The True Detective (21 page)

The boy sits there.

Getting out of the car, extending his legs, standing within the mist and odor of the ocean, the sound, a hundred yards before them, Vernon goes around to the passenger side of the car. This is all a game, he thinks. It’s all a contest of wills, of deceptions, to see who will have his way.

“Okay,” he says, opening the door, the dome light flashing on again. “Let’s go. Do exactly as I say.”

The boy turns his legs and starts to get out, to shift his weight to his feet, but he winces in sudden pain and his hand reaches to the car door. Still he pulls himself to his feet, is standing, and as if he understands the implications of his being hurt, says nothing, makes no complaint.

“Does it hurt?” Vernon says.

“No,” the boy says.

“Let’s walk then,” Vernon whispers, closing the door as the boy takes a step and is clear.

Vernon moves a few steps along and watches, through the darkened, sound-filled air, to see the boy come with him. Trying, managing some steps, the boy cannot help grimacing, gasping almost silently in pain.

“You can’t, can you?” Vernon says.

“I can—yes,” the boy says.

Vernon holds, watching the boy, who also holds in place. Something is sinking in Vernon, as he says, “Forget it; you’re just going to make it worse.”

“I can do it,” the boy says, moving over to him.

“You can’t,” Vernon says. “You can’t. Just get back in the car.”

“I just need to try!” the boy says. “That’s all.
I can do it.”

“Just get back in the car,” Vernon says. “It’s okay. You’ll feel better in a while. Just get back in the car.”

“Please,”
the boy says.
“Please let me go.”

“Get back in the car!”
Vernon says.

D
ULAC IS ON
R
OUTE
1,
FINISHING UP
. He hits his directional signal still again, this time to turn into a Cumberland Farms grocery store–gas station. He has taken Route 1, while Mizener has covered busier coastal Route 1A, which passes near the beaches. Starting with businesses close to the boy’s home, they have stopped to leave fliers where they have guessed a twelve-year-old boy might show his face—gas stations, mom-and-pop stores, pizza, doughnut, and hamburger counters, and supermarkets, almost anything that is open on a Sunday night in February.

This will be Dulac’s last stop. Earlier, while two uniformed officers and two cadets looked into and around garages, dumpsters, yards, and cellar holes, he and Mizener canvassed neighbors, in the house where the boy lived and in several houses in each direction. They came up with a total of nothing, and within the past hour Dulac has been taken with doubt himself over the amount of activity he has initiated, and over the mere reality of the case. Is someone really missing? Is something really wrong?
Momentum of a kind has kept him making his rounds. Even at six forty-five p.m., when twenty-four hours had passed since the boy was last seen and everything became altogether official, he found it difficult to acknowledge that they had a missing child case on their hands. Here—in Portsmouth. Everything seemed the same. Life, so far as he could tell, simply moved along, paid no notice.

Parking, turning off the motor and headlights, he takes a flier with him as he shifts out of the car. Ten minutes to eight. At eight o’clock another public announcement will be made, by radio. At that time, he thinks, as the news goes out and the case continues to become real it will have its impact. At eleven o’clock, if nothing comes in to change their plans in the meantime, an announcement will be made on channels 6 and 9, the two more or less local television networks. In tomorrow afternoon’s newspaper then, the announcement of a missing child will be front-page news. Again, if nothing happens in the meantime. If the boy isn’t in school in the morning, Dulac has thought, there won’t be any question. A missing child. In its way, it’s new here, and Dulac has no wish to explore the curious implications of newcomers and change. Theorizing makes for poor police work anyway, as he well knows.

The man behind the counter is elderly and frail, visibly frightened as Dulac identifies himself and begins his explanation. As he has cautioned Mizener, they need to pinpoint the attention of the people they talk to and get them to pass on the same concern to those who relieve them. Dulac uses the word
emergency.
He also says, “It’s crucial that we have your help.”

The man nods in the midst of his trembling.

“The photograph here is a problem,” Dulac says. “You’ll have to look closely at any boys this age. It’s an enlargement from a
class picture, was the best we could do in a short time. Will you look closely now?”

