Death Rides the Ferry

by Patricia Skalka

  “Let’s go,” the boss man said, and boots thudded on the pier.

  The newcomers left the searchlight on and advanced on foot. Lying prone on the damp earth, Cubiak shaded his eyes and peered through the flickering flames of the dying signal fire. The men were formidable against the backlighting. The first was tall and gangly. The second was even taller and had the swagger and build of a wrestler. Their features were blotted out, but he saw that both wore black and both were heavily armed. Their guns looked like Uzis, which made the Glock in his hand feel like a water pistol.

  The lead man had reached the end of the dock when his partner broke through a rotted board. The jagged planks stopped the muscular assailant from falling all the way through and left him suspended in midair. With his upper torso above the pier and his feet and legs dangling in the water, he twisted and cursed in a language the sheriff didn’t understand.

  The first man swung around. “Fucking asshole,” he said, and Cubiak recognized the voice of the man he thought of as the boss.

  “Chief . . . ,” Rowe said.

  “Not yet.”

  The trapped man struggled to get free. Leaving him, the boss plowed ahead. He was nearly on top of the lawmen when he tripped over the fishing line. As he toppled forward, he lost hold of the Uzi, and it skittered toward the fire.

  “Now,” the sheriff said, pointing his deputy toward the pier.

  As Rowe hurtled toward the lake, Cubiak threw himself at the man on the ground. The boss was young and strong. He punched the sheriff’s jaw and broke his hold. As the intruder went for the weapon, Cubiak scrambled up and kicked the Uzi into the glowing embers.

  A sudden fusillade of gunfire tore across the clearing. The trapped man was firing at the commotion onshore.

  Cubiak dove behind the fire.

  “Stop, you idiot,” the boss yelled, but the sickly staccato of the semiautomatic swallowed his words. The bombardment continued for several more seconds before the bullets stopped hammering the clearing and started pinging at the pier and the surrounding water. This second outburst was followed by a loud splash, then a surprised cry and silence.

  Cubiak didn’t dare look toward the lake. But he imagined what had happened. Rowe had waded out beneath the pier toward the trapped man. When he reached him, he grabbed him from below and yanked him through the gap.

  The sheriff was about to call out to his deputy when his assailant emerged from behind the tree. The boss had a knife.

  Cubiak grabbed a flaming branch and advanced.

  The young man stared at Cubiak with dead blue eyes and didn’t move.

  “Where is Ubell?”

  “He’s my prisoner.”

  “Ah, you have the prize as well?”

  “Of course.”

  The man grinned and the dragon tattoo on his cheek puckered. “We make a deal.”

  “No deal.”

  “Be reasonable.” The boss gestured toward the dock with the knife. “Your friend has taken out my friend. That’s one down. We kill Ubell and your friend, and then we share. Sixty-forty.”

  “Fifty-fifty.” The branch was burning down toward Cubiak’s hand.

  “The fuck. You have no way off this place. You need me.”

  “But I have the prize. So you need me more.”

  The boss sneered. He leapt forward and with a powerful karate kick knocked the burning stick to the ground. The sheriff ducked to grab it, and the young assailant darted forward. He held the knife high and thrust his arm down, plunging the long, serrated blade toward Cubiak.

  A shot rang out. The man yelped and staggered backward. The knife dropped into the dirt as blood streamed down his sleeve. His wrist was shattered. Cubiak grabbed his other arm and rammed it up behind his back.

  Rowe must have pulled a handgun off the man on the dock. That was the only explanation. Expecting to find his deputy on the other side of the clearing, the sheriff spun around.

  And saw Cate. She had fired the shot.

  She stood across from him, tall and impervious. Holding the silver pistol steady, she kept it aimed at the bleeding man.

  The boss snarled with rage and contempt. “A goddamn woman,” he said.

  Yes, and thank God for her, Cubiak thought.

  With the injured man subdued, they moved quickly. Cate devised a tourniquet from her sweater to stanch his bleeding, while Cubiak helped Rowe drag the other shooter from the lake.

