Blunt Darts (6 page)

I smiled back. He reached for the telephone and hit one button. “Checking my service,” he said to me as an aside.

Stein spoke with the service for a while, taking down several quick notes on a pad. He said, “She did?” several times, then said thank you and hung up.

“Well,” he said to me, “it seems your Mrs. Kinnington was quite insistent on reaching me. Virtually threatened my service with legal action if she were not put through.”

“She’s a very determined woman. And quite concerned about Stephen.”

“Stephen, Stephen, yes, yes,” Stein said as he looked at Mrs. Kinnington’s letter again, and then rose and crossed to one of six file cabinets in the room. He pulled back a drawer, retrieved a file, and, opening it, came back to his seat.

Turning the pages of the file, Stein spoke to me. “Mrs. Kinnington says in her note only that Stephen is missing. According to the file here and my recollection as well, Stephen’s father was the family member most involved with Stephen’s … ah, stay at Willow Wood.”

I chose my words carefully. “Mrs. Kinnington was out of the country at the time. Both she and the judge are doing everything possible to locate him. You are just one link, but perhaps an important one, in that chain.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Whatever momentary reticence he had had now seemed to dissolve. “Well then, how can I help you?”

I breathed an inner sigh of relief and plunged on. “We don’t know why Stephen has disappeared. We thought you might be able to give us some idea.”

Stein pursed his lips and flipped back to the front of the file. “According to my records, I last saw Stephen over three years ago. Aside from my file entries, I really have little recollection of him.”

Fishing the photo that Eleanor Kinnington had given me, I leaned forward a bit and held it up for the good doctor. “What I am really interested in is why Stephen, after apparently doing so well for so long, suddenly does an about-face. Now, it may have been a new occurrence, or it may have been a recurrence of something from his past. If we know what caused him to act, we might have a starting point for tracing him.”

Stein waved off the photo, then tented his fingers and gave me a superior smile. “That’s assuming that he departed of his own accord. Has that been established?”

“Not conclusively, but all the available evidence points toward his having run away rather than to kidnapping.”

Stein nodded. He looked to his left and again reread Mrs. Kinnington’s letter. He seemed to be trying to memorize it. “I presume that time is of the essence, as the lawyers say?”

“Yes. The longer it takes us to find the key, the lower our chances of finding the boy.”

Stein came to his decision and swung his desk chair and the folder around sideways. “Let’s go through the file.” I hitched my chair around so that we sat side-by-side at the narrow end of the desk.

The file was in reverse chronological order, so that you had to read from the bottom of the lower page to the top of the higher page. That awkwardness mastered, it took relatively little time to review.

Stephen was signed into Willow Wood by his father within twenty-four hours of his mother’s death. He was diagnosed catatonic upon his arrival, and was treated with half a dozen drugs over the first two months. He slowly came out of the trance, showing exceptional manual dexterity and imagination.

Group therapy efforts were aborted nearly as soon as they began, Stephen preferring individual sessions, though not really coming around to any one analyst or therapist. The entries suggested Stephen most enjoyed outdoor activities and the library, shunning team sports and leadership roles.

“What kind of place is Willow Wood?” I asked.

Stein shrugged. “It’s a low-security, very prestigious facility. In the old parlance, it would have been a sanatorium. It is set on the grounds of a beautiful estate about eight miles from Tanglewood. A friend of mine from medical school is head of staff there. Quite a plum position, but she was a superior doctor at a time when few women were entertained in medical school. She refers me all her discharging patients who are returning to the Boston area.”

“There doesn’t appear to be any indication of who referred the judge to Willow Wood.”

“No, but any knowledgeable psychiatrist would know of Sarah—that’s my classmate. Sarah might have a recollection of it, but surely it would be easier for you to just ask the judge.”

“Right,” I said, hopefully not too quickly. “Tell me about the course of care at Willow Wood, generally.”

“Well, the course of care varies, of course, with the condition being treated. Willow Wood specializes, so to speak, in difficult, long-term cases of seriously ill, but not, dangerous individuals.”

“Arts, crafts, and canoeing versus straitjackets and shock treatment?”

Stein actually harrumphed. “In a blunt sort of way, yes.”