“Oh, yes sir,” the man says.

“Good. Now be sure anyone who replaces you is thoroughly informed.”

“Oh, I’ll do that.”

“Good. It’s not unreasonable at all that this boy, alone or with someone, might stop here. If you see him, or anyone who looks like him, you call that number.”

“Yes sir, I will do that.”

Dulac glances at the flier, Scotch-taped now to the very top of the counter. There is the blurred photograph of Eric Wells and the line above his image, which says,
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY
? “You see anything at all suspicious,” he adds, “be sure and write down any license numbers.”

“You bet. I will certainly do that.”

“Thanks very much,” Dulac says.

Returning to his car, shifting his elephantine legs into place, Dulac has the keys in the ignition and the motor running before he realizes that he has to decide what to do next. He is tired out, he knows that. And angry. Unsettled. That boy has been picked up by someone, he thinks. That’s what it is. Some sonofabitch has picked him up. Has sexually assaulted him. Perhaps killed him by now. That’s what they have to face up to, that something of the kind has come to town.

Dulac turns off the car motor. Returning the key to ON, he turns on the radio. He will sit here and listen to the news, he thinks. He will just sit here and think for a moment. Then, no, he will not be able to go home. He will have to do some time at the station first, to see if any calls come in and to be sure that things are set up for the night.

He sits staring through the windshield. Glancing to the side, he notices cars going by as usual. Things are going on as always. A blue Cherokee pulls in, parks next to the pumps; a woman in a brown vinyl jacket leaves the car to enter the store. The car is two-door, New Hampshire plates.

On the radio, he listens to a Ford commercial. At last—there it is, as the lead story:

Portsmouth police have no clues tonight concerning the whereabouts of a missing Portsmouth youth. Twelve-year-old Eric Wells of Cabot Avenue was last seen Saturday evening leaving Legion Hall on Islington Street where his mother works part-time as a cocktail waitress. He is four feet ten inches, weighs about one hundred pounds, and has brownish blond hair. When last seen, the sixth-grade student at Little Harbor Elementary School was wearing blue jeans and an orange-colored windbreaker-type jacket. Anyone with any information concerning the whereabouts of twelve-year-old Eric Wells is asked to call the Portsmouth Police Department at 421-3859.

“Cocktail waitress,” Dulac thinks, sitting there. Newswriters seem to think in such clichés, but otherwise okay. Let’s see what happens now, he thinks. As he starts the car and backs up, though, he sees that the Cherokee is gone—he hadn’t seen it leave—and the blank space next to the pumps sends a feeling of futility through him.

Backing around, pulling out, and heading downtown, he thinks how unsympathetic he could be to the person or persons who picked up the little boy, how cold-hearted. Because that’s what it has to be, he thinks. That’s what they have to face up to.

F
ROM THE LIVING ROOM
, C
LAIRE HEARS MUSIC
—
ROCK AND
roll—coming from the bedroom, where Matt has gone and closed the door. She thinks to ignore it, to force away again the suspicion that keeps coming up in her.

In the kitchen, without turning on the light, she stands at the window to look out. She wishes time would stop passing, that the world would stop its turning. It seems to be the first time she has ever looked out over housetops and trees and known that the world and all its life just kept going and would not stop, could not be stopped no matter what, on Sunday or on any other day.

Like the music down the hall behind the closed door, it went on. And on.

In the living room, she turns the television back on and sits down once more to watch—to stare at anything. She doesn’t take in what she sees, however, for her thoughts are on the telephone. Will she hear it if it rings? Should she sleep out here, spend the night out here, to be certain she will not miss it if it rings? How can Matt hear it, she thinks, with that music playing? Does he even care? If he cared, would he sit in there or lie in there listening to music like that?

Maybe she should make some more calls, she thinks. And let Matt use the phone, too. But since that policeman told her to keep their line free and to stay alert for a call from Eric, she has stayed off the phone, and kept Matt off it, too, except when
his friends have called, when she has ordered him to tell them that he cannot talk.

