Blunt Darts

turn north onto it, a Meade police car drove through the intersection heading south. Officer Dexter was in the passenger’s seat. He seemed to recognize me. I waved to him, but he didn’t wave back.
    I turned onto Swan Street back toward Bonham and drove a little over a mile before seeing the bridge ahead. I was surprised. I had expected the bridge to be around a corner or curve, but it was clearly visible along the straight road for nearly four-tenths of a mile. Diane Kinnington, or anyone else, would have had no earner or curve to negotiate that night.
    When I reached the bridge, I slowed and checked my rear-view mirror. There was no traffic behind me. I slowed to a crawl and went across the bridge as Blakey told Doucette he had done that rainy night. As Doucette had described it, there was a rock maybe twenty feet out whose crest was eight inches clear of the water line. There were replacement railings where Diane’s car must have gone through, but the car couldn’t have been going very fast to land so close to the bridge. I studied the spot where the Mercedes must have rested. When I reached the other end of the bridge, I stopped and got out. Again I looked to where the Mercedes must have been. Then I checked for traffic, backed across the bridge, and angled my car in the way Doucette had placed Blakey’s cruiser. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the rock and the placement of the Mercedes as I sidestepped down the embankment. I stood at the river’s edge and stared across to the other bank. If Doucette was accurate regarding the Mercedes’s reclining angle against the rock in the water and the compass angle to the far shore, there was no way that Blakey could have seen a license plate or even a hood ornament to know it was the Kinnington car out there.
    I heard a car crunch to a stop above me. I turned and looked up as a second car pulled alongside the first. Both were Meade police cruisers. Dexter and a big officer I hadn’t seen before got out of the first cruiser. Chief Smollett and another big cop got out of the second cruiser. All came to the upper edge of the embankment and stared down at me. I stared back.
    Smollett put his fists on his hips and broke the stand-off. He wore a uniform parade hat, but civilian gray shirt and pants. “I thought I told you to get out and stay out of this town.”
    “Sorry to have to correct you, Chief,” I replied as good-naturedly as possible, “but you told me only to get out of your office. You said nothing about town or about staying out, for that matter.”
    The two big cops turned expectantly to Smollett. Dexter looked down at his shoes. Smollett looked down at me.
    “You been bothering our citizens,” Smollett continued, not raising his voice. Now everyone was looking down at me again.
    “Just which citizen or citizens am I supposed to have bothered?”
    Smollett’s jaw worked a little before he answered. “Harold Sturdevant for one. He says you were in his house upsetting his daughter.”
    “I was in his house with his wife’s permission talking with her daughter.”
    “Hal said she was crying.”
    “She was. Is he prepared to sign a complaint about it?”
    “He don’t need to sign a complaint.”
    “Sure he does,” I replied. “If you receive any complaints, I’d be happy to review them with you and the Department of Public Safety when my license comes up for renewal.”
    The two big cops had been following our exchange with their heads, like sideline spectators watching tennis volleys. Now they had their heads toward Smollett, and Dexter was still examining his shoe-shine.
    Smollett changed neither his pose nor his expression. Just his voice grew strident. “I don’t like wise-ass private detectives,” he said.
    My neck was actually getting stiff from looking up them. There was a boulder nearby about knee high. I walked to it, sat down, and leaned back. The rock’s surface was still warm from the June sun. “Maybe if we pooled our information on Stephen Kinnington, we could be more civil with each other.”
    Smollett began to tremble, his uniform hat rocking slightly over his head the way a pot lid does as the water boils beneath it. “Bring... him... up... here,” he said, each word enunciated like a separate sentence.
    The two big cops started sidestepping down immediately. Dexter reluctantly started down too. I said, “You know, Chief, there isn’t a snowball’s chance that Blakey could have identified that Mercedes that