Blunt Darts Read online

  It’s almost impossible to pivot quickly on your knees that way. No problem, though. I figured I’d wait until I felt his hand somewhere on me, then simply disarm him.

  Stephen Kinnington stepped slowly toward me. Then he must have broad-jumped and swung the pistol butt at my head as he landed.

  The room abruptly darkened to a midnight-blue fog.

  I could taste the wool hairs in my mouth. I suppose wool technically isn’t hair, but when I was little, every night in the winter my brother and I slept in a rusty, iron bed with a coarse woolen blanket over us. The cheaply made blanket would shed every night, and I’d awaken every morning with wool hairs in my mouth. I’d then feel waves of nausea coming over me and run to the bathroom with the dry heaves. One morning my half-opened eyes caught my brother putting the hairs in my half-opened mouth. I half-split his upper lip with my fist.

  I blinked, but I wasn’t in my parents’ house anymore. I was lying on my right side in the dark. Based on the ache from my right kidney, I’d been in that position for a while. I coughed and gagged. There was cloth in my mouth. I was also tied, hands (behind me) and feet.

  Taken, and immobilized, by a fourteen-year-old.

  I lifted my head, and John Phillip Sousa struck up the band at the back of my skull. I involuntarily bit into my gag, which I suspected was one or more wool socks. I coughed some more and flopped over onto my left side.

  “Be quiet, or I’ll have to hit you again,” came Stephen Kinnington’s low voice across the shadowy room.

  “Ugglub caaam,” I said.

  “I mean it. We’re not talking until morning when I can see your eyes.”

  I tried to recall if I’d mentioned Blakey to him. I couldn’t remember, but I didn’t think I would have risked it with a gun being held at my back by a boy who was terrified of his father’s henchman.

  “Ercrue Baaka,” I said. “Baaka, Baaka.”

  “Last warning,” Stephen said, his voice rising a little.

  My head continued throbbing. I relaxed as best I could, and tried to forget about wool hairs and giant court officers. Under my left pant leg, I could feel the empty holster on my calf.

  The throb in my head eased a bit, and I drifted off.

  Twenty-Four

  I REALIZED THE THROBBING was gone. Then I heard a bird sing. Two birds. I opened my eyes, and it was full morning. Plenty of clean, bright sunshine in the room, but no Stephen.

  I rolled up and went too far and keeled over onto my right side. The throbbing resumed. After a few more tries, I was sitting upright but hunched over. Stephen had run a connecting rope between my hands and my feet. From what Eleanor Kinnington had told me about their camping, I assumed he knew his knots. Walking, much less descending the ladder, was out of the question.

  I edged backward until I could rest against the wall. I was hungry, but the thought of Blakey tracing my steps fast eroded my appetite.

  There was nothing I could see in the room that would help me get free. No sharp edges, no drawers I could reach. All the broken glass from the windows had been swept up during Stephen’s cover-up.

  Which left the broken windows themselves.

  I rolled onto my back and tried to stretch my legs. They were pretty numb, but even if they hadn’t been, the rope connecting my hands and feet prevented me from stretching high enough to reach the lowest of the broken windows.

  I rolled back into a sitting position and tried to stand. No good. Both feet and legs too numb. I squirmed and flexed until I could feel the pins and needles signaling the return of blood to my legs. Then I got a cramp in my left calf that left me munching on the wool gag again. Finally, I edged my way up into a stooped position. I leaned back into the open window, but my hands behind me were still a good six inches from the sill. I didn’t like the possible consequences of trying to assume a sitting position on the window shelf itself.

  Then I heard the first footstep on the ladder.

  I hadn’t registered Stephen climbing the steps. But I was pretty sure he didn’t weigh enough to make my new home shake the way it was.

  A cross-piece gave way, and a muffled curse filtered up through the closed hatch. A minute later the hatch flew back and slammed as it hit the floor behind. The muzzle of what became a .357 Magnum appeared, followed by the beefy hand holding it and the beefier face directing it. Gerald Blakey looked surprised to see me.

  Then he smiled, climbing up one more step, and sweeping the Magnum around the room. Finally, Blakey pulled himself all the way up, leaving the hatch open.

  He was dressed in now-dusty dark slacks and a light green shirt. “Christ, am I glad to see you, asshole. Where’s the freak?”

  I did not dignify Blakey’s question with even a muffled reply.

  “Aw, what’s the matter? Kitty-cat got your tongue?” He holstered his gun and, coming toward me, reached into his pocket. “Maybe this’ll loosen things up a little.”

  Blakey produced and opened a pocket knife. He cut the piece of rope around my head that was keeping the gag in place. Then he fished in my mouth with the blade and drew out the gag. A very damp, gray sock. I could feel the wool hairs in my mouth but decided it would be impolite to spit. I swiveled my head and worked my jaws.

  “Now,” he said, pitching the soggy gag off his knife tip, “where’s the kid?”

  “He went out for Egg McMuffins.”

  Blakey backhanded me on the left side of my face. I rolled awkwardly down the sill and banged my elbow hitting the floor. Blakey then kicked me hard in the back of my left thigh.

  “I figure we’re about sixty feet to the ground, wise-ass. A fall like that, it’d cover a lot of bruises.”

  My left leg wouldn’t work. “I don’t know where he is, Blakey.”

  “I thought maybe he was gonna burn you at the stake, like one of them babysitters on TV?”

  I decided to try a smile. “He may yet.”

  Blakey grinned and crossed his arms, coplike, but not threateningly. “You know he’s fuckin’ crazy? You do know that?”

  “Then why do you want him back?” I asked, then clenched, fearing I’d unintentionally hit close to a nerve.

  “What would I want him for?” Blakey said warily. “It’s the judge who wants him. Back in the nuthouse, where the freak belongs.”

  I unclenched and pursued the matter a little. “Then why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff? Why didn’t the Honorable Willard Kinnington just let me help you find him?”

  The grin faded. “None of your fuckin’ business.”

  “Would it have anything to do with a certain midnight swim four years ago?”

  Now Blakey’s lips curled backward into a smile I didn’t like. “The judge told you to stay out of this. The judge and me both. We warned you.” His smile grew wider. “Remember?” he said huskily.

  “I meant to tell you, you’ve got a really sweet phone manner, pal.”

  Blakey stopped smiling. “This time the freak takes the blame. This time some local cop and I find you at the bottom of the ladder, with six slugs from the kid’s twenty-two in you. Then I bring the freak to his nuthouse and call in to the judge. He takes it from there.”

  “Why not just kill Stephen?” I asked, toward gaining some time.

  Blakey laughed. “Boy, you are one cold-hearted bastard. But I’ll tell you why. It makes it tougher to explain why you’re dead. And once I figured, sittin’ by that broken-ass shed all night, that you’d spotted me, you had to get dead.”

  Seemed I should argue that point. “What about the clerk in the hardware store? He can identify you.”

  Blakey unfolded his arms, and his face darkened. “How did you … ?” Then he laughed. “Oh, I get it. You figured out that’s how I found you. Well, you’re right, but that clerk won’t know how I found you here. Dead or alive.”

  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 whil
e. 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.

  Twenty-Five

  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?”