The True Detective (24 page)

He waits, listening for the sounds which say they are slipping on coats, taking up books. One or two of them—he is not sure which—have nine o’clock classes on Mondays, which will have them leaving between fifteen to and ten minutes to the hour, for their frantic ride to school. It’s how they do it.

At last the back door opens and closes. Someone has gone outside. There is movement in the voices—from sink to doorway to kitchen table. A car motor coughs and starts. Then the door opens again—but its closing doesn’t follow.

Vernon listens carefully. At last the door is closed, and there is a stillness and he believes he is alone. He listens another moment. Opening his bedroom door, he sees no sign of anyone. He hears the car backing around then and, at the window, sees its exhaust twirl as it goes down the gravel road, past his car where it is parked off the road in something of a clearing, and out of sight. He stares at the front of his car, which looks like the chrome face of an animal in the trees. The face holds there. It makes no sound or movement, as it seems to him it could if it wanted.

Moments later, having used the bathroom, having brushed his teeth and washed his face, he is hurrying out and along the gravel road in his shirtsleeves. He hears the sound only of his own feet on the gravel, the jingle and click of his keys as he opens the car door. Inside, door slammed, he hears moaning all at once behind him.

“Eric,” he calls out. “It’s me. Are you okay?”

There seems to be an answer, a sound, but he doesn’t know what it is or how to respond to it. Starting the car, Vernon feels some relief. The boy is there, and he may be conscious again. At the same time, of course, there is pain in whatever he had tried to say.

Pulling out, Vernon slips back along the road to the cabin and pulls in next to Duncan’s car, as always. Quickly, at the back of the car, he unlocks the trunk and its lid springs into his hands as he lifts it.

The boy is squinting at him. His face is right there, and he is squinting—his eyes filled and swollen—at the same time he is gasping to cry. “Oh, let me out of here—,” he is crying.

“I am,” Vernon says. “I’m letting you out. That’s what I’m doing. Everything is going to be okay.” At the same time he feels anger and impatience with the boy for asking him to do anything.

Lifting the sleeping bag from on top of him, Vernon begins untying the necktie from the boy’s wrists, as be continues to cry, as he pushes out his legs, which are also tied at the ankles.

“You’re going to be okay now, so no more crying,” Vernon is saying as he works on the necktie at the boy’s ankles. “I’m going to fix you some breakfast and get you washed up—and then you’re going home. Do you understand? You’re going home, and you’re not going to say anything to anybody! Do you understand that?”

Vernon reaches an arm under the boy’s shoulders, to lift him out of the trunk. There is a small dark spot where his head had lain. Nor does the boy help, as if he has no strength or has gone back to sleep. Vernon looks at his face. His eyes are only partially open now and he looks but semiconscious; a gasp comes from his mouth as he is lifted and his eyelids move.

“Come on,” Vernon says, turning with him in his arms. The boy’s face reacts some to this. “Come on, no more crying,” Vernon says to him.

The boy cries, “I can’t . . . lift my legs.”

Vernon kisses his cheek. The boy makes no response to this. Walking with him, Vernon says, “Some warm food and a bath
and you’re going to be fine. I’m going to take you home then. Your legs are just cramped.”

Making his way to the cottage door, feeling with his fingers to find the doorknob, Vernon is saying, “We’re going to get everything straightened out now. You’re going to be fine, aren’t you?”

The boy doesn’t say; his eyes still do not appear to open all the way as Vernon carries him inside. “Aren’t you?” Vernon says.

The boy’s eyes roll yet again; they appear and roll away, and he doesn’t respond.

D
ULAC FEELS A LITTLE STAGE FRIGHT
. H
E IS AT THE FRONT
of Eric Wells’s homeroom, waiting for the children to settle and to be introduced by the teacher. They are merely children, he thinks, as a thought of Men Who Love Boys crosses his mind. Some are quite small, some bigger; they are the singular investments of their parents, he thinks. All things to their parents, more important than houses or jobs or cars. More important than anything. Was it true that they gave life its final meaning, as he had feared that morning?

