unfolded the tale, he suspected that Cantrell was only half-listening, and when he was finished, the chief confirmed it.
“You find out anything about that burglary down at the A&P?”
“I thought we were talking about Randy Corliss.”
“Carl, you were talking about Randy Corliss. I was thinking about the A&P. Charlie Hyer’s giving me a lot of trouble about that—thinks we should have solved it by now.”
“And Lucy Corliss thinks we should have found her son by now,” Carl Bronski said doggedly. “Now I ask you, Orv, which is more important—a couple of thousand dollars, or a nine-year-old boy?”
“To Charlie? The couple thousand.”
Carl groaned. “Come on.”
Cantrell leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. “Carl, I’m gonna tell you something. When I was your age, which I grant you was quite a ways back, I thought I could spend all my time trying to solve the cases I thought were important But you know what? I found out that every case is important to the people involved. I know it sounds lousy, but to Charlie Hyer, his couple of thousand are just as important as Lucy Corliss’s little boy.”
“I’m afraid I don’t agree.”
“Which is why you’re a sergeant and I’m the chief.” Cantrell glanced at the clock. “Now, you’ve got half an hour of duty left, and I want you to spend it on that A&P file. As far as we’re concerned, Randy Corliss is a runaway—”
“Didn’t you even listen to me?”
“I heard you, and it sounds to me like you got suckered in by a couple of hysterical women who don’t want to face reality. What have they got? A bunch of crap out of a computer that probably doesn’t even mean anything to the people who put it ini Know what I read? I read that ninety-some percent of everything that goes into computers is never even looked at again. It’s just stowed away and forgotten. Hell, as far as I can tell, nobody even knows what a in the damn computers anymore. So I don’t want you wasting your time trying to figure out what those numbers you were talking about mean.” As Bronski started to protest, Cantrell held up a restraining hand. “Carl, I’m sorry about Randy Corliss running away, and I’m sorry that other woman’s baby died. Hell, I’m sorry about a lot. But when you talk about Arthur Wiseman maybe ‘doing’ something to his patients, I’ve got to think something’s wrong. Are you starting to get the picture?”
Bronski stood up. “I get it. No more duty time on Randy Corliss, right?”
“Very right.”
Bronski started out of the chiefs office. He had the door half-open when Cantrell spoke again, this time in the soft tones his men referred to as his “off-duty” voice.
“ ’Course, I can’t really be held responsible for what you do on your own time, can I? And you might want to keep in mind that even when you’re not here, the lights are on, the telex works, and nobody really gives a damn about what facilities are used for what case during what hours.”
Bronski turned back. “Did you say something?”
The off-duty voice disappeared as fast as it had come. “I didn’t say a damn thing, Sergeant Now get back to work.”
Bronski pulled Cantrell’s door shut as he left the office and started back toward his own desk. In the far corner, the telex suddenly began chattering, and Bronski changed course to go over and watch as the tape spewed out of the machine.
There was the usual lot of APBs, mixed with some idle chatter among operators who had become equally idle acquaintances over the years. One item caught Bronski’s eye. It was from Atlanta, Georgia, a request for any information about a boy who was assumed to be a runaway. His name was Adam Rogers, and he was nine years old. The message was being sent to Eastbury because the boy’s father had once lived there, and the mother thought the child might be looking for him. The name of the father and his last known address followed the body of the communiqué.
Carl Bronski frowned, then reread the message. The thing that struck him as odd was that the last name of the father was not Rogers. It was Kramer, Phillip J. Kramer.
Bronski was suddenly uneasy. “Anybody on this?” he asked the desk sergeant.
The sergeant didn’t even look up. “Since it just came in, it doesn’t seem likely, does it?”
“Then I’ll take it myself.” He tore the strip of paper out of the