Death by the Bay Page 11

  Mrs. Fadim hadn’t imagined an intruder.

  In broad daylight, a prowler wouldn’t venture past the house to get to the barn. There had to be a back way. Beyond the boulders and scrub brush on the other far side of the barn stood a thick forest. Fifty yards into the trees, the sheriff came upon an old logging road that was nearly overgrown with weeds. Twin trails of broken stalks showed where a vehicle had driven up the lane and stopped.

  Cubiak walked back toward the barn. From the edge of the tree line, he could make it partway to the hidden door without being seen from the house. If the prowler had come this way, it was his bad luck (Mrs. Fadim had said he) to choose one of the rare times the old woman was in the kitchen facing the back window.

  Or had she been lying in wait? “He’s here again,” she had said. She had sounded angry, as if she knew that someone was up to no good in her barn.

  Given the farm’s remote location, the building could be used as a warehouse for stolen property or as the site for a meth lab. It wouldn’t be the first one Cubiak had discovered in the county. But there were no burn pits or other tell-tale signs. It had to be something else. To find out, he had to get inside. Shooting off the shiny new lock on the silo door was one option, but that would alert the intruder that he had been found out. His only other alternative was to undo the wires on the double doors at the cattle entrance.

  Time and rust had melded the wires together. He couldn’t untwist them by hand so he tried using pliers from the jeep. As he separated the strands, the pliers slipped and the wire pierced the skin between the thumb and index finger on his right hand. He sucked at the blood and worked clumsily with his left. It took him another five minutes to pry away the last bit of wire.

  He pulled the handles but the doors didn’t budge. They were swollen in place. He pulled and kicked at the thick wood slabs until the doors gave way and the cavernous interior opened before him. Like the disemboweled, haunted hold of a sunken ship, the deserted barn carried a cargo of memories and spectral images. History was written in the emptiness of the space. First the cows had disappeared—sold, auctioned off, or shipped to market. Then the tall iron stanchions and drinking cups had been ripped from their moorings and traded for cash, as was the conveyor system that had nudged the manure through the gutters. Every shard of metal had been stripped away and sold in a last desperate attempt to reap a few dollars from the once proud enterprise known as the family farm.

  The air inside was saturated with mold and dust. Cobwebs hung like lace curtains at the long row of windows on either side, filtering the light and casting shadows on the floor where the mice scurried unseen. Water pooled in one corner where the concrete foundation had begun to crumble.

  With his bleeding hand against his mouth, Cubiak walked down the center aisle. Each step left a mark on the detritus of a past that had been created by decades of hard physical work. From dust to dust. The words held not only for humanity but for the fruits of its labor.

  At one point, the sheriff stopped and looked around, puzzled. The barn had appeared bigger from the outside. He kept going, and when he reached the end of the center aisle, he discovered a small door that had been cut into a wall, indicating another room on the other side. The door stuck. He put his shoulder to it and shoved several times before it gave way. The door was low. He ducked to avoid hitting his head and then, once inside, nearly tripped over a bale of hay. The space was cold and damp and even dimmer than the rest of the barn. The only light came from a slit near the ceiling where a ray of sun slipped in beneath the eaves. The narrow beam illuminated the high arched roof and fell like a miniature spotlight on the edge of the loft space beneath it. The scent of dried hay mingled with the ubiquitous musty aroma. But there was another, more familiar smell.

  Coffee.

  Whoever had been inside the barn hadn’t been gone for long. Cubiak swore under his breath. It must have been the intruder driving the black car. If he had gone after it, he would have caught him.

  As the sheriff let his eyes adjust to the dark, the surroundings revealed themselves. The floor was wood. Two dark squares on the side walls were blackout cloths that had been tacked over the windows. He considered removing the fabric and then changed his mind. If he wanted to catch the intruder, he had to cover his trail and leave things in place. Otherwise he risked scaring off the trespasser.

