Scare Tactics (35 page)

“But he’s no longer here. As a matter of fact, he’s been free for two and a half years.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where he is now, Doctor?”

Mackerras settled back in his chair. “No. We have no record of his whereabouts.”

“Suppose, after he was discharged, his condition worsened again. Could Val St. George have become markedly paranoiac in two and a half years?”

Mackerras threw up his hands. “How can I say? All I can do is speak from the record. He was discharged as cured, all potentially debilitating tendencies arrested.”

A buzzer sounded on the intercom and Mackerras looked at it regretfully, then leafed through the folder and removed a photograph. Practice took it, and briefly studied the features of Val St. George, a petulant, thin-faced youth. There was a date penciled on the back; the photograph had been taken shortly after the boy’s admission.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to be on my way,” Mackerras said, rising.

“Thanks, Doctor, I appreciate your taking so much time.”

“Tell Lucy we’d like to have her over for the weekend sometime—if she won’t steal too many of my patients away from me.” He smiled, but Practice wasn’t able to return the smile.

—

The streets were wet from a slow misting of rain when Practice drove across the river bridge and turned in the direction of the Governor’s mansion. In a way, he was relieved to have found out all he could about Val St. George. There was a small chance that the boy was not so dangerous as Practice had first thought. Apparently Lucy believed in him, or she wouldn’t be protecting him so fiercely even after what she had seen in the Governor’s bedroom the night before. It seemed almost certain that Val St. George had been the man in the garden and the man who had broken into the mansion, but almost wasn’t quite good enough for Practice; there were too many inconsistencies in the character of Billie Charmian’s son, as he had reconstructed it. Only Val St. George could tell him the truth, and Lucy must know where he could be found.

As he pulled into the driveway of the mansion he saw Mike Liles getting into the back seat of a state patrol car; he honked his horn and pulled up beside it.

“You might want to come along with us, Jim,” Liles said.

“What’s up?”

“Two boys have been missing from the Borden Private School since the lunch hour. One of them is Chris Guthrie.”

“W
here’s Lucy?”

They had driven to the east end of town in less than ten minutes; Liles eat slumped in the back seat, a cold cigar at one corner of his mouth, his eyes on a pocket notebook. At Practice’s question he turned his head slightly.

“According to Mrs. Guthrie, after Lucy drove Chris to school this morning she asked for the rest of the day off. Left the mansion about nine o’clock.”

Practice tried to make a cigarette but soon gave it up; the cur was moving too fast and his fingers felt cramped and cold. “What’s the name of the other boy who’s missing?”

“Hugh McAdams.”

“How could they have left the school without being seen?”

“I don’t know,” Liles muttered. “One of my men has been camped by the gate since eight this morning. You know the school—seven-foot fence around the yard and building. There’s only one way to go in or out.”

They arrived at the school Chris Guthrie attended. Liles paused to have a few words with the trooper posted at the gate, then they hurried across the brick play yard to the entrance.

“Who knows the boys are missing?” Practice asked. “The principal of the school, one of the teachers who’s supposed to keep tabs on them at lunch hour, Mrs. Guthrie, and Dunhill, the Governor’s secretary. Dunhill called me. He was a little upset, but I can’t see where this means anything. Couple of kids playing hookey.”

“Who’s looking for them?”

“All of my men in the district and the local police. We didn’t put anything on the radio, though. Had the men telephone in one at a time to keep things quiet.”

They were met by the principal on the front steps. He was a young, sandy-haired man named Stack.

“Glad you could come, Captain.”

“This is Mr. Practice, the Governor’s aide. How long have the boys been gone, Stack?”

“Almost two hours.”

“Have you notified the parents of the other boy?”

Stack seemed flustered. “I—I didn’t want to call until I had talked with you.”

“I think you’d better call now. The boys might have gotten tired of running around in the rain and headed for the nearest fireside.”

They went into the principal’s office and Stack made his call. No one was home but the maid. Practice leaned against the doorjamb and waited, his arms folded, a small frown creasing his forehead. The school had the familiar chalk-and-polish odor of childhood; down the hall a mixed choir was practicing.

“I was afraid to ask too many questions,” Stack said, replacing the receiver.

“You did fine,” Liles said approvingly.

“I think I can tell you how they left the grounds,” Stack said, eager to atone for the reprimand of Liles’s presence.
“Will you follow me?”

They went out into the hall.

“At lunch hour all the children line up outside their rooms, then march together to the cafeteria in the basement,” Stack explained. “It would have been possible for Chris and Hugh to slip into the bathroom at the head of the stairs, because sometimes there’s a little confusion at that point. We try to keep them orderly and quiet, but on a day like this the kids are restless and mill around ...”

He dabbed at his face with a handkerchief and opened the door of the bathroom. There were four casement-type windows in the north wall, about five and a half feet from the floor. One was open, and underneath was a pasteboard barrel with a metal bottom.

Practice and Liles went to the window and looked out. A narrow brick corridor ran behind the school at the edge of the ravine. It was obvious that from the windowsill an agile boy could reach the top of the fence and let himself down on the other side.

Practice scanned the bottom land as far as the river’s edge a half mile away. It was a poor area; some shacks were perched on the sides of the wide ravine and along the twisting gray tributary of the river. In a marshy pocket, within the shadow of Tournament Hill, stood the half-ruined old prison, a Victorian relic of iron-roofed towers and heavy oak and iron doors. The surrounding wall had long ago been reduced to heaps of stones and isolated gateways.

“Looks to me,” said Liles, “as if they’re off on a jaunt. They’ll turn up before long. Jim?”

