Blunt Darts (18 page)

I definitely didn’t like Blakey’s tone, but I was running out of deflections.

He said, “Just in case you might try and warn the kid, you’re gonna hafta go to sleep for a while. But first,” he said, as he wrapped a handkerchief around his knuckles, “a little warm-up for your swan dive.”

I forced my left leg, the one he’d kicked, to bend a little. “I’ve got a secret about the kid that I’d like to share with you first.”

“Nice try, asshole,” Blakey said, closing his wrapped fist and cocking it for a straight jab.

“You think the kid’ll climb up here when he sees the open hatch?”

Blakey straightened. He looked at the hatch and pursed his lips. “Maybe you’re right.” He ambled over and lowered the hatch.

What I didn’t mention was that Stephen, who must have made the climb a dozen times or more, sure as hell would notice the broken rung on the ladder. I was banking that with the hatch shut, Blakey wouldn’t notice him noticing.

He walked back to me, and I tried to think of more revisions of the Arabian Nights. No luck.

“I’ve got another secret about Stephen,” I said.

“Now what?” Blakey replied.

“If I keep telling you secrets, will you keep me awake?” I thought about what Thom Doucette had said regarding Blakey’s sensitivity.

“What the fuck is it?” he demanded.

“Well,” I said, fluttering my eyelids, “Stephen told me that big, strong court officers really turn him on.”

Blakey bent down and gave me a teeth-jarring shot to my jaw and front of the ear. The other side of my head bounced off the floor.

He then grabbed my shirt with both hands and lifted me to a semi-standing position. I’d known my only chance was to get him mad enough to treat me as harmless.

Blakey held my shirt with his left hand and let fly with his right. Before his fist could connect, I used his left hand as an anchorpoint and flipped back as violently as I could. With his left holding me, that brought both my feet up toward Blakey’s groin, and I lashed out with all the kick I could manage.

I cracked my head against the window sill as I came down. My eyes wouldn’t focus. I could see one-and-a-half Blakeys doubled over, his three hands futilely trying to stem the spread of a dark stain at the crotch of his three-legged pants.

I shook my head as clear as I could and then levered onto my back. I swung my legs at Blakey’s head and connected, but I got the impression that I’d only distracted him from his more immediate injury. As I flopped around, he swung backhand at my side, and I felt a rib break. The pain was incredible, and I prayed that the impact hadn’t punctured a lung. Then he clouted me in the face with another backhand that sent me back into the sill. I could feel the room slipping away, and I knew I was going under. Then I heard a clacking noise, like a softball player opening a pop-top beer can. Then another and another and …

A tree fell, pinning my legs underneath it.

I
COULDN’T MOVE EITHER
leg, but I could rub them against each other a little. They felt sticky, as if ice cream had melted onto each but hadn’t quite dried. I opened the one eye that would open. The room was still light. The tree across my legs was Gerald Blakey. He was half on his side, and his blood had soaked through his pants. And mine.

Blakey’s head was about fifteen inches from my eyes, but his face was turned away from me. The back of his neck looked funny. There were round, raw holes in it, two just above his hairline. It was as if someone had thrown large, blunt darts at him, the dull points first penetrating the skin, then falling away. There was one downward trickle of blood from each hole.

I fell asleep again.

The next time I woke up, someone was pouring water across my lips. Just a little. It tasted salty, probably from the dehydrated blood flakes in my mouth. I opened my eyes. It was nearly dark.

Stephen Kinnington was bending over me, canteen held in dirty hands.

And we were alone.

“Blakey?” I croaked.

“Taken care of,” Stephen answered.

I dropped back off to sleep.

Birds singing woke me up the next time. Sunlight again, and more water. I felt weak but, surprisingly, not in much pain. Then I noticed that my hands were untied. I started to get up, and someone set off an A-bomb in my left side. I stopped breathing and clenched my teeth. Easing back down onto my blanket, the pain receded a little as well.

“Do you think you can handle some bread?”

Stephen’s voice was behind me in the room.

“Yes,” I said.

“You won’t try to grab me?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

I looked down at my feet. Still securely tied. Given my present condition, I figured about two undisturbed weeks would let me get the knots undone.