  “You OK? You’re not hurt?” he asked his deputy as they pulled the protesting lump out from under the dock.

  “Just fucking cold. Water’s like ice,” he said.

  Rowe was limping, and when they got to shore, Cubiak saw the blood on his shirt. “You’ve been hit,” he said.

  The bullet had grazed the deputy just above his belt.

  “Lucky for you it’s just a flesh wound,” the sheriff said, knowing it could have been much worse.

  Onboard the cigarette boat, Cubiak found a first aid kit with gauze and tape that Cate used to patch up Rowe. When he was satisfied that his deputy was OK, he made Rowe and the man who had crashed through the pier strip to their skivvies and sit down by the fire. Then he went back to the boat for dry clothes and the assailants’ passports.

  They were from Tunisia, if the documents were authentic. The boss was Zied; the other man, Pierre.

  “Tell me about your arrangement with Ubell,” Cubiak said, back at the clearing.

  Zied refused to say anything, but Pierre held his hands to the fire and talked freely. As the sheriff suspected, Ubell had hired them to transport him and his companion along with the unidentified prize to Michigan’s Sault Sainte Marie and then across the border to Canada.

  “That’s enough. Shut up,” the boss said.

  The big man ignored him. “I don’t hafta take no orders from you no more. The German guy said there’d be a third passenger, too, but only for as long as needed. Kinda like protection if we were stopped or something.”

  They didn’t know who the third person was, but it had to be Cate.

  “And then?” Cubiak said.

  Pierre shrugged, as if to say You know.

  Without the Uzi, the man looked a little lost and almost harmless. “You kill us?” he said, staring into the fire.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You got this guy, Ubell, right? You got his prize, whatever it is. You kill us all and get rich. That’s the plan, ain’t it?”

  “Not exactly,” Cubiak said. He felt inside his pocket for his badge.

  “Oh,” Pierre said.

  Zied kicked at an ember. “Shit.” He spoke as if he would rather be shot dead than face what was coming.

  Cubiak radioed the coast guard from the Speedy Sister and then brought it around and tied it up behind the monster boat.

  “Coast guard’s already on the way. They’ll meet us at Washington Island and escort us the rest of the way in,” he said. The sheriff looked at his deputy. “It seems that Bathard got instructions from you to contact them if he didn’t hear from you within an hour. Is that right?”

  “Yeah. I hope . . .”

  “That you did the right thing?” Cubiak clapped his deputy’s shoulder. “Absolutely. Good call, Mike.”

  They took both boats back. Rowe insisted he was fit to pilot the monster boat with the fake Helen and Pierre onboard. The others followed in the Speedy Sister. The sheriff took the helm and sent Cate below with the Glock to guard Ubell, Zied, and the yellow viol.

  Cubiak held the wheel steady and followed the white stern light of the cigarette boat. Rowe was traveling fast, and he was glad. The sooner they reached Sturgeon Bay, the sooner Rowe would get to the ER for a thorough exam and he would get through the usual red tape of processing the prisoners. Mostly, however, he thought about Cate and getting her home safely. What if she lost the baby after what she had been through that day? Would their marriage dissolve into vague emptiness? Would she leave him? The possible consequences left him numb.

  After a while, she came up top.r />
  “Aren’t you cold?” he asked. The question seemed banal but he could think of no other.

  Cate shook her head. She was bundled in sweaters and coats and had pulled a red wool cap over her ears.

  “Ubell and that guy creep me out. I’m done looking at them. I’d rather be looking at this.” She pointed to the vista ahead.

  The clouds had fallen away from each other like tatters of lace. As they drifted apart, they created a pathway overhead. Moonlight cascaded through the opening and formed a long, straight silver line that paved their way across the black water.

  “How do you feel?” Cubiak said, although he was almost afraid to ask.

  “I’m fine.” She slipped her hand into his jacket pocket. “At some point you’re going to have to stop asking me that.”

