Blunt Darts

SIXTEENTH

– ¦ I drove back to the apartment house and double-parked out front. I took the steps two at a time, and just caught the tail end of a dial tone noise as I opened my apartment door. Someone's time for a message had just run out. I waited until I heard the machine turn off with a click, then rewound the tape to playback. There were two messages. The first was from Val:

"John, I've arranged to have us meet Kim at two o'clock at the Sturdevants You'll never find it without me, and anyway I don't think Mrs. Sturdevant would talk to you without me there. I don't know how much time I have left-I hate these machines-so pick me up at one-thirty here. I mean here at my house. Remember, 17 Ford…"

One admirable thing about the tape. It cuts everyone off equally. The second message, after two hang-ups, was too concise to be affected by the machine's tolerance for talking.

"I regret to report there has been no progress at this end, Mr. Pembroke. You need not contact me."

I thought of Nancy DeMarco and wished that someone would make some progress toward finding Stephen.

Apparently, however, I thought and wished too long. By the time I got back downstairs, an orange parking violation card fluttered between my windshield and wiper. I put it in my pocket, stopped at a steak house on the way to Meade, and picked Valerie up at 1:35.

The Sturdevants lived on Fife Street, a string of large, split-level homes about half a mile long on one side of the road. On the other side of the road was apparently untouched forest land. Val said that it was "conservation land," which sounds ecologically advanced but which really means that the town fathers and mothers had voted to buy up vacant land to ensure it would not be developed into new homes or businesses. It also meant that the Sturdevants and other home owners could enjoy in perpetuity gas-fired barbecues and sun decks in their backyards and views of the forest primeval from their front yards.

We stopped the car at 9 Fife, distinguishable from the other splits only by its mailbox label and a bright green upper story over a flat white lower story. I'm sure that the Sturdevants thought the color choice enhanced the "country" look of their neighborhood. Personally, I thought their house looked like a giant 7-Up can somebody had tossed out a car window. The flagstone path led in a straight line from the edge of the road slightly upgrade to the front door. The neighborhood was sans sidewalks, another country affectation.

A woman of perhaps forty answered Valerie's ring. She frowned as she recognized Val. An invisible puff of air-conditioned atmosphere wafted past her to us. "Hello, Mrs. Sturdevant," began Val. "This is-"

"My husband and I had a talk after I spoke with you, Miss Jacobs," interrupted Mrs. Sturdevant, who was slim and ash-blonde, but with a pinched face and eyes that flickered nervously from Val to me and back again. "We're not at all sure that we should let you talk to Kim about all this. We're afraid it might upset her."

Val looked taken aback, so I slipped into the conversation as gently as I could. "Mrs. Sturdevant, I'm John Cuddy. If I were in your position, I think I'd have the same hesitation. But a boy your daughter's age has disappeared and," I embroidered a bit, "the family is frantic to find him. If we could just come in and talk with you for a few minutes, we'll abide by whatever decision you reach."

The wheels were turning in Mrs. Sturdevant's head. I had the feeling that they turned infrequently, and slowly when they did. "Well," she began and paused. She seemed to have been prepared by Mr. Sturdevant to defend against an assault, but not to decline an invitation to diplomacy.

"Please, Mrs. Sturdevant?" said Val in a soft voice.

Mrs. Sturdevant blinked and relented. "All right, come in."

We followed her into the house. It was dark and quiet inside as well as cool. We turned left and climbed eight low steps to the living room level. A large picture window provided a striking view of the conservation land across the street. In a corner of the room squatted a twenty-five-inch color console television (I believe RCA calls the cabinet "Mediterranean"). The sound was off, but the video displayed some sort of game show. An overweight woman in a red dress was hugging a slim, middle-aged host who smiled enthusiastically. Mrs. Sturdevant took a chair with her back to the TV. Valerie and I took the couch.

Although there was a remote control device on the coffee table between us, our hostess made no effort to tum the set off. Perhaps she had become oblivious to it.

"Would you like some coffee and cake?"

Val, remembering my awkwardness at Miss Pitts's house, was about to decline for both of us. I cut her off and said we'd be pleased.

"I'll just be a minute," said Mrs. Sturdevant, who had barely disappeared around a comer before Val turned to me.

"But I thought-"

"You were right," I said, my hand up in a stop sign, "but I wanted a word with you before we tried persuading her." Val nodded and smiled. "Now, as I see it, Mr. S. probably gave her some marching orders and we've altered the conditions. We have to get to her without giving her a need or opportunity to call Mr. S. for further instructions."

