Blunt Darts by Jeremiah Healy Read Free Book Online

over the mouthpiece of his phone. I hoped he wasn’t going to yell anything confidential to me, since you have to cover both ends of the receiver to be sure the other party on the line can’t hear what—
    “Your name?”
    “John Francis Cuddy, Sergeant.”
    He repeated the words into the phone, then said, “Right” and hung up. “The Chief will be back to me in a few minutes.”
    “Thank you, Sergeant,” I said, and waited patiently. Non-commissioned officers in every hierarchy I’d ever known love it when you address them by their title.
    Five minutes later, the sergeant’s phone rang. He picked it up and said, “Yes, Chief.” A short, pudgy uniform opened the door behind the desk, and the sergeant hung up.
    “Hey, Dexter, show Mr. Cuddy here to the Chief’s office.”
    The newcomer stopped, nearly clicking his heels together, and motioned. “Follow me, sir.”
    “Thank you, Sergeant,” I repeated as we moved into the corridor.
    “This is it, sir,” said my guide in front of a newly painted door.
    “Thank you, Dexter.”
    “Yes, sir,” he beamed, pushing out his chest. I was certain that he was somebody’s eager nephew.
    I knocked and heard a near-human growl from within, so I entered the office.
    There was a small brass placard on the desk that said SMOLLETT . No rank or title, just the surname. The metal was old and worn-looking. I got the impression the chief had bought it when he first came on the force, because he was old and worn-looking too, with a voice that sounded like a ’47 Nash without any mufflers.
    “What do you want?” Smollett said.
    I decided to sit down anyway. “I want to speak with whoever’s looking into Stephen Kinnington’s disappearance.”
    “That’s a missing-person case,” folding hands gnarled by arthritis in front of him. “It’s been looked into.”
    “Then can I see the reports and talk to the investigating officer?”
    “Why?” Smollett asked, quite reasonably.
    “Because I’ve been retained to find him,” I replied.
    “I want to know who retained you.”
    “Why?” I asked, also 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 problem. But with a missing person, the more knowledgeable people actively searching, the more likely somebody will find something.”
    “Get out,” he said again, his folded hands trembling a little.
    I complied.

Seven
    A FTER 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 figure out 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 the telephone booth in a gas station.
    The yellow pages 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,