Blunt Darts by Jeremiah Healy Read Free Book Online

folding his hands, gnarled by arthritis, in front of him on the desk. “It’s been looked into.”
    “Then can I look at the reports and talk to the investigating officer?”
    “Why?” he asked, quite reasonably.
    “Because I’ve been retained to find him,” I replied.
    “I wanna know who retained you.”
    “Why?” I asked, quite reasonably.
    “Get out,” he said, his eyes bulging a bit.
    “Look, Chief,” I said with some heat, “I’ve talked with the boy’s grandmother, father, and now the chief of police of the town he skipped from. And so far all I’m getting told is to butt out. Now, if this were a criminal case, I could see it. The too-many-cooks theory. But with a missing person, the more knowledgeable people looking, the more likely it is somebody’ll find something.”
    “Get out,” he said again, his folded hands trembling a little.
    I complied.
     
     
     

     
     
    After I left the police station, I drove around Meade for an hour, just taking streets to see where they went and to get an idea of how many ways there might be for a fourteen-year-old boy to leave town. Even Meade’s finest must have checked with bus drivers and the few cabs that plied the town. My guess was a cross-country hike until he was out of Meade and then maybe hitchhiking northwest to Worcester, northeast to Boston, or even southeast to Providence, Rhode Island. From any city, his transportation opportunities were limitless. Even with publicity, the chances that someone would come forward to say, “Yeah, I picked up the kid,” were astronomically small. Without publicity, there was no chance at all to trace his route. I was going to have to be very lucky and hope that I could deduce what city he’d chosen as his jumping-off point.
    I cut short my wanderings and drove to the outskirts of Brookline, a beautiful bedroom suburb of Boston, but really a small city in its own right. I stopped at a telephone booth in a gas station.
    The telephone book showed two Dr. D. Steins in Brookline but one was eliminated by his D.D.S. degree. Dr. Stein the psychiatrist was in a large, old stone medical building on Beacon Street across from the 1200 Beacon Motel. I eased the rent-a-car into one of the slanted center divider parking spaces, crossed the street, and entered the foyer.
    I found Stein’s door on the fourth floor and opened it. The foyer below and the hallway above were nondescript, but the psychiatrist’s waiting room was elaborately furnished with a comfortable-looking sofa and four easy chairs arranged around a midsize oriental rug. The walls were a soft beige, with nonstrident landscapes and seascapes. If Dr. Stein intended his patients’ surroundings to be soothing, his intention was successfully realized.
    As I closed the door, I heard a low-toned bong. There was no receptionist, and indeed no desk or interior window for a receptionist. I was halfway to the inner office door when it opened.
    “Yes?” said a tallish, slim man about forty. His initial smile of greeting faded as he failed to place me. He had a beard that was redder than the moplike sand-colored hair on his head.
    “Dr. Stein?” I said.
    “Yes.”
    “I’m John Cuddy. I believe Mrs. Kinnington called you?”
    “Kinnington? She may have. I’ve been in group most of the morning. Kinnington?”
    “I have a letter from her.” I lifted it from my jacket pocket and handed it to him. He looked down at it.
    “Yes, well…” He seemed only to skim the letter, but he nevertheless kept it in his hand when he looked back up. “I’ll have to check my service. I never take calls when I’m in group. I’ll be another fifteen minutes or so and then I can see you. Please sit down and I’ll be back to you.”
    He withdrew into the inner office and closed the door. I sat down and scanned his eclectic magazine collection. I flipped through two old New Yorker magazines (which I read only for the cartoons) and was halfway through my third Field and Stream