Death Stalks Door County Read online

  Ruby rapped the podium with the gavel. “Otto has the floor.”

  Caruthers shot an angry look around and plopped back down.

  Johnson had found his stride. “Since 1952, we’ve lost more than twenty-three species of insects and plants in the park. These are not my figures. The data are based on studies by state biologists and botanists. The inner fibers of the park’s ecosystem are being broken down and eroded. Just by way of example, garlic mustard is spreading through the undergrowth, choking out native plants and even disrupting tree reproduction. We pull out as much as we can every year, but the seeds are carried in on muddy shoes and tires from cars and bicycles. It’s a losing battle.” The larger picture was exceedingly more ominous, he explained, predicting eventual damage to trees and the demise of the deer population from pollution.

  “What’s happening here in miniature is what’s happening to the great national wildernesses out west. We either conserve or destroy. There is no middle ground.”

  “There’s always a middle ground,” Caruthers protested. The rest of the room was silent. Cubiak waited to see what came next.

  “At least a committee to study the idea. It would be a start,” Johnson said.

  Ruby called a fifteen-minute recess. When the board filed back into the meeting room, she was somber faced. “Unfortunately, this is simply not a fight we can win,” she said, speaking directly to the park director. The board, she explained, had voted to table the motion indefinitely.

  Johnson blanched and spun away, nearly tripping in his rush to leave. In the doorway, he turned back and shouted at the group: “You’ll be sorry. You’ll all be sorry!”

  SATURDAY

  Under cover of night, Door County got its miracle. The prayers said, the candles lit, the silent supplications to the gods of land and sea paid off. In the impenetrable dark, an invisible force lifted the shroud of gloom from the peninsula and from among the general populace vanquished the last lingering concerns about death and bad weather. Daylight ushered in an upbeat attitude along with the sweetness of summer and the requisite accouterments of tourism: blue sky, warm sun, gentle breezes.

  Up and down the peninsula, business owners and residents whose livelihoods rode the tide of the visitors’ trade quivered with expectation. The festival—and the season—would be saved.

  Even as the lingering shards of bad weather dissipated over the Great Lakes, cars and vans throughout the region were being readied for the trek to Door County. Suitcases and duffels were packed with swimsuits and stylish resort wear. Bicycles and golf clubs were pulled from hibernation. For those intent on living outdoors, tents, sleeping bags, air mattresses, cookstoves, even mosquito netting—every piece of camping equipment imaginable—were checked off lists and stuffed into vehicles for the trip to the peninsula.

  The Fourth of July Festival kicked off in four days, and the compulsive early birds, eager to claim their share of fun, were already on the road. By late morning, Interstate 43 from the south and Wisconsin 57 from the west were liquid rivers funneling traffic to the Midwest’s magnificent answer to Cape Cod.

  By contrast, the mood in the kitchen at Jensen Station was somber. Johnson remained visibly upset over the league meeting. He tapped his thick fingers on the oak table and worked his jaw as if he were delivering his speech to a new, more enlightened audience. Having witnessed the superintendent’s humiliation, Cubiak found it hard to face him.

  Ruta scurried around the two silent men, pouring coffee and piling hot, buttered toast on their plates.

  “Eat,” she said to both and no one in particular.

  Cubiak blinked and pinched the bridge of his nose. A branch scraping against his bedroom window had kept him awake half the night. Lying in bed, he’d listened to the stiff wind and remembered the time a late spring thunderstorm had knocked out the electricity in his Chicago neighborhood, frightening four-year-old Alexis. Nothing he or Lauren did would console the child. Finally, Lauren announced that she was going to make a picnic and asked Alexis and Cubiak to help. Father and daughter stood in the kitchen training flashlights on the counter and singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” while Lauren prepared peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When she finished, they spread a blanket on the living room floor and ate by candlelight. It had been one of their happiest meals as a family, Cubiak thought, as he looked at the toast cooling on his plate. He wanted that life back.

  Johnson pushed away from the table. Cubiak looked up. The superintendent hadn’t shaved, and stubble lay thick on his jowls. His hair was surprisingly lacking in gray for a man his age. Only his arthritic limbs betrayed him. His movements were stiff and clumsy. In the doorway, Ruta reached out to help him with his jacket, but he pulled away from her.

