Blunt Darts - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  She locked eyes for another moment, then relented once more. "This is all so . . . difficult to deal with. We had all thought him to be . . . Very well. I see your point. I will call this Dr. Stein."

  "By 'this Dr. Stein,' do I take it you never met him?"

  "That's correct. I've a vague recollection of speaking to him once on the telephone."

  "In that case," I said, "could you give me a brief letter of introduction, preferably on some of your stationery?"

  "Certainly." She swiveled and scooped up her walking braces in her right hand.

  I extended my right hand. "Do you need some help?" I asked.

  She shook her head as she maneuvered the braces to the sides of her chair. "Never ask someone in a wheelchair, which I was, or on braces if they 'need some help.' Psychologically, they can't answer yes to that question."

  "Well, then, can I give you a hand?"

  She rewarded me with her faint smile. "Better. But no, thank you," she said as she levered herself up to a standing position. "I prefer to have tea at a tea table and to write letters at a desk. This way, please." Her legs moved stiffly in lockstep with the thrust of her shoulders and braces. She stopped at a Governor Winthrop desk, which looked to my untutored eye to be made of curly maple and therefore probably even more antique than the rest of the place. She lowered the drawbridge writing surface, revealing a desk fountain pen. She eased into the chair, leaning her braces against the wall, out of the way but within reach.

  "Now," she said, tugging open a shallow drawer and removing another sheet of the rose-colored stationery, "what shall I write?"

  I slowly dictated a form of authorization and release, which I had seen often enough at Empire to know by heart. It authorized Dr. Stein to reveal Stephen's confidences and to allow me to review medical and hospital records, releasing him from liability if he did so. She signed it and handed it to me. "Is there anything else?" she said.

  "If you would call Dr. Stein and let him know I'm coming?"

  "Certainly."

  I put the letter and the envelope in my breast pocket. "One last thing. Given your knowledge of what Stephen knows about the wilderness, do you have any ideas about where he might go?"

  She looked up and smiled wanly. "We maintained a veritable atlas of topographical maps of the Eastern seaboard in his room, to plan or just fantasize about future trips. They are all still there, which probably means he found a way to copy one before he left. He could be anywhere."

  I nodded. "I can reach you by telephone here?"

  "During the day," she said. "If you need me at night, please call Miss Jacobs and have her call me. I will then call you when everyone else is asleep."

  I nodded again. "I'd like to speak to Mrs. Page now."

  "That's not necessary, Mr. Cuddy. Stephen disappeared on her day off. I've already questioned her thoroughly, and she knows nothing."

  And, I gathered, if she did know anything, Mrs. Page wouldn't tell me.

  I said goodbye and went out into the hall. I retraced my steps down the stairs, and as I reached the front door I was aware of Mrs. Page behind me. At least she hadn't frisked me to check for the family silver. I smiled at her, and she shook her head. As I went through the door, she began closing it behind me.

  "Blakey's gonna eat you alive," she said in a tsk-tsk whisper.

  I considered knocking on the door, but I didn't think she'd elaborate even if she opened it again. I got in the Merc, drove down to the main road, and swung back toward Boston and opposite the first straining of the westward commuter traffic. Almost immediately, a black sedan swerved into my lane and I had to cut onto the shoulder. I glared over at the driver. My eyes caught about one frame of a beefy, stupid face before he was past me. I wrestled my car back onto the roadbed.

  I got to Route 128, but instead of turning north toward Mass Pike and the fast way into Boston, I

  turned south and picked up the usually mis-named expressway, which leads into the city from the southeast. This looked as if it was going to be an effort-intensive case, and I wanted to pay a visit first.

  FOURTH

  -♦-

  "Just carnations." I set them down and stepped back. "Mrs. Feeney said the roses at the flower market were tired-looking." I felt too distant standing up, so I squatted down on my haunches.

  "Remember Valerie Jacobs, Chuck Craft's friend? Well, she's brought me a case, and it's a beaut! Rich family and all kinds of troubles. The grandmother, you'd like. Good Yankee, you'd call her. The grandson I haven't met yet, and won't, if I don't roll pretty hard and fast on finding him. Still, he sounds like the type you'd have liked too. Serious, studied, and quiet. Just like me." We laughed.

