The tower man's voice crackled in the background.
Cal clicked his cylinder shut. "It was early spring, John. Big from the snows and rain. When they pulled the car up, she wasn't in it. Never found her."
"Was one of the doors open?"
Cal smiled and pulled his muffs on. The tower man finished his liturgy. We fired the second string double-action and again cleared our weapons.
As we moved downrange again, Cal continued the conversation. "Smollett's diver said he didn't notice."
"Did you say 'driver' or 'diver'?"
"Diver, as in scuba diver."
"Meade has its own scuba team?"
"Of sorts. Meade is 'concerned about crime.' At least I think that's Smollett's usual budget speech. Pretty effective speech, too."
"Cal, I'm told that the kid flipped soon after his mother's death. Institutionalized. Then he was apparently fine until two weeks ago. Can you tell me anything about his disappearance?"
Cal frowned and dropped his voice. "Smol1ett never even called me to put me on alert. I found out from one of my men whose wife works in the cafeteria in Stephen's school. Nothing on the radio or the computer. Nothing at all."
We reached the targets. "Can you think of any reason the judge wouldn't want his son found?"
Cal clucked his tongue, perhaps at the question, but more likely at my miserable shooting. "Maybe the kid just doesn't fit into his system." He began penciling our shots. "The judge, who by the way this department and I have to live with, is a cold, cold man. Just the opposite of his brother, who was real personable, though in an unpredictable sort of way. But the judge… well, if you ever saw him in court, you'd know what I mean."
"I have. I've also met his bodyguard."
"Bodyguard? Oh, Blakey?"
I nodded.
"Blakey," said Cal. "He's a bad-ass, John. He was on the Meade PD, then broke up a fight in a tavern a little-no, a lot-too hard. Citizens' group managed to raise enough fuss to get him off the force, because he was still probationary. But then the judge hired him on at the courthouse. One of those political moves that makes the judge look fearless to the law-and-order folks."
Cal pocketed his pencil but made no move back toward the firing line. "You have a jam with him?"
"Sort of," I said.
"Watch his hands, John. He could open coconuts with 'em. By the by, if memory serves, Blakey was the officer who noticed the smashed fencing when Mrs. Kinnington went into the river."
I perked up. "And then sometime later, when Blakey is squeezed off the force, the judge gives him a job?"
Cal nodded.
"How does that add up to you?" I asked.
Cal gave me a philosophical look. "Small-town police chiefs don't add, John; they subtract. Every time they take a stand, they subtract from their support in the town. Support remembers only the times when you do what they don't want. Enough subtractions and there's a new chief to do the arithmetic. I don't know what happened between His Honor, Smollett, and Blakey."
While I decided not to push my luck any further, Cal walked over to a locker at the end of the range and came back with a stapler and two bigger cardboard targets. He stapled them onto the target easels. They were full-sized, human silhouettes.
"Why these?" I asked.
"You didn't do real well on those first two strings, John. Never can tell when you might need to be better." We turned and walked back toward the tiring line.
"Combat string," he yelled to the tower man.
TWELFTH
– ¦ Fordham Road was a short street of older houses three blocks from the center of town. I parked and rang the bell marked K Jacobs.
"Oh, John, I've been leaving messages for you all morning. Where have you been?" She was dressed in a halter top and shorts. Both were pastel and the colors clashed a bit.
"What's the news?"
She ran back down the hall, disappeared, then reappeared with a picnic basket and a beach bag. "I ran into Miss Pitts this morning in the market. You remember, the retired teacher who had Stephen in the fifth grade? We have to go see her right away."
She was past me and halfway to my car. I shrugged and followed after her.
The living room was filled with the kinds of things one obtains with trading stamps. Plastic-brass floor lamps, plastic-walnut cocktail tables, and plastic Hummel-like sculptures on eight separate knick-knack-holding shelf arrangements. My rocking chair, however, was built of massive pine. It must have gone for twelve and a half books, minimum.
Miss Pitts was plump and spoke in a soft purr. The three of us held teacups and coffee cakes in our hands and on our laps in a precarious balance that I've never been able to master. Miss Pitts had thus far covered her brightest class (1959), and her catlike voice was slowly putting me to sleep. I began to wonder why the hell she had the cocktail tables if she wasn't going to use them for the tea and cakes. I was giving serious consideration to cutting a fart to change the direction of the conversation, when Valerie mercifully jumped first.
"Miss Pitts, what year was it you had Stephen?"
"Ah, Stephen, Stephen. What an unfortunate story. Oh, one of today's wicked novelists would have a field day with his sad life. But the brightest boy, the absolute brightest I've ever seen. No one, not even in the class of 1959 could touch him."
"Actually, Miss Pitts," I broke in, setting my cup, saucer, and goodies on the floor, "what I'm interested in is whether anyone has touched him. In the unfriendly sense, I mean."
"Uh, quite," said Miss Pitts, a bit miffed, I thought. "Well, as I told Miss Jacobs this morning, two weeks ago, on the twelfth, I was taking my evening exercise. I used to call it my constitutional, but after the way some groups have twisted one meaning of that word, I have ceased to use it at all. In any case, while I was walking down Ballard Street, I saw Stephen ahead of me, carrying his books. No doubt he was so late in heading home-it was nearly five-thirty, you see-because he had visited the library after school. Well, seeing him I was about to call to him, when a black sedan screeched to a halt on the street beside him. He took one look at the driver and was gone."
"Did the driver go after him?" I asked.
"Hah, not likely. Stephen is as springy and quick as an antelope. That Gerry Blakey couldn't have caught him on horseback, assuming a horse could bear him any better than this town can."
"What happened then?"
"Well, Blakey, who'd gotten half out of the driver's side, muttered something, slid back in, and drove off."
I leaned back. Miss Pitts's eyes might be getting a little weak, but she wouldn't be likely to mistake Stephen, and no one could mistake Blakey.
"Why didn't you report this to the police?" I asked.
She gave me a sour look. "The police? Hmph. Will Smollett is a fool who can't even control the teenage hoodlums in this town, much less be its chief investigative officer. Besides, he's in the judge's pocket. Everyone knows that. And if Blakey was chasing Stephen, the judge was likely connected with Stephen's leaving. That's why I decided to tell Eleanor."
"You mean Valerie."
She determinedly set down her teacup and rose.
"Young man, you are smug, and you are rude. If I were to say 'Valerie' I would mean Miss Jacobs. When I say 'Eleanor,' I mean Eleanor Kinnington. I'm afraid this interview is over."
I glanced to my right. Valerie seemed as stunned at the reference to Mrs. Kinnington as I was.
I stood politely and looked at our hostess. "Miss Pitts, please accept my apology. I was rude, and I assumed you were a meandering old woman who might confuse things. I was wrong. But I've been retained to try to find a probably terrified fourteen-year-old child, and you're the first bright spot I've come across. Can we please talk a while longer?"