Page 8

Martin Showalter lived just outside of Fish Creek, on a bluff overlooking the bay waters.

The view was spectacular, and Martin’s piece of land was likely worth a bundle, but his dwelling was a mobile home parked on cinder blocks.

It had clearly seen better days, as had the rusted old pickup truck parked beside it.

In sharp contrast to this slow spread of neglect was the boat perched on a trailer behind the pickup.

Its shiny fiberglass hull and twin outboard motors gleamed in the sunlight.

It was obvious what mattered most to Marty.

I unhooked Newt and told him to heel.

As soon as he hopped out, his nose was in the air, his nostrils flaring, but he stayed at my side.

We walked up to a wooden block that served as a step to the entrance of the mobile home and Rita rapped loudly on the door.

After waiting a full two minutes, Rita knocked again, harder this time.

Seconds later the door flew open, banging on the side of the mobile home and making me jump.

In the doorway stood a slightly stooped, grizzled old man.

He had a long gray beard that was tangled and yellowed in places, and the odors of stale cigarettes, urine, and something that might have been rotting food wafted out the door.

“Hold your damned horses!”

he grumbled.

“Why is everyone so frigging impatient these days?”

What little I could see over Marty’s shoulders confirmed what Rita had told me.

There was junk piled from floor to ceiling behind him: boxes, paper and plastic bags that contained who knew what, dishes, clothing, towels, small kitchen appliances, and books, with a small chair and table near the floor serving as a base.

Marty stared at Rita, and I saw recognition kick in as the anger in his yellowed eyes gradually softened.

Then his gaze shifted to Newt and that old face cracked a smile, revealing lots of yellowed teeth.

He hobbled out onto the wooden block and said, “Hello there, boy.”

Newt surprised me by walking up and sniffing Marty’s feet, which might simply have been Newt’s way of enjoying an olfactory overload.

Marty eyed my dog with amusement and said, “What brings you out here, Rita?”

“This young lady is looking into some fellows who died in Death’s Door recently.

She needs information about currents in the area.”

Marty finally tore his eyes from Newt and fixed them on me instead.

“You a copper?”

“No, sir.

But I’ve been hired to help them.”

He scoffed and eyed me from head to toe.

“As what?”

“A cryptozoologist.”

Something in Marty’s face shifted.

He stared at me, his lips moving as if he were ruminating on my answer.

“What’s your name?”

“Oh, sorry.

It’s Morgan Carter.”

That got a chuckle out of him for reasons I didn’t comprehend.

“Don’t tell me.

You’re looking for a lake monster,” he said.

I was impressed that Marty knew what a cryptozoologist was.

“In a way,”

I admitted.

“The police want to find out what’s killed two men and some animals out on the water by crushing them in what appears to be a giant bite.”

“Is that right?”

Clearly, Marty was a skeptic, a good thing in my opinion.

“And how do you think I can help with that?”

“I’m bothered by how and where these fellows’ bodies were found.

I don’t have a good enough understanding of the local currents to know if the bodies could have traveled from where they presumably drowned, based on anecdotal evidence, to where they were found, but it feels wrong to me.

I’m hoping you can help me discern if I’m right or just imagining things.”

“I thought you said they were bit,”

Marty said.

“Now you’re saying they drowned.

Which is it?”

“Both.

It appears the men drowned, but they were also bitten by something with a mouth span of nearly twelve inches at or around the time of death.”

Marty gave me a tired look that said this would be a waste of his time, time that, judging from his lifestyle and appearance, he didn’t have a lot of left.

I sent Newt a mental message, wanting him to cozy up a little more to Marty, sensing that my dog might have been key in gaining the man’s cooperation.

Newt glanced over his shoulder at me, and I gave him a subtle nod.

With that, he put his front feet up on the wooden step and started licking Marty’s hand.

Having no idea how clean that hand was, I shuddered, but then I remembered that Newt had eaten and licked far grosser things in the past.

Marty gazed fondly at Newt and stroked his massive head.

“He’s a big fella, a lot like my Moose used to be.”

His face contorted, and for a second, I thought he might cry.

But then he gathered himself and looked at Rita.

“I was sorry to hear about George,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“You sold the store.”

Marty made it sound like an accusation rather than an observation.

“More like I gave it away,”

Rita grumbled.

“Turned out, George wasn’t so good at managing the money.”

Marty nodded, looking thoughtful.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yes, well, fortunately, Morgan’s parents gave me a job and bought enough of my book inventory to let me unload the store without declaring bankruptcy.”

