Death by the Bay Read online

  Lupita lived in a white frame duplex. Her neighbor’s door and shutters were red; hers were green, giving the building a cheerful Christmas look even in summer. No one answered his knock on the green door. He tried the red one, hoping someone was home and could tell him where to find Lupita, but no one answered.

  Still moderately optimistic, he proceeded around the corner to the pale blue cottage where Francisca lived. Wooden trellises framed the small front yard. The structures were empty but probably would be covered with flowering vines or green beans later in the season. Cubiak knew that without Lupita to translate, he wouldn’t be able to talk with Francisca, but he hoped that he would be able to convey his concern. It was the least he could do for her.

  She wasn’t home either.

  Cubiak checked his phone for a message from Cate. But there was nothing.

  A mound of paperwork greeted him at the office. When he left the previous evening, the surface had been clean. The mind-numbing stuff of bureaucracy, he thought. It’s as if it falls from the sky. Instead of reading the reports, he fished out Doctor Sage’s card again and dialed the number.

  Noreen Klyasheff, the doctor’s assistant, answered.

  “Doctor Sage is not in. Is there anything with which I can help?”

  “I wanted to find out about getting a copy of a photo that was part of his presentation at the conference.”

  “You’d have to ask Doctor Sage about that.”

  Cubiak explained that he had tried reaching the physician to no avail.

  “Well, I can’t answer to that.” She hesitated. “I haven’t heard from him either.”

  Despite her starchy self-righteousness, Cubiak sensed an underlying trickle of concern.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “No,” she said. But this was followed by “not really,” which told him different.

  “Is it unusual for him to be out of contact like this?”

  “Depending on circumstances, no. He often travels on institute business.”

  As she spoke, he caught her regret. Had she been too personable and given away more than she should have? “I assume he’s upset about what happened yesterday with Doctor Melk. Understandably, of course,” she said with cool professionalism.

  “Of course, but have him call me when he gets in. Better yet, give me his cell number and his landline if he has one. I’ll call him myself.”

  She demurred; it was against policy to provide personal numbers without permission. Cubiak envisioned the woman at her desk, her posture as rigid as the rule she enforced. It took some wrangling and mention of the word subpoena before he finally got what he had asked for.

  When he dialed Sage’s mobile, the call went to voice mail, much as he expected it to. The same thing happened when he tried the landline.

  Cubiak imagined the doctor sequestered behind closed doors with his immediate subordinates or the board of directors, conferring about Melk’s death and its impact on the future of the institute as they moved forward. Or maybe they were discussing Francisca’s claim about the boy in the photo. If the picture was a stock photo, questions remained: Where had they gotten it, and had they secured permission for its use? Were there undue ramifications that could reflect negatively on IPM?

  There were other possibilities. Perhaps Sage had lied, and he or another institute physician was the unidentified man in the picture with the boy. Perhaps they knew the identity of the child. If so, could they prove he wasn’t Francisca’s brother? How many tracks did the institute have to cover? As he had done at the restaurant, the sheriff stopped himself. He was moving way ahead of the situation and getting caught up in speculation. He had no proof of any untoward activity. He had found no indication of illegal or unethical behavior on the part of Sage or the institute. For all he knew, the picture had been plucked off the internet or purchased from a photo supply house thousands of miles from Door County.

  There hadn’t been a serious crime in the county in eight months. Not like at his old job in Chicago when it seemed that one came across the wire every hour, or sometimes every ten minutes. Cubiak opened the top desk drawer. Then he shut it. He forgot what he was looking for. Don’t be a fool, he told himself. He lived in a paradise compared to most of the world. He was fifty-four and rolling toward retirement. He didn’t need to go looking for trouble.

