Chain of Fools

11

Thursday morning, Timmy, exhausted, slept in-we'd shared a frilly four-poster in what had been June's room-while Janet drove off to the Herald, Dale joined Elsie the housekeeper in keeping an eye on Ruth Osborne, and I left Maple Street at 7:45 in search of Captain Bill Stankie.

I drove out to the edge of town and found Stankie in his office at the State Police barracks, one of those characterless brick boxes that are representative of public architecture in the age of hate-all-government. Stankie didn't look as if he minded the lack of columns and a cupola framing his official presence. Squat, ruddy-faced, and agreeably unprepossessing in shirtsleeves and green suspenders, Stankie looked up at me placidly from behind his metal desk. I introduced myself and explained that I'd been hired by Janet Osborne to investigate any connection between her brother's murder and two apparent attempts on her life. For the moment, I left out the sale of the Herald, that day's edition of which lay open to the sports section on Stankie's desk next to his coffee mug.

"I doubt there's any connection, but I'd be interested to hear what you've come up with," Stankie said. "Have a seat."

I seated myself across from Stankie and told him that I was only just getting started and had come up with nothing of substance yet, and that was why I'd come to see him. I asked him to fill me in on the Eric Osborne murder investigation, and on anything Stankie knew about the sheriff's office investigation of the two Jet Ski attacks on Janet.

"Was that your boyfriend that got clipped yesterday?" Stankie asked. "My wife is a nurse at the ER, and she said a gay couple came in, and one of the guys had a broken foot from a Jet Ski incident out at Osborne's place on the lake."

"How did she know we were a couple?"

"Sue always knows. Our third son, Hank, is gay, and he and his partner, Ray, are both police officers in Cincinnati, Ohio-Ray's hometown. We don't see nearly as much of them as we'd like. We get out there once a year, but Hank and Ray are kept pretty busy with their off-duty gay-rights — work. Cincinnati is a pretty conservative town. Which is fine with me, overall. I'm conservative myself."

"Except in one way, it looks like."

"Oh no," Stankie said with a shrug. "If you mean gay rights, that's conservative as I see it. The government leaving decent, law-abiding people alone is conservative. People being treated fairly is conservative. No, I don't see that I'm being inconsistent at all. It's the Newt Gin-grichs that are being inconsistent." He paused, then added, "Not that I always saw it that way, I have to admit. I had to be educated on the subject."

"That's often the way it is. Although a lot of men your age are un-educable."

"I had no choice in the matter," Stankie said mildly. "It was come around or lose a son. So I came around. And it didn't take long, either."

"Then you had no problem with Eric Osborne's being gay. Or Janet's."

"Not in later years," he said, and I didn't probe into what that might have meant.

I said, "And when Eric was killed, you didn't immediately peg his male lover as the prime suspect, the way a lot of investigators might have."

"No, I knew Eric and Eldon well enough to see that their marriage was as good as mine is. But you shouldn't knock homicide investigators who take a close look at the spouse or lover first. Straight or gay, when a bed partner is murdered, often it's the other partner who did it. The statistics bear this out. In any case," Stankie said, looking a little embarrassed, "Eldon McCaslin had an alibi. When Eric was killed, Eldon was on a special assignment up near Watertown with two other forest rangers. Checking that out, of course, was a matter of routine."

"Of course."

"And anyway, on the second day of the investigation we started hearing about this Gordon Grubb character. Janet's filled you in on him, I take it?"

"She told me that he exists and you think he's the killer."

Stankie hesitated no more than a second, and said, "He's my candidate, yes."

"How come?"

Stankie pulled a folder from a stack on the side of his desk and extracted a rap sheet, photo attached, of a blank-eyed, thirty-seven-year-old man with a dirty beard and a jagged scar on his left cheek. "This is one of sixteen people who were known to have been, or could have been, on the trail Eric was hiking on the morning of the day he was killed. The other fifteen were upstanding citizens who had no connection with Eric that we could establish, or that any of them would admit to. Grubb had no known connection with Eric, either. But you'll see there that he's had two earlier arrests, including one conviction, for assaulting and robbing campers near Saranac Lake.

"A general store manager up where the hiking trail crosses Route 418 used to live in Saranac, and he recognized Grubb when he'd come into the store a day or two earlier. Later, other people who'd been on the trail that week picked Grubb's mug shot out of a series, and they said they'd seen him and he'd made people nervous on account of his looks. A week later, Grubb turned up in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, where he allegedly savagely assaulted and robbed three campers while they slept, shoving their bodies in a ravine. Two of the three died in the attack-they were all stabbed repeatedly with a hunting knife. But one survived, and he ID'd Grubb, who'd already been arrested in the next county for breaking into a vacation cabin. I drove down there and interviewed Grubb, but by then a lawyer had been at him. He refused to talk about anything at all, other than that he'd been up this way camping-he said he couldn't remember when. But is he our man on the Eric Osborne homicide? I'd say yes."

