The True Detective (13 page)

And then, “Fifty cents? Would he run away over fifty cents? What else did he take with him? How much money did he have?”

And, “Mrs. Wells, please, try not to be upset. He’s probably fallen asleep somewhere. Even in a car. This happens. He could be at a friend’s house.”

Listening again, the lieutenant says, “Where is Mr. Wells?”

And, “You mean he’s deceased?”

And, “You have no idea of his whereabouts? Is he delinquent in support payments?”

And, “I see.”

And, “Mrs. Wells, listen, call his teacher and see if he’s been having any unusual problems at school. Ask his brother the same thing.”

Then, “Mrs. Wells, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to stop by and talk to you and your older son. In about twenty minutes to half an hour. Listen, before I get there, there’s something I want you to do. Look through your son’s possessions. Eric’s possessions. Look carefully. See what’s missing he might have taken with him. It could be a watch or a coin, or anything. A favorite jacket. Some personal treasure. A photograph.”

Listening another moment, he says, “This valentine is still there? It’s the same one?”

And finally, “Check your own things as well. See if anything is missing. Valuables. Money. And try not to worry. This isn’t that unusual. Boys who are twelve begin to have a lot of adventurous ideas.”

Replacing the phone then, Dulac stands a moment thinking or puzzling. “That’s odd,” he says.

Then to the cadet he says, “The mother is quite worried. She doesn’t think he’s run away, although they did have a little argument over fifty cents the last time she saw him. Last night.”

The cadet doesn’t respond, merely sits watching and waiting.

“Odd,” the lieutenant says to himself.

“Does any mother ever think her son’s run away?” the cadet says.

Dulac returns from his pondering and looks to the cadet. “Oh, I guess not,” he says.

“I mean—” the cadet starts to say, but the lieutenant has raised a hand to hush him.

“Listen,” Dulac says. “Several things I want you to do. I want you to run a check on Warren Wells. The father. Check with South Berwick, and with the State of Maine.”

“Yes sir.”

“Wait a minute. Some other things. Repeat the description of this missing boy to all patrol units. Looks like it only went out last night at 2310. Anyway, repeat it. Get it out, too, to the Maine State Police, New Hampshire State Police, Massachusetts State Police. Say it comes from me. Gil Dulac, Portsmouth PD. Notify the MPs at Pease Air Base, too.”

“Yes sir, that’s a lot of calls,” the cadet says.

Dulac glances to the cadet, sees him making notes, decides he is merely being conversational. “That’s okay,” he says. “They’re just sitting on their asses drinking coffee. Tell them this. Say there’s an extremely worried mother here in Portsmouth who is waiting for her twelve-year-old son to get home.”

“Full description plus that message?” the cadet says.

“Yes. Also, if my wife calls, tell her something came up and I’ll get back to her. This is probably a simple runaway, but it does have this funny feel to it, so I’m just going to stop and have a look.”

“Sir, I’m supposed to go off duty at eight.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s just that I don’t know if I’ll get all these calls made by the time I’m supposed to get off and—”

“Pass it on to whoever comes on. Regular dispatcher’s in there, isn’t he?”

“Yes sir. I didn’t mean to—”

“I’ll call back in a few minutes, see if you have anything on the father. Warren Wells. Formerly of South Berwick. Okay?”

“Yes sir. I just meant to say that it is Sunday morning and I—”

“You check Warren Wells yourself,” Dulac says. “Do that right away.” Dulac smiles some, as if to say one thing or another.

Returning his smile, the cadet says, “It’s the lieutenant’s day off, too, sir.”

“Dedication,” Dulac says, as if to share a joke, however surprised he is at the cadet’s remark.

Writing the address in his pocket memo book, he adds, on his way out, “I’ll call back in ten or fifteen minutes.”

Crossing the parking lot, however, he finds himself increasingly bothered over the exchange that has just taken place. It’s as if, even with this young cadet, he has presented himself in some dishonest way. The story of his life, he thinks. The old ethnic fear of looking dumb. A fat man’s fear.

He goes through the chore of loading his bulk into his car but doesn’t start the motor. The unsettled feeling remains with him.

All at once, he finds himself unloading from the car. On the pavement he says, evenly, “Goddamit,” as he slams the door, as he starts back around to the side entrance.

