Blunt Darts

looked at the stone. Probably because the stone wasn’t her, wasn’t where she was for me.
    “This boy I’m looking for, Stephen, must be some piece of work. His teachers think he’s at least exceptional and a doll in his class thinks he’s a genius and is crazy about him. His father seems not to care about him, his grandmother seems not to care about much anything else. He’s apparently shy around most kids, but he has perseverance enough to search his father’s house for a gun for four years, and then balls enough to take off and use the gun to stand off a shake-down artist twice his size.”
    Something was wrong there. Like always, Beth sensed it before I did. But I couldn’t quite put it into a thought, and she couldn’t put it into words.
    I needed to get something else off me and squared away, anyway. I took a breath and hunched down again.
    “I did a necessary thing this afternoon, Beth. I roughed up a cheating, lying trucker. He was the shake-down artist. But I did a stupid thing before that. I spidered a big, bullying college kid into a short fight and humiliation. It wasn’t just my overeager sense of righteousness, Beth. I was showing off. Showing off for somebody I was with. Valerie. Sort of the way I showed off for you. But not quite. For you I showed off for you. For Valerie, I showed off just to see that I could still show off for somebody. Pretty dumb, not to mention a pretty boring description of being dumb. But then, you always put up with dumb, boring me much better than most.”
    I laughed for her, then got serious again. “Valerie took offense, but I apologized and it’s okay now. Except that she’s invited me to dinner, and I’m afraid she’s getting the wrong impression, that she thinks that I’m—”
    I stopped because Beth and I had come to a decision. It certainly seemed the only fair thing.
    I stood up. The mini-yachts of the well-to-do who lived on the renovated waterfront were tacking and running in the harbor below. I looked down at the grave. Mrs. Feeney had done a nice job with the roses.
    As I walked out of the cemetery, the elderly man with the Homburg was still standing over the other grave. Still motionless.
     
     
     

     
     
    I stopped at the apartment. My tape had two hangups. I reset the machine and changed my clothes. I figured it would be colder in the Berkshires and I wasn’t sure when I would be able to change again. I put on a flannel shirt and a pair of khaki pants. I strapped my Chief’s Special to my inside left calf and bloused the pant bottoms into the tops of a pair of L. L. Bean Maine hunting boots. I slung an old army pack (with a jacket, canteen, and candy bars) over my shoulder.
    There was some plain white bond paper on my desk. I took a piece and wrote a short note, marked the envelope “Personal,” and put a return address under the name “Pembroke.” I mailed it on my way back to the car. Then I headed southwest.
    The sun was still high, and children were out sunning and playing ball in seemingly every yard and field I passed. There was a constant gentle breeze of the kind that I remembered kept you from getting thirsty. The flannel shirt was making me thirsty.
    I took the exit that would bring me to Bonham Center first. Since Cal was a six-days-a-week cop, I stopped in at police headquarters and was told Chief Maslyk would be back in an hour. I had a late lunch at an uncrowded pub with a jukebox that played country-and-western. I returned to the station, and still had to cool my heels for twenty minutes until Cal Maslyk could see me.
    I told him about my planned trip to the Berkshires. He asked me why I was telling him, and I said because I might need someone to come looking for me. He said he had some vacation time coming in September and that if I weren’t back by then, he’d swing by Granville to check on me. I thanked him and left.
    It was only 4:00 and I couldn’t see dropping in on Val that early. I decided to drive over to the Swan Street bridge. Thomas Doucette had already poked a lot of holes for me in Blakey’s version of Diane Kinnington’s accident, but a law professor of mine always had stressed that we actually should visit the scene of any incident.
    I crisscrossed Bonham roads for thirty minutes without hitting Swan Street. I ended back in Bonham Center. Too proud to stop and ask directions, I took a road with a sign that said “Meade Center 3.” Just past the center I came upon Swan Street. As I prepared to