"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."