Blunt Darts

Mr. Cuddy here to the chief’s office.”
    The short, squat one stopped, nearly came to attention, and motioned to me. “Follow me, sir.”
    “Thank you, Sergeant,” I repeated as I moved into the corridor.
    “This is it, sir,” said my guide as he gestured to a newly painted door.
    “Thank you, Dexter.”
    “Yes, sir,” he beamed, pushing out his chest. I was certain that he was somebody’s nephew.
    I knocked and heard a near-human growl from behind the door. I entered the office.
    There was a nameplate on the desk that said SMOLLETT. No rank or title, just Smollett. The plate was old and wom-looking. I got the impression the chief had bought it when he first came on the force, because he was old and wom-looking too. He had a voice that sounded like a ‘47 Nash without the mufflers.
    “What do you want?” he said. I decided to sit down anyway.
    “I want to speak with whoever’s looking into Stephen Kinnington’s disappearance.”
    “It’s a missing-person case,” he said, 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