Blunt Darts

THIRTEENTH

– ¦ "I guess you don't feel like a picnic anymore, do you?"

We were back in the car, and Valerie's were the first words spoken since we'd left Miss Pitts.

"Actually, I'd love a picnic," I said; she smiled broadly. "As long as the conversation level is low enough to give me some time to sort things out."

"Terrific!" she said, and shook her hair down onto her shoulders.

"But first," I said, "let's be sure we can reach this Thomas Doucette character, class of '61."

We stopped at a gas station and I called Boston information. No Thomas Doucette nor T. Doucette. Then I tried the elder Doucettes. Again, no listing in Meade. We decided to stop at Moody Street and see the Doucettes on the way to the beach.

Valerie directed me up and down and left and right through semi-rural, increasingly narrow roads. If there was a poorer section of Meade, this was it. We pulled onto Moody Street and up to a small and old, but neatly kept, ranch house to which someone had added a little greenhouse. The mailbox had "Doucette" in paste-on letters. There were three or four similar homes on the street, but no sense of development or planning. It was as though the distance between houses was less a function of privacy or exclusivity and more a reaction to the undesirability of the intervening and uneven scrub-pine land.

A small, four-door American subcompact sat in the driveway, and a small woman stood at the screen door. We left our car and started up the path toward her.

She had been watching us leave the car and approach her. She stepped outside and looked around. She had light blue hair and a troubled expression.

"May I help you?"

"Yes," said Valerie. "Are you Mrs. Doucette?"

"Yes."

"Mrs. Doucette, I'm Valerie Jacobs. I teach eighth grade at the Lincoln Drive School. This is a friend of mine, John Cuddy. We'd like to contact your son Thomas."

By the time Valerie had finished, we were nearly to her. At the mention of Thomas, Mrs. Doucette stiffened and eyed us both very carefully.

"Thomas doesn't live here anymore," she said carefully.

"We know," I said.

"He also likes his privacy," she continued.

"And he's entitled to enjoy it," I said.

Before I could continue, Valerie broke in. "Mrs. Doucette, we simply need to speak with him about a news story he covered years ago. A young boy's safety is at stake."

Mrs. Doucette's eyebrows shot up. "The Kinnington boy?"

"That's right," said Valerie, flashing her most ingratiating smile.

"Goddamn him!" Mrs. Doucette bit off her words.

"Goddamn him and his whole family!" She stormed into the house, slamming the screen door behind her. She whirled. "And you! Goddamn you for reminding me of them!" She slammed the inner door.

"What the…" began Valerie.

"Face it, Val. You blew it. You're just not cut out for this kind of work."

I was back in the car and had it started by the time a frowning, frustrated Valerie tired of knocking at the Doucettes' door and began walking down to me. Valerie had gotten over my teasing by the time we reached the parking lot of the swimming beach. We respectively entered a rustic, large cabin, "Men" on one side and "Women" on the other.

Coming out of the women's side of the locker building, Val's legs looked a little thicker than they had in the other outfits I'd seen her wear to date. The rest of her looked triple A, however. I got a slight flush when she flickered an appraising eye over my new physique. This was the first time I'd worn a pair of trunks in quite a while, and I decided I liked sporting the results my conditioning had produced. We walked toward the water.

The long, manmade swimming beach edged into trees and picnic tables at one end and into a parking lot at the other. The beach was nearly empty, most people being under the trees at the tables. Owning no sandals, I toughed out the blistering sand in bare feet. We finally pitched our blanket at what looked like a quiet spot about fifty feet to the left of a perfectly tanned elderly couple sitting and reading in half-legged sand chairs.

We talked around Mrs. Kinnington for a while before I brought her up.

"You know, Val, I'm on the verge of leaving this case."

Her face was stricken. "Oh, please, John-please don't!"

I rearranged my legs Indian-style on the blanket.

"Look, I won't be violating any confidence by telling you that my client did not mention word one about Miss Pitts and the scene with Stephen and Blakey. That could be an important link in the chain of Stephen's disappearance, and if Mrs. Kinnington knew about it, she should have told me."

She faked casualness by stretching out on her stomach, longways to the just-past-zenith sun. "Is the reason he left really that important to your finding him?"

I leaned back. "Possibly, yes; probably not, if he's gone voluntarily."

"But Mrs. Kinnington said she told you that the things he took were only things he'd know to take."

