to get him from the station.”

C
ubiak climbed into the truck. The pickup wasn't an official departmental vehicle but it was the one the park super insisted on using. The ranger snatched Johnson's cell phone off the seat. The battery was dead. Not that it mattered—it was nearly impossible to get a signal in the park. He tossed the phone down and made a three-point turn. The forest road was deserted. Death pulled the leaden sky lower and peppered the claustrophobic woods with strange whispers of events spinning out of control. Fate was not always kind. A lesson Cubiak knew well.

Away from the tower, the wind came up and swept tendrils of fog across the hood. Squinting into the mist and steering with his knees, Cubiak patted his pockets for a cigarette. He checked twice before realizing he was in his running clothes. Out of habit, he reached toward the dash, but he was in Johnson's vehicle and the superintendent didn't smoke. “Damn.”

At Jensen Station, Cubiak nabbed a half-empty pack from the glove box of his jeep and lit his first of the day, inhaling deeply. The nicotine settled him immediately. He took three long drags, each of them calming him further. When he'd burned down to the filter, he smashed the butt between his fingertips and then stripped it down military style as he walked to the rear door of the former hunting lodge.

The imposing wood and stone refuge had been built by an eccentric millionaire and in its heyday had boasted a ballroom, trophy room, and dining room that could seat thirty comfortably. Indian rugs and portraits of famous chiefs had hung on the walls, and books on Native American lore had filled the third-floor library. Left to the state, the lodge's treasures were replaced with unimaginative bureaucratic trappings and its grand interior reconfigured into a series of cracker-box offices and stingy, utilitarian rooms.

Cubiak followed a warren of dim passages to the rear staircase and took the steps two by two to his room on the second floor. From his closet he unearthed the second of his vices, a quart of vodka. The ranger had neither the money nor the taste for expensive booze. Rotgut, corrosive liquor, the kind favored by his late and not-dearly-departed father, suited him fine. Drinking as punishment. As effective a penance as sackcloth and ashes. Cubiak took a hearty pull and stripped off his wet clothes. The aroma of freshly baked cinnamon rolls rose up from the kitchen. He gagged and swallowed more vodka, trying hard not to blink because the images of the dead man were most vivid when his eyes were closed.