Chain of Fools (14 page)

"Was there physical abuse? No. Can you term what I just described as psychological abuse? Maybe. Although, if it is, the legislatures had better not make it a felony without first spending billions of dollars on more prison cells. From what I've observed, as a style of parenting it comes dangerously close to being the norm in this country. Not that the current Congress is about to outlaw it, of course. Among the traditional family values cherished by the religious right, emotional abuse is surely high up in their pantheon, if their own biographies are any guide."

I said, "Your overall assessment of family life in America, Janet, seems to me unduly bleak. Anyway, you and Eric both turned out emotionally healthy. That must have come from somewhere in the Osborne family."

A wistful smile. "I guess so. They say every child experiences the same family differently. Eric's and my peculiarities—and our interests—were much more in tune with Mom's and Dad's than Chester's were, or June's. Even our both turning out gay seemed to fit in with

the Osborne tradition of defiant rugged individualism. On the other hand, June, the social-climbing ditz, was never appreciated for who she was. And of course as Chester's tendencies toward violence surfaced, that didn't particularly endear him or add to his opportunities in the family dynamic."

"And you think it's possible that what Chester experienced as psychological abuse in your parents' home was so traumatic that he passed it on in his own home as physical abuse?"

She said, "I'm afraid so."

I asked Janet if I'd heard correctly the day before when I thought she said that Chester had "disowned" Craig—meaning presumably that their disaffection was so complete that they no longer had any contact with each other at all.

"That's the impression I have," she said. "It's certainly the impression Chester leaves on those rare occasions when anybody dares mention Craig's name in Chester's presence."

I said, "Then why would Chester have visited Craig at Attica twice in the last twelve weeks?"

She stared hard. "He did? Chester visited Craig in prison?"

I nodded. "It's important to my source, a good guy who wants to keep his job, that you don't repeat this."

"All right." I could all but hear the wheels whirring inside her head.

To protect the Attica warden's informant, I did not repeat the—possibly unreliable—hearsay evidence of Craig telling the prison snitch that there was more to Eric Osborne's death than the investigators knew and that at least one homicide had been commited by a member of the family other than Craig. But I did say: "With his criminal history and criminal connections—and now with these unexplained visits from his suddenly not-so-alienated father—Craig at least bears looking into. I may drive out there and interview him myself."

She still looked dumbfounded. "Well ... I just don't know what to think."

"If somehow Tidy is unable to serve on the
Herald
board of directors," I said, "and Craig can't do it on account of being locked up, who's next in line to move on to the board? Anybody helpful to the good-chain cause?"

"It would be Tidy's brother, Tacker Puderbaugh. But he's no factor, believe me, Don. Tacker has no interest whatever in the
Herald
He's

could have saved Craig from wrecking his life. Twenty-five years ago, of course, child abuse wasn't as recognizable as it is today, or taken as seriously by the law or society. Back then, a parent could get away with treating his child in a way that, if he treated anybody else's kid that way, he'd be convicted of assault and sent to prison for years. Still, some of us did suspect what was going on, and now I wish we'd tried to intervene."

I said, "Physical abusers were usually abused themselves when they were young. Was that true of Chester?"

Janet blushed and said, "Uhn-uhn. No."

"You're sure?"

She shuddered. "I'm sure. Your suggesting it is disconcerting, though. Neither Mom nor Dad was particularly affectionate toward— or effusive in their expressions of approval of—any of us. And Dad was particularly hard on—even cold with—Chester. Chettie was the oldest, and when it turned out he had no interest in the journalism profession—acquisitiveness was Chester's main interest in life from about the age of three—Dad had no more use for Chester. I think I can safely say he didn't like him. And it showed. Dad's characteristic way with Chester was either to ignore him—that's the way it was most of the time—or to snap at Chettie over niggling matters.