While the teacher tells them about Eric, and explains who he is, he feels a little like a child himself, about to have to stand before the class and give a talk. When he has taken his place before them, though, and has said, “I’m here to ask you guys, you
girls, too, to be my eyes and ears,” and sees them staring back at him, his stage fright gives way to other concerns.

Smiling, afraid they might be intimidated by his bulk, his general homeliness—thinking it is a job better done by Shirley Moss—he takes in a breath, like a child doing a report before class, and gives them his heartfelt pitch. Only true urgency within will create the same without, he has told himself.

“Listen now,” he says. “Listen to me, boys and girls.
Someone knows something.
Someone had to
see
something. Or they
heard
something. No matter what has happened to Eric, or where he is. Someone saw something. If he ran away—which we don’t think he did—or if some person or persons picked him up, probably in a car, or if someone got him to go into a house.
Someone. Saw. Something.
Eric had to walk, or he had to ride. Willingly, perhaps, but maybe there was a struggle. Someone knows something—because someone saw something or heard something, and police work has to do with getting through to what that person saw and heard—”

“What if nobody did see anything?” one boy asks.

“Even if the person doesn’t know it,” Dulac says, “they did. Someone
saw
something. It’s always that way, believe me.”

“What if he just ran away?”

“We don’t believe he ran away—” Dulac says.

“Why not?” one or two children ask.

“Well,” Dulac says. “He didn’t take anything with him. No possessions. No money. No extra clothes or food. Nothing. Which indicates to us that he probably did not run away. Do you understand?”

“All that Green Beret stuff he liked,” a boy calls out. “He even wrote—once—that they go in the woods—with nothing—and eat snakes to stay alive.”

The children hoot and laugh some, as Dulac says, “Wait, though. Those guys have knives and weapons. It isn’t as if they don’t have anything, do you see?”

“Green Berets have all kinds of stuff!” another boy calls out.

“Still,” Dulac says, “that’s the second or third time now I’ve heard that Eric has a special interest in military—”

“It’s just about all he ever writes or reads about,” the teacher says. “If Eric has a story to write, it’s about a man with a parachute, jumping from a plane. When we used reference materials, he looked up the history of hand grenades—really. In art class, I know, what he’s been drawing have been soldiers shooting rifles . . .”

The teacher has them all smiling, Dulac included, and he smiles again moments later, as he finishes his drive downtown and turns into his parking space behind the police station. He pauses. If the boy was that interested in the military or in survival, he wonders, couldn’t it mean that he is off somewhere testing himself?

No, he thinks. No, he’d still have taken things with him. A flashlight. A pocketknife. A rope.

Matches!
he thinks, going into the building. Make a point to ask his mother to double-check if any matches are missing. Then he thinks, these were just children. Eric is one of them, and they are children, and aren’t they just about capable of anything? It is then, in a flash, that Dulac believes he understands why someone might steal a child, to give meaning to his life, a thought which suddenly frightens him.

Through the swinging gate, walking to the special desk, he is confronted—all at once—by the cadet on duty, by Shirley turning from a computer console a dozen feet away, by Mizener entering from the corridor, and he has to hold up his hands to sort them out.

From the cadet he learns that the boy’s brother is back in the squad room. “He has an idea where the boy might have gone,” the cadet says.

“Okay,” Dulac says, imagining he is going to hear about something crucial at last, as he turns to Shirley Moss.

“I’ve studied the newspapers for the past four days,” she says. “Like you said. The only thing I’ve found is a movie—it’s a triple X movie—called
Children in Bondage
—playing in that state-line place called the Sex Barn.”

“Children in Bondage?”

“That’s right. I called to see if it’s
still
playing, but there’s no answer.”

“We’ll check it out,” Dulac says, turning to Mizener.

“We’ve got a guy,” Mizener says. “Called in, says he offered Eric Wells a ride outside Legion Hall Saturday night.”

“You’re kidding. Say that again.”

“What I said. This guy called, says he heard the report on the radio this morning. He remembered leaving the Legion Hall on Saturday. At about six forty-five. He says he offered the Wells boy a ride! He says he knows him. Says the boy turned him down.”