Going along the hallway, her thought is only to speak to Matt about anything at all that comes to mind. What she says to him, though, rapping on his door and walking in, is, “Do you have to play that so loud?”

“What?” he says, lying on his bed.

“Turn that down!” she says.

Reaching, he turns it down.

“My God, just turn it off!” she hears herself say.

“Do what?”

“I said turn it off!”

Silence follows. He has pressed a button; the music has stopped.

“Eric is missing and you’re in here listening to that?” Claire hears herself say.

Matt doesn’t say anything, nor does he look up at her.

“You’ve got to help!” she says to him.

“What’re you doing?” he says then. “You’re in there watching TV!”

“You want me to slap your face?” Claire says to him.

He looks back down.

She stands there. Then she hears herself say, against her better judgment, “Matt, there’s something I’m going to ask you. And you have to tell me the truth.”

Matt only lies there.

“Do you hear me?” she says.

“I hear you.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“The way you’re acting, I’m not sure you even care.”

“Care about what?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

He lies there.

“Do you care about your brother or not?” she says.

“You don’t think I care?” he says.

“I don’t know if you do or not.”

He lies there. He makes no move, gives no sign.

“I’m going to ask you this,” she says. “Do you know anything about this, about what is going on?”

After a moment he says, “No,”

“You don’t know anything about what’s going on? Matt, I do know some things. I’m not a fool.”

He has, she sees, begun to cry. Against the hurt she feels, she hears herself say, “Matt, you have to tell me.”

“I don’t know anything,” he says, crying.

Claire stands there; her own eyes are full. “Have you and Eric been doing anything you shouldn’t have been doing?”

“No,” he cries.

“Matt, if you have, you can tell me. I don’t care what it is.”

He only lies there.

“Well?” she says.

“There’s nothing,” he cries to her, “There’s nothing.”

She stands looking at him through her own tears, All at once she believes him and trusts him again, and she doesn’t know what to say. Time, she sees again, in the space between them, keeps happening.

T
HERE IS MOVEMENT
. S
OUND
. A
LL AT ONCE
,
SOMETHING IS
happening. They are at McDonald’s. They are under the canopy, at the pick-up window. Vernon is reaching a five-dollar bill to the stainless steel window corning toward him, opening like doors to a bus; there is a McDonald’s boy in a cap leaning forward, and a sound is screaming into him—“
Help me! I’m being kidnapped! I’m tied up! Help me!”

He jams the gas pedal. He loses the five-dollar bill. The boy is trying, he sees, to open the door. The car is swerving, skidding, roaring all at once against its turned wheels. He will not know for an instant that he is simultaneously pressing brake and gas pedals in his frantic attempt to gain control of the car. The car hits and jumps a McDonald’s side curb and slams as it slows down—as he sees that the boy is halfway, two-thirds out of the door, as he knows he has heard a squeal, a cry, a thunk.

Reaching, grabbing waist, pants belt with one hand, he pulls the boy back—as the car is rolling again—grips jacket and shirt to pull him in, hears another cry and sees
blood blood blood,
wails himself as he reaches past the boy to slam the door, wails and cries as he presses the accelerator again, as the car skids on over soggy grass, down over another curb, righting itself to a degree as it bounces onto the paved shoulder and swerves into the street lane, into the flow of traffic, and on, as he presses the gas.

He cries out,
“My God!”
And,
“My God!”

He has to roll up his window but doesn’t know how to use his hands.

He has to shift gears, but everything seems impossible. The car is laboring madly in first gear and everything seems impossible, but then he coordinates his arms and legs enough to shift the handle to neutral, then to third . . .

He rolls up his window.

He is afraid to look. He drives on, looking only ahead. He is afraid to look. He knows the boy is lying over in the seat. He knows he is bleeding. He knows the boy is bleeding. Everything is wrong. Everything is wrong. He can only cry, bawl out tears, and cry out then,
“How could you do that? How—oh God!”