Blunt Darts

THIRD

– ¦ Valerie wanted to drive me out to the Kinnington place, but I insisted that she merely lead me there and let me see Mrs. Kinnington alone. She reluctantly walked with me to a rent-a-car place in Copley Square (my ancient Renault Caravelle being in the shop awaiting a used A-frame from North Carolina). I rented a Mercury Monarch, and we bailed her car out of a parking garage.

We took the Mass Turnpike to Route 128, the elongated beltway around Boston. We were beating the high-tech rush hour by thirty minutes. After about six miles we took the exit after the one I used for Bonham and continued into Meade.

As we wound down the stylish country road, I began to get a better sense of the town. Meade was about as rural as its neighbor Bonham, but a good deal ritzier. In Bonham, there were big old farmhouses flanked by peeling, musty-looking barns with rusting agricultural machinery slumped in the yards. In Meade, there were big, skylighted farmhouses flanked by newly painted, too-red bams with burnished Mercedeses and Jags in the yards. I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror. Meade would happen to Bonham someday, and at that point I'd probably no longer be able to use the pistol range.

Val signaled a turn onto a private gravel road, then pulled past it to a stop. She stuck her head out the window and swiveled a hopeful face back toward me. I waved her on. She frowned and crunched some gravel on the shoulder as she accelerated out. I checked my watch. It was a shade after four, so I made the turn and weaved slowly upward through the trees.

As I approached it, the house appeared more modest than l had expected. It was a white colonial, with thin black shutters framing the smallish downstairs windows. No modern glass walls punched through here.

I swung around a wide circular drive with a small, nonspitting fountain in the center. I pulled past the fountain so that the Merc was headed out again. By the time I closed the car door, the main door to the house was open, and a middle-aged black woman stood frowning at me.

"Hello," I said, "I'm-"

"I don't want to know your name. I don't even know you're here. Mrs. Kinnington is upstairs. Follow me."

Maybe, I thought, it's my breath.

The central staircase was beautifully maintained, with a polished, curving mahogany handrail atop off-white pickets. The steps were mahogany under a narrow, oriental runner. I glanced left and right as we climbed the stairs. On one side I could see a living room with a large portrait of a young army officer over the mantel. On the other side was the corner of a dining room. Polished hardwood floors and no wall-to-wall, only old, tasteful orientals. A natural product of old, tasteful money.

At the top of the staircase was an invalid lift, a chair that would slide mechanically up and down on a floor-and-wall track. Through clever coloring, the wall tracks were almost invisible. We turned right, then left. There appeared to be a similar wing on the other side of the stairs. I realized that the house was a good deal bigger than it appeared from the driveway.

We entered a robin's-egg-blue bedroom that must have measured thirty by thirty feet. Sitting on a love seat, with a beautiful silver service on a low table in front of her, was a double for the late actress Gladys Cooper. A double except for the eyes, which were flinty-hard and so dark that there was no way to tell where the pupil stopped and the iris began. On one side of her rested a pair of metal braces; on the other was a Princess phone the color of the walls.

"Good afternoon, sir," she said. "Thank you, Mrs. Page; that will be all."

I half-turned, and Mrs. Page shot me a look that indicated that she was sorry her name had ever been mentioned in my presence. She closed the door behind her.

"No need to worry about Mrs. Page," she said in a tone she probably believed to be pleasant. "She and I have an understanding. Please sit down."

The least delicate-looking chair in the room had apparently been moved from a now-bare corner to a conversational distance from her. I took it.

"Will you have some tea?"

I declined.

She settled back with hers. "You look younger than I expected," she said from behind her teacup.

"It's the booze," I replied. "It acts as a preservative."

She sniffed a smile at me. "Middle-aged and impudent. Well, that's probably just the combination I require. Has Miss Jacobs fully informed you of what has happened?"

"Miss Jacobs has told me everything she believes is important."

A better smile this time, and the teacup was replaced on the tray. "Why don't we begin discussing what I feel is important, then?"

"Fine. Just so it doesn't interrupt our train of thought later, my fee is two hundred and fifty dollars per day, plus expenses."

"I trust then that you intend working on no other cases save this one?"

"By some frantic telephoning, I was able to clear my calendar."

"Continue."

"Second, the chances of one investigator finding one boy two weeks after he has vanished, even assuming he hasn't been kidnapped, are very, very slim."

"He hasn't been kidnapped."

"What makes you so sure?"

"There has been no ransom note, and Stephen packed before he left."

"Both good reasons, Mrs. Kinnington, but I'm afraid the lack of a ransom note would be consistent with packing if someone were trying to give the impression that the boy had skipped on his own."