  A sleeping bag was rolled out on the floor near the hay bale that he had almost fallen over. The bag was generic and nondescript, the kind sold in hundreds of stores and on online outlets. The bale itself served as a makeshift table. On it were a pen but no pad, a small battery-powered lantern, and a Styrofoam coffee cup from the truck stop outside of Sturgeon Bay. The cup was not yet completely cold. Someone was camping out in the barn.

  The interloper wasn’t a runaway kid. A runaway wouldn’t have a car, unless it was stolen.

  Who was the intruder and why had he chosen this barn, this farm?

  How long had he been coming there?

  Was he trespassing, as Mrs. Fadim implied, or had she given him permission to use the vacant building? Given her mental condition, it was possible that she had done so and then immediately forgotten. But if the mystery visitor had permission to be there, why didn’t he drive up past the house? Why sneak in from the woods? Unless there was another trail through the pasture that had eluded the sheriff.

  Cubiak scanned the walls with the lantern. The aged wood was pitted, and the discolored surface absorbed the light as he moved across it. There was nothing on the wall behind him or on either of the side walls. Then he held up the lamp and looked across the room.

  “What the hell,” he said.

  Twenty feet in front of him, hundreds of pieces of paper were tacked to the barn wall in a giant collage that snaked across the wooden boards like a long, wide river. Most of the montage was white, but there were splotches of yellow as well. Superimposed on it was a trail of small dark squares and a network of red strings that varied in length and ran in every direction, like vectors that were tracing a path on a map.

  The whole business was bizarre.

  Throughout Door County, farmers hung brightly colored wood designs on barn exteriors as part of a statewide barn quilt project. For a moment the sheriff wondered if the installation in Mrs. Fadim’s barn was part of a partner initiative, an indoor project that hadn’t been made public yet. New art installed inside old barns. For all he knew, there were dozens of such projects in progress throughout the area.

  It was also possible that the collage wasn’t connected to an official program but was an example of a new trend. Weren’t kids pulling all manner of crazy stunts and then filming them and posting short videos on the internet? The montage might even be the work of an underground art movement. There were hundreds of artists in the county. Maybe the more avant garde among them were competing to find unique ways to repurpose old buildings. Cate might know. She was tuned in to that world.

  Cubiak appreciated the straightforward simplicity of representational art and was confounded by the abstract design. “Paper on Wood Wall,” he would call it, if he had to come up with a title.

  Still, he found himself unable to turn away. His inner voice urged him forward for a closer look.

  Assuming there was logic to the collection, it probably ran from left to right. The sheriff started at the beginning. From across the room, the white papers appeared blank, but as he got closer he realized they were pages torn from old notebooks. Each one was covered with rows and columns of faded letters and numbers that had been recorded in pencil. Some of the white papers had titles scrawled in a language he didn’t recognize. The yellow sheets were filled with notes carefully written in the same unfamiliar language. And pinned to this paper backdrop were the small dark squares.

  Photographs.

  A dozen or more.

  Black-and-white pictures of young children and adolescents. They wore plain smocks and their hair was chopped short. With their unsmiling faces and sad, haunted eyes they loo
ked like a lost tribe of primitive youth.

  Who are you? What happened to all of you? Cubiak wondered as he followed the red strings from one photo to another.

  Suddenly a familiar face stared back at him. It was a picture of a girl who resembled the child Mrs. Fadim had identified as her long-lost, crippled sibling. Several pieces of red string radiated out from the photo, linking the picture to sheets of white paper covered with the letters MS and thick with tabulations. There were several yellow pages as well, all filled with indecipherable notes. None of it made sense to Cubiak. Just as he started to move on, he saw the word polio.

  The sheriff went very still.

  The letters MS could be the initials of Mrs. Fadim’s sister, Margaret Stutzman. If so, the collage had nothing to do with art but could be evidence linked to her disappearance. Whatever he was looking at, instinct told him it wasn’t good.