  I stared at the carnations for a while. I began blinking rapidly. We talked inside for a bit.

  "So. I'm afraid I won't be back for a while. I'll see you when the case is over. Or sooner, if I hit a problem. Just like always."

  I straightened up and turned around to walk back down the path. A teenager holding a rake and wearing a maintenance shirt and dungaree cut-offs gave me a funny look. I didn't recognize him. Summer help, probably, and young. Too young to know anything. Especially anything about cemeteries.

  * * *

  When I got back to Charles Street I put the Merc up at the garage on the riverside and grabbed a steak at the charcoal place that was then near the intersection of Beacon. In the apartment I made a screwdriver (the orange juice makes me feel healthy) and played back my telephone tape. The only caller was Valerie. She wanted me to call her back and tell her about my interview with Mrs. Kinnington. Instead, I dialed Chief Maslyk's home number in Bonham and asked him if he'd like to fire a few strings with me at the range tomorrow. He said he couldn't but would be available the next day, around 9:30. He'd meet me there.

  After I hung up, I thought about Valerie. I downed the second half of my screwdriver and left the telephone on tape rather than on ring for the rest of the night.

  FIFTH

  -♦-

  I got up at 6:30 on Thursday morning and did what I call my double-declining calisthenics. I start with fifty push-ups, one hundred arm rotations, and one hundred fast-flapping over-and-under motions. For the last, I stand, swing my arms horizontally forward with fists clenched until they pass each other. Then I swing them back hard, trying to touch them behind my back. Then I swing them forward again, and so forth.

  After I finish, I repeat the series, halving the number of repetitions of each exercise. I then did a fast (for me) three miles along the river and wolfed down the "farmhand breakfast" (three eggs, four sausages, hash browns, toast, juice, coffee, parsley, oregano, and God knows what else) at a luncheonette on Cambridge Street.

  I got back to the apartment and cleaned up. I checked the phone tape. Valerie had called again and said that the reason I couldn't reach her last night was because she and a girlfriend had gone to a drive-in and she was leaving for the beach and wouldn't be in until six and would I please call her then and she . . . at which point, mercifully, the tape's maximum run was reached. Feeling vaguely relieved, I reset the tape, dressed in a conservative dark suit as the concerned

  father of an accused delinquent might, and set off for Meade District Court.

  As I turned into the court parking lot, I noticed it was almost three-quarters full at 8:30 A.M. I wanted to at least get a look at His Honor before I started after his son. Also, because of my understanding with Mrs. Kinnington, I thought I ought to do my observing before I did any poking around that would identify me for him.

  The courthouse looked spanking new. It was red brick and from the exterior had some stylish peaks that implied cathedral ceilings inside. As I walked from the lot toward the door, I caught a glimpse of a court officer with a hand-held metal detector at the entrance, thoroughly going over an obvious lawyer type carrying an attaché case.

  I immediately spotted a terrible scuff on my right shoe, whipped out a handkerchief, and failed miserably to remove it. Nervously shaking my head, I walk
ed quickly back to my car, where I opened the trunk, reached in for an imaginary rag, and slipped my wood-handled .38 Smith & Wesson Chief's Special and clip-on holster from over my right hip. I fussed with my shoe and then tucked the pistol and holster completely under the plastic rug in the trunk before closing the lid and retracing my steps toward the courthouse door. Ever since the bombing at the superior court in Boston several years before, varying degrees of security had been imposed on entry to the commonwealth's courthouses, but virtually none included checking out well-dressed, distinguished-looking, mature men. Apparently Judge Kinnington's building, which he ran as presiding judge, was the exception.

  I passed inspection and milled around with the crowd inside the lobby of the courthouse. As I bumped my way up and down the broad corridor, I realized there were two courtrooms on the main floor and at least one other (based on signs at the staircases) on the second floor. I drifted into the clerk's office and casually asked who was sitting in the First Session (Massachusetts legalese for courtroom number one, which is usually the courtroom to which all cases report and from which all cases are assigned to other courtrooms for hearing). A faded disco queen behind the desk said "Judge Kinnington, of course," and I thanked her and went back into the mob just as a short, elderly court officer began shrieking.

