Chain of Fools - Stevenson Richard. Страница 44

I said, "And Chester knew none of this?"

"Not in the beginning," Dan said, looking away again.

"But he figured it out," I said. "Craig described that part to me."

Dan nodded grimly. "Fucking greedy, hothead Chester. We knew all along—I knew, Stu knew—not to get Chester involved."

"And Chester never tumbled to the fact that his good pal Stu was the man who had initiated the entire scheme?"

"No," Dan said, "Chester found out Craig and I had been spending time together before the robbery. And then when the stolen jewels failed to turn up, Chester was suspicious and went out and confronted Craig at Attica. Chester is such a total asshole. First of all, he threatened to blow open the whole deal if we didn't give him the jewels so that he and June could gain control of the paper. Craig just blew him off.

"Then in May, Chester gets it in his insane head that Eric and I are about to use the diamond money to squeeze him and June out of the paper, and he goes out and confronts Craig a second time. But by then I'd lost the jewels and I was frantically trying to find them up here in the woods, and I was too embarrassed to tell Craig where the jewels went. So when Chester goes out to Attica and says, 'Where are the jewels?' Craig, who's plenty pissed by now, he tells Chester, 'Ask Dan where they are.'"

Arlene said, "Jesus, Dan, what a bunch of fuckheads. Your family sounds like a bunch of people on a daytime TV talk show."

"Every family is a family from a daytime TV talk show!" Dan snapped. "Most families just don't happen to go on television and make fools of themselves in public."

I said, "In the nineties, we're a long way from Tolstoy in these matters, I guess, but let's get back to your interesting narrative, Dan. So Chester then came to you and asked where the jewels were?"

Dan shook his head in disgust. "I told Chester he was nuts and to fuck off, which he did. But what does Chester do next? He goes to Eric. Eric! Eric came to me, and he says, what's this about Craig and me and the jewel robbery? I said, God, Eric, don't be ridiculous, it's just Craig playing head games with Chester. Eric, who was so straight, so naive— Eric just says, oh, okay. And he went back and told Chester that Craig had made up the entire story, none of us had any jewels, and to forget about it."

"It is Craig's belief," I said, "that at that point Chester became so frustrated and angry that he flew into one of his violent rages and killed Eric."

Arlene let loose with another shriek. Dan looked at her and then at me and said quietly, "No. That's not the way it happened."

I said, "Torkildson?"

Dan nodded and Arlene shrieked again.

I said, "How? Why?"                            ^v

Dan took a deep breath. "By early May," he said, "I was fairly certain I'd never find the jewels out here. I'd spent weeks combing these woods without coming up with a single jewel, and meanwhile the ground cover was getting thicker and thicker."

"You bastard!" Arlene said. "That's the whole month I thought you were out fucking Patsy Livingston again. And here you were up here in the woods looking for diamonds. Dan, you asshole!"

"But the thing was," Dan said, "by that time the paper was up for sale and it already looked as if the board's choice would be either Griscomb or InfoCom. I had finally admitted to Stu that I'd stashed the jewels with Dad's ashes and Eric had unknowingly scattered the contents of the urn up here in the woods. So Stu was getting agitated and he was saying that if we couldn't save the Herald for the family—and restore his shattered reputation—then the paper would have to be sold to InfoCom so at least the family could come away with several million. I knew we had the board votes to approve a sale to Griscomb, but Stu started threatening legal action against any board member who blatantly voted against the company's best interests—he said Chester and June would both sue and he would join them—and that's when I panicked and made what turned out to be a terrible, terrible, terrible mistake."

Arlene sat looking frightened but said nothing. No one spoke until Dan took another deep breath, let out a long sigh, and went on.

"I decided to blackmail Stu," Dan said. "I told him that I had lied about Eric throwing the jewels away accidentally. I told him Eric had found the jewels and confronted me, and that I had confessed everything. I said Eric was threatening to go to the police and expose us all, Stu included, but that Eric had agreed to return the jewels to their owners anonymously if Stu threw his support to Griscomb and stopped Chester and June from suing us."

Dan paused and looked off into the woods thoughtfully. I said, "How did Torkildson react?"

"He followed Eric into the woods on the day of Eric's weekly trip to the beaver pond that Eric was writing about in his column and bludgeoned Eric to death. He described the whole thing to me the next day. Stu said he didn't plan to kill anyone else if he could help it, but that after the Spruce Haven bust he was already too embarrassed to

show up at the country club on Friday nights, and he would not risk being exposed additionally as an accomplice in a jewel robbery."

Arlene and I sat looking at Dan, who leaned comfortably against his tree but whose eyes were full of terror. Arlene did not exclaim this time, she just sniffled quietly.

I said, "Is there any way it can be proven that Torkildson killed Eric?"

"Sure, I've got the proof," Dan said. "Stu told me he killed Eric with a camera tripod he borrowed from the Herald's picture department. I found the tripod that night and took it home. Stu had washed it off, but there were still traces of blood on it and presumably Stu's fingerprints and other DNA traces."

"Why didn't you turn Torkildson in?" I said. "Dan, the man murdered your brother."

"Well," Dan said, "for one thing, I just wanted to save the paper. I figured Stu would help me do that, considering what I knew. It turned out I was wrong about that. Torkildson is a psychopath. And of course the other thing was, it was my fault. I triggered Stu into killing Eric. I was just as guilty as Stu was."

With that, Dan stood up, walked over, and lifted the tent flap. He went inside, and a thought hit me hard and I stood up abruptly.

I spoke rapidly to Arlene. "He doesn't have a gun or anything in there, does he?"

"No," she said, "Dan's just getting his stash. Sounds like a good idea, huh? Don, I'll bet right about now you could go for a smoke too."

25

Late Saturday afternoon, Bill Stankie arrested Stu Tor-kildson for murder. A magistrate ordered Torkildson held in the Eden County Jail pending forensic tests on the camera tripod Dan had produced. When he was picked up, Torkildson lost his customary cool. Vehemently denying guilt, he railed against the police and the Os-bornes He kept yelling, "After everything I've done for them!" But Stankie said a preliminary lab examination of the tripod supported Dan's story. Plus, it turned out, Torkildson had no alibi for the time of the murder.

Chester had no alibi either, but now he didn't need one. Chester told Stankie that on the morning of Eric's death he had been out examining some woods and pastureland he had been looking at on behalf of the Wal-Mart company, and that's how he'd gotten muddy. He said Pauline's accusation of murder was a result of her mental instability (Craig's malicious phone call to Pauline never came up), and that instability was the subject of an upcoming court hearing.