I sensed an opening. "Actually, I asked her who was closest to Stephen in the class, and she said you were."
Kim flushed a little, partly from pride, partly from embarrassment. Mostly from pride, though.
"Stephen's a hard person to get close to," she said. "He and I went to different schools till last year, and last year's homeroom was alphabetical. You know, they'd assign us to rooms based on our last names. Then somebody got the idea that alphabetical assignment was 'stultifying.' That's the word the principal used this year, 'stultifying.' So they just assigned us randomly." She smiled. "So this was the first year I had a lot of classes with Stephen."
I leaned back in the couch. "I've seen photographs of Stephen, but I've never met him. What's he like?"
She eyed me for a moment and decided I was sincere. "He's the smartest guy I've ever met. There are a lot of kids at our school who are great test-takers, even without studying or anything, you know. But Stephen is really different. He's smart past everybody, even the teachers, way past." She gave me a smug smile. "He's a genius. He could be anything. Anything he wants."
"What does Stephen want?" I asked.
She frowned, but not at me. "I don't know," she said quietly, looking down at her lap.
Dead end. Back up and try another street.
"When did you last see Stephen before he disappeared?"
"It must have been the day he left. We were in school together. We had a morning class, one of those nothing classes you have when exams are over. Then we had lunch." She smiled again. "We ate lunch together, at one of the picnic tables outside school."
"Did he say anything that indicated why he was leaving or where he was going?"
She frowned again, this time at me. "No," she said, a little too certainly.
I sighed and spread my hands in front of me. "Look, Kim, I will not reveal to anyone anything you tell me."
She eyed me cautiously. "Like lawyers and clients?"
I shook my head. "I won't bullshit you, Kim. There is no detective-confidential source privilege in Massachusetts. But that just means that I might go to jail for keeping quiet about what you tell me. It doesn't mean I won't keep my word. I will." I leaned forward again. "I think Stephen's in trouble because someone is after him. I don't know why someone's after him, and I'm not sure you do. I am sure that if I don't get more information about Stephen, I'm never going to find him."
She dropped the frown and resumed her fiddling with the earphones. "Maybe he doesn't want to be found."
I resisted the temptation to ask her why she might think that. "Kim, please trust me."
She shook her head. "Stephen once told me not to trust anyone. He said he didn't trust anyone."
"He trusted you," I said, quietly.
She smiled sadly. "No, not much." She wiped at her eyes, then said, "Look, mister, I don't know where Stephen is. I don't even know why he left. I was hoping you could tell me he was okay. If you can't, you can't. If I can't, I can't. Okay?"
This time I shook my head more emphatically.
"No. Not okay. I care about Stephen. I care because he's had a tough life of it so far, and it's my job to find him. But you care for him, and despite what you've said so far, I think he did trust you with something, with some information. There is no way I can make you trust me, but I don't see how you can think Stephen is better off out there than back here with us protecting him."
She glared at me. "Us! Us protecting him? It's his father who's after him. The judge and Blakey. How can you protect Stephen from them?"
"I don't know," I said, "but maybe the reason Stephen ran would give me leverage enough to do that."
" 'Leverage'," she snorted sarcastically. "That's what my father uses to close computer sales. That's how you're going to stop the judge?"
"Kim, I don't know what your image of the judge and his power is, but nobody is all-powerful. There are things, facts or evidence, that can scare the judge, same as you or me. If Stephen knows or found out something, and that knowledge or fact was important enough to make him run, it may be important enough to bring him back and protect him from the judge." I paused. "What do you say?"
The glare slid away, and she chewed her lower lip. "I'm just so scared for him," she said, the tears welling up.
I dug out a handkerchief and she cried quietly into it for about ten seconds. Then she wiped her eyes and nose. "What do you want to know?" She was flushed and red-eyed, but cooperative.
"What did you and Stephen talk about at lunch that day?"
She sniffed and began. "The same thing we always talked about. His quest."
"His quest? You mean, like a search or a mission?"
"Yes. Stephen and I got to be, like Ms. Jacobs said, close. I kind of watched him last year and the beginning of this year. He's real intelligent-looking and, well, anyway, I saw that he didn't seem to have any friends. I mean, he would talk to the other kids, but just kind of politely, like he was talking to a teacher or somebody's father and he didn't want any trouble. I think he just wasn't much interested in what the kids were doing and talking about. Like, whenever he talked with me, it was like we were on a different level from the rest of the kids."
"You mentioned his quest."
"Yes, I'm coming to that. One day I just sort of decided to try talking-really talking-to him. That was this year, maybe October or November." She paused. "It was November, because the decorations were up. You know, the stupid stuff like cardboard turkeys and pilgrims?"
"I know."
"Well, we just started talking, and it was amazing, you know, the way he could explain things and understand the things I would say. It was like… it was like he was the best teacher I ever had, but he was my own age-actually a year older because he… lost a year. He understood me, but he acted older, so I could… I could…"
"Respect him?" I said tactfully.
She sniffed again. "Yeah, respect him. Anyway, it was maybe two months ago that he told me about his mother, and how he'd gotten sick and was in the hospital."
"Did he tell you what kind of illness he had?"
She fixed me with her still-reddish eyes. "Yeah, mental illness. He was in a crazy house, out in the mountains somewhere. His father did it."
I tensed. "Did what?"
"Huh?"
"You said, 'his father did it.' What did his father do?"
"Oh, his father put him in the crazy house. His grandmother didn't want him to stay there, though, but he still had to stay a long time, like maybe a year. When he got out, he came home. That's when he began his quest."
I held onto my patience. "What was Stephen's quest?"
Kim became very still. She looked down. "You have to promise never to tell anyone."
I promised.
"You can't even ever tell Stephen I told you. I'm the only one who knows, so you can't even let him know you know or he'd know it was me."
"I promise," I repeated.
She twisted the earphones off her neck and played with them in her lap. I involuntarily noticed that the woman in the red dress must have won again. This time she was literally smothering the host, who was no longer smiling, sportingly or otherwise. Kim's first words snapped me back.
"His mother was killed. Murdered. His quest was to get evidence. To prove his father did it." She shivered. I gave her a moment, then: "Kim, what kind of evidence?"
She began gnawing on her lower lip again. "A gun."
"A gun?"
"Yes," she said.
"Stephen's mother supposedly died in a car accident. Stephen believed his mother was shot?"
Kim, crying again, now nodded vigorously. I heard soft footsteps, Valerie's, I thought, approach and recede. I could just hear Val's voice from the kitchen. She said, "They're doing fine, Mrs. Sturdevant."