The True Detective (49 page)

Claire is trying, too, to be uncertain; it isn’t working.

“Is there someone we can call? To make identification? Would you want your older son to do it?”

Claire only looks at him; she isn’t ready for this conversation.

“Is he home?” the chief says. “We need to notify him, too.”

“Matt’s at school,” she says. And then she says, “You think it’s Eric?”

“Well, there aren’t any other young boys missing,” the man says.

Claire sits there, and over a distance, across the span of her life, a thought comes to her that Betty is waiting and that all things in life are blown around by the wind.

“I wouldn’t want Matt to do that,” her voice is saying.

“What’s that, Claire?”

“To identify his brother,” she says.

They are there, about her, waiting.

She is not looking at them. She is looking between them. Eric? she thinks then, as the information seems to come home to her. Is it Eric they’re talking about, out there where it’s so cold and damp?

V
ERNON IS ACROSS THE STREET
,
ALONG THE SIDEWALK
. H
E
’
S
fifty yards away. He’d like to be closer, to see better, at the same time that he is reluctant to be too close. He doesn’t know what to do or what matters.

As an initial move in the direction of things, he crosses the street between the slow-moving cars and stands on a raised
sidewalk surrounding Mister Donut. People are standing and moving everywhere, trying for a better view; the thickness of the crowd, however, close to the roped-off event, holds more or less steady. “They found that little boy,” someone says.

Vernon keeps walking, circling, to see if he can get closer. There is a tall woman draped with photography gear, keeping a camera in both hands raised above her head, like someone on television. There, too, are two men, a dozen feet apart, with television cameras mounted on their shoulders. “They found that little boy,” someone says. The eggbeater sound of a helicopter is in the air, but the clatter is there for some time before Vernon—like most others, he keeps shifting and tiptoeing and trying to see something of the heart of the matter—realizes what it is or glances to see it.

“These people will sure scatter if that thing lands,” someone says.

“You think that’s why it’s here?” someone says.

“Maybe they want to evacuate him to Boston,” someone says.

Vernon keeps shifting and trying to slip between people to move closer. Boston? he thinks. Will they take him to Boston? The idea appeals to him, as if everything would be taken out of town. And taken care of. In Boston, medical things were made okay, as they all knew.

He shifts and moves closer, raises to his toes as do others throughout the crowd. All at once then there is shouting and a surge backward, nearly pushing him from his feet in the crowd.
“Move it back now!”
a voice is shouting.
“Move it back! Move it back!”
There is an ambulance with flashing red lights, Vernon sees; the wooden barricades are being lifted around by policemen—the white vehicle with its orange stripe is more like a large pickup truck carrying a hospital container—as the ambulance backs into the parking lot, into the center of secret
knowledge to which they are all being denied access. Maybe now they will just leave him alone, Vernon is thinking. They have the boy; they’re all so busy. Duncan didn’t really know, did he? Even if he did, would he tell anyone? He wouldn’t, would he? Duncan? He cannot imagine Duncan telling anyone.

The barricades are swung nearly closed again, and the crowd surges forward this time. Cigarettes are lighted. Close by, Vernon hears someone say, “What a circus.” And he hears, “Who has the snack concession here? I’m missing lunch.” A thought is in his mind all along to speak to someone, to talk about what is happening, to ask if it is the little blond-haired boy who was missing? He’d like to talk to anyone, but doesn’t.
Is it the little blond-haired boy?
he thinks to say.

The helicopter hovers, centers almost directly above them, and people glance up into the whipped air. Vernon doesn’t. He keeps edging between others and in time comes to a place where he is all but in the second row, with a view, over and between shoulders, of the policemen and others on the other side of the barricades and rope. The ambulance lights are in view as he lifts to his toes, and its roof lights continue to flash and circle. Flash bulbs go off in the distance, too, and there are many more policemen and plainclothesmen around the lighted vehicle. There, he sees, yes, there is the same large detective whose picture was in the paper! Seeing the man makes him feel sick in his stomach for an instant, as if he is going to vomit. He doesn’t vomit, though. He thinks of going up to ask the man, as he would ask a professor after class, if the boy’s being taken away in the ambulance meant he was going to the hospital and was going to be all right. Is that why they have an ambulance? Were they taking him to Boston?