  Cubiak picked up a report from the stack and starting reading. He was on page 10 when he tossed the document back on his desk. Under ideal circumstances, he disliked paperwork. After yesterday’s events, he found it impossible to concentrate on the mundane. Something about what had transpired at the lodge wasn’t right. At first, Sage had seemed almost matter of fact about Melk’s death, and then he was overly eager to keep the sheriff out of the matter. He had been blasé about his Alzheimer’s research and dismissive about Francisca’s claim that the boy in the photo was her brother. Kiel’s edgy excitement was disquieting as well. Nor could he get past the fact that the two cleaning women had disregarded his simple request that they wait for him. Had someone scared them away?

  The sheriff unwrapped the ham-and-swiss sandwich he had brought for lunch and opened an online search for information about Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s. This shouldn’t take long, he thought as he took a bite, expecting not to find much information on the internet. Stories on advances in Alzheimer’s treatments periodically popped up in the mainstream news, but he had never heard a report that connected the disease to Down syndrome. He hadn’t understood much of what Sage had told him at the conference center and assumed the doctor had been talking about theory or even wishful thinking.

  What Cubiak found shocked him. The first headline he came across read like something from a tabloid newspaper. “Down Syndrome and Alzheimer’s Disease Have a Lot in Common: Scientists are studying them together to find underlying causes.” He checked the source and was even more stunned to find that the article had been published in Scientific American.

  He remembered paging through copies of the magazine in high school. He had seen it on the shelves in the Sturgeon Bay library and on the small table in Bathard’s study where the doctor kept his current reading material. This was not a publication to be ignored.

  “I’ll be damned,” the sheriff said.

  He skimmed the article. Although he didn’t fully understand the content, he picked up enough to realize that what the author was saying was essentially the same as what Sage had explained to him the day before: plaque and tangled brain function were found in both patients with Down syndrome and those with Alzheimer’s. The vital difference was that patients with Down syndrome were born with the condition, while those with dementia developed it later in life.

  Similar articles were published by the National Institutes of Health, the Alzheimer’s Association, and other equally prestigious sources. They all said the same thing: People with Down syndrome were predisposed to developing Alzheimer’s. Finding a way to stop the progression of DS meant finding a possible cure for Alzheimer’s, a disease that affected more than five million people in the United States and was the sixth leading cause of death in the country.

  How does anyone figure all this out? Cubiak wondered. He clicked another button, and the link jumped to academic research studies. The titles of the articles were dizzying, far more complex than anything he could understand with his high school knowledge of biology and chemistry. The sheer volume of material was staggering. He scrolled back to the start of his search and began counting the articles about the topic. When he reached three hundred, he stopped, though there were many more.

  “They’re all in a race to the finish line,” he said out loud.

  Most of the research was relatively recent, but there were articles from as far back as the mid-1980s. The oldest material he found was from the early 1970s. One of the earliest reports was based on a study of only thirteen DS patients.

  Cubiak did the math. If he was right, the research was already underway by the time Francisca claimed her brother had disappeared
. The sheriff skimmed through the material again, but he didn’t find Sage listed as the author on any of the pieces. That seemed odd, but maybe it didn’t mean anything. The sheriff wasn’t sure.

  He pushed back from his desk and turned toward the window. In the pasture across the way, a line of Holsteins plodded toward the barn. It was nearly time for evening milking, and the large beasts walked with leisurely intent, their massive heads bobbing and their rumps swaying gently with each step. The hall outside his office was eerily quiet. He reached for his coffee and was about to take a drink when he realized it was cold.

  “What the hell is going on?” he said as he set the cup down next to his wilted sandwich.

  When Cubiak arrived home that evening, Joey was on the beach tossing a Frisbee to Kipper. Inside, Cate was perched on a tall wooden stool at the kitchen counter. She had the phone receiver tucked under her chin and was bent over a notepad with pen in hand. He opened the door, and she stopped scribbling long enough to give him a thumbs-up sign and then resumed writing.

  The sheriff cracked a beer and went out to the deck to watch his son.

  A few minutes passed before Cate appeared. She looked triumphant.

  “Remember our conversation this morning?” she said as she slipped into the chair beside him.

  “About the missing girl and the haunted house?”

