“Smollett?” Stephen laughed oddly. “He helped cover-up my mother’s death, too.”
“Your father killed her?”
“That’s between the judge and me.” He continued packing and I got the feeling we might better talk about his parents later.
“You going on a trip?” I asked.
“Yes. You, too.”
“Where?”
“Back to Meade. To speak with my father.”
So much for talking later. “Not without the county district attorney and, if Smollett’s local force is involved in your mother’s death, maybe the state attorney general as well.”
Stephen left what he was doing and came around to squat on his haunches across from me.
“No. It’ll just be you and me,” he said. “I need you to drive me back. I was stupid to think that the judge wouldn’t send people after me. After I found the pistol, my father must have realized it, checking on the gun when I wasn’t around. The judge probably did that every day because of what it could do to him. Back in Meade, he sent Blakey after me. I panicked, dyed my hair as a disguise, and ran. Blakey’s dead, but my father will always send people after me. And, if Blakey could trace you to this hiding place, then somebody else knows about it. The judge can find that somebody, too, then send another goon here after me. Or any other place I try to go.”
Something in Stephen’s reasoning continued to jangle, but I still couldn’t pull it together. Then I thought about Blakey talking to the hardware clerk. Court Officer had probably called Judge immediately, before coming out here, so the Honorable Willard J. Kinnington would know about the ranger station.
I said, “Why should I drive you, Stephen? Because, otherwise, you’ll shoot me?”
He grew somber again, then stomped over to his knapsack and came stomping back. I held my breath, but Stephen tossed the knapsack down in front of me. “No more guns! I buried them. Go ahead and search it.”
I hefted the knapsack, then pawed through it. No weapons. “Then, I repeat, why should I drive you anywhere?”
Now Stephen grinned, a yo-yo inversion of the emotions. “Because of three things. First, I dragged Blakey out of here—rolling him, really—across the floor with a rope around his belt, but I don’t think anybody would believe I actually had the strength to do that. I stuffed Blakey through the floor-hatch and he hit the ground hard enough to make this room shake. I climbed down the ladder. Then I pushed the body until it slumped into some soft weeds downhill. That’s where I buried him.”
I had no words.
“Second,” said Stephen, grinning more broadly, “I took the twenty-two, wiped it off, and then put its handle in your hand. I squeezed your fingers around the smooth metal sides and even fired a shot with your finger across the trigger. Then I buried the gun, but in a different place than I did Blakey.
“Third,” Stephen’s broadest grin yet, “I hiked into town and mailed my grandmother a letter, describing how I saw you do all these things.”
Jesus. A fourteen-year-old?
I expect I failed to maintain a poker face. “I don’t believe you.”
Stephen’s grin sloughed off his eyes and mouth. “Then don’t drive me anywhere. I’m going to be leaving soon. Eventually, I’ll be able to hitch a ride back to Meade. I’ll take your and Blakey’s car keys with me, and I don’t think you can hike out, hurt like you are. That means waiting for the police. If they get here before you die from hunger or thirst.”
“The police won’t be coming.”
“Oh, yes. They will,” he replied. “Picture my grandmother, descending upon them when she gets my letter.”
“You didn’t write any letter, Stephen.”
“But I did.” A shrug. “However, even if I didn’t, I could still be gone and call the police before you could do anything about it. Or I could not call the police, and just leave you here to die.”
I leaned back and faked a grimace to think it over. In his own, admittedly highly organized way, Stephen had to be crazy, Dr. Stein to the contrary notwithstanding. Whether the boy had sent the letter or not, my past run-in with Blakey at the courthouse, combined with the Granville hardware clerk’s identification, would tie me in to the court officer’s death. If Stephen had sent that letter or made a call, I doubted that I’d be allowed out on bail to try to find him toward explaining things. Especially if he had made his letter sound as if I might kill him, too.