Stephen edged into my vision. He was wearing a polo shirt and loose-fitting hiking pants, cut like baggy army fatigues. He stopped three feet from me and lobbed a hunk of bread. It landed on Blakey’s bloodstain, which had already dried. There were about ten ants nibbling at the edge of the stain.

“Still don’t trust me, huh?” I said as I picked up the bread.

“I’m between not quite and almost,” he said.

As displayed by his photo, Stephen Kinnington in real life certainly appeared much older than fourteen. His face was somber and intelligent and his movements measured and sure, with none of the awkwardness of adolescence. There were still traces of blond in his dark hair, as though he’d streaked—rather than dyed—it.

The bread crust, a couple of days past its prime, grated against a newly chipped molar in my lower left jaw.

“How did you find me?” Stephen asked.

I regarded the bread crust and took another nibble, chewing on the other side of my mouth. I wanted time to review all the promises I’d made to people I’d spoken with, and my brain wasn’t collating that well as yet. “It’s a long story.”

Stephen hopped his butt up onto the desk and, crossing his ankles, swung his legs slowly to-and-fro through the knee-hole. “We’ve got time,” he said without smiling.

“Well, I’m a private investiga—”

“I know,” Stephen interrupted. “I looked at your identification after I … while you were sleeping.”

“And, as I told you, your grandmother hired me to find you.”

“How did
she
find
you?”

I gave him my warmest reassuring smile. “Your teacher. Valerie Jacobs. Valerie knows me from an earlier job I held.”

Stephen smiled back. A good-kid type of smile. “Ms. Jacobs is a nice person,” he said. “Go on.”

“Well, from what your grandmother told me, you hadn’t been kidnapped. She knew that because only you or she could have handpicked your survival kit.”

Stephen smiled more vividly. “Grandmother’s shrewd like that. I should have known she’d guess.”

I continued. “Once I accepted that you’d run away, I talked with your psychiatrist—”

Stephen’s face darkened. “Which one?”

“Dr. Stein.”

The smile returned. “He was kind of a jerk. I had the impression that he made a lot of money without helping people much.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“Did he help you?”

“Not really,” I said, trying to recall the chronology and not reveal anything I shouldn’t. “But your stay at Willow Wood pointed me out this way.”

Stephen frowned. “I was afraid of that. But I didn’t think going off to some place completely new would be a very good idea, either.”

“Alone, Willow Wood wasn’t a solid lead, but when Miss Pitts told me—”

“Boy,” he exclaimed, “you went back as far as her?”

“I’m pretty thorough.”

“What’d she tell you?”

“About your mother’s death.”

Stephen darkened again and looked down. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Right,” I said quickly. “Anyway, I thought it might have something to do with your disappearance, and I slowly traced you down through Ms. Traub at the library and—”

“Ms. Traub?” he said, quizzically. “What could she tell you?”

I explained about his copying the
New England Outdoors
article, including Ms. Traub’s lingerie concerns. Stephen smiled sheepishly. “Did you check all the stations out before you hit this one?”

“No,” I said. “I found out from Valerie that you had done a report on the meat distribution system, and then I paid a visit to the driver you hitchhiked with.”

Stephen screwed up his face. “A pretty lousy guy.”

I nodded.

Face back to normal. “What did he tell you happened?”

I tried to keep old Sammy in and young Kim out. “The trucker said you had a gun. And that he would be laughed out of the meat exchange if anybody found out you’d taken him.”

Stephen laughed, and I did too. Then he said, “I guess I wasn’t as careful about coming out here as I thought.”

“Well, neither was I.”

Stephen tilted his head in question. “What do you mean?”

“Blakey. Following me out here.”

Stephen shivered. “Why did he whale on you like that?” he asked.

“I made a comment about his sexual preferences,” I replied.

Stephen smiled sheepishly again.

“And yours,” I added.

He laughed innocently. “I’m still too young to have preferences.”

“Then why did you shoot him?”

The smile froze. “Two reasons. One, he was beating you to death. Two, he helped my father cover-up the death of my mother.”

“How?”

Stephen straightened, hopped down from the desk, and circled behind it. “That’s for me to speak with the judge about.”

He began packing his knapsack, his back toward me.

