Death by the Bay Page 3

  “How did she respond?”

  “She laughed and then she gave him a hug.”

  “Did he hug her back?”

  “Not really. He seemed startled. He said something else and she walked away. Afterward, he stood there with this odd look on his face. Then he grabbed the podium with both hands, like this”—she demonstrated for him—“and fell over. I could hardly believe it, even though it was happening right before my very eyes, but then I heard a loud thud and saw him lying on the floor. That’s when I screamed.”

  “Where was Ms. Kiel?”

  “I’m not sure. I think she was at the window. I jumped out of my chair and ran to the podium to help Doctor Melk, but she just stood and stared.”

  “You got to him before anyone else?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Doctor Melk was still alive.”

  She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He tried to talk but his voice was so faint I couldn’t understand.”

  “If you had to guess what you heard, what would it be?”

  Klyasheff narrowed her eyes and stared into the middle distance. “It sounded like he was saying the word snow.” She looked at Cubiak. “It didn’t make any sense.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then he died.”

  Cubiak left Noreen Klyasheff sitting along the side wall and motioned Linda Kiel to the other side of the room. As she approached, he was struck by her apparent nonchalance.

  Again he pulled out two chairs and waited for the young woman to sit first.

  “You’re not a doctor?” he said.

  “Me? Heavens, no. I thought of going to med school at one point but never got through organic chemistry.” She laughed as if she were sharing an inside joke with the sheriff, and he smiled in the way he knew she expected him to.

  “Sage called you a scribe.”

  She laughed again. She was trying to be casual, but he sensed an undercurrent of excitement in her manner, as if she was pleased to be part of the day’s drama.

  “That’s so like him to use such a very old-fashioned term, but he is sort of an old-fashioned guy, so it fits. And it is what I do.”

  Cubiak glanced at the walnut wainscoting and oversized ferns on the ends of the dais. “This hardly seems like the kind of event that warrants media coverage.”

  “It’s not. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m writing a book about the institute, and with Doctor Melk giving his farewell address, it was something I couldn’t miss.”

  “What kind of book?”

  She rolled her eyes. “The kind they want, of course. History, highlights, happy endings.”

  “Sweeping the negative stuff under the rug.”

  “More like keeping the spotlight focused on the positives. I’ve been imbedded with the institute for ten months.” She stressed the word imbedded as if it heightened her status. “Interviewing doctors and patients and figuring out what’s important and how to organize the material so it’s not one of those boring beginning-to-end chronologies.”

  “You get to decide on the content?”

  “It’s a work for hire, but to some extent they depend on my discretion.”

  Cubiak took that to mean no.

  “Ultimately the institute calls the shots?”

  She shrugged.

  A yes, he thought.

  “And Melk was the final judge.”

  “One of them.”

  “You liked Melk?”

  “I liked everyone at the institute.”

  It was Cubiak’s turn to laugh. “Do you like doing this kind of work?”

  Kiel twisted the silver ring on her right hand. “More or less.” She hesitated. “Okay, less than more. Like isn’t really the word for how I feel about the assignment. Need is a better fit. The honest truth, Sheriff, is that it’s almost impossible to make a living doing straight reporting anymore. Instead, you write for established websites, which pay nothing or close to it, or you blog and starve waiting for readers to discover and follow you. Or, you swallow your pride and write happy news for those willing and able to pay for your time and expertise. It’s akin to selling off pieces of your soul to the highest bidders.”

  “When will the book be published?”

  “In about three months. But the first sample cover design was ready, and I brought a copy to show Doctor Melk.”

  “Is that why you went up to him at the podium?”

  Kiel looked across the room at Ms. Klyasheff and glowered. “Apparently the all-seeing eye of the institute has already run through things for you.”

  Cubiak ignored the obvious dig at the senior staffer. “Is it?”

  “He had to give his approval.”

  “You couldn’t wait?”

  “He’d told me earlier that as soon as it was ready, he wanted to see it. I don’t understand what the big deal was. It’s not as if I was cutting into his prep time. He had nearly an hour before he was to give his talk, so it wasn’t like I was unduly pressuring him or anything.”

  “Did he like it?”

  “Absolutely.” The response came a little too quickly. “He asked me to email him a copy so he could give it his considered opinion—a favorite phrase of his—once the conference was over. But he was humming a bit when he saw it, and with him that was always a good sign.” She looked at Cubiak. “Here, do you want to see it?”

  “Isn’t it proprietary?”

  She shrugged as if to say words had to be protected but art was fair game.

  The drawing was done in an art deco style and portrayed the traditional medical symbol of the winged staff entwined by two serpents. The caduceus was imprinted with the letters IPM and surrounded by rays of light that beamed out as if coming through the gates of heaven.

  “Doesn’t Sage have to approve it as well?”

  “Of course, him and God only knows who else. They tend to make decisions by committee at the institute. But Doctor Melk’s okay was still the most important.”

  “How well did you know the doctor?”

  “Personally, not at all. He was very tight lipped about his nonmedical life. I know that his parents were from Brooklyn but that by the time he was born, they’d moved to Wisconsin.”