He passes through the door and there is the cadet, standing, just lighting a cigarette, which he begins at once to snuff out.

“No no, I don’t care about your cigarette,” Dulac says.

“Sir?”

“Did someone tell you—have you been taught not to do a good job around here?”

“Sir, I don’t understand.”

“You’re how old?” Dulac says.

“Nineteen, sir.”

Dulac is nodding. “I’m going to tell you something,” he says. “It’s okay to make an extra telephone call. You understand? It’s okay to do a good job.”

“Yes sir.”

“It’s taken me most of my life to know that.”

“Sir.”

“State Troopers. Maine State Troopers. It’s okay to disturb them. They really don’t mind. That’s what they signed on for. Me, too. Long time ago. I mean the money, the security, that’s all fine. But there’re other reasons, too, why we’re here. Women and children first. Am I making sense?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. Then you make every call I told you to make. It doesn’t matter if it takes you all day and all of another day and you miss everything you ever wanted to do in your life, every girl you ever wanted to love, and you don’t earn an extra penny. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. I’ll call you in ten or fifteen minutes.”

T
HE ROADBED HERE IS GRAVEL
;
ICE WATER IN THE POTHOLES
looks black. Not long ago, a dented Subaru drove by. Before, as first light was hardly in the sky, a pickup truck passed slowly, and the lone driver looked hard at them but did not stop. In the rearview mirror, the pickup moved away slowly, like someone walking on bedsprings

Vernon watched it go, thinking the man was trying to see something. Everybody is trying to see something, he thought. Then he returned his face to his hands on the steering wheel, to
a jumpy feeling which keeps passing through him and which he has been unable, for even a moment, to escape. Everybody is trying to see something, he thinks. Trying to see other people’s secrets. No matter what they say.

He sits here, chilled. The only thought he seems able to form is that he has never, no one has ever, been as sick at heart as he is now. The wine. His head, his temples into his eyebrows offer gradual waves of pain. The fear in his heart is constant. It is the day after.

Now there is sunlight glancing at angles through the trees, and he guesses the gray Sunbird is not very noticeable in the dappled light. As if it matters, he thinks. As if anything matters.

Has he done this? he wonders. Has he done what he knows he has done, or is something, someone, playing some cruel game with him?

The boy isn’t talking. Even though Vernon untied his hands from behind and retied them in front, to have him stop crying so much. Nor can he be cold, with the flannel Boy Scout sleeping bag up to his chest—but he only looks away, looks to the side window at nothing, or at his reflection, with that expression on his face. Anger. Maybe it’s anger. It’s all he does is look that way. He hasn’t looked at Vernon now in twenty minutes, at least.

Vernon
is
sorry. He admits this to himself. Given a chance he would say so to the boy. He is so sorry, so regretful, he becomes all but sick in the waves of fear and confusion which keep sweeping through him. If only the boy would tell him it’s okay. If only the boy would say it did not matter that much, then Vernon could cry to him how deeply sorry he is and take him back home. Give him the money he had promised to give him. More than he had promised. And return to his mere problem of losing his friend.

The boy stays at his distance, though. He only shows anger, or hurt. The scowl on his face—if he had any idea how unattractive it made him look this morning.

Nor is there anyone Vernon can call. If anyone cared for him, he thinks, he could call and explain how he’d gotten into a situation—in the dark of night, he might say, in a grip of passion, because of the rejection he was suffering, the wine, he would mention the wine—and maybe the person would help him or tell him what to do, He keeps thinking that Anthony would know—money, or words, something—but the thought of Anthony is as far as he can carry the idea. Calling him seems impossible. So does it seem impossible to turn to his mother. She’d hear so much. She’d be concerned in her way. She might even try to help, or say she’d try to help. But she’d turn on him then.
How could he do such a thing? Was he insane? Why, why, why was he always trying to ruin her life?
she’d cry at him.

What could he say to her? How could he tell her what he did not know himself? He could only cry back to her that it happened. His entire life had been that way. It happened. It was all he knew.
It happened. He did it.