  He felt his fears start to slip away. “In about seven months maybe, but not before then.”

  Cate rested her head against his shoulder. “Fair enough.”

  They were quiet for a moment, and then Cubiak spoke again. “You saved my life back there. You risked everything for me. If anything happens . . .”

  “Shhh. I only did what needed to be done. I did what you do every day.”

  “What made you come to the clearing?”

  “I heard the gunfire. You had Ubell’s Glock, and I knew Rowe was unarmed. That left me holding the only other weapon for our side. I thought it might help even the odds.”

  “You’re a brave woman.” Cubiak wrapped an arm around his wife.

  Just then a shooting star plummeted toward the earth. “There’s something that I have to ask,” he said when the flash of light disappeared.

  “Yes?”

  “Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?”

  Cate laughed. “Uncle Dutch taught me. I used to go camping when I was a teenager, and he said he couldn’t rest unless he was sure that I knew how to protect myself from wild animals.”

  “I guess I owe a lot to Dutch.”

  “You know that wasn’t his real name, don’t you?”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No.” Cate looked up and smiled. “It was Dave.”

  23

  MUSIC FOR THE GODS

  The calendar had flipped to October, the month when summer retreated into memory and Door County settled into the welcome leisurely pace of autumn. With the number of tourists dwindling as quickly as the vivid fall leaves faded, the routine job demands at the justice center eased as well, giving Cubiak time to catch up on paperwork. That morning, he had two reports to read.

  The first document summarized the events surrounding the Viola da Gamba Music Festival. Nearly seven weeks had passed since he had locked Ubell Acker, Helen-Marlene, and the two Tunisians behind bars. After their night in the Door County jail, he had remanded them into FBI custody. Within days, the four were arraigned on charges that included murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, theft, and assault. The report spelled out the details of the subsequent findings. Most interesting to him was the fact that all of the suspects’ names were aliases, even that of the man who had claimed he was Ubell Acker. According to the German police, the real Ubell, the son of gambist Franz Acker, had been missing for more than two years and was presumed dead.

  “Well, isn’t life strange,” Cubiak said when he came to that bit of information.

  For him, the second report, which Rowe had just brought in, carried more immediate import. It detailed the investigation of the shoplifting ring led by Meryl Gregory, the woman the sheriff had encountered at the Washington Island gift shop during the festival.

  “She ran a group of nine people. All of them were married to musicians who traveled around the country performing at different festivals and summer concerts. While the musicians worked at their gigs, the spouses ‘shopped.’ In two summers, they swiped more than a hundred grand worth of merchandise. Most of which they sold on eBay,” Rowe said.

  “Were they all women?”

  “Mostly, but there were two or three men as well.”

  “And the spouses—the musicians—knew nothing about the scheme?”

  “That’s what they all claim.”

  Cubiak shook his head. He was about to say Well, isn’t life strange but realized he would be repeating himself and wasn’t that a bad sign? Instead he looked at his deputy. “How’re you doing?”

  Rowe patted his left side. “Good as new,” he said.

  “I still regret letting you pilot the Tunisians’ cigarette boat back to Sturgeon Bay.”

  “Too much adrenalin. I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Or you just wanted to drive a monster down the lake.”

  Rowe laughed and stepped back toward the door, where he nearly collided with the sheriff’s assistant.

  Lisa was unusually animated. “There’s a gentleman here to see you,” she told her boss.

  “Who is he?”

  “He wouldn’t give his name, but you’ll want to see him. Trust me.”

  The last time Lisa had said something similar, the devious fake Helen Kulas had sat down across from his desk.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Cubiak glanced out the window. The view opened to the pasture across the road, where a herd of Holsteins grazed. Earlier the cows were scattered over the grass, but now they had moved out of sight, leaving the empty meadow to shimmer in the brilliant October light. The glow was almost otherworldly. A sign, perhaps.

  “OK, send him in,” he said.