  “When was that?”

  “Sometime around the 1920s.”

  “Why did his parents leave New York?”

  She looked past Cubiak toward the window. “He never said. I’m not sure he knew.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  Kiel rattled on. “In a nutshell, Doctor Melk started medical school just as the Depression was winding down. He married late and was widowed young. He and his wife had no children. He enjoyed studying biographies of famous men but also felt that any time he spent reading for pleasure was time away from his work. He was totally dedicated to his profession, but modest too. There were some things, like the institute, that he was happy to talk about and others that he minimalized.”

  “Such as?”

  “His early days as a physician. It’s all ancient history, he liked to say. We were like the blind stumbling around in the dark. The real advances are being made now. And we need to keep looking forward, not to the past.”

  “How much time did you spend with him?”

  “Altogether, I have about ten hours of interviews with Doctor Melk. That was time I spent just with him but there’s more in conversations that included Sage as well.”

  She hesitated. “You asked me before if I liked Doctor Melk. I think the most truthful answer is that I admired him. He was a fine person and a real gentleman. Mostly he was a good doctor, one of those who genuinely cared about his patients. His presentation today was supposed to be one of the highlights of the book. We—Sage and I—had any number of discussions about whether it should be used as the preface or an appendix.” She dug around in her briefcase again and pulled out several sheets of paper. “His speech,” she said.

  “I’ll need a co
py of that.”

  Kiel hesitated. “I think you’ll have to ask Sage for that. It’s proprietary material.”

  “Was Melk in the room when you arrived?”

  “Yes. He was sitting there.” She pointed to the row of chairs on the other side of the podium. “He and Doctor Sage were discussing final arrangements for tonight’s banquet.” She made a noise and clasped her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “The banquet! It’ll have to be canceled, won’t it?”

  “I would imagine so.”

  “All that planning. Anyway, I sat down at the end of the row and waited for them to finish. Doctor Melk saw me because he gave a little wave, and then when Sage got up and walked away he motioned me over.”

  “He wasn’t at the podium when you showed him the book cover?”

  “Oh, no. He was still seated over there, just as I told you. We talked about the cover, which he liked very much, and then he made a little joke about this being his swan song. ‘I hope someone applauds when I’m done,’ he said, and I assured him that he’d get a standing ovation.”

  As she talked, Cubiak tallied up the discrepancies between her version of events and what Noreen Klyasheff had told him. The differences probably didn’t matter, unless there was a reason behind them.

  “Where were you when Doctor Melk collapsed?” he asked.

  Kiel pointed to the window near the podium.

  “And just before that?”

  “I was at the podium. Doctor Melk’s tie was crooked. Doctor Melk was very particular about his image. He always said it wasn’t about him; it was about IPM and he wanted the world to see the institute in the right light. I knew there’d be photos taken during the speech and felt he should look his best. So I went to straighten it for him.”

  “Ms. Klyasheff said you gave him a hug.”

  Kiel grimaced. “She would. I may have patted his arm or whatever after fixing his tie, but I assure you I did not hug Doctor Melk. No one did.”

  “Did anyone else approach him after you stepped away?”

  “No, why do you ask?”

  “No reason, but it makes you one of the last people to talk to him before he died.”

  Kiel’s eyes flashed with triumph. The spark was unsettling, and she tried to cover it over with a flutter of her lashes and a diminutive “oh.”

  Cubiak wondered what else besides the book she intended to write.

  “Can I leave now?”

  Before Cubiak could respond, a second loud cry rang out. It sounded desperate and familiar, like a delayed echo of the first scream, which had brought him to the room where Melk had died.

  3

  DESAPARECIDO

  For the second time that afternoon, Cubiak slalomed through the human obstacle course in the corridor. The crowd had thinned, but enough hangers-on remained to hamper his progress. They seemed confused by the ongoing turmoil. Some continued to look toward the room where Melk had collapsed, while others had turned in the direction of the second scream, as if they weren’t sure which crisis deserved their attention. Sidestepping past the IPM signs that had been toppled and kicked aside, the sheriff sent another text to his deputy Mike Rowe: Hurry.

  Before he left for work that morning, Cubiak had assured his wife that he would be home in time for an early dinner. He told Cate that he had a light morning at the office, lunch with Bathard, and several days’ worth of paperwork to catch up on. It was supposed to have been an easy day, but instead he was moving from one hot spot to another. In one room, a well-regarded physician lay dead on the floor. He hoped that there wasn’t another body waiting down the hall.

  As Cubiak neared the end of the passage, he heard sobs coming from the Forest Room. The door was open and a bubble of people had formed around the entrance. He stepped through and closed the door.

  Inside, a short, slim woman stood with her back toward him. She gripped the handle of a large wheeled cart that was piled with cleaning supplies and towels. Unlike the conference-goers in their smart attire, the woman wore the outfit of a lodge staff member: athletic shoes, black sweatpants, and a blue long-sleeved T-shirt with the words Green Arbor Lodge splashed across the back.

  Cubiak stepped forward so he could see her. She was fairly young and Hispanic. Traces of tears glistened on her face.