I closed my eyes. "Yeah, but that suggests only that he voluntarily decided to leave. It doesn't go far in suggesting what might have happened twenty feet from his back door."

She came up to her knees with a start. "Do you really believe something happened to him?"

"That's just the problem, Val. I'm not being helped by anybody in this case, or even permitted to gather the facts I could use to reach a decision like that."

She put her hand on my right forearm and squeezed, a little too long and a little too hard. "John, you know that-"

The moment was broken by a loud and worthy curse from the elderly man next to us. Three boyish bruisers, built like college football players, were laughing at him and his wife. He rose from his chair and shook a book-clutching list at a sign I could barely read while he and his wife brushed sand off themselves.

"The goddamned sign says no goddamned ball playing on the beach!" he yelled.

The biggest of the three, cradling the ball professionally in the crook of his arm, replied, "Fuck you."

"We'll get the cops!" yelled the old man.

"And the lifeguard!" yelled the old woman.

"The fuckin' cops are off drinking and the fuckin' lifeguard knows I'll kick his ass if he lets his shadow fall on me." The other kids laughed, and they continued their running and passing drills up the beach. The big boy had the right moves; the other two were barely adequate. The old man sat down sputtering.

"Nice kid," I said to Val.

"Craig Mann," she said disgustedly. "His father's a selectman, so nobody will do anything about him. He was a real high school star, tight end, I think. Last fall the local paper was full of his gridiron heroics at U Mass/Amherst."

"Why wouldn't the local paper have been full of Stephen's disappearance?"

She frowned. "Judge Kinnington probably owns most of it."

I leaned back down. "A few more questions, then some fuel and reflection," I said. I felt her settle her bottom on the blanket like a witness on the stand. I also felt a stirring in my trunks that I hadn't expected.

"Did you ever have reason to believe that Stephen was involved with Blakey in any way, with or without consent?"

"No. I mean Stephen is not exactly average, but he's not abnormal. At least, not that way. I don't mean I think that… that that is abnormal, you know, if that's what an adult, two adults, I mean, decide to do, but…"

"Okay. Assuming Stephen left involuntarily, he could have been taken to a place none of us would ever guess or stumble on. So let's assume that Stephen's on his own. We don't know where he went, but we have to start somewhere. So how would he get where he's going?"

"Hitchhiking," said Val as she squeaked open the Styrofoam chest. "John, I'm sorry, but I'm starving. Can we start just a little bit early?" I didn't like her voice when it wheedled.

"Yes, we can start," I said, "but hitchhiking, at least toward his destination, isn't likely. He's smart enough to fear he'd be remembered and recognized. He might have hitchhiked away from here, though, and toward some other form of transportation."

"Like a bus station?" She unwrinkled some aluminum foil.

"Good thought, but they've been checked, apparently competently." I sat up.

Val said, "Just let me toss these away so they won't blow, and then we can dig in." She trotted off with some paper toward a trash basket. I noticed that the Dallas Cowboys were headed back toward us. As they approached Valerie, Big Boy made some remark that sounded like, "Hey, hey, school is out, boys." Val shook her head and trotted back to the blanket. The boys whooped a little at her distinctly feminine gait.

"I just so hate people like that," she said as she reached into the cooler.

"Can you think of any type of transportation Stephen might try to use?" I asked.

She cut a hunk of cheese and passed it and some gourmet crackers over to me. I reached over and poured the wine. I had my head down as she answered. "No, not really. Of course, he-Hey!"

I looked up to catch part of a rooster-tail of sand in my wine and all over the cheese.

"Sorry, lovers, but that pass was in the fourth quarter, and we needed it to keep our drive alive," said Big Boy over his shoulder as he loped away from us.

I raised my voice so it would crack. "You fellows ought to have some respect for others, you know."

"Oh, I have lots of respect for Miss Jacobs, pop," he yelled, his pals hooting. I noticed Big Boy was wearing jean cut-offs held up by an old belt. Off to our right, the old man was sputtering again.

Val was looking at me oddly, the way you react when someone you've so far liked shows some weakness or failing, like dropping a racist remark.

"Sorry about the cheese," I said as I brushed it off.

"Oh, that's okay, John," she said uncertainly, dropping her eyes a little and fussing with the crackers.

"By the way," I said, "do you have a hairbrush in that bag of yours?"

She looked up. "A what?"

"A hairbrush."