  “I’m checking for claim jumpers,” he said, glancing back into the room.

  Claim jumpers: campers who snuck in early without permits and established camp in areas marked off limits.

  As Johnson’s footsteps receded, Cubiak returned to the DNR bulletin on invasive plant species that he’d brought to the table, pretending to read. At ten, he’d start check-in procedures at the main entrance, and he knew that once the first wave of vacationers rolled past, there’d be no hiding in dim corners for the next two months. But first he had to call Beck and tell him about the meeting. Whatever bad blood ran between him and Johnson, Cubiak sensed that it was dark and deep and wondered if it had anything to do with Beck’s sister.

  At the sink Ruta spritzed water on a row of dark-leafed plants that lined the deep windowsill.

  “African violets?” Cubiak said.

  “Yah. Yes. You know these flowers?”

  “My mother liked them.”

  “Ah,” the housekeeper said with a single, knowing sigh.

  When she finished with the plants, Ruta carried a bowl of apples to the table and began peeling the fruit. “Otto works too hard. He is not a young man,” she said after a while.

  Cubiak murmured in agreement, and they fell back into a comfortable silence, the only sound the steady swish, swish of the blade against the dense pulp as Ruta stripped the apples and cut the fruit into uniform slices. She seemed to operate by radar, barely looking at what she was doing.

  “The superintendent likes apple pie, not cherry,” she said, apropos of nothing.

  So did he. Cubiak reached for a piece of toast. He was considering a third cup of coffee when a burst of static rattled through the half-open door.

  As abruptly as it started, the buzzing stopped and the kitchen was quiet again, but only for a moment.

  “Oh, God!” A sob swallowed the words that followed but they both recognized the voice. It was Johnson, from somewhere in the huge park, shouting to them over the pickup’s recently repaired radio.

  Ruta dropped the paring knife and clutched her fist to her chest, mimicking what they were both thinking.

  Then she sputtered, “Dave!”

  Cubiak was already on his feet. He sprinted down the hall to the radio room, Ruta on his heels.

  “Dave. Come. Dave. Come.”

  “Otto? What’s wrong?”

  “Dave. Come.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Help me.” The rest of the response was garbled.

  “Otto? Are you okay? Where are you?”

  There was clicking on the wire and then the transmission cleared. “Lighthouse. Garrity Point.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Cubiak pulled Ruta in from the hall and plunked her down in front of the radio. She was to wait there until she heard from him. He showed her how to operate the mike and the dial. “You may need to call Halverson,” he said from the doorway.

  Since 1868, the powerful lantern in the William Garrity Lighthouse had flashed its special code of one second on, six seconds off to guide passenger and cargo vessels past the Strawberry Islands and the rocky shoals that paralleled the western edge of Peninsula State Park. When the facility was automated in 1926, the last lighthouse keeper moved out and the building
slowly fell into disrepair. Packs of small brown field mice built nests in the empty cupboards. The roof began to leak, paint bubbled, and entire sections of wall began spalling. Several civic leaders labeled the vacant building a potential hazard and agitated to have it razed. The Conservation League, under Johnson’s tutelage, won the fight to restore and preserve the historic edifice. Its glory regained, the beige brick structure became a popular attraction. School groups came from as far away as Green Bay on field trips. Families picnicked on the carefully mowed lawn. Amateur and professional artists alike stood in its shadow and produced widely varying renditions of the tower in oils, chalks, and watercolors.

  It was still early enough that morning that the grounds were deserted. Cubiak found Johnson on a log bench near the lighthouse path. The super was shivering and breathing heavily with his mouth open.

  “Are you hurt?” Cubiak said.

  Johnson shook his head. Unclenching a swollen hand, he pointed toward the lighthouse. “There,” he said.

  Cubiak jogged up the trail. The forest was hushed, void of the usual early-morning chatter of birds and squirrels. At the top of the rise, the path emerged in a small clearing and the view opened to the tower. From a distance of fifty feet, Cubiak confronted the madness that had stilled the forest and frightened his boss.

  A man, tall and angular, in worn jeans and torn sweatshirt, was skewered to the shiny oak door of the building. An arrow pierced his chest. Blood flowed down his torso and legs and pooled on the ground.