I decided that I’d better agree to Stephen’s plan before he figured out how to drive himself. “If I take you back to Meade, can I go to the hospital?”
Stephen Kinnington brightened. “After we talk with my father. I want you at the house.” Then the brightness drained from him. “Without a gun, and without you there as my bodyguard—or, at least, witness—I’m sure the judge would kill me.”
Twenty-Six
STEPHEN TOLD ME THAT he’d found my rented Mercury at the base of the front trail up the mountain. He advised me, however, that the hood was up. I told him that it was an old trick and that I was sure the car would start. Besides, I knew I couldn’t return down the back way I’d come up. Or, for that matter, even by descending to the perimeter road.
My face was pretty much numb, but my rib was killing me. Stephen cut my ankle bonds, and I found after a while that I could still walk, at least around the room.
We ate canned fruit cocktail and some dry chocolate candy with almonds from Stephen’s pack. He wanted to leave so we could arrive in Meade at approximately 9:30 P.M. I told him that in my condition I wanted to complete the downhill part of the trip while it was still bright outside. He agreed.
We began descending the ladder, the worst part of the ordeal. On the trail, I asked Stephen to help support me a few times, which gave me the opportunity to frisk him unobtrusively. He wasn’t carrying any weapons.
We got to my car just at sunset. I lowered the hood. It turned over on the second try, and Stephen rewarded me with a smile.
I had to take the dirt road very slowly. Once on the pavement back to the Pike, we stopped at a supermarket. A sign in the window read “Closed all day tomorrow, July Fourth.” Stephen went in to buy some more bread. While he was gone, I did another quick search of his knapsack. Clean.
Stephen got back in, and we continued on. I asked him if he thought the judge would be at home, since the next day was a holiday.
“Sure. Every year, my father gives a big speech after the parade. He’ll be home tonight, practicing it like always.”
Then we talked about Valerie, camping, and the Army. He knew a lot about the service, obviously from reading up on his Uncle Telford and what he had done. I judiciously avoided my visit to Kim Sturdevant’s house.
I’ve never been much for kids. Even when Beth was alive, I was perfectly happy to borrow somebody else’s when she and I wanted to go to the Museum of Science or the circus at Boston Garden. Then, having had my fill, I could return them at night, like short-term library books.
Stephen Kinnington, though, was different. He truly appeared to be a gifted, sensitive boy. I tried to square that with how he had handled Blakey. I decided that his maturity and intelligence might have permitted him to shoot Blakey to save my life, but I couldn’t account for his disposing of Blakey’s body in such a way as to gain leverage over me. Stephen was, I suppose, one of the few individuals, child or adult, who interested me more the more I came to know him.
On the well-maintained roads, I began to forget about my injuries. Over two hours later, however, as we turned in to the Kinnington driveway, the lurch onto gravel brought tears to my eyes.
I braked the car to a halt, but not because of my rib-cage. There was a heavy, double chain stretched across the driveway. The chain was anchored at both ends by short, stout metal poles.
“I don’t remember this from my earlier visits,” I said.
Stephen was staring at the chain. “Don’t worry. There’s another way. In fact, it’s a better way.”
I sighed and gingerly shifted to face
him. “What kind of ‘way’ is it?”
He gestured beyond the windshield. “A path, on the other side of the hill. It leads to the back of our house.”
“Can we drive the car up this path?”
Stephen turned to me. “No, but it’s still shorter than climbing the driveway here.”
When I frowned, he continued quickly. “No, really! It’ll be a lot easier on you, I promise.”
I nodded. Reluctantly.
Stephen said, “Back the car up and keep going down the road like we were.”
I followed his instructions. As we drove, I asked him why, rich as the Kinningtons were, they didn’t pave their steep driveway. He said the judge felt that paved driveways encouraged passersby to drive up them and that gravel driveways did not. Also, gravel drives were more “genteel” and therefore more in keeping with the “overall Kinnington environment.”
Sounded like the perfect family for a growing kid.