  Cate squeezed his hand. “You were right. The house isn’t haunted. I talked to my old girlfriend, and she admitted that she’d just been trying to impress me when we were kids. But as far as she knows, the bit about the girl disappearing is true. Even better, the last she heard, someone from the family still lives there.”

  “Did you get a name?”

  “Fadim. Florence Fadim. If it’s the same woman, she must be ancient by now. She was old when I was kid.” Cate handed him a piece of paper. “Here’s the address.”

  “Was the girl her daughter?”

  “Apparently not, but she might have been her sister. No one seems to know for sure.”

  “Did the girl have Down syndrome?”

  Cate shook her head. “Uh-uh. Polio.”

  7

  A CUP OF TEA

  Cubiak spent a restless night. In his dreams he sprinted through a maze of narrow, antiseptic hallways chasing a small red ball. The child’s toy rolled on endlessly, always out of his reach. The passages were painted a blinding white and lined with crooked doorways that opened to dim, windowless rooms that smelled of bleach and human waste. In each room, long rows of empty beds lined the walls. The center aisle was filled with lopsided tables that were covered with microscopes, moldy test tubes, and evil-looking syringes. The dreams were silent and unpopulated, except for wavering shadows that eluded him no matter how fast he raced through the deserted corridors.

  When he woke, the glaring early morning sunlight etched the nightmarish images into memory. Exhausted, he slipped from bed and went out to the deck. He hoped the fresh air would clear his mind, but instead the opposite occurred. The rising sun that hovered above the lake was as red as the ball he had pursued through the night. Cubiak rarely recalled his dreams, but when he did he knew what prompted them. He was certain that this recent nightmare stemmed from the stories Francisca and Cate had told of mysterious doctors and missing children.

  Determined to follow his normal routine, he pulled on a cap and started down the beach. Three days a week, he did a slow five-mile run on the road with Kipper, but on the two days in between, he and the dog hiked along the shore. From the house, the sand beach stretched for two miles in either direction before giving way to slabs of gray table rock that made walking impossible. No matter which way he went, it was a four-mile hike to the rocks and back. He followed no set routine but let the wind be his guide, always preferring to head into it and to return home with the breeze at his back. That morning, he started off toward the south. At first, he walked on a long stretch of beach that had been pounded hard by the waves, and the going was easy. Then the sand turned to mush. Each step demanded effort, and the comfortable stroll turned into a slog. By the time he had made it to the rocks and back, his leg muscles were tight. Kipper was already limping toward the house when Cubiak called him back. “Not yet,” he said. Reluctantly, the dog obeyed and trailed behind as Cubiak plodded on. He was midway to the rocks at the north end of the beach when he finally gave up. Six miles was enough for both of them. He felt a soft ache in his right hip and apologized to the dog for the additional steps, but he had needed the extra distance to try to erase the images from his dream and to think through his plan for the day.

  After breakfast with Cate and Joey, he left the house. It was a few minutes before nine. He checked in at the office and then he headed toward the Fadim farm. He could have asked one of his deputies to handle the visit and talk to the old lady about the alleged missing girl, but he had a light schedule, and he was curious. Chances were the excursion wouldn’t amount to much. Had Mrs. Fadim even been alive when the girl disappeared? The sheriff wasn’t sure what he expected to find. Probably nothing. Even if there was something to the story, he doubted there was much he could do. The trails would all be cold and forgotten.

  Still, it wouldn’t be a wasted trip, he thought. Mrs. Fadim lived in the quiet southern part of Door County where the farms far outnumbered the few visitors who lingered on their way to Sturgeon Bay and the touristy part of the peninsula. Cubiak didn’t get out that way often and figured the visit would give him a chance to reacquaint himself with the area.