He watched me interestedly as I said, "Did I or did I not hear you say that Grubb had actually been spotted in the area of the murder scene a day or two before the killing, and he might have been there on the day Eric was killed?"

"That's what I said."

"I don't know about that, Captain."

"I'd rather have him on the trail on the day of the crime, yes. But we don't know that he wasn't there on the day of the murder, either. Grubb is certainly unable or unwilling to show that he was anywhere else at the time."

"Anyway," I said, "wasn't Eric bludgeoned to death? Grubb apparently likes to stick knives in people. What about the Saranac Lake assaults? Did he use a knife or a club?"

"He threatened people with knives, and hit one with a rock."

"Oh."

"Eric Osborne was hit from behind, on the head, thirty or thirty-one times, with a heavy blunt instrument that left no residue. That rules out a log or branch or other barky natural object of the forest. The handle end of a golf club is a possibility. The object was roughly of that thickness. It appears that the perpetrator was hiding behind some rock ledge, jumped out just as Eric passed by, and pounded away. Eric probably never knew what hit him."

"Whoever did it," I said, "obviously wanted to make sure that Eric was dead."

"That's so. It was a vicious attack by someone in a great fury."

"And by someone who, it sounds like, carried the murder weapon with him or her on the trail. How far off the road did the crime occur?"

"Less than a mile," Stankie said. "The weapon was never found, but Grubb could have stashed it in his camping gear and trekked out to 418 and thumbed a ride. That's generally how he got around. So far, we've been unable to locate the motorist who gave him a lift out of the area."

"Was Osborne robbed?" I asked.

"Apparently not. At any rate, nothing obvious was lifted from his wallet. But then we don't know what all Eric had in his possession at the time."

"Then that's another reason to discount Grubb, who seems to like to hurt and rob strangers. Captain, you've got sixteen people who were on that trail around the time of the killing. But how do you know there weren't others? Especially since the murder took place so close to Route 418."

He shrugged. "We don't."

"Who knew Eric was going hiking that day, and where he planned on walking? Anybody?"

Stankie fidgeted with his folder and said, "As a matter of fact, quite a few people knew."

"Uh-huh."

"Every Monday morning, Eric hiked up to Hobbs Pond, where he'd spend several hours watching a beaver clan he'd been writing about in his Thursday column in the Herald. It was a series he'd started in late March. Twenty-two thousand copies of the Herald are sold every day, so-you can take it from there, Mr. Strachey. That opens up other possibilities-I realize that. But possibilities are possibilities, and evidence is evidence, and the best evidence still points to Gordon Grubb- a known violent killer, probably a psychopath-as Osborne's assailant. Of course, the case is officially open. And so's my mind."

Stankie sat watching me with a look that seemed to suggest he was waiting for me to say something, but I had no idea what it was he wanted me to say. When I asked, "What have you heard from the sheriffs department on the two Jet Ski attacks?" Stankie looked almost disappointed.

He said, "The Jet Skier got away yesterday, but Sheriff Stone has a sketchy description of a pickup truck that somebody saw near the north end of the lake not long after the attack. This guy had a Jet Ski in the back of his truck and was speeding east. They haven't got a plate number, only a general description of the truck, so I don't know whether anything much is going to come of that. The sheriff tells me he's going to be keeping an eye on Janet's place for a while, but he's advised her to stay off the lake for the time being and she's agreed to play it safe."

"She and Dale Kotlowicz are staying in town at the Osborne family house for now, and I'm there with them."

"Good," Stankie said, and again he looked as if he were waiting for me to ask some critical question I'd neglected to ask so far, or to open up a topic he felt unable to introduce on his own.

I said, "The Osbornes are quite a family. I'd never met any of them before."

"They are, aren't they?" Now he was alert.

"Three generations of American overachievers."

"I'd put it at about two-and-a-half," Stankie said. "And the fourth generation you can pretty much forget about."

"I haven't met any of the fourth generation yet."

"And chances are, you won't."

"Why's that?"

He eyed me grimly. "Dick and June Puderbaugh have two boys, Titus-he's called Tidy-and Frederick, who's better known as Tacker. Tacker left town four years ago, no loss to Edensburg. He was an aimless, slow-witted boy who always seemed to be in the vicinity of trouble-one of his best buddies is doing time at Ossining for dealing coke in a school zone. The last I heard of Tacker, he was a beach bum in Fiji or someplace out in the South Seas.

"Tidy, the older boy, is here in town, and theoretically he practices law, but if he's ever had a client, I couldn't tell you who it would be. Tidy and three other nicely manicured, underemployed youths with fat trust funds spend seven afternoons a week in an alcove off the grillroom at the Edensburg Country Club, where they have their own table for an ongoing bridge game. The only way you'll get to meet Tidy is by crashing his game or by ambushing him when he's on his way in or out of his condo at Pleasant Meadow Estates.