She broke eye contact and retrieved her teacup.

"Could we please refer to my grandson as 'Stephen' rather than 'the boy'?" she said softly.

"Of course." A sincere emotion? Yes, all the more because while the voice changed, the face, more easily controlled, did not.

"I'm certain Stephen packed himself, because items are missing that another person, even his father, would never have thought to take."

I let the reference to the judge pass for the moment.

"For instance?"

"Before we go any further, I really must give you some insight about Stephen. He is an exceptionally gifted child. He was reading at age three. I had feared so that his mother's behavior and the shock of her death would crush his talents. But if anything, his unfortunate home life seems to have spurred him. His teachers and I, recognizing his abilities, have given him more and more advanced materials to study and absorb. Given a few months of intensive study, I daresay he would be a better lawyer than-but I digress. The point I mean to make is that Stephen has the emotional and intellectual courage to strike out on his own. He would know exactly and concisely what he would need, and that is what he packed."

"What did he pack for?"

"Until my stroke, three years ago, I was an active camper. The judge despises the outdoors and would invent illness when he was younger to avoid coming with my husband and… and me.

"Stephen, however, seemed born with a love for the outdoors. He would walk the property here, approximately seventy-five acres, endlessly, as one season changed into another, observing the wildlife and plants. After my stroke, he would come in each day and describe to me what he'd seen and heard and touched. He became terribly interested in the wilderness, and with my help, he and I selected numerous books and items from L. L. Bean, Abercrombie, and other catalogs to prepare a wildemess-survival kit for him."

"And that's what he took with him?"

"Yes and no, Mr. Cuddy, and that's my point. What is missing is not his whole kit nor a random sampling of all the items he had. What he took were only the lightest components and the barest necessities. My memory is still perfectly sharp, and I'm sure only his hand or mine could have selected so carefully the items that are missing."

"Could you make a list of those, along with the clothes he was wearing and the clothes that are missing'?"

She reached her hand down between the cushion and the couch and handed me a small envelope. "It's all in there."

"Do you have a picture of him?"

"The best one I have is in the envelope. I would appreciate your making copies and returning it to me as soon as possible."

"I'll do that." I opened the envelope and scanned the list. It was written on rose-colored stationery with her name embossed on the top. The handwriting, now shaky, once must have won penmanship awards. I studied the photograph. It showed a black-haired boy, whittling but looking up at the lens. The body was right, but the face was somber, joyless, and somehow not young.

"How long ago was this taken?"

"About six weeks. Stephen disappeared on Tuesday, June 12. The photograph was taken by his father, which explains Stephen's expression."

I slipped the photo back into the envelope. "Mrs. Kinnington, you don't speak as lovingly of your son as you do of Stephen. Was the judge the reason Stephen ran away?"

"I don't believe that is necessary for your task. Regardless of what Stephen's reasons were for leaving, I am convinced Stephen's father had nothing directly to do with Stephen's departure. Accordingly, I don't wish you to speak with the judge nor even allow him to become aware that you are pursuing the case on my behalf."

I cleared my throat. "Mrs. Kinnington, that's probably not possible. I'll have to ask some questions in this town about Stephen, and that fact is bound to get back to the judge. Aside from you and him, I can't think of anyone who would hire me to look for Stephen. He's bound to add it up."

Mrs. Kinnington fixed me firmly. "Nevertheless, I do not wish you to do anything that would specifically lead him to that conclusion."

"Mrs. Kinnington, I will do what I believe is best for finding Stephen. If that isn't acceptable to you, I'll walk right now. No charge."

She blinked and sighed. "Please do your best, then, to honor my wishes," she murmured.

"I will."

I mentally reviewed the topics I had wanted to cover with her. Two remained.

"I have only a few more questions for now, Mrs. Kinnington. One is about Stephen's institutionalization after his mother died."

Her eyes sharpened again with her voice. "That was years ago. What could it possibly have to do with his disappearance now'?"

"Frankly, I don't know. But it seems to me something must have happened to cause Stephen to take off. Perhaps that something isn't a new occurrence but rather a recurrence from those days."

She sighed again. The institutionalization appeared to be as difficult for her to discuss as it must have been for Stephen to experience. "I had very little to do with that. I was out of the country when Stephen's mother died, and the judge's actions were fait accompli by the time I got back." She adopted the hard tone again. "I distrust psychiatrists and other so-called mental health professionals. I believe that love, not analysis, is what Stephen needed. In any case, however, the name of the sanatorium was Willow Wood. It was in the Berkshires near Tanglewood. I don't recall the town, but I doubt it would do you any good to find it. I'm sure the judge would have sealed things up tightly to avoid any adverse publicity."