“It looks that way,” Practice agreed. “But I’d like to know where they are.”

“Should the Governor hear about this?”

“I wouldn’t bother him just now. He’s having a tough fight in the Legislature today—his road-tax bill. I think the kids will turn up in the next couple of hours—wet, tired, an unhappy.”

—

Liles dropped Practice at the mansion and returned to his office.

Dore Guthrie met Practice at the kitchen door. She looked a little haggard without her customary heavy coat of makeup.

“Is Chris all right?” she asked expectantly.

“I’m sure he is,” Practice said, but something was brooding in his mind, trying to take shape. “Chris and a buddy of his apparently got fed up with school and declared a holiday for themselves. How are you feeling?”

She glanced away. “I remember—some awful things from last night. I was ...” He nodded.

“This morning when I woke up, John was there.” She sat on a high stool with her hands clenched between her knees, “lie was looking at me
—staring
at me as if I were a stranger. I pretended I was still asleep. Then he—I felt his hands, touching me, all over, and I heard him crying. I didn’t know what to do. I just didn’t know what to do. Finally he went away. I wanted to hold him. But I was afraid to put my arms around him.” She looked up at Practice, her eyes startled and fearful. “I was afraid if I put my arms around him, he’d disappear, just like that, and then everything—the bed, the room, the mansion—would disappear, too.” Tears started in her eyes, and she wiped at them. “Everything. Chris. My—baby.” She put her hands flat against her thighs and stared down at them. Her voice was low, but with a hint of desperate strength.

“Jim? What’s mine? Is anything mine?”

“I’d have to answer that question for myself, Dore, before I could help you.”

“He—was in love with me, Jim. I swear it. A lot of people would never believe that. Me. How could John love me? But I swear it. He did. And he ...”

“I believe that, Dore.”

“Well, what did I
do?"

“You think he’s disappointed in you?”

She threw her head back. “Well? Isn’t he?”

He shrugged helplessly. “Dore, he’s not—he’s not happy with himself.”

“Why, Jim?”

“A lot of reasons. You’re a part of it; so is Chris. Chris baffles him. John can’t remember his own childhood, and so he doesn’t know what Chris wants or needs. I guess he blames you for not showing the way.”

Anger appeared in her face. “I want to love him.
Him.
The way it was. I pleased my husband, Jim!”

“Now it’s different.”

“But I don’t know
how
to love a little boy!”

The silence between them grew, and Dore shook her head. In the dimness of the kitchen, loneliness seemed to press down upon them both from the heights of the empty mansion. Dore put a hand in her hair and tugged fiercely, then her hand dropped.

“When I was in college,” she said, “I had the same dream. Everything would disappear, a little at a time. And when everything I had ever wanted was gone, then I—I’d start to disappear, too. And nothing could stop me.”

“That won’t happen, Dore.”

“
Then where is Chris?
” she said, hissing, and instantly began to sob. Without thinking, he took Dore in his arms and held her as soothingly as he could, a little perplexed by her weight and warmth.

“Don’t let me disappear, Jim.” For a moment she looked at him pleadingly, her eyes big, then she put the tip of her tongue catlike against her lower lip. “Don’t let me ...”

She lifted her shoulders and raised her head and kissed him. There was a thin cold edge to her teeth, and her tongue was ripe and quick. He responded easily, but at the same time was repelled and appalled by the twist of her shoulders, the lurid pressure of her breasts, and the digging fingers at the nape of his neck.

His resistance became obvious as his reason asserted itself, and Dore let him go, her expression at first annoyed, then bewildered, at last ashamed.

“Some people think I’m this way with any man,” she mumbled.

He touched his lips where her kiss still burned.

“Stop telling me what people think, Dore,” he said sharply.

She stiffened at his tone, and sat facing away from him, wounded.

“I’m going to go out and have a look around for Chris myself,” he said more softly. “When he comes home, you can either bawl him out as he deserves or you can gush over him. I’d bawl him out. But a little later I’d find the chance to show him I loved him. If I were you, I’d just pick him up and hold him, and maybe tell him a story—the way Lucy does.”

“I might do that,” she said grimly, “if I could get him away from Lucy. I haven’t yet.”

“Then get rid of Lucy,” he snapped, and carried the image of Dore’s eyes—staring, surprised—with him as he went outside and hurried away from her, from them all, with a taste of rust in his throat and a tremor in his hand where it had brushed against her breast.

Oh, no, he thought. That would be just fine, wouldn’t it, Dore? But I won’t let it happen, not because I’m afraid of John Guthrie, or respect him too much. Not because I think you’re a sulky child who needs a lick now and then to straighten up. But only because I’m afraid there’s not enough of me for any man or woman to feed on and grow strong, and I fear anyone who tries.

H
e drove slowly back to the east end of town and Tournament Hill. The rain had quit, but if anything the sky was darker, the air more gloomy. At the top of the hill, the highest part of which was occupied by Major Kinsaker’s house, he looked down from his car at the school and beyond to the mist-shrouded river. Suddenly he smiled and focused his attention on the old prison buildings. Chris had called it “the fort,” and it was obvious that at some time or other he had gazed down from the windows of the school at the ruined buildings, wanting to explore them. He wouldn’t be likely to go alone, though, and it must have taken him a while to find another boy willing to accompany him.

Practice put his car in gear and headed for the old prison.

The street ended two blocks from the prison site. Part of the ravine had been used by the city as a dump at one time, and jagged precipices of rusted metal loomed through the few slender trees that clung to the slopes above the creek. Practice made his way across the soggy ground by using a series of stones and flattened cans for a haphazard path.