"Was there physical abuse? No. Can you term what I just described as psychological abuse? Maybe. Although, if it is, the legislatures had better not make it a felony without first spending billions of dollars on more prison cells. From what I've observed, as a style of parenting it comes dangerously close to being the norm in this country. Not that the current Congress is about to outlaw it, of course. Among the traditional family values cherished by the religious right, emotional abuse is surely high up in their pantheon, if their own biographies are any guide."

I said, "Your overall assessment of family life in America, Janet, seems to me unduly bleak. Anyway, you and Eric both turned out emotionally healthy. That must have come from somewhere in the Osborne family."

A wistful smile. "I guess so. They say every child experiences the same family differently. Eric's and my peculiarities—and our interests—were much more in tune with Mom's and Dad's than Chester's were, or June's. Even our both turning out gay seemed to fit in with

the Osborne tradition of defiant rugged individualism. On the other hand, June, the social-climbing ditz, was never appreciated for who she was. And of course as Chester's tendencies toward violence surfaced, that didn't particularly endear him or add to his opportunities in the family dynamic."

"And you think it's possible that what Chester experienced as psychological abuse in your parents' home was so traumatic that he passed it on in his own home as physical abuse?"

She said, "I'm afraid so."

I asked Janet if I'd heard correctly the day before when I thought she said that Chester had "disowned" Craig—meaning presumably that their disaffection was so complete that they no longer had any contact with each other at all.

"That's the impression I have," she said. "It's certainly the impression Chester leaves on those rare occasions when anybody dares mention Craig's name in Chester's presence."

I said, "Then why would Chester have visited Craig at Attica twice in the last twelve weeks?"

She stared hard. "He did? Chester visited Craig in prison?"

I nodded. "It's important to my source, a good guy who wants to keep his job, that you don't repeat this."

"All right." I could all but hear the wheels whirring inside her head.

To protect the Attica warden's informant, I did not repeat the—possibly unreliable—hearsay evidence of Craig telling the prison snitch that there was more to Eric Osborne's death than the investigators knew and that at least one homicide had been commited by a member of the family other than Craig. But I did say: "With his criminal history and criminal connections—and now with these unexplained visits from his suddenly not-so-alienated father—Craig at least bears looking into. I may drive out there and interview him myself."

She still looked dumbfounded. "Well... I just don't know what to think."

"If somehow Tidy is unable to serve on the
Herald
board of directors," I said, "and Craig can't do it on account of being locked up, who's next in line to move on to the board? Anybody helpful to the good-chain cause?"

"It would be Tidy's brother, Tacker Puderbaugh. But he's no factor, believe me, Don. Tacker has no interest whatever in the
Herald.
He's

already got enough money from his trust fund from Grandmother Watson's estate to meet his minimal needs—a bathing suit and a supply of surfboard wax, as I understand it. And anyway, Tacker was ten thousand miles from Edensburg, the last I knew. He spent one semester at the University of Hawaii in 1990, then started drifting southwestward, and he just kept on drifting."

"Do you have his current address?"

"I can get it from—Tidy would be the best bet. If I asked June, she'd be suspicious."

"I think we need to confirm that Tacker is in fact halfway around the world and uninvolved in the struggle here. Any financial interest he might have in the
Herald's
disposition would be indirect—through June—but real enough. After Tidy and Tacker, who's next in line for a board seat?"

"That's it as far as the family is concerned. None of us were big followers of the Holy Scriptures, and the Osbornes don't seem to have gone forth and multiplied at a rate anywhere near the world average. The company by-laws state that if no direct descendant of Daniel Lincoln Osborne is able or willing to serve on the
Herald's
board, the existing board can fill a vacancy with a nonfamily member of the board's choosing. The board as it's now constituted, of course, would pick somebody who's pro-Griscomb. But that's all academic, isn't it? Tidy is in good health, as far as I know, and it's unlikely he'll meet a violent end in the grillroom at the country club. Even if Tidy got one, a puncture wound from the toothpick in a BLT is rarely fatal."