She turned awkwardly for it without taking her eyes off me. "Yes, yes I do." She dipped into her bag and produced a big blue plastic one with a thick handle and a broad working end.

"Thanks," I said, and slid it between two folds in the blanket. "Now, can you think of any form of transportation Stephen might favor?"

She tried to refocus her thoughts. "No. No."

I heard some thudding behind me and, sure enough, my imitation of the all-American wimp was drawing the all-American schmuck inexorably back toward us. He did a stop-and-go turnaround, which again showered the elderly couple. He then came chugging at us full tilt, following the wobbly arc of the ball, his face turned back over his shoulder.

Val, believing, reasonably, that she had to try to take charge of the situation, rolled up onto her knees and yelled, "Hey, watch out!"

Big Boy did nothing to show that he heard her. He was about twenty feet from us. I figured he would glance once at us to orient himself and then plant his left leg, the one closest to us, just outside our blanket in order to (1) turn sharply to receive the pass and (2) inundate us with another tidal wave of sand. I waited and then did what every schoolyard kid knows how to do.

I stuck out my foot.

Big Boy's left foot landed just before my outstretched calf. As he pivoted on that foot to redirect his momentum, the sand flew all over me. As he stepped off, though, my lower leg was a bar to his left leg, and he toppled. He hit the sand heavily on his left shoulder, with the awkwardness and impact that you see only when an athlete who knows how to fall from combat goes down because of an accidental shot from his teammate. He also missed the pass.

I was standing a count before he was. I hoped that what I'd done would so embarrass him that he'd think only a punch could avenge him. He came up spitting sand and obscenities. He wound up with his right list and let fly at my head. I parried it with my left, slashing the edge of my hand into his forearm. As I slashed, I cocked my right hand, fingers outstretched but slightly cupped to avoid jamming them, and then drove it up and into his solar plexis. There was a noise from his mouth like the sudden flapping of a sail that's lost its wind and purpose. He sank to one knee and started to gag. I dropped to one knee, reached back for the hairbrush, and then yanked him by his hair over my other leg. I spanked him hard and loud with the hairbrush. He had about enough air to go "Emphh!" on each swat and wriggle a little.

After about ten strokes, my palm was beginning to ring, the way it feels if you catch a hardball in the wrong part of the glove. I tossed the hairbrush onto the blanket and looked around for his friends. They were transfixed about twenty feet away. I rolled Big Boy off my leg and stood up. I reached down, gripped his belt dead center at the small of his back, and lifted him like a four-limbed suitcase. It's really pretty easy to do, even with a heavy man, since you are able to lift him at an almost perfect balance point, but it's impressive as hell. I then walked purposefully down into the water until I was at mid-thigh. I yo-yoed him five times into the water to help focus the sting the spanking imparted. He was making little gurgling sounds. I carried him back up the beach and stopped in front of his friends. I dropped him like a sack of battered junk.

"And if you do this again," I said to them, shaking my index finger, "you're all going to bed without any supper."

As I returned to our blanket, the elderly man caught up with me. He was grinning and hopping from one foot to the other. He started pumping my hand.

"Boy, oh boy, son, that's the best show I've seen since the war! That miserable bastard's been terrorizing this beach for years. My name's Graden. Charlie Graden. If you need anybody to stand up for you with the cops or anything, you call me, me and Edna. We're in the book. Boy, oh boy!"

I smiled at him. "Thanks, Mr. Graden. If this were twenty years ago, I'll bet I'd be the one shaking your hand."

"Damn right!" he said, giggling. "Take care of yourself, son." He trotted, only a little uncertainly, back toward his chair.

When I reached the blanket, Val had already packed everything back in the chest and had her tank top on.

I said, "We can stop for lunch…"

She glared up at me with tears in her eyes. "You're just as bad as they are, you know. Only you don't know it. You could have handled that boy easily, any time you wanted. You used that whiny voice to encourage him to come back." Now her voice cracked with emotion. "I thought you were a sincere, caring guy looking for a poor little boy. But all you are is a showoff too, just like those college kids. The only difference is, your shows are a little more clever and a lot more violent." She picked up her cooler with one hand, yanked up her blanket with the other, and strode determinedly off, trying unsuccessfully to gather the sand-trailing blanket into a bundle with just one hand.

As I picked up my keys and shook out my towel, it seemed that her version edged closer to the mark than the old man's and mine did. I spent most of the drive back to Boston trying to persuade myself the other way.