Death Stalks Door County by Patricia Skalka Page A

him a glass of water. “What happened?” he said.
    Barry choked on the water and began to cough and cry at the same time.
    Cubiak waited for him to recover. “Were you alone?” he said finally.
    The boy’s eyes glazed over.
    â€œYou were with a girl?”
    Barry nodded. His breathing was rapid and shallow.
    â€œWhat were you doing, messing around?”
    Barry nodded again. “Yeah.”
    The story came out in spurts. He’d taken a girl named Alice to the hilltop clearing behind Turtle Bay Campground. After about an hour or so, they ran out of beer. Alice said she was cold so Barry gave her his jacket and the flashlight and left to get another six-pack from the car. Coming back he got lost, and when he finally located the spot where they’d been hanging out, he found her. He looked at them in panic as if they should know the rest without his having to spell out the details.
    â€œWhat happened?” Johnson shouted. He tried to shake the boy but Barry swatted at his hand.
    â€œIs she okay? Is Alice all right?” Cubiak said quietly, tamping down his own fear. What could harm someone in the woods? A hungry bear? Wolves?
    Barry shuddered and doubled over. “She . . . she . . .” The rest dissolved into sobs as he rocked back and forth, sputtering saliva at the floor.
    Cubiak snatched a coat from the hall and dropped it over the boy’s shoulders. “You better call Beck and Halverson,” he told Johnson. “I’ll go and check. Maybe she’s hurt.”
    I n the blackened forest, Cubiak felt the same cold dread he’d experienced as a cop answering a call in the most violent urban neighborhood. No matter how much information the police had going into a situation, there was always the unknown factor: the door knob wired to a bomb, the guy at the bottom of the basement stairs waiting to slam a nail-studded board into the face of the first person down. Maybe Alice had passed out from drinking. Then how to explain the blood on Barry’s hands? A nosebleed, animal bite?
    Cubiak missed the campground cutoff and had to double back. On the second go-round, the headlights caught the marker. He parked at the bottom of the trail, flipped on the flashers as a signal for Halverson, and climbed up the path, spurred on by the nervous click-click of the emergency lights.
    The sound ebbed away and a cobweb brushed Cubiak’s face. A ridge of sweat rose on his spine.
    The woods were familiar in the daylight. At night, they were changed, at once vibrant and soulless, alert and sleeping. Darkness reshaped the landscape until time and distance lost their meaning. He was a man accustomed to sodium-vapor streetlamps. In the dark forest, even with the flashlight, he felt powerless.
    An owl hooted. Cubiak spun toward the sound. Behind and to his right, the wind whistled through the trees. He turned again and through a thicket of wild blackberry bushes spied a faint yellow glimmer.
    As he pushed through the brush, he caught a whiff of wood smoke. It was cold in the woods, and he figured the two had disregarded park regulations and made a fire. Cubiak expected to find Alice curled up alongside it. But she wasn’t anywhere near the mound of embers. She was sitting at the far side of the small clearing, braced against the trunk of a young white birch tree. A blue-and-yellow plaid blanket draped her head and torso. Her lap was heaped with empty beer cans and her bare legs extended straight out toward him. She was shoeless, and the soles of her feet glistened winter-white in the light from the lantern that lay near her thin canvas slip-ons. The forest was oddly quiet.
    â€œAlice?”
    There was no answer.
    A sense of rage pulsed through Cubiak as he crossed the patch of trampled grass. Was this some kind of sick joke? Or a prank, an initiation into an adolescent club that Barry wanted to join?
    Cubiak trained the flashlight down and lifted the blanket, scattering the empty