When I'd entered her office twenty minutes earlier, Janet had shut off the ringer on her office phone and activated her voice mail. The voice-mail light had been blinking for several minutes, and now a tiny woman with a pixie cut whom I recognized from the newsroom stuck her head in Janet's open door and said, "Sorry to interrupt, but Dale wants you to call her at your mother's house. She said to tell you that your Mom is okay, but there is some kind of urgent situation."

"What kind? Is June out there with a lawyer?"

"No, she didn't mention that It has something to do with Dan. He had a close call this morning, Dale said."

"Oh, hell, that nails it," Janet said. She snatched up the phone with one hand and her handbag with the other.

14

It was
exactly
like Karen Silkwood," Arlene Thurber said, as she accepted the joint Dan passed to her and took a deep toke. Then she offered the reefer around the Osborne back porch where six of us were seated. One by one, Timmy, Dale, Janet, and I shook our heads no thanks. Elsie the housekeeper was upstairs helping Ruth Osborne clean out a closet; just as well.

"It was
sooo
weird," Arlene went on in a voice that was faster than slo-mo but not quite normal speed, either "I mean, it was just yesterday I was saying that all this crazy shit that's going down—I mean Eric getting killed and that Jet Ski attack—that all that shit sounds
exactly
like Karen Silkwood. I said that yesterday, and then—holy smokes!— what happens? Somebody tries to run Dan and me off the road and take us out, just like Kerr-McGhee did to Karen Silkwood! Can you believe this crazy shit?"

Dale said, "We can believe it."

Arlene had just described how she and Dan had been driving early that morning on a rural county road. At a spot where the road ran along a woodsy hillside, a large pickup truck had sped up behind them and repeatedly banged into the rear of Dan's Range Rover. It was obvious, Arlene said, that the truck was trying to force their car off the right shoulder down a steep embankment. Constantly in danger of losing control, Dan was able to keep the vehicle on the road for a half mile before he veered too far into the oncoming traffic lane, did lose control, and ran off the left side of the road and along a ditch.

The car ended up nose down in the basin next to a drainage culvert. Dan and Arlene had been wearing seat belts and were unhurt,

but the Range Rover was badly damaged, probably totaled, Dan thought. The pickup truck had then sped on up the rural road. Ten minutes later, a man on his way home from an early-morning trout-fishing excursion came along and drove Dan and Arlene to a main-road gas station, where they phoned the State Police. Two officers soon arrived and took them back to the crash site, questioned them there, and then brought them back into town. A tow truck had been dispatched for the wrecked Range Rover.

I said, "Did you mention to the cops our ideas about a possible connection between Eric's murder and the Jet Ski attacks and now this?"

"
I
certainly did," Arlene said, her voice full of mellow outrage. Dan sat slumped in a wicker chair, his head back and his eyes squeezed shut. "Dan thought maybe we should cool it," Arlene went on, "on account of where we'd just been when the attack happened. But I thought no, we don't have to mention that, but we can still be up front about this other bad shit. I mean, how else can the cops help us if we don't share our thoughts and feelings with them?" Arlene nudged Dan, who opened his eyes and accepted the smoldering joint from her. Timmy had on a mild huff-huff look, but he kept his lip buttoned. Dale must have noticed this, for at one point she did accept one toke, exhaling grandiosely in Timmy's direction.

Janet said, "So, where had you two been when the attack happened? Not burglarizing hunting cabins, I hope."

"Don't be absurd," Dan said disgustedly.

"I'm only asking because Arlene said you couldn't tell it to the police. Any suggestion that you were involved in something illegal this morning is not ridiculous at all, Dan."

"We'd just been out to see our dealer," Arlene said good-naturedly, waggling her eyebrows and indicating the reefer. "We had two ounces of sensi buds stashed under the backseat. The way the cops would have acted if they'd found it—you'd think we were criminals or something. Anyway, we left the whole stash in a tree near where we crashed. We'll have to go out there later and pick up the sensi before some animal gets at it."