  He searched the rest of the room. In the corner, under a layer of loose hay, he found a long, narrow cardboard box, the kind once used to store files. The carton was soft with mold and age. Although faded, the wording stamped on the lid was legible: “Confidential: Property of Northern Hospital for the Insane. Cleona, Wisconsin.”

  A new sense of dread came over the sheriff. Since taking office, he had heard tales of these government-run institutions. Now defunct and relegated to a history no one wanted to remember, they had been established as regional treatment centers for the mentally ill and those considered dangerous to themselves and others. Too often they ended up as warehouses or worse for juvenile delinquents, drunks, adulterers, and free-spirited women who willfully disobeyed their husbands or fathers.

  Inside the box were fifteen manila envelopes, each filled with material similar to that on the wall. Inside a folder were dozens of consent letters from parents, voluntarily giving up their sick offspring in the hopes they would be cured of their afflictions. The letters were simply worded, some barely literate. Several were signed with X’s. All of them were addressed to Leonard Melk.

  On the bottom of the carton Cubiak found a framed photo of a young Doctor Melk standing next to a black sedan. The sheriff remembered that Mrs. Fadim had said the man who took Margaret away had a nice car, and she had urged Margaret to get in it.

  Cubiak sat back on his heels and let out a long, slow breath.

  What the hell had Melk been up to? Treating private patients at a public facility violated both state law and professional protocol, but what if he had been doing far worse things to the children entrusted to his care?

  Cubiak called Bathard.

  “Can you come out to Southern Door?”

  “Now? Why?”

  “There’s something here I don’t understand, something I need you to see.”

  12

  BLOOD SERUM

  Cubiak lit the room with a set of floodlights that he kept in the jeep for emergencies. He wanted Bathard to get the full impact of the collage immediately.

  Like the sheriff, the coroner had to stoop to get through the low doorway. When he straightened up he saw the wall and frowned. “What in the name of heaven is this?” he said.

  “That’s what I’m hoping you’ll tell me.”

  Cubiak led the physician across the room to one of the yellow papers. “The writing is pretty faded, but do you think you can make anything out?”

  Bathard put on his glasses and took a closer look. “It’s German.”

  “Do you know German?”

  “A little but hopefully enough.” Bathard scanned the montage. “I’ll start at the beginning, shall I?” It was the coroner’s polite way of asking Cubiak to leave him be.

  While the physician worked, the sheriff paced along the back wall. For the second time in two days he wanted a cigarette. It had been four months since he last smoked, and he thought he had exorcised the need. The morning runs, the long walks along the beach, and the yoga breathing he had learned from Cate helped him withstand the craving. Until now. Tension weakened his defenses. But smoke in a barn? He almost laughed. Even if he had a pack in his pocket, he wouldn’t dare.

  Cubiak watched as the coroner moved from one scrap of paper to another.

  What’s taking so long? the sheriff wondered.

  He hoped he wasn’t wasting Bathard’s time. Perhaps he had read too much into the material and had overreacted. It wouldn’t be the first situation where he imagined clues where none existed. He had made mistakes as a cop and knew he wasn’t immune to making them as sheriff. Another concern nagged. To whom could he turn for help if the coroner was stymied by the collage?

  The barn was damp, and Cubiak wished he could make a cup of hot tea for Bathard, but he didn’t dare go into Mrs. Fadim’s kitchen and chance disturbing her. Instead, he got a wool blanket from the jeep and draped it over his friend’s shoulders. The doctor murmured his thanks and pulled it tight as he kept reading.

  When Bathard finally turned away from the collage, his expression was grim.

  “Where did you get all this?” he said as he settled uneasily on a hay bale.

  “I found it here, tacked to the wall.”

  “I realize as much. I am asking if you know the source, from whence it came.”

  Cubiak showed him the cardboard box.