"Agreed," said Val, "but in the kitchen she could-"

"Right again. She could call him now. But I'm betting that she has a one-project-at-a·time mindset. Accordingly, I think we're safe for now."

"Safe from what?" spoke a new voice.

Val and I both swiveled around. A much younger version of Mrs. S. stood at the foyer. She had the ash blond hair and slim figure, but her hair was kept in place with a yellow band and her face was open and relaxed. Her eyes only momentarily went toward me before fixing on Valerie.

"Hi, Ms. Jacobs. Safe from what?"

"Hi, Kim," covered Val. "We're talking about Stephen."

At the mention of his name, Kim started running up the stairs toward us and talking at the same time. "Have you heard from him? How is he? Where is he?"

She reached us at the couch just as Mrs. Sturdevant came bustling into the living room, carrying one full coffee cup and one empty one.

"I thought I heard your voice, Kim. We haven't reached a decision yet," she said, parroting my earlier phrase. "Please go to your room." Mom's eyes were nervous still..

"I want to find out about Stephen," said Kim, her eyes steady.

I decided that Mrs. S. probably hadn't won many of these contests recently. "Mrs. Sturdevant." I got up and walked over to her. Val joined us. I lowered my voice with my back toward Kim. "The main concern here is not to upset Kim, right?"

Mrs. Sturdevant looked confused, but she nodded hesitantly.

"Well," I said, "it seems pretty clear that Kim is going to insist on finding out what I can tell her about Stephen." I paused just a beat. "She doesn't strike me as a girl who's going to take no for an answer."

Mrs. Sturdevant nodded again. The cups were rattling against their saucers in her slightly trembling hands. "She is a very determined girl sometimes."

I gave Val a gentle nudge, a signal we'd worked out on the drive over.

"Mrs. Sturdevant, why don't you and I go into the kitchen. I guarantee that Mr. Cuddy will be very careful with Kim and not do anything you'd disapprove of."

"Well…" said Mrs. Sturdevant.

"Mom," said Kim clearly and stubbornly. "I'm going to find out about Stephen."

"Well," said Mrs. Sturdevant, thus prodded. "If you think it's best…"

"I know it is," said Val, relieving the woman of the formerly full, now slightly spilled, cup and guiding her toward the kitchen.

Kim and I were alone. She was wearing running shorts and a halter top, small breasts just pushing out against the fabric. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted the bright pink of her lipstick. I had the feeling that the lipstick went on after Daddy left in the morning and came off before Daddy got home at night. She had a Sony Walkman strapped around her waist, the light earphone attachment resting on her shoulders like a bizarre necklace.

"It's your house," I said, "but why don't we sit down?"

She gave a little frown, then sat in her mother's chair. I don't think Kim noticed that the TV was on either, but the woman in the red dress must have done well again, because she was again hanging on the host, who was still smiling, but only sportingly now.

"Wh0 are you?" Kim asked warily.

"My name is John Cuddy," I said, handing her a card and even flashing her my identification. I thought it might impress her, but she barely glanced at it. "I'm a private detective. I've been hired to try to find Stephen. I'm hoping that you can help me."

She shook her head. "I don't know where he is. I thought you'd be able to tell me how he is."

We looked at each other for a moment. I had the feeling that Kim's wheels turned faster and a lot more frequently than her mother's.

I sighed in what I hoped was a reassuring way.

"Kim, I was hired by Stephen's grandmother, not his father. His father, for reasons I can't imagine, doesn't seem much interested in finding Stephen. Valerie-Ms. Jacobs-and I have been chasing down every lead we can find. She told me you and Stephen were good friends, that maybe you could help."

Kim settled back into the chair. Her left hand began to fiddle with the earphones around her neck. "Ms. Jacobs said Stephen and I were good friends?" she asked.

I sensed an opening. "Actually, I asked her who was closest to Stephen in the class, and she said you were."

Kim flushed a little, partly from pride, partly from embarrassment. Mostly from pride, though.

"Stephen's a hard person to get close to," she said. "He and I went to different schools till last year, and last year's homeroom was alphabetical. You know, they'd assign us to rooms based on our last names. Then somebody got the idea that alphabetical assignment was 'stultifying.' That's the word the principal used this year, 'stultifying.' So they just assigned us randomly." She smiled. "So this was the first year I had a lot of classes with Stephen."

I leaned back in the couch. "I've seen photographs of Stephen, but I've never met him. What's he like?"

She eyed me for a moment and decided I was sincere. "He's the smartest guy I've ever met. There are a lot of kids at our school who are great test-takers, even without studying or anything, you know. But Stephen is really different. He's smart past everybody, even the teachers, way past." She gave me a smug smile. "He's a genius. He could be anything. Anything he wants."

