Blunt Darts (17 page)

Scratch Option Two.

Option Three was an extension of its predecessor. I could drive to a decoy site, mess around for a while, then return in abject disappointment to my car and drive dejectedly back to Boston. The problem with Option Three? As soon as Blakey saw me heading back to Boston, he might still check in with the store clerk.

Enter Option Four. I could try to lose Blakey without allowing him to realize that I was trying. If I lost him, he’d go to the clerk. If he realized that I was trying to lose him, he’d come after me. I was willing to bet that he had the biggest engine allowed in his car, and could catch my four-cylinder Monarch in distressingly short order. There would follow a very unpleasant variation of Option One.

Option Five, and the final one. I might be able to lead Blakey close enough to the station without tipping him that I knew he was behind me. If I could keep the trail warm enough for him, I might (1) discourage his following me on foot and (2) delay his visit to the clerk.

Option Five looked like the only choice.

I drove toward the ranger station but swung onto the perimeter road at the base of the mountain. The perimeter road was dirt and some gravel, and I threw a high rooster-tail of dry dust as I bounced along at a bone-crunching twenty or so. Blakey should realize that, although my rooster-tail would hide him, I might see his own dust if he drove too close. Since my slowly falling cloud was a perfect trail of crumbs for him to follow, I figured he’d back way off and stay there.

I went by two long-abandoned camps and a house in ruins and executed a three-point turn so the Mercury headed back the way it had come. Once on the shoulder, I raised the hood. I then left my pack in the back seat with the windows open and lit out across the road and into the forest at the base of the mountain. I headed uphill as far as I could until I heard the sound of another car. Then I hunkered behind a boulder.

I couldn’t see the road, but I could hear Blakey throttle down and then continue on the road at a low speed. I heard him fading in the distance for maybe a half mile. Then he came back. Blakey stopped near my Mercury rental and turned off his engine. He probably checked my car and, seeing my gear still in it, figured I wasn’t intending to be gone for long. He’d know that I hadn’t had car trouble because I was facing back out the way I’d come in, a difficult maneuver if your car isn’t working right. Blakey would also figure, I hoped, that I’d intended it to look like car trouble so that if anyone did pass by, they wouldn’t think a parked car was suspicious. I heard him re-enter his car, start up, and move back down the road. I was willing to bet he’d hide out at the old house and wait for me to drive by with Stephen. I then heard what sounded like a short spurt of reverse. Abruptly, Blakey’s engine stopped long before it would have faded in the other direction.

Thank you, Option Five.

Orienting myself via memories of the topo map, I continued up the mountain, approaching the ranger station from its rear. With luck, Blakey would wait me out for a few hours. By that time, I’d have Stephen and we’d have arrived back in Granville after cutting cross-country the same way Stephen must have hiked in.

With luck.

A
BOUT AN HOUR LATER
, I knew why the store clerk had advised the
front
road up to the ranger station. The grade on my side of the mountain was steep, the brambles sharp, and the bugs fierce. According to the topo map, the ranger station was just over the crest above me. However, from the climb, I was still a good hour away.

When I did reach the crest, I spotted the station. It was nearly sundown, but even in the fading light the box on stilts looked derelict. I waited and watched for half an hour. I then moved slowly to the base of the ladder that connected the ground to the viewing box sixty feet up. The ladder was wooden, a couple of crossbars missing. It would have been a hairy climb for a fourteen-year-old, and I wasn’t too enthusiastic myself.

Very slowly, I ascended the ladder, pulling myself by arms rather than pushing myself by legs. My hands I kept at the intersection points of the horizontal rungs with the vertical posts, presumably the strongest part of each crossbar. A few groaned, but none gave way.

The ladder ended under a hatchway with a clasp long ago half-broken off. I raised the hatch and gingerly pulled myself up into the station.

As boxes go, it was perhaps thirty feet square, windows all around, but every pane also broken. Bugs buzzed through the hot air. An old desk, displaying some paper debris from its earlier, official days, some latex condoms and aluminum beer cans from its later, unofficial ones. Otherwise, nothing.

Except for the floor.

No broken window glass. And no dust. At least there should have been dust, with marks and scuffs in same from any recent visitors. No dust meant somebody had cleaned up, and recently. So dust wouldn’t show a fourteen-year-old’s footprints, just in case somebody came looking for him.

I walked to the front windows and looked down at the logging road. Nobody seemed to be on it. Then I walked to the back window and could see only the edge of the crest. The back side of the mountain must have been the responsibility of another station in the network.

If I couldn’t see Blakey, then he couldn’t see me in the station. Fine.

The only other question was whether Stephen would return before Blakey ran out of patience. Neither variable being within my control, I settled down to wait.

An hour. Make that an hour and fifteen. Now an hour and twenty-five.

I got up and looked out back. Nothing but deepening darkness. I walked to the front windows and, after crouching, eased my face to eye level and then slowly higher.

I was about halfway up when I heard a creak behind me and a young voice that froze me.

“Don’t move or I’ll shoot you.”

“Stephen, I’m—”

“Don’t move! I have a twenty-two-caliber pistol pointed at you. I might not be able to kill you with it, but you’d never catch me or get down the ladder to a hospital in time. Now keep your hands on the sill and kneel down.”

“Stephen—”

“Now!” His voice cracked.

I knelt.

He began to move in behind me. “Cross one ankle over the other.”

“Your grandmother sent me.”

Stephen stopped. “Sure she did. Now, cross your ankles!”

“Okay,” I said.

“Now, sit back onto them at the cross point.”

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.

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.”