We slowed about half a mile after the chained driveway and took a right onto a narrower, but still paved, road. At Stephen’s direction, I pulled to a stop near an old, stone-fence marker.
“This is it,” he said.
I eased out of the driver’s side, but Stephen stumbled in the dark and into some bushes as he was swinging open his door.
“You all right?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “Just a few scratches.”
I could hear him scuffling back up to the Mercury and gently closing the door. We left his knapsack in the car. The crickets were chirping madly, and there was a scent of freshly mown grass in the warm and heavy night air.
“Come on over to me,” he said. “The path starts right here.”
I moved around to the back of the car and fumbled with my keys at the trunk as my eyes tried to adjust to the little night vision the moon would allow me.
“What are you doing?” asked Stephen.
“I’m checking for a flashlight. Look in the glove compartment, will you?”
“It’s a rental, right? I searched this car at the ranger station. There’s no flashlight.”
I pocketed the keys and reminded myself that things would probably progress faster if I just left our lead to the genius.
I was pretty stiff from the long drive as we started up Stephen’s trail. The moon, winking in and out from behind passing clouds, was just bright enough to allow me to see where I was walking. The path was only two-feet wide, but some worn spots here and there indicated it used to be wider. Stephen obviously was at ease climbing the trail, partly youth and partly familiarity.
“Did you clear this path yourself?” I whispered.
“No,” he laughed softly, getting a few steps ahead, then waiting for me to catch up. “My grandfather told me that the men who cleared the underbrush and deadwood from the grounds here used this because it was easier than carrying the stuff up past the house to the driveway. My uncle and my father used to play on it as kids, too.”
I stopped and looked around. Even in the weak light, I could see a lot of brush intruding on the trail and deadwood along side of it. “Looks like it’s been a while since the landscapers have been around.”
“It has.” Stephen’s voice had no laughter in it now. “The judge and Blakey do … did what needed to be done.”
I looked at him quizzically, but in the moonlight I couldn’t read his face, and he probably couldn’t see mine. “Your grandmother told me that you have over seventy-five acres here. Why the hell doesn’t your father have someone come to take care of this stuff?”
Stephen turned up the trail. “You’ll see,” he said flatly as I began after him again.
I tried to go slowly, on the theory that the less frequently I had to breathe, the better my rib would feel. After about five minutes of climbing, however, the throbbing pain was distracting me and increasing with every step.
I noticed I was focusing my eyes on the ground. Not just the path under me, but the yard or so in front of me as well, my head bobbing slightly. That snapped me back for a moment to Vietnam. During my tour, MP lieutenants were shuttled into infantry platoons if the infantry companies were short of young officers. I hated patrols in the jungle, or “the bush” as the troops called it, and I was terrified of land mines, which killed or maimed so unpredictably that they would have seemed whimsical in a less personal setting. The Cong would stretch thin wire across the trails as trips for the mines. You bobbed your head to vary the moonlight hitting the path ahead of you in the hope that a change in the angle of light and sight would pick up a stretched wire that the point man might have missed. It had been a long time since I had been reminded of that, and I hoped it would be a longer time before the memory surfaced again.
Lost in thought, I nearly fell over a protruding rock—or maybe an exposed root—in the path. I cursed under my breath as I stumbled and my rib shrieked.
“Are you all right?” whispered Stephen, just ahead but out of sight.
“Just a few scratches,” I mimicked.
He laughed softly again and urged me on.
Just as I thought I would have to call for a rest, Stephen let me catch up to him on the trail. “We have to go off the path a little ways here.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see,” he said again, turning into the brush.
“Stephen, wait a minute.” I leaned back against a tree to ease the pressure on my breathing apparatus. “I’m hurting pretty badly. Detours are not a happy prospect right now.”
His voice dropped very low, so much so that I could barely hear him, even in the summer stillness. “I want you to believe me. I want you to see this before we see my father. It’s important. Please?”