I returned to the file. Stephen seemed to improve month by month, if you compared a given week’s entry to one four or five weeks later. The drugs dropped off, and the assessments of his progress steadily rose. About eight months after his initial admission, he was released to his father, with a forwarding referral to Dr. Stein.

I looked up at him. “Doctor, I don’t quite understand something from the records here. What exactly was wrong with Stephen?”

“Well,” said Stein, clearing his throat and shuffling through the file, “it’s often difficult to diagnose exactly what is ‘wrong’ with a patient. One treats the apparent condition, or symptom, if you like, and then varies the treatment if earlier efforts prove unsuccessful. As you can see, Stephen was catatonic upon arrival at Willow Wood. Then slowly, by an evolving alternation of drugs, counseling, and therapeutic activities, he came back to us, so to speak.”

“In layman’s terms, you varied your prescriptions until he seemed to come out of it.”

“Yes, but that can pretty generally be said about any patient.”

“Then you can’t really be sure of what was wrong with him to start with.”

“Well, not in some microscopically, conclusively proved sense, no. When Stephen arrived at Willow Wood, he was literally in a trance. One can only identify the symptom or condition. One can’t, despite magazine and television to the contrary, ever be sure of what’s ‘wrong with him,’ in the sense I think you mean it.”

I let that lay there while I returned to the file. The remaining pages were pale blue. “Are these blue pages yours?”

“Yes,” Stein said, hopscotching with a pointed finger. “I first saw Stephen there, then a week later, then two weeks later, then one month later.”

I read his entries. To me they seemed the sort of bland evaluation an assistant principal might give an above-average kindergarten teacher. Stein’s notes indicated good re-adjustment to home life, eagerness to return to school, intellectual curiosity, etc.

“I take it you came to no independent diagnosis of Stephen’s illness.”

“Well, no, but perhaps for a different reason. You see, by the time he came to me, Stephen was no longer exhibiting any symptoms of any condition. He appeared to be a normal, well-adjusted boy of”—Stein consulted his entries—“ten, nearly eleven years old. Since he wasn’t sick, so to speak, there was nothing to diagnose. Hence only the few, increasingly spaced visits.”

“Do I understand then, Doctor, since neither Willow Wood nor you determined what was wrong with him, you don’t know for sure that his mother’s going off the bridge caused it?”

Stein blinked several times, and his mouth opened before he began to speak. Then he lapsed into a smile and gave me a patronizing look. “Given the chronological proximity of the event and the onset of the condition, what else could have caused it?”

I thanked Dr. D. Stein, M.D., for his time and left.

I
DROVE INTO
downtown Boston and parked on the fourth floor of the Government Center Garage. I walked through the new Faneuil Hall Market area. Although the renovated space opened in 1976, I grew up in old Boston, so I’ll probably always call it the “new” market.

A stop at my camera shop, where Danny promised me he’d have fifty copies of Stephen’s photo for me within an hour. Then I moved down State Street.

Sturney and Perkins, Inc. was in a traditional, tasteful building near the waterfront. I took the elevator to the tenth floor. Sturney and Perkins occupied about half of it, the kind of offices a good, medium-sized Boston law firm would have had twenty years ago, before the glass-eyed skyscrapers opened.

“John Francis to see Ms. DeMarco.”

The receptionist gave me an uncertain look and dialed two digits. Her telephone had a cover on the mouthpiece, which prevented me from hearing what she said into it. She hung up.

“I’ll take you myself.” As we wound down a labyrinthine corridor, I thought it odd that she would leave her post. The receptionist showed me into a spacious, leather-done corner office with a harbor view. A tall, graying man who looked like an ex-Navy commander stood from behind an expensive desk.

“Mr. Cuddy, this is Nancy DeMarco. I’m Charles Perkins. What can we do for you?” he asked without extending his hand beyond waving the receptionist away.

As the door clicked shut behind me, Ms. DeMarco stood up. Nancy DeMarco. Medium build, Harpo hair, and late of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Empire Insurance “enjoyed” one of the worst sex-discrimination-in-promotion records in the Northeast, and Ms. DeMarco had been the one who crammed it down the company’s throat. I’d met her once across a crowded conference-room table. Aside from an Empire stenographer, she had been the only woman present. And DeMarco won.