"What does Stephen want?" I asked.

She frowned, but not at me. "I don't know," she said quietly, looking down at her lap.

Dead end. Back up and try another street.

"When did you last see Stephen before he disappeared?"

"It must have been the day he left. We were in school together. We had a morning class, one of those nothing classes you have when exams are over. Then we had lunch." She smiled again. "We ate lunch together, at one of the picnic tables outside school."

"Did he say anything that indicated why he was leaving or where he was going?"

She frowned again, this time at me. "No," she said, a little too certainly.

I sighed and spread my hands in front of me. "Look, Kim, I will not reveal to anyone anything you tell me."

She eyed me cautiously. "Like lawyers and clients?"

I shook my head. "I won't bullshit you, Kim. There is no detective-confidential source privilege in Massachusetts. But that just means that I might go to jail for keeping quiet about what you tell me. It doesn't mean I won't keep my word. I will." I leaned forward again. "I think Stephen's in trouble because someone is after him. I don't know why someone's after him, and I'm not sure you do. I am sure that if I don't get more information about Stephen, I'm never going to find him."

She dropped the frown and resumed her fiddling with the earphones. "Maybe he doesn't want to be found."

I resisted the temptation to ask her why she might think that. "Kim, please trust me."

She shook her head. "Stephen once told me not to trust anyone. He said he didn't trust anyone."

"He trusted you," I said, quietly.

She smiled sadly. "No, not much." She wiped at her eyes, then said, "Look, mister, I don't know where Stephen is. I don't even know why he left. I was hoping you could tell me he was okay. If you can't, you can't. If I can't, I can't. Okay?"

This time I shook my head more emphatically.

"No. Not okay. I care about Stephen. I care because he's had a tough life of it so far, and it's my job to find him. But you care for him, and despite what you've said so far, I think he did trust you with something, with some information. There is no way I can make you trust me, but I don't see how you can think Stephen is better off out there than back here with us protecting him."

She glared at me. "Us! Us protecting him? It's his father who's after him. The judge and Blakey. How can you protect Stephen from them?"

"I don't know," I said, "but maybe the reason Stephen ran would give me leverage enough to do that."

" 'Leverage'," she snorted sarcastically. "That's what my father uses to close computer sales. That's how you're going to stop the judge?"

"Kim, I don't know what your image of the judge and his power is, but nobody is all-powerful. There are things, facts or evidence, that can scare the judge, same as you or me. If Stephen knows or found out something, and that knowledge or fact was important enough to make him run, it may be important enough to bring him back and protect him from the judge." I paused. "What do you say?"

The glare slid away, and she chewed her lower lip. "I'm just so scared for him," she said, the tears welling up.

I dug out a handkerchief and she cried quietly into it for about ten seconds. Then she wiped her eyes and nose. "What do you want to know?" She was flushed and red-eyed, but cooperative.

"What did you and Stephen talk about at lunch that day?"

She sniffed and began. "The same thing we always talked about. His quest."

"His quest? You mean, like a search or a mission?"

"Yes. Stephen and I got to be, like Ms. Jacobs said, close. I kind of watched him last year and the beginning of this year. He's real intelligent-looking and, well, anyway, I saw that he didn't seem to have any friends. I mean, he would talk to the other kids, but just kind of politely, like he was talking to a teacher or somebody's father and he didn't want any trouble. I think he just wasn't much interested in what the kids were doing and talking about. Like, whenever he talked with me, it was like we were on a different level from the rest of the kids."

"You mentioned his quest."

"Yes, I'm coming to that. One day I just sort of decided to try talking-really talking-to him. That was this year, maybe October or November." She paused. "It was November, because the decorations were up. You know, the stupid stuff like cardboard turkeys and pilgrims?"

"I know."

"Well, we just started talking, and it was amazing, you know, the way he could explain things and understand the things I would say. It was like… it was like he was the best teacher I ever had, but he was my own age-actually a year older because he… lost a year. He understood me, but he acted older, so I could… I could…"

"Respect him?" I said tactfully.

She sniffed again. "Yeah, respect him. Anyway, it was maybe two months ago that he told me about his mother, and how he'd gotten sick and was in the hospital."

"Did he tell you what kind of illness he had?"

She fixed me with her still-reddish eyes. "Yeah, mental illness. He was in a crazy house, out in the mountains somewhere. His father did it."

I tensed. "Did what?"

"Huh?"

"You said, 'his father did it.' What did his father do?"