  Was the sun playing tricks? Cubiak looked away and then back. The terrible image endured. Johnson appeared at his elbow, trembling.

  “Do you recognize him?” Cubiak said.

  “No.” He paused. “A visitor, I think.”

  As the two approached the lighthouse, the horror became more riveting. The man’s lips parted in agony, his hazel eyes wide with fright, his palms smeared red with blood from rabid, vain attempts to free himself.

  “Is he dead?” Johnson said.

  “Yes.” The man had to be dead—no one could lose that much blood and survive. Cubiak registered the dark liquid on the ground, the navy wool cap that sat like an island in the center of the pool.

  Johnson lunged past his assistant and wrapped one arm around the man, lifting him off the ground. With his free hand, he jerked hard at the arrow.

  “No,” Cubiak said, struggling to restrain his boss.

  Johnson shook off Cubiak and tugged on the arrow again. The shaft pulled free and the dead man toppled forward into the superintendent’s embrace. In a grotesque mockery of dancing partners, they reeled several yards before Johnson regained his balance and reverently lowered the body to the grass. When the superintendent stood up, his face was contorted and glistened with sweat. A tattoo of the dead man’s torso was imprinted in red across the front of his jacket. Johnson swatted at the fabric in wild panic.

  Cubiak grabbed the super by the wrists and held firm. “We need to go, get help,” he said.

  “We can’t . . .” Words failed Johnson.

  “We’ll put him inside.” Under the circumstances, it was the only solution. Cubiak couldn’t trust Johnson to get back to the station on his own and hesitated to leave him alone with the body.

  The ranger forced the door open. When the two men finished moving the victim, Cubiak rolled a white decorative boulder from the walkway and wedged it against the door, as if sealing a makeshift tomb.

  Driving back, he radioed Ruta and told her to contact the sheriff. “Tell him there’s been an incident at the lighthouse at Garrity Point.”

  Near the bottom of Ricochet Hill, the park rangers encountered the morning’s second circle of hell. At the base of the steep incline, two touring bicycles lay in the patches of wild chicory at the edge of the woods. Wheels bent. Handlebars askew. Cubiak pressed his full weight into the brake, bringing the jeep to a skidding stop inches from a single strand of piano wire stretched across the lane.

  The ranger glanced at Johnson. The superintendent had aged a decade in the last thirty minutes.

  “Stay here,” said Cubiak as he jumped from the vehicle.

  A patchwork of sunlight filtered through the forest canopy. Squinting against the crazy-quilt pattern of light that illuminated the scene, Cubiak ducked under the wire and walked past the twisted bike frames toward the two riders who sprawled on either side of the road. They wore shiny black helmets, biking shorts, and covered toe sandals, and their arms were flung out as if they had meant to fly through the trees. The cyclist on the right, a young man, lay on his back, his expression frozen in terror and surprise and his lips parted as if to call out a warning. The victim’s throat was slashed, almost sliced through. Trails of blood smeared the front of his yellow jersey. His left incisor was missing. Cubiak felt the bitter taste of bile rise in his throat. He swallowed hard and checked for a pulse. Nothing.

  The other victim was a young woman. Eighteen? Nineteen? She’d matched her lipstick to her magenta jersey. Now horror distorted her features and blood splattered her top. Her helmet strap had snagged the silver hoop in her left ear and pulled it askew. Her throat was cut and she was dead as well.

  Two riders, but only one set of skid marks. They had ridden down the incline one behind the other, Cubiak realized. With their heads lowered against the wind, the visors on their helmets would have blocked their view of the wire until it was too late. The first rider was caught unawares. The second unable to stop in time.

  Not daring to look at Johnson, Cubiak walked back to the jeep, pulled a blanket and canvas tarp from the cargo area, and covered the bodies. Then he returned to the vehicle for wire cutters. There were none in the tool box. There were no gloves either. Not thinking, he approached one of the trees and tried to untwist the piano wire anchored to it with his bare hands. The steel strand sliced a deep gash in his right palm. Cubiak winced and wrapped his kerchief around the wound. Still without a word to Johnson, he opened the passenger door, reached past the superintendent, and rummaged through the glove box, coming away with a roll of bright orange tape. With his teeth, Cubiak tore off a long strip and wound it around the wire. Then he ripped off five more pieces and dangled them from the wire as a warning to anyone unfortunate enough to venture down the lane.