  A pale, sandy-haired man wrapped in a monk’s cassock floated through the doorway bearing a massive bouquet of yellow roses. The visitor was slight of build, and with his tonsured hair, he looked like an apparition of Saint Francis of Assisi. A wide cowl encircled his throat, and his shoulders stooped under the weight of the coarse, brown fabric that cascaded to the floor. He wore sandals and no socks. A mendicant. As soon as he saw him, Cubiak regretted his decision.

  What the hell is this? the sheriff thought as he stood to greet the visitor.

  “I am Ubell Acker,” the monk said. With an unabashed smile, he presented the flowers to Cubiak.

  The sheriff was dumbfounded. “Ubell Acker is presumed dead.”

  “Dead to the world, yes. And, indeed, for a while that was true. But as you see, I am very much alive.”

  Cubiak didn’t know what to say and was saved by Lisa, who had followed the visitor in.

  “May I?” she said as she reached for the roses. “I’ll put them in water. Coffee, sir?”

  “Please.”

  “Father?”

  The visitor bowed his head. “I am Brother Franz, named in memory of my father, not a priest, but thank you for the use of the honorific. And tea, not coffee, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  The sheriff seated Brother Franz at the small table near the door. For a moment, the monk busied himself studying the trappings of the office. He seemed content not to speak, so Cubiak waited.

  When Lisa returned with the vase of flowers and mugs of tea and coffee, the sheriff signaled for her to close the door.

  “Two months ago, I arrested a man who called himself Ubell Acker. According to the FBI, his real name is Karl Jager. Have you ever heard of him?”

  “Sadly, yes. Karl Jager was my former longtime friend, pretending to be me.”

  “You know him, then?”

  Brother Franz gave a woeful smile. “Karl and I grew up together.” The monk sipped the tea and then launched into the sad story of his childhood. Some of the information was already familiar to Cubiak: After the theft of the yellow viol, Franz Acker returned to Germany with his infant son and tried to take up his old life in Hamburg. Emotionally distraught, he was unable to perform in public and ended up giving private lessons to make a living. But much of what the monk revealed was new.

  “Many of the neighbors also were not kind to my father. There were whispers and sniggers, sometimes behind his back and sometimes to his face. He had been a famous man and now he was reduced to a jok
e in their eyes. Eventually their vitriol drove him away from our home. I was three or so when we moved to a small farm in Bavaria, where my father meant to start over. No one paid much attention to us, except for old ladies who baked him cakes and tried to win his favor for their unmarried daughters.”

  The monk paused, as if remembering. “And that was where I met Karl,” he said. “We started together in kindergarten and remained classmates all the way through gymnasium, which is like your high school. I was a shy child and Karl became my best friend, my only friend, really. It was from me that he learned so much about the yellow viol.”

  Brother Franz looked at the sheriff with sad eyes. “You must realize that my father remained tortured by the events of that terrible night. He blamed himself for everything that happened and never ceased talking about it—the storm, the arduous journey to the hospital, my mother’s death, the theft of the viol. And I, though sworn to secrecy, complained endlessly to Karl.”

  “You must have had great trust in him,” Cubiak said.

  “We were both farm kids without many playmates. He shared secrets with me, and I did the same with him. There didn’t seem to be any harm in it.” The monk made a small sound like a laugh. “Ironically, of the two of us, Karl was the one with the talent for music.”

  “Your father taught him to play the viol?”

  “He did. And Karl was quite good.”

  “What happened then?”

  “My father died and Karl and I grew up. He went to study in Cologne and I in Berlin. He had family in Bavaria and probably went back but I had no reason to return. Over time we lost track of each other.”

  Brother Franz reached for the tea again. “I endured much hardship growing up, and in Berlin I became acquainted with people who had been lavished with wealth and ease. Getting to know them, I realized how different my life would have been if my father had not lost the yellow viol. I would have enjoyed luxury instead of deprivation. I became very angry.”

  He gave Cubiak a meaningful look. “It is easy to be angry in Berlin. There are many outlets for one’s rage.”

  “Drugs? Alcohol?”