Marty digested this for several seconds and then said, “Let’s go sit out back and we can have a chat.”

Relieved that the issue of meeting outside had resolved itself so easily, we followed Marty around to the area behind his mobile home.

It turned out to be much nicer than I expected.

After seeing the squalor he lived in, I was expecting a junkyard mess.

Instead, there was a small clearing in the heavily wooded parcel of land, and in that clearing sat four beautiful Adirondack chairs facing out over the bluff.

Mingled with the scent of pine and the lingering aromas from Marty was a distinct odor of sawdust and paint.

“Did you build these?” I asked.

I expected him to say no, but he nodded.

“I sell them.

Give you a good price if you want one.”

“I just might,”

I said, running an appreciative hand over the wide, flat arm of one of the chairs.

It was stained, giving the wood grain a slightly reddish hue, whereas the other three chairs were painted, two in a colonial blue shade and the third in a dark red.

“This is really beautiful,”

I said, eyeing the stained chair more closely.

“I love the way you brought out the grain in the wood in this one.

You do nice work.”

“Thank you.”

Marty seemed genuinely humbled by the compliment.

I settled myself into the chair, sliding toward the back of it as I wondered how Marty could have built such lovely furniture, given what a mess his house was.

Then I spied a shed out under the trees, nearly hidden in the shade.

A trail of sawdust near the door told me that had to be his workshop.

Rita sat in the chair next to me while Marty sat on her other side, looking delighted when Newt walked over and lay at his feet.

“Tell me where these fellows went into the water and where their bodies turned up,”

Marty said.

“First let me tell you about the animal carcasses,”

I told him.

“A large sturgeon showed up floating in the water near the Rock Island ferry landing.

Since there are efforts underway to try to restore the sturgeon populations, the DNR took an interest in the carcass and collected it for examination.

They were surprised to see that the fish had apparently been crushed to death by something large that appeared to have bitten it.

There were teeth marks on the fish’s body, but the skin wasn’t broken.

All its insides had been crushed.”

“Could have been caught between a jetty and a boat,”

Marty said.

“Maybe stones made a pattern that looked like teeth.

Nothing to get too excited about.”

“I don’t think anyone did until the deer carcass showed up,”

I said, and Marty’s scraggly eyebrows shot up with interest.

“It was found on shore in a small cove on Washington Island, near Schoolhouse Beach.

It, too, had been crushed as if something large had grabbed it by its body and clamped down.

And again, there were indentations and bruising that indicated teeth were involved.”

“Any puncture wounds?”

Marty asked, and I shook my head.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way of knowing where these animals sustained their injuries initially,” he mused.

“I don’t think so.”

“Deer can and do swim a long way,”

Marty said.

“They’ve been known to swim a couple of miles, sometimes more.

They swim from island to island in Death’s Door all the time.”

“That’s true,”

Rita said.

“I saw three of them swimming once when I was on the ferry.”

Marty patted one of his knees and Newt dutifully sat up and rested his head there so Marty could pet him.

The two of them looked quite content, and whatever else Marty was, he was okay in my book if Newt liked him.

“And our human victims?”

Marty asked.

“Where did they go into the water?”

“The first victim, Oliver Sykes, supposedly went kayaking along the northern coastline of Washington Island, taking off from Schoolhouse Beach back in June.

By all accounts, he was a very skilled kayaker and swimmer, and everyone thought he’d be fine on his own, but he never returned.

His body washed up on the western side of Boyer Bluff two days later.

Autopsy showed that he drowned, but he also had bite marks on his torso and most of his organs were crushed.”

Marty frowned at that.

“Did they find his kayak?” he asked.

“They did, in Green Bay, about a half mile west of Washington Island.”

Marty frowned.

“You said there were two victims?”

“Yes, the second one, Will Stokstad, was here on a fishing trip two weeks ago.

He rented a small motorboat on Washington Island and there’s some confusion as to where he went.

He spoke to his wife on the phone the morning of the day he went missing, telling her he planned to go fish near Fisherman Shoal, though the boat rental shop thought he might have changed his plan and headed for the Rock Island Passage instead.

His boat was found with most of his gear in it floating near Hedgehog Harbor.

There was no sign of Stokstad until two days later, when his body was found on the eastern shore of Boyer Bluff on a small section of isolated beach.”

Marty slowly shook his head.

“I’ll need to know the exact dates,”

he said.

“There were some changes in the wind vectors during both months that resulted in a southeasterly wind for several days despite the prevailing southwest and northeast winds.