The boy sits there. Turning his face from the steering wheel, Vernon looks at him through his own dilated eyes and reaches to turn his chin, on the thought of begging forgiveness, but the boy jerks his head away. Neither of them has had more than moments of sleep. The boy’s eyes are puffy, Vernon sees, and he cannot help thinking yet again that he just isn’t cute this morning like he was last night.

“Are you hungry?” Vernon says.

The boy gives no response.

“You want to get something to eat?” Vernon says.

“I just want you to let me go!”
the boy says to him.
“That’s what I want. I want you to let me go.”
He bawls a gasp.

Vernon, watching, tries to check himself from being affected by the boy’s hurt. “I’m sorry,” Vernon says then and almost starts crying again himself. “I’m sorry you feel bad.”

Vernon sits looking, but the boy maintains his gaze away. Vernon tries yet again. “Eric,” he says. “We’ve done what friends do. That’s all we’ve done. It’s all I wanted—was to be your friend. If I was your friend, if I knew we were friends, I could let you go. I’d just take you home. I’d give you the money, like I said. I’d buy you some breakfast.”

“I said I won’t tell!”
the boy cries.
“I said I won’t tell!”

“You don’t mean it, though,” Vernon says, in a moment. “I can tell you don’t mean it. How can I let you go if I know you don’t mean it?”

“I said I won’t tell!”

“You will, though,” Vernon says. “I can tell you will. As soon as I let you go, you’ll tell somebody. Then I’d be in trouble because they wouldn’t understand. What kind of friend is that?”

The boy sits there, whimpering at a distance.

“I can tell if someone is my friend,” Vernon says. “I can
tell.
I can tell you’re
not.
You wouldn’t be mad at me if you were. I know you wouldn’t.
So how can I let you go?”

“I’m not mad,” the boy cries. “I said I’m not mad.”

They are quiet again. Another car approaches, a newer car, and Vernon is thinking the morning hours will bring more cars along even this scraped and rutted dirt road.

The car passes.

Vernon rests his face on his hands once more on the steering wheel. He is wondering, if the boy did tell, could he be traced? If the boy told the police? Would the police bother? What if he just told them the boy befriended him, asked to go for a ride, or was hitchhiking, and said he didn’t want to go home because he wasn’t happy and everyone was mean to him? Could they
prove anything? What if he said the boy got fresh with him and so they fooled around a little? The boy put his hand on him and said he liked to play dirty. Wouldn’t it be his word against the boy’s? After all, he didn’t have a record. He really isn’t hurt, is he? Vernon thinks. In any way that will show?

Another car is coming. It turns out as it passes, though, to be another pickup truck, eyes looking down hard again to see the front seat of the parked car, and Vernon thinks again how everyone wants to see, how others could just as easily be sitting here.

“Eric,” he says. “Listen. I would be willing. I would be willing to say to you that I’m sorry. That you feel hurt. Not just because I like you and want to be your friend. But because I can tell you
do
feel hurt a little. If I said that, that I was sorry, and I really meant it—and you wouldn’t be mad at me and you swore you wouldn’t tell on me—then I could take you back. And untie you. Do you understand?”

The boy is looking alert to this; his eyes are moving.

“Do you?” Vernon says.

“You’ll say you’re sorry?” the boy says.

“Yes. Yes, I will,” Vernon says.

“You have to say it,” the boy says.

“I’m sorry,” Vernon says. “I’m sorry you feel hurt if that’s how you feel. All I wanted was to be your friend.”

“Okay,” the boy says. “Okay. I promise I won’t tell. I promise. So untie me.”

“Some people might not understand,” Vernon says. “So you can’t tell anyone.”

“Just untie me. I said I won’t tell.”

“People would make trouble. For me. For you, too, you know. If you told anyone, kids would tease you and make fun of you. Just because you had someone who was your friend and
wanted to tell you things and show things to you. Adults do things like we did all the time. All the time. So do a lot of kids, kids you know, too, only they wouldn’t ever tell you or anybody else. Because it can be a lot of fun and can make you feel really good, only adults usually don’t want you to learn anything about it, because they just want you to be quiet and do what they want you to do. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” the boy says. “Just please untie me. I said I won’t tell.”

“Eric . . . if I let you go . . . will you still be my friend? Will you promise you won’t ever tell anyone? If I could believe that, I’d take you back right now. I’ll give you the money and everything. It’s up to you.”