The large man moves, comes several steps his way, then stops. He is lighting a cigarette. He appears to be looking at the
mob of people, even at him. The man turns then to speak to two other men, pointing one way and another. He is a flushed and overweight man, Vernon sees. He is jabbing a finger at the pavement then, over and over, as he talks. The man terrifies him, makes him feel another wave of sickness.

Something is happening, out of view, at the rear of the ambulance; all attention, including Vernon’s own, shifts there. A rear door, which had been standing open, is closed; a man in a white hospital jacket steps past others to the driver’s door of the ambulance. The ambulance is going to leave, as policemen move away from in front of it. Added lights start flashing from the headlight area of the vehicle; the pushing back and shouting comes up again, although less wildly this time.
“Move it back, please, here it comes. Move it back now.”

Vernon sags with the crowd, sees the flashing ambulance slip by, and returns forward with the crowd once more as the barricades are closed. Turning into the street, the ambulance lets out an abbreviated howl as it heads away. In a moment it howls again, again briefly. The sound continues between Vernon’s ears, though, and seems to pose a question of the boy’s being okay or not, being rushed to the hospital or not. Why else would the siren call out like that?

He lingers still, as do most others. His soul might survive if the boy survives, is what be is thinking, ignoring altogether his lifting of the stiffened body from the trunk and placing it on the ground. His soul might survive. That seems the issue within him now.

He pushes closer through the crowd; still he cannot win a place in front. As if it is important now, sanctified with this attention, he has no wish to leave this place. There is even an urge in him to identify himself to the crowd and to the police, to have credit paid where credit is due, to explain what happened.

Going up on his toes, he looks for the big detective. Has he gone home? he wonders. With the boy recovered and taken to the hospital, is his job over? Has he quit?

I
N THE CAFETERIA
, M
ATT IS SITTING AT A BENCH BY HIMSELF
when he realizes someone is speaking to him. Looking up, he sees the three-piece suit first and then Mr. McGowan, the assistant principal. Matt had been thinking and feeling how bummed out he is, and seeing the man’s gray suit, he knows, he knows everything, even as he hardly recognizes any of the words being spoken.

He stands, lifting his legs out from under the table, and he leaves his plastic tray, as instructed, an added clue to everything, to anyone watching, and makes his way between the tables to the center aisle. Here he approximately walks with Mr. McGowan, half a step behind him—like any other student, he thinks in this moment, who doesn’t own geometry—follows the man through the overall din, on their way to the swinging doors ahead.

Mr. McGowan has said nothing more, nor does he speak again as they walk the endless hallway. It is just as well to Matt that the man doesn’t say any more, for the din of the cafeteria continues in his ears and his thoughts keep flashing here and there. He’ll be famous now, he thinks. She’ll change her tune now. What will Cormac say?

In the main office, he notices the flash of eyes on him from the women behind the counter as he turns, on faint intuition, to the left, into the principal’s office, as Mr. McGowan opens the door with its upper pane of clouded, rippled glass. The principal is getting to his feet, coming around his desk. It is Mr. Duchaine, who says, “Matthew, it’s about your brother.”

Matt looks at him, waits for what he knows is there like a curious present.

“I’ve had to do this before,” the man is saying. “It’s not easy, believe me. Your brother’s body was found a short time ago.”

Matt only looks back at the man. He doesn’t know what to say.

“Matthew, I’m so terribly sorry,” the man says. “This kind of thing shouldn’t happen.”

Matt stands there. He is squeezing his eyes, as they smart some. He is against crying, though, as if the tears would seem to be for the benefit of this small audience. “Where did they find him?” he says.

“I’m not really sure,” the man says.