“See what, Stephen?”
“Please?”
I sighed. “How far?”
“Not far,” he said quickly. “Maybe twenty yards. They couldn’t. … Maybe not even twenty.”
I told my rib that the kid had been through a lot. “All right,” I said. “But let’s take it real slow and easy, okay?”
“Sure. Slow and easy.”
“Real slow and easy,” I corrected.
“Right,” Stephen said, and we slipped under a branch and began edging in.
We had moved about his twenty yards when he stopped and sank slowly to his knees.
“This is it,” Stephen said, looking earthward but not otherwise moving.
I eased to one knee myself. There was a decaying log with a large clump of encircling wildflowers. “What is it?” I asked quietly.
“Her grave,” he said. “My mother. This is where the judge and Blakey buried her.”
I had nothing to say. I looked at Diane Kinnington’s last place and I thought of Beth’s. Both were on hillsides, and both had flowers. And each, it seemed, had one faithful mourner.
“I was there when he shot her,” Stephen said in the low, flat voice. “It was. …” He stopped. Then, “Afterwards, they locked me in my room. The judge had hit me, knocked me out, I guess, but I woke up. I heard him, through the window, at the tool shed. I got up and looked out, but it was too rainy and dark to see well. Blakey was carrying some tools—I could hear them clanging together—and he was hurrying down the path with my father. I must have passed out then, because the next thing I remember is being in an ambulance on my way to Willow Wood, and nobody would listen to me.”
“They’ll listen now,” I said, forgiving Stephen’s failure to remember that he’d been catatonic. I restrained myself from patting his shoulder. The boy was only fourteen, but he didn’t seem to need any comforting.
Stephen continued. “At Willow Wood, I had time to think.” His voice changed tone. “‘All the time in the world’,” as though he was mocking a doctor’s phrase there. “I figured out what must have happened, but I couldn’t tell anyone about my father and Blakey covering it up. Who’d believe me against them? When my grandmother got me out of Willow Wood, I came home and acted like nothing … like the judge hadn’t done anything. I was afraid to tell my g
randmother, afraid that he’d kill her, too. When I could, I searched—really carefully—for the gun, and finally found it. But first I had to search for … her.”
The ache was getting me, so I shifted knees. Stephen tensed when I moved, then relaxed and settled from his knees onto his haunches. He had yet to look away from the grave. “I had to be sure my father didn’t realize I was searching, so I didn’t do it every day, sometimes not even for a week. It was tough not to, but it was a quest, and I couldn’t let my mother down by being discovered. I knew from what I saw at the window that they’d buried her somewhere down the path. But it had been almost a year, and I didn’t know if they would have dug … moved her, while I was away at Willow Wood.
“Then, one day, I found this spot. I remembered the fallen tree from a storm that year. But the tree didn’t look right, and I realized it was because of all the flowers. There had been flowers other places, too, but not here, and now there were lots and lots of flowers, mostly in this little spot. At first I thought that God had put them here special for my mother and special for me, so I could find her.” Stephen rubbed his right forearm across his eyes. I found myself doing the same.
“Then I read in a botany book that flowers grow over bodies that aren’t … sealed up in coffins. That’s when I was sure she was here. I came to visit every day, but I’d walk in from a different direction each time, so as not tramp down a path that would let the judge know I’d found her. Some days, I wouldn’t even come right up to my mother, because I didn’t want the other plants around her to look trampled, either.” Stephen finally swung his face toward mine. “Did you ever have anybody close to you be buried?”
I hadn’t stopped dwelling on Beth since he’d begun. “Yes,” I said in a choked voice.
He tried to examine me in the moonlight. “You’re crying.” Stephen Kinnington looked back at the grave. “I’m ready to see the judge now.”
So was I.
Twenty-Seven
“HE’LL PROBABLY BE IN the library,” Stephen Kinnington whispered as he beckoned me toward the back of the house.
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