"Tidy lives out there in an apartment that adjoins the condo of Ann Marie Consolati, who runs a body-waxing and electrolysis hair-removal parlor in town. I've been reliably informed by a friend in the construction business that there's a hidden door that opens between Tidy's clothes closet and Ann Marie's-even though Tidy has been engaged to Debbie Stockton, the boat-cushion heiress, for six years. And I can also tell you-although I cannot divulge my source of information on this point-that Tidy Puderbaugh does not have a single hair on his body from the neck down."

Stankie colored a little as he mentioned this eccentrically lubricious detail and cracked a droll little smile. Then, looking instantly somber again, he said, "Tacker's a sad loser, and Tidy is ineffectual and a little bit comical, but Chester and Pauline Osborne's son, Craig, should not be taken lightly at all. Craig Osborne is highly intelligent, shrewd as they come, and altogether ruthless. He's in Attica doing twenty-five to life for killing a guard in a diamond heist last year. Before that, Craig had a record as long as your arm for robberies and assaults and god-knows-what-all, going back to when he was just twelve years old. Craig Osborne, I can tell you, is a thirty-year-old man with no moral conscience whatsoever, and I'd say he is capable of just about anything."

Stankie stopped talking and looked at me again-as if I were somehow supposed to supply the point of his discourse on Tacker, Tidy, and Craig. I said, "Craig couldn't possibly have been Eric's killer, could he?"

Stankie shook his head and kept watching me. "Nunh-unh," he said.

"When was Craig sent up?"

"December tenth, and he'd been in custody since June of last year, when he was wounded in a shoot-out at the jewel heist in Tarrytown." He looked at me some more.

"Why are you telling me this?" I finally said.

Stankie leaned forward and said quietly, "Eric Osborne was a fine young man."

"That's what I keep hearing."

"If Grubb didn't kill him, I want the man who did kill him apprehended."

"Good."

He said, "A snitch at Attica reported that Craig Osborne talked about Eric's death and said there was more to it than the investigators knew." Stankie was motionless, but now he seemed to be watching two things: me and the door behind me, which opened into an outer office and was ajar.

Stankie said, "This got back to me through channels, and I asked that the snitch press for details. He claimed to the warden out there that he wasn't able to pry anything else out of Osborne."

"That's too bad," I said. "Maybe it was just talk, a sociopath's braggadocio."

"That could be. But Craig said one other thing to the snitch that might give you pause. It did me. On one occasion, Craig was talking about Eric's murder and how there was more to it than the investigation had turned up, and he made a crack to the snitch about his own murder conviction and how, 'Anyway, offing people runs in the Osborne family.' Those were the words he used: 'Offing people runs in the Osborne family.' "

"I've heard about a tendency toward violence in some Watsons and Osbornes. But the jewel guard's was the only actual homicide by an Osborne, according to Janet."

"It's the only one I know of," Stankie said. "Of course, Chester, Craig's father, has a couple of assaults in his record-or did, before they were erased."

"I heard about that too. And I've met Chester. He's creepy enough."

"There's an Osborne intrafamily fight going on," Stankie said in a matter-of-fact way. "It's over the ownership of the Herald. Eight million dollars is at stake, plus, of course, the paper's reputation. You're up-to-date on that, I take it."

"I am."

"And the ins and outs of the upcoming board of directors' vote, and how Eric's death means one less vote for selling the Herald to a quality newspaper chain at a loss to the family of eight million dollars."

"Funny you should mention that, Captain. It's exactly the angle on this whole thing-Eric's murder and the two Jet Ski attacks-that a number of people close to the situation are currently considering." I said, "Are Craig and his father close?"

"They seem not to be," Stankie said. "In fact, Chester disowned Craig a long time ago. But I can tell you confidentially, Mr. Strachey, that Chester Osborne has visited Craig in Attica twice in the past five months, once just before Eric's death in mid-May, and again on June fourteenth."

"I see. Is there anything else you'd like to tell me confidentially, Captain?"

"No. Just that I can't carry the Osborne-family angle of the investigation any further than I have. I can't question Craig without betraying the Attica snitch, who is considered too valuable an asset for the warden out there to transfer. I can't question Chester because I have no evidence whatsoever connecting anybody but Gordon Grubb to Eric's murder, and Chester is liable to accuse me of spreading false rumors about himself and the Puderbaughs. He'll have some State Street lawyer down in Albany visiting the commissioner and threatening to sue me for slander." Again, he waited.

"So what do you expect me to do?" I said. "The investigative work of the New York State Police?"

"Yeah, I'm kind of hoping you will," he said. "Of course, I can't be of any assistance to you, or be associated with your work in any way. Until, of course, you nail that arrogant asshole Chester Osborne. Then I'll see he's strung up real good."

"Oh, so you know Chester pretty well then?"

"We went to school together," Stankie said. "We played on the same varsity hockey team for three seasons, in fact-until the day at prac tice when I checked Chester for the third time that afternoon and he turned around and pounded me in the face with his stick so hard that he knocked all my teeth out."

Stankie opened his mouth and popped out a double set of dentures, uppers and lowers.