At seven he’d awakened unrefreshed, and gone downstairs. It was a cold slap of reality to find Doreen still asleep on his living room couch. She lay with one arm dangling off the side, her red hair dull and greasy, her mouth half open. He stood for a moment, looking down at her, pondering how to convince her to leave with a minimum of yelling and crying on her part, but he was too weary to deal with the problem at that moment. Worrying about Doreen had already drained so much energy from his life. Just the sight of her seemed to drag down on his limbs, making them hang heavy, as though Doreen and the force of gravity were intimately connected.
“I’m sorry, Honey,” he said softly. “But I’m going on with my life.”
He made one phone call, then he left Doreen sleeping on the couch and walked out of the house. As he drove away, he felt the first layers of depression peel away like a worn outer skin. The roads were plowed, the pavement sanded; he pressed the accelerator, and as he picked up speed he felt he was shedding more and more layers, that if he just drove far enough, fast enough, the real Lincoln, the man he used to be, would finally emerge, scrubbed and clean and reborn. He sped past fields where the snow, so freshly fallen, puffed up in clouds of white powder with the slightest gust of wind. Keep driving, don’t stop, don’t look back. He had a destination in mind, and a purpose to this journey, but for now, what he experienced was the joyful rush of escape.
When he reached the University of Maine campus an hour later, he felt renewed and refreshed, as though he had enjoyed a long night’s sleep in a comfortable bed. He parked his car and walked onto the campus, and the cold air, the crystalline morning, invigorated him.
Lucy Overlock was in her office in the physical anthropology department. With her six-foot frame clad in her usual attire of blue jeans and flannel shirt, she looked more like a lumberjack than a college professor.
She greeted him with a calloused hand and a no-nonsense nod and sat down behind her desk. Even seated, she was an imposing woman of Amazonian proportions. “You said on the phone you had questions about the Locust Lake remains.”
“I want to know about the Gow family. How they died. Who killed them.”
She raised an eyebrow. “It’s about a hundred years too late to arrest anyone for that crime.”
“I’m bothered by the circumstances of their deaths. Did you ever locate any news articles about the murders?”
“Vince did-my grad student. He’s using the Gow case for his doctoral thesis. A reconstruction of an old murder, based on the remains. It took him weeks to track down an account. Not every old newspaper, you see, has been archived. Your particular area was so sparsely populated at that time, there wasn’t much news coverage.”
“So how did the Gow family die?”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s the same old story. Unfortunately, family violence is not a modern phenomenon.”
“The father did it?”
“No. It was their seventeen-year-old son. His body was found weeks later, hanging from a tree. Apparently a suicide.”
“What about motive? Was the boy disturbed?”
Lucy leaned back, her tanned face catching the light from the window. Years of work in the outdoors had taken their toll on her complexion, and the wintry light illuminated every freckle, every deepening crease. “We don’t know. The family apparently lived in relative isolation. According to the deed maps for that period, the Gows’ property encompassed the whole south shore of the lake. There may not have been any neighbors around who’d know the boy very well.”
“Then the family was wealthy?”
“I wouldn’t say wealthy, but they’d be considered land rich. Vince said the property came into the Gow family in the late 1700s, and stayed with them until this… event. It was later sold off piece by piece. Developed.”
“Is Vince that scruffy kid with the ponytail?”
She laughed. “All my students are scruffy. It’s almost a prerequisite for graduation.”
“And where can I find Vince right now?”
“At nine o’clock, he should be in his office. The museum basement. I’ll call and let him know you’re coming.”
Lincoln had been here before. The broad wooden table was covered with pottery shards this time, not human remains, and the basement windows were blotted over by drifted snow. The lack of natural light, and the damp stone steps, made Lincoln feel he had descended into some vast underground cavern. He walked into the maze of storage shelves, past towering stacks of artifact boxes, their labels feathered by mold. “Human mandible (male)” was all he could make out on one label. A wooden box, he thought, is a sadly anonymous resting place for what had once been a man’s jaw. He moved deeper into the maze, his throat already scratchy from the dust and mildew and a faintly smoky odor that grew stronger as he progressed through the shadows, toward the far end of the basement.
Marijuana.
“Mr. Brentano?” he called out.
“I’m back here, Chief Kelly,” a voice answered. “Take a left at the stuffed owl.”
Lincoln walked a few more paces and came to a great horned owl mounted in a glass case. He turned left.
Vince Brentano’s “office” was little more than a desk and a filing cabinet crammed in between artifact shelves. Though there was no ashtray in sight, the aroma of pot hung heavy in the air, and the young man, clearly uneasy in the presence of a cop, had assumed a defensive posture, barricaded behind his desk, arms braced in front of him. Looking the boy straight in the eye, Lincoln held out his hand in greeting.
After a hesitation, Vince shook it. They both understood the meaning of that gesture: a treaty between them was now in force.
“Sit down,” offered Vince. “You can set that box on the floor, but watch the chair-it wobbles a little. Everything in here wobbles. As you can see, I got the deluxe office.”
Lincoln removed the box from the chair and set it down. The contents gave an ominous clatter.
“Bones,” said Vince.
“Human?”
“Lowland gorifia. I use them for comparison teaching. I hand them to the undergrads and ask them for a diagnosis, but I don’t tell them the bones aren’t human. You should hear some of the crazy answers I get. Everything from acromegaly to syphilis.”
“That’s a trick question.”
“Hey, all of life is a trick question.” Vince sat back, thoughtfully regarding Lincoln. “I take it this visit is a trick question, too. The police don’t usually waste their time on century-old murders.”
“The Gow family interests me for other reasons.”
“Which are?”
“I believe their deaths may be related to our current problems in Tranquility.”
Vince looked puzzled. “Me you referring to the recent murders?”
“They were committed by otherwise normal kids. Teenagers who lost control and killed. We’ve got child psychologists psychoanalyzing every kid in town, but they can’t explain it. So I got to thinking about what happened to the Gows. The parallels.”
“You mean the part about teenage killers?” Vince shrugged. “The underdog will only take so much abuse. When authority clamps down too hard, young people rebel. It’s happened again and again.”
“This isn’t rebellion. It’s kids going berserk, killing friends and family.” He paused. “The same thing happened fifty-two years ago.”
“What did?”
“Nineteen forty-six, in Tranquility. Seven murders committed during the month of November.”
“Seven?” Vince’s eyes widened behind the wire-rim glasses. “In a town of how many people?”
“In 1946, there were seven hundred living in Tranquility Now we’re facing the same crisis, all over again.”
Vince gave a startled laugh. “Man, you’ve obviously got some major sociological issues in your town, Chief. But