I thought it over. She was probably right about the sanatorium itself. Then I recalled something a doctor once told me when I was visiting Beth in the hospital.

"Mrs. Kinnington, it seems that I've heard a psychiatric hospital usually does follow-up treatment on a released patient. Since the sanatorium must be a hundred miles from here, do you recall any local psychiatrist seeing Stephen after he was sent home?"

She regarded her teacup for a moment. "Yes, yes, I do. He was in Brookline. Stem? No, no, Stein. That was the name. Dr. David Stein."

I nodded. "Could you call him and authorize him to speak with me about Stephen?"

"Mr. Cuddy, I want one point to be absolutely clear," she said, again hardening her voice. "I will not have those days reopened. The judge and I would agree on that, though he for selfish reasons of publicity and I for concern about Stephen. Is that understood?"

"Mrs. Kinnington, if your concern for Stephen is so strong, I would think you'd want me to reopen anything I had to in order to bring him home safely."

She locked eyes for another moment, then relented once more. "This is all so… difficult to deal with. We had all thought him to be. .. Very well. I see your point. I will call this Dr. Stein."

"By 'this Dr. Stein,' do I take it you never met him?"

"That's correct. I've a vague recollection of speaking to him once on the telephone."

"In that case," I said, "could you give me a brief letter of introduction, preferably on some of your stationery?"

"Certainly." She swiveled and scooped up her walking braces in her right hand.

I extended my right hand. "Do you need some help?" I asked.

She shook her head as she maneuvered the braces to the sides of her chair. "Never ask someone in a wheelchair, which I was, or on braces if they 'need some help.' Psychologically, they can't answer yes to that question."

"Well, then, can I give you a hand?"

She rewarded me with her faint smile. "Better. But no, thank you," she said as she levered herself up to a standing position. "I prefer to have tea at a tea table and to write letters at a desk. This way, please." Her legs moved stiffly in lockstep with the thrust of her shoulders and braces. She stopped at a Governor Winthrop desk, which looked to my untutored eye to be made of curly maple and therefore probably even more antique than the rest of the place. She lowered the drawbridge writing surface, revealing a desk fountain pen. She eased into the chair, leaning her braces against the wall, out of the way but within reach.

"Now," she said, tugging open a shallow drawer and removing another sheet of the rose-colored stationery, "what shall I write?"

I slowly dictated a form of authorization and release, which I had seen often enough at Empire to know by heart. It authorized Dr. Stein to reveal Stephen's confidences and to allow me to review medical and hospital records, releasing him from liability if he did so. She signed it and handed it to me. "Is there anything else?" she said.

"If you would call Dr. Stein and let him know I'm coming?"

"Certainly."

I put the letter and the envelope in my breast pocket. "One last thing. Given your knowledge of what Stephen knows about the wilderness, do you have any ideas about where he might go?"

She looked up and smiled wanly. "We maintained a veritable atlas of topographical maps of the Eastern seaboard in his room, to plan or just fantasize about future trips. They are all still there, which probably means he found a way to copy one before he left. He could be anywhere."

I nodded. "I can reach you by telephone here?"

"During the day," she said. "If you need me at night, please call Miss Jacobs and have her call me. I will then call you when everyone else is asleep."

I nodded again. "I'd like to speak to Mrs. Page now."

"That's not necessary, Mr. Cuddy. Stephen disappeared on her day off. I've already questioned her thoroughly, and she knows nothing."

And, I gathered, if she did know anything, Mrs. Page wouldn't tell me.

I said goodbye and went out into the hall. I retraced my steps down the stairs, and as I reached the front door I was aware of Mrs. Page behind me. At least she hadn't frisked me to check for the family silver. I smiled at her, and she shook her head. As I went through the door, she began closing it behind me.

"Blakey's gonna eat you alive," she said in a tsk-tsk whisper.

I considered knocking on the door, but I didn't think she'd elaborate even if she opened it again. I got in the Merc, drove down to the main road, and swung back toward Boston and opposite the first straining of the westward commuter traffic. Almost immediately, a black sedan swerved into my lane and I had to cut onto the shoulder. I glared over at the driver. My eyes caught about one frame of a beefy, stupid face before he was past me. I wrestled my car back onto the roadbed.

I got to Route 128, but instead of turning north toward Mass Pike and the fast way into Boston, I turned south and picked up the usually mis-named expressway, which leads into the city from the southeast. This looked as if it was going to be an effort-intensive case, and I wanted to pay a visit first.