“Stephen, why did you run away?”

“Because I knew my father would be after me. I found the proof.”

I decided I’d better not even bend my promise to Kim. “What proof?”

“The twenty-two, a target pistol. The judge had hidden it the night my mother was killed. He’d hidden the gun so well that it took me ’til now to find it, but I knew I would. And I did.”

“Then why didn’t you go to the police?”

“Smollett?” Stephen laughed oddly. “He helped cover-up my mother’s death, too.”

“Your father killed her?”

“That’s between the judge and me.” He continued packing and I got the feeling we might better talk about his parents later.

“You going on a trip?” I asked.

“Yes. You, too.”

“Where?”

“Back to Meade. To speak with my father.”

So much for talking later. “Not without the county district attorney and, if Smollett’s local force
is
involved in your mother’s death, maybe the state attorney general as well.”

Stephen left what he was doing and came around to squat on his haunches across from me.

“No. It’ll just be you and me,” he said. “I need you to drive me back. I was stupid to think that the judge wouldn’t send people after me. After I found the pistol, my father must have realized it, checking on the gun when I wasn’t around. The judge probably did that every day because of what it could do to him. Back in Meade, he sent Blakey after me. I panicked, dyed my hair as a disguise, and ran. Blakey’s dead, but my father will always send people after me. And, if Blakey could trace you to this hiding place, then somebody else knows about it. The judge can find that somebody, too, then send another goon here after me. Or any other place I try to go.”

Something in Stephen’s reasoning continued to jangle, but I still couldn’t pull it together. Then I thought about Blakey talking to the hardware clerk. Court Officer had probably called Judge immediately, before coming out here, so the Honorable Willard J. Kinnington would know about the ranger station.

I said, “Why should I drive you, Stephen? Because, otherwise, you’ll shoot me?”

He grew somber again, then stomped over to his knapsack and came stomping back. I held my breath, but Stephen tossed the knapsack down in front of me. “No more guns! I buried them. Go ahead and search it.”

I hefted the knapsack, then pawed through it. No weapons. “Then, I repeat, why should I drive you anywhere?”

Now Stephen grinned, a yo-yo inversion of the emotions. “Because of three things. First, I dragged Blakey out of here—rolling him, really—across the floor with a rope around his belt, but I don’t think anybody would believe I actually had the strength to do that. I stuffed Blakey through the floor-hatch and he hit the ground hard enough to make this room shake. I climbed down the ladder. Then I pushed the body until it slumped into some soft weeds downhill. That’s where I buried him.”

I had no words.

“Second,” said Stephen, grinning more broadly, “I took the twenty-two, wiped it off, and then put its handle in your hand. I squeezed your fingers around the smooth metal sides and even fired a shot with your finger across the trigger. Then I buried the gun, but in a different place than I did Blakey.

“Third,” Stephen’s broadest grin yet, “I hiked into town and mailed my grandmother a letter, describing how I saw
you
do all these things.”

Jesus. A fourteen-year-old?

I expect I failed to maintain a poker face. “I don’t believe you.”

Stephen’s grin sloughed off his eyes and mouth. “Then don’t drive me anywhere. I’m going to be leaving soon. Eventually, I’ll be able to hitch a ride back to Meade. I’ll take your and Blakey’s car keys with me, and I don’t think you can hike out, hurt like you are. That means waiting for the police. If they get here before you die from hunger or thirst.”

“The police won’t be coming.”

“Oh, yes. They will,” he replied. “Picture my grandmother, descending upon them when she gets my letter.”

“You didn’t write any letter, Stephen.”

“But I did.” A shrug. “However, even if I didn’t, I could still be gone and call the police before you could do anything about it. Or I could
not
call the police, and just leave you here to die.”

I leaned back and faked a grimace to think it over. In his own, admittedly highly organized way, Stephen had to be crazy, Dr. Stein to the contrary notwithstanding. Whether the boy had sent the letter or not, my past run-in with Blakey at the courthouse, combined with the Granville hardware clerk’s identification, would tie me in to the court officer’s death. If Stephen had sent that letter or made a call, I doubted that I’d be allowed out on bail to try to find him toward explaining things. Especially if he had made his letter sound as if I might kill him, too.