“I bet,” Dulac says.

“Can you beat that?” Mizener says.

“When did he call; did it just come in? Where does he live?”

“He called at eight twelve, so he checks out on that okay—right after the news.”

“Why wasn’t I called? Eight twelve? I hadn’t even left here by eight twelve.”

“It’s okay. The cadet who came on thought it was routine or something.”

“It’s
not
okay. Our cadets are
too fucking polite!
” Dulac says.
“God-dam it!”

“I’ve checked the guy out,” Mizener says. “He’s single—has no record. I was just going to pick him up and wanted to know if you want to go.”

“I do,” Dulac says. “But I can’t. I have all these things to get rolling. No, I’m going to go. Just hold on a second. Let me see what the brother has to say—”

In the squad room, where Matthew Wells is sitting at one of the long wooden tables, Dulac says, “What’s going on? Come on in my office; I’m in a rush, I’m afraid. I’m glad you’re here, though. I was meaning to call you. I want you to make a list for me of all your adult friends. Men you and Eric would know. Coaches, Sunday school teachers, neighbors, family friends—anyone like that, okay? Anyone you’ve ever known.”

In his office, where Dulac motions to Matt to sit down, he says, “What is it? What’s cooking?”

“I thought of something,” the boy says.

“Okay, go on. What is it?”

“Well, this might sound kind of dumb, or something, but you said—you told me, you know, to try to think of things that someone would run away over, or run away
to.
You said, like kids used to run away to join the circus—”

“Right.”

“Well—I’m not so sure about Eric—but what a person would run away for . . . would be a rock band. You know, to be the sound man or something. The equipment man. Just about anybody I know would take off if they had a chance like that. I would,” he adds.

Dulac is watching him, taking in what he is saying. Okay, he says to himself. That makes sense. “Okay, Matt,” he says, deciding to use his name. “That makes sense. Have there been
any rock groups around; was anything like that around on Saturday?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What about the high school?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay. We’ll check it out. It’s a good idea. It’s a smart idea on your part. We’ll check it out and I’ll let you know. Okay? You check it out, too, okay?”

“I know why, too,” Matt says then.

“You know why about what?” Dulac says.

“Well, why you’d take off with a group like that.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s so you’d be part of something. So you’d belong to the group, instead of just watching them. You’d be on the inside.”

“On the inside of what?”

“Everything.”

“As opposed to being on the outside?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that how you feel—on the outside?”

“I guess I do.”

“You have your family. Your mother and your brother.”

“I know,” Matt says.

Dulac looks at him, notes to himself that the father’s whereabouts is unknown, has been for eight years. Then he says, “Matt, your idea is fine. We’ll check it out. You have any other ideas, be sure and let me know. And do that list for me, too.”

As the boy leaves, Dulac holds at his desk for the moment, looking for something elusive to fall into place, and goes on his way when it doesn’t, thinking what a pathetic thing that was for a kid to say, what an unfortunate way to feel, to look to a fucking rock band as a place to which to belong.

V
ERNON IS AT THE STOVE
,
STIRRING A PACKAGE OF CHICKEN
noodle soup into lightly bubbling water. The boy is across the room, lying on his side on the ratty couch. With a warm washcloth, Vernon has cleaned the head wound. Thinking now to cover him, Vernon turns the gas burner down to a blue circle and goes to his bedroom to retrieve a blanket.

The boy lies there; he gives no sign of consciousness, although it is clear, in his faint periodic gasps, that he is breathing steadily. Vernon chooses to believe he is asleep. Now that they have settled in and Vernon has had some coffee, he feels less frantic and less frightened.

“How does your head feel?” Vernon says to him.

There is no response. Vernon leans forward, to look once more at the head wound. While he washed the wound and the surrounding hair earlier, the boy’s gasping had increased and he seemed once to all but wake up—which allowed Vernon to continue to believe he was merely drifting in and out of sleep.

“I wish you’d wake up,” Vernon says now.

There is no response. Vernon looks at him. Pulling the blanket to his shoulders then, leaning down, he kisses his cheek. Then he gets to his feet.