"Oh, his father put him in the crazy house. His grandmother didn't want him to stay there, though, but he still had to stay a long time, like maybe a year. When he got out, he came home. That's when he began his quest."

I held onto my patience. "What was Stephen's quest?"

Kim became very still. She looked down. "You have to promise never to tell anyone."

I promised.

"You can't even ever tell Stephen I told you. I'm the only one who knows, so you can't even let him know you know or he'd know it was me."

"I promise," I repeated.

She twisted the earphones off her neck and played with them in her lap. I involuntarily noticed that the woman in the red dress must have won again. This time she was literally smothering the host, who was no longer smiling, sportingly or otherwise. Kim's first words snapped me back.

"His mother was killed. Murdered. His quest was to get evidence. To prove his father did it." She shivered. I gave her a moment, then: "Kim, what kind of evidence?"

She began gnawing on her lower lip again. "A gun."

"A gun?"

"Yes," she said.

"Stephen's mother supposedly died in a car accident. Stephen believed his mother was shot?"

Kim, crying again, now nodded vigorously. I heard soft footsteps, Valerie's, I thought, approach and recede. I could just hear Val's voice from the kitchen. She said, "They're doing fine, Mrs. Sturdevant."

I wasn't sure how much more Kim had left.

"Why did he think that, Kim? Why did he think his mother was shot?"

"Because," she said, too loudly, nearly a wail. She dropped her voice. "Because he was there."

She fell silent. Me too. Then, "Kim, at that last lunch, did Stephen say anything about being in danger, or…"

She blew her nose and fixed me again. "You don't understand," she said. "He'd found it. That was what he told me at lunch. The quest was over. He'd found the gun."

"He'd found it?"

"Yes. The night before. Every night he'd wait until everyone was asleep. Then he'd search a different place. He thought his father might suspect he was on the quest, so sometimes Stephen would double back and recheck some of the old places. But he finally found it."

"Did he say what he was going to do with it?"

"No." She managed a half-smile. "No. He had been on the quest for so long, years, that I don't think he really had figured out what he was going to do. I mean exactly what he was going to do. When he found it."

She wiped her eyes again.

"Kim, I think Stephen left on his own. And from what you've told me, I'm sure it was because of finding the gun. Is there anything else you can tell me about Stephen, like where he might go?"

She shook her head. "He never-"

She stopped and froze as the big front door clicked and then banged open. "Sal, Kim. I'm home. Hey, Sal, I may be early but-"

I swiveled around and rose. A bearish, balding guy of forty-five or so came tromping up the stairs to the living room. I caught Kim rubbing furiously on her lips with my handkerchief as he saw us and exploded.

"Who are you? Kim! What the hell is that stuff doing on your-You're crying!"

By this time a terrified Mrs. Sturdevant, with Val in her wake, burst into the room.

"Hal, oh Hal," she cried, "they said it would be all right."

I remember nearly laughing. Val, Sal, and now Hal. But there was nothing humorous about Hal just then.

"You're the guy we told to stay away, aren't you?"

Hal's briefcase, newspaper, and a supermarket bag hit the carpet. A widening pool of milk gurgled out of an unseen carton.

"Mr. Sturdevant, I'm investigating…"

He swung a rounding left as Sal screamed his name and Val yelled mine. I ducked under it and just pushed him, but hard, with my open hands as his shoulder went over my head. It knocked him off balance, and his momentum was broken by banging into the wall.

I spoke as quickly as I could. "This is your home, Mr. Sturdevant. I have no desire or reason to hurt you. I will leave immediately if you tell me to."

Sturdevant came off the wall and hesitated. Sally grabbed his arm. "Please Hal, just tell him to go."

Hal, his honor saved by her entreaty, glared at me. I noticed for the first time that Kim was gone. I had a vague recollection of a slamming door in there somewhere.

"Get out! Get out of my house and don't ever come back!"

I nodded and backed toward the stairs. I motioned to Val to precede me down, which she did. The Sturdevants, Hal leading and Sal in tow, followed us down, maintaining a three-step interval.

"Get out. Get out. Get out!" The last shout cracked his voice a bit.

We were outside. Sturdevant slammed the door behind us. We had reached our car when I heard a window open. I turned around in time to see Kim's head and forearms pop out an upper story window.

"Tel1 Stephen," she sobbed, "tell him that I love him. Tell him. .." at which point a pair of fatherly hands pinned her elbows, yanked her from the opening, and slammed the window as well.

A tearful Val spoke as I opened the car door for her. "Somebody else does care for Stephen."

"Yeah," I said, "for all the good it's done him so far."