  Bathard read the inscription on the lid and recoiled as if he had been slapped. “The Northern Hospital for the Insane! That place burned down years ago, killing so many, but it is a wonder more people did not die. I remember seeing pictures in the newspaper. There was nothing left.”

  “Then how the hell did this box survive?”

  “Someone must have removed it from the building before the fire. Why, it is not difficult to surmise,” Bathard said. There was pain in his eyes. He glanced from the box to the collage and then back again. “What you have there on the wall are fragmentary records of very rudimentary and in my opinion unethical medical research. I assume there is more of the same in the carton.”

  Cubiak nodded.

  “The photos indicate that the experiments were performed on children and teenagers,” Bathard said.

  The coroner’s assessment confirmed the sheriff’s worst fears. Cubiak nodded again.

  Bathard went on. “As a physician, I am loath to admit it, but historically children, especially those in orphanages and hospitals, were often used for such purposes.”

  “That’s hard to believe, even looking at all this.”

  “I know, but unfortunately, it is true. In many respects, children and infants were ideal candidates for medical research. For one, they were readily available, and for another, they were defenseless. Melk was immune from public scrutiny, given the hospital’s location, but this type of travesty went on elsewhere as well. There were more than a few doctors at highly regarded institutions who used the very young as unwitting test subjects. One physician even called them ‘animals of necessity’ when it came to research.”

  Cubiak shot to his feet. “Jesus. Weren’t there laws against that?”

  “You would think so, but such protections did not exist until relatively recently. In fact, there were no laws governing research in general until the Nuremberg trials after World War Two.”

  The sheriff was incredulous. “So these kids”—he pointed to the collage—“were essentially fair game for anyone who wanted to test a new theory or treatment.”

  “I am afraid so.”

  Cubiak handed the file of letters to Bathard.

  The coroner read the first one and paled. “Leonard Melk. That fucking bastard,” he said.

  It was the first time Cubiak had ever heard his friend curse.

  The retired physician skimmed several more of the crude letters and then dropped the pile in his lap. “Melk deserves to burn in hell for this abomination. Not only did he abuse these sick and disabled children, but he misled their parents, offering hope where none existed and then using their children as guinea pigs for his theories.”

  “I need to know the specifics,” Cubiak said.

  The corone
r struggled to his feet and walked across the room to the start of the collage. “Melk seemed to be have been trying to find a polio vaccine. He may have been looking for treatments for other illnesses as well, but everything on the wall concerns that particular disease. Initially his experiments involved horse serum. I know it sounds bizarre, but there was some scientific basis for thinking the serum could work as a preventative. You’ve heard of the English physician Edward Jenner?”

  “The name’s familiar but I don’t really remember . . .”

  “Doctor Jenner is credited with discovering the smallpox vaccine. When entire villages were being ravaged by the disease, he noticed that the young milkmaids on the local farms seemed immune, even though they worked around animals infected with cowpox, a variation of the disease. Jenner surmised that something in the animals’ blood protected them. To test the idea, he scraped particles from a cowpox lesion on one of the milkmaids and injected them into a healthy eight-year-old boy. He then exposed the boy to smallpox. The boy didn’t get sick and humanity had its first effective vaccine.”

  “And horses don’t get polio?”

  “That is correct. But for reasons no one understood, their blood serum didn’t protect humans from the disease. In fact, there were often severe and even fatal side effects. Having encountered that problem, Melk switched tactics and tried a different approach.”

  Bathard pointed to the photo associated with the letters MS.

  Cubiak felt light headed.

  “Once again Melk hoped to emulate Jenner’s success, but this time he used blood serum that he took directly from polio victims themselves. He injected the serum into healthy subjects, on the mistaken theory that he was inoculating them against the scourge of the disease. He probably thought he was being logical. Although polio affects the nervous system, it enters the body through the mouth. Once it reaches the digestive system, blood distributes it to the nervous system. After this discovery was made, the hope was that researchers could find a vaccine that would stop the virus in the blood.”