Chain of Fools - Stevenson Richard - Страница 7

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Janet said, "Anyway, the sun had already set. It was dusk with some red in it, and just a couple of low, dark clouds in the southwest. It's a perfect still time for an after-dinner swim, or a slow canoe ride. Once you get out a ways, you're only aware of the water around you and the sound of your own motion through it, and then as the light fades and the stars come out, the sky. It's always been my favorite time of day or night on the lake "

"The other nice thing about that time," Dale said, "is that you see fewer power boats after sunset, and hardly ever Jet Skis It's the time of day when the owners of such devices tend to be enjoying their cocktails—which more often than not come in packs of six and are bound with thin strips of plastic."

Timmy said, "It's tempting to place a Freudian interpretation on men achieving a sense of power by v-room-v-rooming around a body of water with internal-combustion engines wedged between their legs "

"That's right," Dale said, "when the only thing most men need to do

to achieve the same effect is to eat more beans, sit in their bathtubs, and blow it out their butts."

I said, "Janet told us you were a doctor, Dale. What are you, a gas-troenterologist?"

"No, I'm a heart surgeon "

"Ah."

Timmy said, "Where do you practice, Dale? At Albany Med?"

"Yes, I'm on vacation for the month of August. The rest of the year I work seventy to ninety hours a week, but I do make it a point to stay up here all of August every year and rediscover nature and literature and my lover. So, what's the deal? Are you guys going to find out who's after Janet and protect her' Eldon said you were some kind of hot-shit private eye in Albany, Don."

Timmy said, "Yes, he is."

"Let's slow down for a minute," Janet said. "It does look as if someone tried to run me over with a Jet Ski. But that was over a week ago, and nobody has come after me since then. I've been wary and alert, but there haven't been any suspicious or threatening incidents at all. So the Jet Ski thing could have been a weird, isolated event with no explanation we'll ever have. Or is that wishful thinking?"

"What it is, is bullshit," Dale said.

Janet gave Dale an affectionate look, as if Dale had just uttered a familiar endearment, and said, "I admit that the Jet Ski scare coming on top of Eric's being killed makes me nervous. I'm just not sure, Don, what you or anybody else can do about it. The sheriff sent a deputy over, and he checked out the cove the skier came out of. There was no sign of the guy an hour later, and a couple of the people who live up that way said they did notice a skier that evening, but they didn't register where he'd come from, or where he went, or anything unusual about him. So going after the rampaging Jet Skier looks to me like a probable dead end."

I said, "What did the man on the Jet Ski look like? You said you saw his face."

"White, male, big, stocky, sandy hair pulled back, probably in a ponytail, broad face," Janet said. "I couldn't have gotten a close look at his face, but somehow I have it in my head that he looked cool and ferocious, as if he knew exactly what he was doing."

"That may sound like your typical outdoors internal-combustion

overenthusiast," Dale said. "But this one was even worse than most. Homicide is a little much even for the crotch-rocket crowd."

We all peered out at the area of the lake where Janet apparently had been attacked. It was midafternoon—Janet had left the office early and we'd followed her the twelve miles out to the lodge—and the sun was still strong in a cloudless blue sky. On the far side of the lake, a mile or two away, I could make out several old wooden docks like the one we were on as well as newer, lower floating docks moored in front of the cabins and lodges that were back in the shadows of the pines. A cigarette boat buzzed up and down the far shore pulling a figure on water skis. Closer to our side, a lone man wearing a baseball cap paddled a canoe.

I said, "I'd like to talk to the deputy who came out last week, and to whoever investigated Eric's murder. Are they out of the same office?"

"You mean out of the same Cub Scout pack," Dale said.

"The deputy was Fulton Poorman," Janet said. "He's not terribly swift as a criminologist, but they sent him because he lives out this way. He's entirely approachable and actually a pretty nice guy. As for Eric's case, the sheriff, Ken Stone, doesn't have the resources, outer or inner, to handle a murder investigation. So he brought in the staties and they pretty much took over. See Captain Bill Stankie at the Edensburg barracks. He strikes me as competent, if unimaginative, but I'll be interested in getting your take on him. Dale thinks he's lazy, but I'm not sure about that. I think maybe he has his own tempo that he thinks is right for any particular investigation. And for Eric's case, apparently, it's a slow one."

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?"

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