They stand there. Matt doesn’t know what else to say, as his attention seems focused on keeping his eyes from blinking and releasing tears. His brother, Eric, dead, he thinks. Still it isn’t Eric who is dead; it isn’t Eric they are talking about.

“A police car is coming to take you home. It should be here any second.”

Again they stand there, until Matt says, “What happened to him?”

The one man, and the other, looks blankly at him, at his question, until the principal says, “We don’t really know, Matthew. I’m sure they’ll tell you everything.”

Matt stands there.

The three of them stand there.

“I’ll get my coat,” Matt says.

“Oh, I’ll go with you,” the assistant principal says.

“That’s okay,” Matt says.

The principal nods lightly, to agree that it’s okay.

In the hallway, Matt walks on air. He continues to keep his eyes from blinking into tears. When he blinks once, though, against his wishes, a film is drawn over his eyes, which he strains—retrieving his coat, starting back, saying “Hi” to someone in passing—to have evaporate without being sideswiped by another blink.

“They should be here any minute,” the principal says, having stepped to the hallway door.

“I’ll go wait outside,” Matt says.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” the principal says.

“Yes,” Matt says, for it is true.

Again, the man nods.

Outside, as everyone knows, it’s the winter air that makes a person’s eyes water, and this knowledge helps Matt’s efforts not to cry. It’s an effort which is taking on a certain importance, as if it is he and Eric against all odds.

Nor does he blink in the back seat of a rattling police car as two young uniformed officers in the front return him home, It’s only when the car is on his street and approaching his house that something happens. It is the house where they live, have always lived, the three of them. There it is. The police car is pulling up, and from the rear seat, looking through the side window, he sees the house there beside them. There is their third-floor apartment, their black-and-white TV, their bedroom, their life. Matt tries to hold himself against breaking, and he gasps and holds and gasps again, but his face is going to pieces then and all is lost just as he is opening the door.

The young officer in the passenger seat has turned to look at him, is saying, “You gonna be okay now?” and gets out on his side then as Matt has started crying and is unable to speak.

Beside the car, the officer takes Matt’s shoulders in his hands, tries to look at Matt as he is bawling and trying not to bawl, gasping and crying as his heart seems to be pulling apart and there is nothing to be done about it. The policeman’s arm goes all the way around his shoulders then, and grips him to his side, and he seems about to cry himself, as he says, “Oh, kid, goddamit.” And even as he is crying and gasping for air, Matt resists the strong embrace, vaguely aware of the grip and strength of his father holding him, the last man to have held him, a lifetime ago.

O
NCE
,
WHEN SHE WAS A LITTLE GIRL TOO SMALL TO KNOW
much of anything—perhaps five years old and three feet high—there was a moment when a burst of childlike love came up in her and she exclaimed, “Papa, I love you,” to her old father, only to have tears come up in his eyes, which started up tears rather of fear in her own, which occasioned his trying to let her know that his eyes had filled in the rush of happiness he felt, all of which kindled in her one of the warmest sensations in her life, a warm sensation within which she peed some in her panties in her father’s lap and he held her to him in laughter and tears and
told her she was just like a little puppy . . . which old thought she is trying to have within her now, within the hospital smells, following along a corridor, trying to settle herself against an impossible task immediately ahead.

She wishes the lieutenant were here. None of the people leading her along are familiar. Turning to the double-door entrance to an apparently large room, two of them—one a woman in a white jacket who seems to be a doctor—hold the doors open for her to enter.

As she enters, though, the woman reaches to take her arm and whispers, “Right here, Mrs. Wells.”

However confused, Claire stops with the woman and the others in the entrance to the room. The woman is turning her around in the direction from which they had just come, still holding her arm in both hands. “Up there,” the woman says.

Claire looks up. Mounted above the doorway is a television set, its screen lighted grayish white. At once, as she watches, a black-and-white image appears on the screen, like the odd beginning of a program. There is a young boy lying on a narrow surface, and there is a white sheet up to his shoulders, and it is Eric, and she looks at him and looks at him, and sees how tired and hungry he appears to be, how there are shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep, and she is thinking how he would need to—