Richard Stevenson - Chain of Fools

Dale said, "Stankie's theory is it was a homicidal drifter-some twitchie dork by the name of Gordon Grubb who was in the area at the time and is now in jail down in Pennsylvania, where supposedly he shoved three campers off a cliff. Stankie's not trying to extradite him because there's no real evidence tying Grubb to Eric's death. Anyway, if he's convicted down there, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will no doubt want to send him spinning off to kingdom come expeditiously. My parents had a friend who went to Penn State in the forties, and she said whenever they threw the switch on 'Ol' Ben's Kite,' as they called it, at Rockview State Penitentiary, the lights dimmed up and down the Nittany Valley. Just your average inadvertent public execution."

Timmy said, "These days executions are so tasteful, and medically approved-lethal injections and all that."

"I don't believe there have been any 'medically approved' state executions in this country," Dale said. "Oh, in Texas maybe."

We were all sitting along the edge of the dock now. Janet and Dale had their sandals off, their feet dangling in the cool water.

Timmy said, "Why do you think Skeeter is so sure there's some connection between Eric's death and the Jet Ski incident and the situation at the Herald? He was acting pretty crazy at the hospital last night, but he seemed so certain about that-as if the drug that made him psychotic also heightened his powers of intuition."

Janet slumped a bit and looked rueful at this turn in the conversation. It was Dale who said, "Skeeter?"

"Eldon was called Skeeter when Timmy knew him in high school," Janet said, perking up at the chance to change the subject. "Where did his nickname come from anyway?" she asked Timmy.

"I don't know. He had it from when he was a little kid."

"The Eldon I know is hardly mosquitolike," Dale said. "He's more ursine. But I guess it would make some people nervous having a tot around nicknamed Grizzly."

"Eldon was big and already had hair on his chest even when I first met him in seventh grade," Timmy said. "He was in my gym class, and I think it might have been my first locker-room erotic response."

"Mine was similar," Dale said. "Renee Boulanger was a French exchange student. She didn't have hair on her chest, to the best of my recollection, but she had it under her arms down to her hipbones, and I still get weak in the knees at the thought of her. I wonder what old Renee is up to now."

Janet suddenly hopped up and said, "How about a swim? Aren't you two ready to cool off?"

We'd brought our bathing suits along, although Timmy had said earlier in the car: "I know at some point they're going to whip off all their clothes, dash through the trees, and plunge into the lake-I guess you can't call it 'buck naked.' And they're going to expect us to do the same. Believe me, this is going to happen. I have a feeling about Janet Osborne and about any woman she might choose to live beside a lake with."

I told him that if he was going to be involved in the investigation of a crime-which he still insisted he was-he'd have to quit being so prim. So he buttoned his lip on the subject of our skinny-dipping with lesbians, obviously a complex circumstance for him.

Now, as Janet began to speak eagerly of watery recreation, Timmy said, "I'm really enjoying just sitting here, even with so many people living around the lake."

"Stilton is big enough," Janet said, "to accommodate quite a crowd. Although if tranquility is what you're after, stay away from here on holiday weekends. It's Orlando-in-the-Adirondacks."

"She's referring to the Florida city specializing in industrial tourism," Dale said to Timmy and me, "not the Virginia Woolf novel."

Timmy said, "Oh, I see. Thank you."

"Have you read it?" Dale said.

"Orlando the city," Timmy asked, "or Orlando the novel?"

"The great novel."

"No, but I read To the Lighthouse. By the time. I'd finished it, I was experiencing the actual physical sensation of having multiple personalities. Only the greatest literature can do that."

At this, Dale cracked an enigmatic little smile.

Not daring to look at Timmy, I gazed out across the lake. The cigarette boat across the way was still zooming around with a skier in tow- a young man in multicolored boxers, it looked like-and a man in a baseball cap still paddled his canoe along the shore a quarter of a mile away.

Timmy said, "Janet, you were going to tell us about Skeeter's suspicions surrounding Eric's murder and the Jet Ski attack, and how they could be connected to the Heralds situation. Does Skeeter have particular people in mind-in your family or at one of the newspaper chains-who might actually try to change the outcome of the vote by murdering people on the board of directors? Murdering Eric or you or your mother or your brother Dan?"

Janet stood motionless, outlined against the sun, and said nothing for a long moment. Fit and rangy as a basketball pro in blue shorts and a lemon-yellow T-shirt, she was remarkably sturdy for a woman in early middle age, but now her fear made her seem vulnerable. She suddenly looked so anxious that I half expected her to dive off the dock and speed away in no particular direction.

Dale said, "Some of the newer Osbornes have a part or two missing. Or six or eight. The gene pool got spread thin or something."

Janet lowered herself to the dock again and sat beside Dale, who squeezed Janet's hand, then let go. Janet smiled weakly and said, "The

Osbornes have always advocated peace and love." She forced a laugh and added, "But they haven't always practiced it."

Dale said, "Present Osborne company excepted, of course."

"I have a temper too," Janet said. "You guys haven't seen it, but Dale can tell you."

Dale rolled her eyes. "I can, but I won't. Anyway, what we're talking about here is more than the odd hissy fit. It wasn't Janet who killed her brother. And Janet didn't get mad at herself and try to bash her own head in with a speeding Jet Ski last week. I know that because I was there."

I asked, "Do some Osbornes have a history of violence?"

As Dale watched her, Janet said to me, "Some do, yes." She took another breath and said, "My mother's brother Edmund once nearly beat a man to death with a walking stick. Uncle Edmund is dead now, but I mention this because there seems to be- a pattern, a predisposition to violence among the Watsons, my mother's family. It's probably not genetic-the best science on the subject comes down against that possibility. But the tendency nevertheless is there. A therapist I once talked to about it called it image copying. That's where someone internalizes the image of a relative and consciously or unconsciously follows a kind of life script where she or he emulates a bad relative's bad behavior. There are several examples of it in my family. Among my generation, my cousin Graham, Edmund's son, has been in prison since 1992 for stabbing a man in a bar in Lake Placid and nearly killing him.

"Eric was never violent, and Dan's not, and I'm not-so far-and neither is June. We've all been known to yell and storm around, Dan especially. But the only one of the siblings who's shown any of the Watson tendencies is my brother Chester. When he was an adolescent, he lost it twice at hockey matches and bashed guys on the opposing team with his hockey stick. The second time he did it, he beat a boy so badly that Chester was charged with criminal assault. It was only his age and Slim Finn, Dad's lawyer and Edensburg's Mr. Fixit, that got Chester probation instead of juvenile detention. Chester hasn't hurt anybody since then, that any of us knows of, but Chester's son, Craig, is in prison too. Last year he shot and killed a guard in a jewel robbery."

Janet paused here to take another deep breath, and maybe to get a reaction. Timmy said, "So it's a kind of Watson-Osborne floating bad seed. Not genetic, but persistent nevertheless."