  "First Session, First Session, court is coming in. All criminal business. Court is coming in." The doors of the First Session swung open, and an architectural vacuum cleaner sucked virtually all the inhabitants of the corridor inside. The only exceptions were a few lawyers who looked well-to-do and vaguely uncomfortable, which probably meant they were out here defending General Motors or Boston Edison on some minor but time-consuming civil matter.

  I became part of the wedge cutting its way into the First Session. The courtroom was like a church, with one of the cathedral ceilings I'd spotted from the outside. The doors opened onto a wide center aisle, and the seating for the public was on high-backed benches, rather like Catholic pews without the kneelers. The center aisle ended at a gateway in a fence. The fence is the bar enclosure, so-called by lawyers because usually only members of the bar may sit within it. The fencing reminded me very much of a half-scale model of the balustrade on the stairway in the judge's house. Past the bar enclosure, which was sunken like a split-level living room, was the bench, raised like a pulpit.

  I spotted two especially scuzzy-looking early-teenaged boys sitting near the aisle. I sat down next to them. I practiced a concerned glance in their direction. They returned a disgusted look, probably thinking that I was there on a morals charge.

  "Courrrrrrrt!" bellowed the little court officer, and the congregation rose as the Honorable Willard J. Kinnington fairly scooted from a door to the right side of the bench and ascended. Possibly he moved so quickly because he was only barely medium height and didn't wish to advertise it. He had slightly graying, blondish-red hair and was wearing amber horn-rimmed glasses. He clutched a small loose-leaf book in his right hand; with his black robes this gave him the appearance of a new parish priest slightly late for his first mass. Once on the bench, however, he fixed the entire courtroom with a baleful eye. With the added height of the raised bench, he now looked as though he could jump center for the Celtics. He bowed his head as the court officer intoned the full salutation. The courtroom clock showed 9:00 A.M. on the nose.

  "Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. All those having business before this, the Fourth District Court of Western Norfolk, now sitting in Meade, within in and for our county of Norfolk, the Honorable Willard J. Kinnington presiding, draw near, give your attention, and you shall be heard. God save the commonwealth of Massachusetts and this honorable court. Be seated."

  I watched the judge as the court officer spoke; he didn't twitch during the entire soliloquy. In Massachusetts, there is a district-court system, which handles lesser matters, and a superior-court system, which handles graver matters. Each district court is in an important town and includes several smaller towns within its jurisdiction. The superior courts are countywide courts. Until court reorganization becomes a functioning reality, the major difference between the two systems is that whereas the district court is apparently less prestigious, the superior-court judges have to ride the circuit, rotating every month or so all over the state. The district-court judges sit almost exclusively in one district court. Accordingly, some district-court judges, appointed for life, have built up substantial little fiefdoms over which they exercise almost unbridled control. I'd been in a dozen district courts and every superior court in eastern Massachusetts during my time with Empire. Although the full "Hear ye, hear ye" salutation is occasionally heard in superior court, I'd never before heard it used in a district court.

  When the court officer ended, the judge sat down briskly and spoke a name quickly. The clerk had materialized in the wooden kangaroo's pouch immediately in front of the judge. He turned to Kinnington and began giving short, nervous answers to whatever questions the judge was asking.

  Meanwhile, I caught sight of the back of a huge court officer who was sliding down the left-hand side aisle toward the judge's bench. He looked to be my height, but he was enormously thick across the back and bottom. He clicked open a side gate and entered the bar enclosure and moved up next to the clerk, who literally cringed away from him. Seeing him standing with his back to me and looming over the clerk, I pushed him up to six feet five. The giant's head bobbed up and down a little, as though he were talking. The judge's expression clouded, then cleared, and he muttered something to the giant. The giant nodded and backed away as the clerk called the first case.