  From the justice center it was sixteen miles to the exit for Brussels. In town, he passed the old mill and several bars, and then he turned away from the water and drove another two miles along a series of country roads where both the houses and patches of trees grew sparser and farther apart. Finally he stopped by a weather-beaten mailbox. The numbers painted on the side were flecked and too faded to read from the jeep, so he got out and took a closer look. This was it: the Fadim farm. The box was empty except for last week’s newspaper. He pulled it out to take inside. Life had to be pretty lonely out here, he thought as he turned off the road and onto the narrow, rutted lane. A border of thistle and tall weeds flanked the entranceway, but beyond the tangle of brush several cultivated fields stretched out in either direction. The green fuzz that poked up through the black earth might be soybeans or hay. Cubiak was still too much a city boy to distinguish one crop from another. Maybe the shoots were newly sprouted stalks of corn. If it was knee high by the Fourth of July, farmers could count on a good crop. That was all he knew about corn.

  Abruptly the road ended at what had once been a front yard. Instead of grass, a patch of parched, brown stubble covered the ground. A low wooden fence that was missing most of the pickets encased the patch, which was split down the middle by a jagged sidewalk. The path led to a stucco house with splotched brown walls and high, tiny windows on either side of the door. A rounded roof curved over the eaves and made the house look like a mushroom in need of rejuvenation, a fixer-upper for elves or pixies.

  As he mounted the single step to the recessed doorway, he caught a flutter of curtains at the window near the corner of the house, but there was no answer to his knock and no doorbell to ring. On a hunch, he reached under the straw doormat and found a key. He slipped the key into the lock and realized he hadn’t needed to bother. The door was not locked.

  Whoever occupied the house was one of those trusting souls.

  Too trusting, like Bathard, the sheriff thought, but he knew that this was still the norm for many of the residents. Probably half the people in the county either didn’t bother to lock their doors or hid the keys in a spot that even an amateur thief would find in less than a minute.

  Wary of alarming the old woman or whoever was in the house, or of being shot as an intruder, he toed the door open.

  “Hello,” he called out to announce his presence.

  There was no response.

  He slid one foot over the threshold and tried again.

  “Hello. Mrs.
Fadim? I’m Sheriff Dave Cubiak. I was in the area and wanted to stop by and say hello, make sure everything was okay with you.” A white lie but the kind that came in handy at times like this.

  The stuffy interior muffled the greeting.

  The small entryway was boxed in on three sides and smelled of mold and dust. Through the doorway on his left he made out a long, narrow room where thin ribbons of sunlight rimmed the curtains in the three windows that looked out toward the road. The pale light illuminated a hunched figure in a tall, overstuffed chair but left the rest of the room in dim shadow.

  “Hello. Mrs. Fadim?” he said again.

  The bent figure turned toward the sound of his voice, and slowly the profile of an old woman came into focus. As she looked at him, her eyes narrowed, and she shrank farther into the chair, but when she spoke her voice was unexpectedly strong.

  “Tommy, is that you? It’s about time you got back. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Who’s Tommy? Cubiak wondered as he approached. He reached the chair in a dozen steps, but Mrs. Fadim had already pivoted back to the window. She was cocooned in a thick brown shawl. The faded blue housecoat beneath the wrap covered her knees and fell to her ankles. Layers of other clothes peeked out from the neckline and around her wrists. The sheriff wondered that she could move at all.

  Leaning forward, she parted the curtains. “Did you find her?” she said.

  “Mrs. Fadim, I’m—”

  At that moment, the elderly woman latched a clawlike hand to his arm and with strength that surprised him jerked him forward.

  “I know who you are! Don’t you play games with me, Tommy. Where have you been all this time? I’ve been worried sick. Where’s your sister? Did you find her?” The old woman sounded desperate and near tears.

  Careful not to disturb the wooden cane that rested against the sill, Cubiak crouched down before the chair. This close to the old woman, he could almost see through the thin, parchment skin that stretched over her fragile, birdlike cheekbones. Wispy gray bangs hung over a deeply creviced forehead. Veins traversed her hands like rivers and creeks coursing through a sunburned landscape. Her thin hair was caught up haphazardly in a bun at the back of her neck.