Blunt Darts

clenched my teeth. As I eased back down, so did the pain.
    “Do you think you can handle some bread?”
    He was behind me in the room. “Yes,” I said.
    “You won’t try to grab me?”
    “No.”
    “Okay.”
    I looked down at my feet. Still securely tied. Given my present condition, I figured about two undisturbed weeks would let me get the knots undone.
    He came into my vision. He was wearing a polo shirt and loose-fitting hiking pants, cut like baggy army fatigues. He stopped three feet from me and lobbed a hunk of bread at me. It landed on Blakey’s bloodstain, which had already dried. There were about ten ants nibbling at the edge of the stain.
    “Still don’t trust me, huh?” I said as I picked up the bread.
    “Almost,” he said.
    In real life, he certainly appeared much older than fourteen. His face was somber and intelligent and his movements measured and sure, with none of the awkwardness of adolescence. There were still traces of blond in his dark hair, as though the sun were shining on him.
    The bread crust grated against a newly chipped molar on the lower left side.
    “How did you find me?” he asked.
    I regarded my bread crust and took another nibble, chewing on the other side of my mouth. I wanted time to review all the promises I’d made to people I’d spoken with, and my head wasn’t reviewing as well as it might. “It’s a long story,” I said.
    He hopped his bottom up on the desk and, crossing his ankles, swung his legs slowly to and fro under the desk top. “We’ve got time,” he said without smiling. “Well, I’m a private detective—”
    “I know,” Stephen interrupted. “I looked at your identification after I... while you were asleep.”
    “And, as I told you, your grandmother hired me to find you.”
    “How did she find you?”
    I gave him my warmest reassuring smile. “Your teacher. Valerie Jacobs. Valerie knows me from an earlier job I had.”
    Stephen smiled back. A nice, good-kid type of smile. “Ms. Jacobs is a nice person,” he said. “Go on..“
    “Well, from what your grandmother said, you hadn’t been kidnapped. She knew that, she said, because only you or she could have handpicked your survival kit.”
    Stephen smiled more vividly. “Grandmother’s shrewd like that. I should have known she would guess.”
    I continued. “Once I accepted that you’d run away, I talked with your psychiatrist—”
    Stephen’s face darkened. “Which one?”
    “Dr. Stein.”
    The smile returned. “He was kind of a jerk. I had the impression that he made a lot of money without really helping people much.”
    “Me, too,” I said.
    “Did he help you?”
    “Not really,” I said, trying to recall the chronology and not reveal anything I shouldn’t. “But your stay at Willow Wood pointed me out this way.”
    He frowned. “I was afraid of that. But I didn’t think going off someplace completely new would be a very good idea.”
    “That alone wasn’t much help, but when Miss Pitts told me—”
    “Boy,” he exclaimed, “you went back as far as her?“
    “Sure,” I said. “I’m thorough.”
    “What’d she tell you?”
    “About your mother’s death.”
    Stephen darkened again and looked down. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
    “Right,” I said quickly. “Anyway, I thought it might have something to do with your disappearance, and I slowly traced you down through Ms. Moore at the library and—”
    “Ms. Moore?” he said, quizzically. “What could she tell you?”
    I explained about his copying the New England Outdoors article, including Ms. Moore’s lingerie concerns. Stephen smiled sheepishly. “Did you check all the stations out before you hit this one?”
    “No,” I said. “I found out from Valerie that you had done a report on the meat distribution system, and then I had a... uh, little talk with the driver you hitchhiked with.”
    Stephen screwed up his face. “He was a pretty lousy guy.”
    I nodded.
    Stephen unscrewed his face. “What did he tell you?”
    I tried to keep old Sammy in and young Kim out. “He said you had a gun. And that he would be laughed out of the meat exchange if anybody found out you’d taken him.”
    Stephen laughed, and I did too. Then he said, “I guess I wasn’t as careful about coming out here as I thought.”
    “Well,” I said, “neither was I.”
    Stephen tilted his head in question. “What do you mean?”
    “Blakey. Following me out here.”
    Stephen shivered. “What made Blakey come