  A couple in front of me popped up with their son and blocked my view of the bench momentarily. They said their lawyer would be late, the judge asked the clerk if the lawyer had called the clerk's office, and the clerk said no. At that point the judge stated that their son's case would not be heard until 3:00 P.M. The father began to say something, but the clerk had already begun calling the next case.

  As the trio hesitatingly sat back down, I saw the giant court officer in the side aisle pull even with my row and roll his gaze toward me as he walked back toward the only public entrance. His was the beefy, now not-quite-as-stupid face I'd seen in the car that had swerved at me the day before. He had a fringe of wispy blond hair around, and combed in ridiculously long strands across, his balding head. I didn't follow him with my eyes to the back of the room, but no sound came from the central door, which had squeaked a bit when opened by a latecomer a moment before. So much for my concerned-parent cover. The next case was a Bonham police matter. The defendant's name was called, and the defendant and her attorney answered "Ready." No one, however, answered for the Bonham police, which, like most Massachusetts departments, prosecutes its own minor cases through a senior officer instead of tying up an assistant district attomey. A young, clean-cut guy within the bar enclosure (who turned out to be the Meade police prosecutor) stood up haltingly. He said, "Your Honor, I believe the Bonham police prosecutor is on the telephone arranging to bring in a witness." The judge glared down at him. "Case dismissed for lack of prosecution." I was stunned, but the young cop/prosecutor gamely tried a stall. "If Your Honor please. I can run back and—"

  "Case dismissed!" boomed the judge, whose microphone was set, I suspect, a bit higher than anyone else's. The defendant and her lawyer got the hell out as fast as their feet would carry them.

  And so it went. Of the twenty or so preliminary rulings I saw Kinnington make, at least six were similarly outrageous; yet he seemed to favor neither police nor defendants as a class. Each decision seemed exactly arbitrary, depending upon which party happened to appear to be giving the most affront to the judge's sense of how his time was to be used. I'm sure all six rulings were technically defensible. The point was that it was clear to everyone in the courtroom that the rulings were unfair and showed an incredible disregard for common sense.

  I almost forgot. About six names (or three minutes) after the "case-dismissed" defendant, the central doo
rs squeaked and a fiftyish, crew-cut guy in a brown double-knit blazer and baggy blue slacks hustled down the center aisle. I recognized him from the Bonham pistol range. He entered the bar enclosure and sat down hurriedly next to the young police prosecutor who'd stood up for him. The young one whispered to him. The old one turned to him with a look of disbelief on his face and half-rose from his chair. He sunk back down, faced front, and bowed his head. He then pounded the counsel table three times silently with his fist.

  After the criminal cases had been called, the judge muttered something to the clerk, who turned to the judge and then turned back around with a surprised look on his face. "Court will recess for thirty minutes," he announced.

  "All rise," shouted the elderly court officer as the judge scampered off the bench as quickly as he had ascended it and exited through the same door.

  "Shit, man, we're gonna be here all fuckin' day," said the kid next to me to his friend as they got up and edged past me. About half the courtroom's population decided to do the same. I could feel the exodus clearing from the aisle, when a five-pound ham dropped on my shoulder. A gruff, egg-breathed voice said, "His Honor wants to see you in his chambers. Now."

  I put on my most indifferent face and swiveled my head around. The giant's eyes were small and mean.

  "I don't expect any special treatment, you know," I said mildly.

  "Now."

  I got up, and we walked abreast to a side door just forward of the right-hand seating area. I decided Giant was pushing six feet seven and maybe three hundred pounds. Giant used a key on the door. I moved before he could shove me through it. We entered a narrow corridor with PRIVATE stenciled on the painted walls. We made a sharp left and walked into a small outer office with a striking brunette secretary behind the reception desk. She gave me a quick look, as if she didn't want to be able to say later on that she recognized the body. Giant rapped a knuckle twice on the heavy-looking inner door and then pushed it open and motioned me in ahead of him. I walked in and glimpsed reddish hair behind the cloud of light blue cigar smoke hanging over a big desk. Then I was whirled around against the wall. I heard the door slam, and Giant said, "Assume the position."