“Mr. Cuddy,” she acknowledged.

I stopped at a leather chair, and we all sat down together. “Well,” I said, “this doesn’t seem to be my day for surprise attacks.”

Silence from them.

And from me, too.

Then Perkins: “Why are you here?”

“You must have discovered that in the process of finding out who I am.”

“Amateurish, Mr. Cuddy. That phone call, I mean.”

“Look, Mr. Perkins,” I said, “let’s stop the urinating contest. Notice I avoided ‘pissing’ out of respect for your decor. You’re one of the best in Boston at what you do. You’ve been asked to find Stephen Kinnington. So have I. He appears to have run away, so there is probably no criminal element behind the disappearance, and therefore no bad guy to tip-off. Why don’t we share information and coordinate those efforts?”

“Our client does not appreciate your involvement, Mr. Cuddy.”

“Does the judge appreciate that every hour we don’t find Stephen increases the chances that we won’t find him?”

“We will find the boy—and, as soon as this conference is over, Ms. DeMarco can resume her efforts in that direction.”

I looked over at Ms. DeMarco. She was looking at Perkins without expression.

I rose and sidled toward the door. “Mr. Perkins, I guess I can understand why you don’t want to tell me what you know. What I can’t understand is why you don’t want to find out what I know.”

I turned the knob. “Amateurish, Mr. Perkins. Or worse.”

I
HAD A DRINK
at P.J. Clarke’s while I waited for my photos to be finished. They were ready as Danny had promised.

When I arrived at the apartment an hour later, the red light on my tape machine told me I’d had some calls. The first message was from Valerie. The usual you’re-a-tough-man-to-reach-but-I-forgive-you. Then there were three dial tones, meaning that whoever had called had hung up instead of leaving a message. Then there was this:

“I don’t like leaving messages, even for a discriminating man like you. Meet me at Father’s First at eight P.M.
”

I might have had some question about the voice, but not the “discriminating” tag. I wondered if she’d wear a disguise.

I dialed Eleanor Kinnington’s number. Mrs. Page answered, grumbled, and told me to hang on.

“What have you to report?” asked my client.

“Precious little. Everybody but the psychiatrist is slamming doors in my face.”

“Does that mean my son is aware of your efforts on my behalf?”

“It does,” I said, and I summarized my day for her.

Mrs. Kinnington sounded like a little girl when she spoke again. “I should have realized that your prediction about his discovering you would prove accurate. I am an old woman, Mr. Cuddy, autocratic and perhaps even cranky. Stephen is all I care about anymore. I will pay you to search for him until you advise me it’s hopeless.”

“I’ll call you again when I know more.”

“By the way, I was never contacted by this DeMarco girl regarding Stephen.”

“That’s odd. Maybe she thought it best not to disturb you.”

“Perhaps that’s what she was told to think.”

I was nodding as I hung up. I drummed my fingers on the tape machine, then dialed another number.

Valerie picked it up on the second ring.

“It’s John Cuddy,” I said.

“Oh, John, how are you doing? What have you found out?”

“Not too much. I’d like to ask you some questions about Stephen.”

“Oh, I’m ten minutes late for a tennis match now, and Marie will have to give up the court if I’m not there in five minutes. How about meeting me for a drink tonight.”

“Sorry. Prior engagement.”

“Oh.” I could hear her frown over the phone.

“I’ll be in Bonham early tomorrow morning. How about lunch?”

“Terrific. I’ll pack a picnic basket and we can go down to a great swimming beach, and we—”

“Slow down. You’re on vacation. I’m working.”

The frown-pause again. “Well, you still have to eat lunch, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Pick me up at my place. Seventeen Fordham Road, first floor. Eleven-thirty. I’ve got to run. Bring your trunks. ’Bye.”

“Val—”

Click.

Annoying woman.

I
F
F
ATHER’S FIRST WERE
located in a poorer neighborhood than Beacon Hill, it would be a dive. Being on Charles Street, it’s a charming institution. It’s dark, dingy, and jukeboxed, with a mixed bag of gays, MBTA motormen, nursing students from Mass General, and law students from Suffolk University. I spotted her near the corner. She
was
wearing a disguise, sort of.