I’ll also have to consider temperature and the effect of the geography of the Niagara Escarpment since it runs right up through the middle of the peninsula and Washington Island.

And then there’re the warm waters of Green Bay flowing into and on top of the cold waters of Lake Michigan.

That creates currents that change from month to month.

We have bimodal winds and bimodal currents to consider here.”

I must have looked dumbfounded, which I admittedly was, and Marty concluded with, “I need to look at some things before I can give you an answer.

But for either victim’s body or boat to show up where they did . . .”

He shook his head again, more definitively this time.

“Not likely.”

Marty shifted his gaze to the woods and pulled at his beard with one hand while absentmindedly stroking Newt’s head with the other.

I watched him but said nothing, not wanting to disrupt his thought process.

Eventually he looked over at me.

“Are you seriously thinking there might be some sort of creature out there that’s doing this? Something along the lines of the Loch Ness Monster?”

“It’s unlikely,”

I admitted, “but not impossible.

Something created those bite marks.”

Marty nodded but he looked unconvinced.

“Maybe you have a rogue creature with a homicidal bent who strayed here from one of the deeper lakes,” he said.

I saw a twinkle in his eye and realized he was having a bit of fun at my expense.

“I assure you, I’m a skeptic at heart, Mr.

Showalter.”

“Like your parents?”

I stared at him.

“Hard to live in Door County all your life and not know about them,”

Marty said with a shrug, “though I came from a different side of the tracks than they did.

Your dad was a Carter, and that family is well-known in these parts.”

His presumptuousness annoyed me.

I did my best to hide it and, eager to get back to the topic at hand, said, “Can you think of a plausible explanation for how the men’s bodies ended up where they did?”

His face wrinkled in thought.

“Again, I need to check some things.

But my gut says something or someone had to have transported those bodies to the beaches where they ended up.

And they were up on a beach, on dry land?”

I nodded.

“Wave action might have pushed them close to shore, but . . .”

His voice trailed off.

“What?”

I prompted.

“I’ve spent a lot of years on the waters around here, and I’ve seen plenty of people die in them.

Bodies don’t float when they drown because the lungs fill up with water and that makes them sink.

If the water temperature is cold enough, those bodies may never come back up to the surface.”

He paused and pulled at his beard.

“I suppose one explanation is that whatever bit them fellas carried them to the waters near the beaches where they were found.”

“But why?”

I said, a mostly rhetorical question.

I was merely thinking aloud.

“If the men weren’t killed for food, why were they killed? It doesn’t fit with typical animal behavior.”

“Well, this ain’t exactly a typical animal we’re thinking about here, is it?”

Marty said, arching those scraggly eyebrows.

“I need to go to the beaches where these bodies were found, see them for myself.”

I nodded.

“I did that earlier today.”

“Can you do it again tomorrow? Show me where they were? We can take my boat.”

He wanted me to come along? I hadn’t expected that.

I looked at him, his body bent and crippled, and then I looked at his boat, all shiny and new and sparkly.

I glanced over at Rita, who didn’t look overly concerned with the idea.

“I go out on the water nearly every day,”

Marty said, reading my doubts.

“You and the dog will be fine, I promise.”

He punctuated his comment by patting Newt on the head.

His automatic inclusion of Newt sealed the deal for me.

“Okay,”

I said, hoping the lake winds would help dissipate Marty’s aromas.

“When and where should we meet you?”

“How about the boat launch at the marina in Sister Bay?”

he said.

“Eight tomorrow morning?”

“We’ll be there.”

Rita and I drove back with all the windows down, relishing the fresh air.

When we got to the store, Newt approached the back door ahead of us and whined.

A ridge of fur rose down his spine and I shot Rita a worried look as I unlocked the door and opened it, calling out to Devon.

“Devon? Are you in here?”

No response.

Newt entered the store, crouched down, his nose sniffing the air anxiously.

As soon as we reached the counter, I saw Devon.

He was prostrate on the floor, either out cold or dead, a pool of blood near his head.

I rushed over to him, relieved when I saw him move a hand.

“Call nine-one-one!”

I hollered to Rita.

A closer look at the back of Devon’s head revealed a gash that was oozing a steady flow of blood.

I went to grab the roll of paper towels I kept in a cupboard by Henry’s mummified body and was ripping off several sheets to use to try to stanch the flow of blood when I saw the note.

It was pinned in place with a knife that was buried to the hilt in Henry’s chest.

Written on it in big capital letters was this:

BEWARE OF DEATH’S DOOR.