  “Are you okay? What’s happened?” he asked.

  She seemed not to have heard. Raising one hand, she pointed to a black-and-white photograph that was projected on the pale ivory wall behind the podium. The image showed a young boy in a white short-sleeved shirt and dark knee-length shorts. The photo was slightly out of focus and tightly cropped around the boy, cutting off the top half of the person standing behind him. All that showed of the unknown figure was the bottom part of a long white coat, the kind worn by a doctor or a lab technician, and the thick, gnarled fingers that gripped the boy’s shoulders. The boy looked to be about six or seven, not much older than Cubiak’s son, Joey.

  As if she had just become aware of his presence, the woman’s gaze shifted toward the sheriff and then moved back to the photo. When she finally spoke, her voice was fragile, as if it might break.

  “Mi hermano. Mi hermano gemelo.”

  To Cubiak, it sounded as if she were uttering a prayer. He tried to connect what she had said to the words and phrases he had heard living in Chicago, but he was never good with foreign languages. Time had blurred the memory of the little he had picked up from the taunts and slurs tossed around the neighborhoods, the intimate, hurried conversations exchanged on the L platforms as noisy trains pulled in to the station, the pleas whispered or shouted into cell phones in corridors of the police stations where he used to work.

  Despite the bits of Spanish that came back to him, he didn’t comprehend what the woman said. “No comprendo. I don’t understand,” he said.

  Did anyone at the station speak Spanish? As he wondered whom he could call upon for help, the door opened and another woman slipped in behind them. She was Hispanic and older but of an indeterminate age. Although she wore her black hair stylishly short, the features of an ancient people were imprinted on her face. She had rounded shoulders, deep wrinkles, and soft, dark eyes that seemed steeped in sorrow. She too wore the uniform that identified her as a member of the lodge cleaning staff, but on her squat, padded frame the costume was taut.

  The door clicked shut and the younger woman stiffened, but she did not turn around.

  Instead, she slapped her fist to her chest. “Mi hermano gemelo,” she said, as if she could convey her message through sheer force of willpower.

  “The boy in the picture is her brother,” the older woman said. She spoke quietly in the self-appointed role of translator. Despite her heavy accent, her words were clear.

  Hermano. Brother. He should have known that.

  Cubiak dipped his head to indicate his understanding. There was another word he had not recognized. “Is that his name, Gemelo?”

  She smiled condescendingly. “Gemelo is not a boy’s name. It is the word for twin.”

  As she talked, the older woman approached her colleague and wrapped an arm around her. Then wordlessly she guided her to one of the chairs along the back wall.

  The younger woman sat without protest. She seemed lost in a daze. Her head drooped to her chest, and she sobbed for several seconds before her cries softened into whimpers. The older woman crouched at her feet and cradled her hands in her gnarled grasp.

  The sheriff was struck by the tenderness between the two. Could they be mother and daughter? He dismissed the idea. If they were, then the boy in the photo would be the older woman’s son and she would have identified him as such. It was possible the two women were related in a different way, or perhaps they were simply coworkers and friends. Or maybe the older woman was one of those rare souls who understood intuitively when kindness was needed.

  Cubiak pulled up a chair and sat facing them, careful to remain several feet away. Both women wore ID tags, but he couldn’t see them clearly enough to read their names
.

  He decided to talk directly to the younger woman. Even if she didn’t comprehend what he was saying, he hoped that she would realize that he wanted to understand the reason for her distress.

  Looking straight at her, he spoke. “What is your name?”

  As he knew she would, her companion translated.

  The younger woman raised her head and stared at Cubiak. For the first time she seemed fully aware of his presence. Her eyes brimmed with suspicion. She frowned and shook her head. Then she leaned toward her companion and unleashed a fury of words.

  “She won’t talk to you,” the older woman said.

  “Why not?”

  “She thinks you’re one of the doctors.”

  The response surprised him. Why would she be wary of doctors? And why would she think he was a physician? “Why does she think I am a doctor?”

  The older woman waved a hand toward the door. “They are everywhere.”

  She kept her eyes pinned on him. “Are you?” she said, in an accusatory tone.

  “No es médico,” Cubiak said. He spoke to the young woman again, uncertain if he had used the correct term for doctor. After a pause, he went on. “I am the sheriff.” He spoke in English because he didn’t know the Spanish words to use.

  The young woman stiffened in alarm and pulled back as far as she could while still remaining seated.

  She understood, he thought. But why was she so fearful of him? She had to be legal to be employed at the lodge. As he watched, her eyes narrowed and the muscles around her mouth twitched. She was battling with herself, deciding whether to talk to him. Whether to trust him.

  He waited. Any sign of aggression would upset her further. To convey his good intentions, he sat back and let his hands fall over the arms of the chair in a nonthreatening pose.

  When he spoke again, he kept his voice soft. “My name is Dave Cubiak,” he said as he raised one hand to his chest.

  The young woman scrutinized him. After a moment, her eyes softened and she relaxed. “My name is Francisca María Delgado,” she said. Then she touched the other woman on the shoulder. “My friend is Lupita Esteban.”