  Unable to reach Halverson, Cubiak eased the jeep under the wire. Wordlessly the rangers continued through the park. They reached the main entrance as the sheriff was turning in. Cubiak flagged him down.

  “What do I do?” Halverson wailed after hearing about the cyclists.

  “Cordon off the road and set up a detour through the access lane at Turtle Bay Campground. I’ll take Otto back and tell Bathard to meet me at the lighthouse.”

  With Johnson left in Ruta’s care, Cubiak grabbed a coil of rope from the garage and doubled back to Garrity Point.

  When Bathard arrived, the rock had been rolled away from the door and the area strung with the brown rope.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Cubiak stood at the edge of the bluff, smoking. He was suddenly very tired.

  “I stopped and administered sedatives to both Otto and Ruta. Nothing too strong.” Bathard paused. “How about I tend to your hand as well?”

  Cubiak looked down, surprised by the red blotch on the handkerchief. The doctor rebandaged the wound and then turned toward the lighthouse. “Why don’t you come in? I don’t mind, and you might notice something of import,” Bathard said.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Cubiak said. Six people dead in one week. In the city, the number would not be considered cause for alarm, but on the peninsula it was ominous, even if some of the fatalities had been accidental. The problem was that the pattern had no pattern.

  A somber Bathard finally emerged from the dark interior. His shoulders drooped in defeat and the paper whiteness of his face intensified. Cubiak wired the door shut, and they went on to the scene of the dead bicyclists.

  Halverson’s men had tromped around the area with such abandon, they’d obliterated any clue
s that might have helped reconstruct the sequence of events that had led to these two deaths. Two deputies were rinsing blood off the road when Cubiak and the coroner pulled up. From the jeep, Cubiak watched Halverson bully Bathard through his examination. When the coroner was done, the sheriff ordered the bodies removed, at the same time dispatching a team to the lighthouse on a similar errand.

  While the county ambulances moved in and out of the park, Halverson kept the police presence to a minimum. Rumors flitted through the campgrounds, but these were quickly dismissed as signs of the double tragedies were erased. The festival campers already in place were busy staking out territory against the onslaught of new arrivals who were streaming into the park, with only one goal in mind: to make the most of their week in the great outdoors.

  That afternoon, Door County officials gathered around the conference table in the third-floor library at Jensen Station. They were a solemn group, the morning’s elation gone and their commingled high hopes shattered. The warm sunshine that poured through the windows had become a source of mockery. They were not in the room to admire the few remaining portraits of Indian chiefs that hung on the walls or to rue the depleted inventory of books left on the walnut shelves. They had come together to discuss the morning’s tragic events and develop a plan forward: the mayor of Sturgeon Bay; the village administrator of Ephraim; the town board chairman of Fish Creek; Door County Tourism Board president Les Caruthers; Sheriff Leo Halverson; Herald editor Floyd Touhy; coroner Evelyn Bathard; park superintendent Otto Johnson; and chair of the Door County Arts Coalition Ruby Schumacher, the only woman in the group. Halverson drummed his fingers on the table. The Ephraim representative cleared his throat. Otherwise the room was silent. Below them on the first floor, a clock chimed, but no one noticed. They kept their eyes down and their thoughts to themselves. The coffee and cookies that Ruta had set out were untouched.

  Cubiak lingered at the window, his back toward the others. The top of Falcon Tower was directly in his line of sight. One week earlier Larry Wisby had tumbled off the observation deck, making him the first of six people to die in seven days. One murder and two deaths were officially ruled accidents. That morning, three tourists were killed under gruesome circumstances. Cubiak focused on the different greens of the forest to avoid seeing the red of blood. He assumed most of the assembled officials would be unwilling to recognize the crisis they faced and instead would favor interpreting the recent events as a continuation of bad luck. From their perspective, that was the only option that made sense, and without any hard evidence to the contrary, who was he to argue? He was an outsider and if he disagreed with their assessment, he’d be dismissed as a troublemaker.