The True Detective (15 page)

Claire is on her way down the hall. At the closed bathroom door, she hisses,
“Matt, you come out of there right now! What in the world is wrong with you?”

When she returns this time, the man says to her, “When’s the last time Eric saw his father or heard from him?”

“Oh, over eight years ago.”

“No calls or letters?”

“Nothing. Not a Christmas card or a birthday card to either of his sons. He’s—he’s missed some of the most wonderful things in life, which has been to see his sons grow up.”

“He could have changed, Mrs. Wells. He could have realized something like that and come back. And picked Eric up.”

“Not him. Not anyone who would go off and leave two wonderful little boys without even any money to buy food or clothes.”

Matt appears then, and the policeman says, “You’re Matt. Do
you
have any idea of your father’s whereabouts?”

“My father?” Matt says. “No—”

“When did you last see your brother?” the man says.

“When I left yesterday,” Matt says.

“When was that?”

“About noon, wasn’t it, Mom?”

“I understand you were with a friend. What’s his name?”

“Cormac.”

“Who Cormac?”

“Cormac Hughes. Cormac’s his first name.”

“Where does Cormac live?”

“Over here, on McDonough.”

“Where were you yesterday, until you came home?”

“I was in town.”

“By yourself?”

“I was with Cormac.”

“What did you do?”

“We just hung around, went to the movies.”

“What movie did you see? At what time?”

“Well, we saw, it was about this kid who went back in time.
The Time Machine,
or something like that.”

“At what theater?”

“The Cinema.”

“What showing?”

“Well, the one that started at about five, I guess.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Went to the Mall. Just hung around.”

“What time did you get home?”

“About nine thirty.”

Returning his pad and pen to his pocket, the man says then, “Mrs. Wells, there are a couple of things I’d like you to do. I’d like you to write down the names of anyone you knew who was at the Legion Hall when you were working. Anyone, best friends included.
Anyone.
And I’d like a recent picture of Eric.”

“I’ll have to look,” Claire says, knowing in a flash they have ordered no school pictures in some time, perhaps years.

“Fine. I don’t mean to alarm you. These are just some precautions I think we should take. I still think chances are Eric will come strolling in any time.”

“You want us to keep looking for things he might have taken with him?”

“Absolutely. I’d like to know if he stopped here after he left the Legion Hall. Check on any kind of camping gear or sleeping bags, too. Flashlights, anything like that. Matches. Even cans of food. Can opener.”

“Okay,” Claire says.

“And give me a call,” the man says, nodding, pausing before opening the door and leaving.

In the man’s sudden absence, Claire and Matt stand in something of a vacuum. Claire says, “Why didn’t you come out when I told you to?”

Matt doesn’t reply.

Going into the kitchen, Claire is asking herself if Warren really would come back.
Would
he? she wonders. There’s just no way, she tells herself as she thinks how that policeman seemed to think differently. He just thought she was a typical stubborn woman who couldn’t see reason, and maybe she was, in part, where Warren was concerned; still, he didn’t know Warren the way she did.

She comes to herself again, as if sensing and then realizing that something is wrong. Stepping back through to the living room, she says to Matt, “You know, maybe Eric has run off because of the treatment he’s been getting around here. I can’t say as I’d blame him.”

“Oh, Mom,” Matt says.

Claire goes on, against her better judgment, “Well, you have been
mean
to him,” she says. “You were mean to him yesterday!”

“My gosh, nobody’d run away over something like that.”

“How do you know? How do you know how he feels? Has anyone ever picked on you the way you pick on him? Have they?”

“Oh, Mom.”

“Just your dad I guess is the only one who’s picked on you.”

“Mom, don’t say that,” Matt says. He has started to break.

“It’s true!” she says.

“Don’t,” Matt says. “Please don’t say that.”

Claire cannot help beginning to cry, too. “What in the world is happening?” she tries to say to him.

“I don’t know,” Matt cries. He draws in air, as he bawls.
“I don’t know.”

T
HEY ARE DRIVING
,
GOING NOWHERE
. A
T A LOSS FOR WHAT
to do, Vernon feels like a criminal. He feels like he did when
he once played hooky from elementary school, in California, and went into a church and stole some candles. He felt lost and haunted in his heart, all that day and the next, in fear of being caught. The fear stayed with him even after they left California. It was with him still, in him now.

The boy is beside him as before, covered to his waist with the sleeping bag, neckties around his wrists and ankles. They are driving west on Route 4, a two-lane highway. They are just driving. Burning up gas, Vernon thinks. There are open fields, woodlots, house trailers, houses that are slightly out of balance. There is a building supplies store, closed on Sunday morning. Everything is quiet, except for the trucks going by. A few cars driving under the early angle of sunlight. Snowmobiles stand next to outbuildings. Smoke puffs from metal chimneys. The boy whimpers again,
“It hurts.”

Vernon drives. He thinks how he’d rather be in his room, studying, or on his way to the library. Going to see his friend. But he can’t just go ahead and do any of these, because he cannot think of what to do with the boy. If only he weren’t hurt, he thinks. He can’t just let him off hurt. Because—even if he did promise not to tell—someone would make him do it. The question was if they would be able to trace anything? Would they care?

How he’d like to take a bath, he thinks. It’s so awful, feeling dirty, wanting to brush your teeth. Being so tired. Everything is a problem. Using a bathroom. Eating. Buying food. How is he going to get gas? Maybe he’ll have to tie the boy to something and leave him somewhere. He could put him in the trunk, he thinks, although it would be horrible to be locked in a trunk.

Bathing him, he thinks, glancing at him. That’s what he’d like to do. Wash him in a shower or in a bathtub. Wash his hair and
ears. Wash between the legs as his mother washed him when he was a child. He could do anything he wanted, he thinks. How could he stop him?

They roll along in silence. The boy’s faint sniffling and gasping is the only sound above the sound of the car.

“I wanted to buy you a bicycle and be your friend,” Vernon says. “It’s your fault that you feel hurt. If you weren’t hurt, if you didn’t act like that, I could take you back right now.”

When the boy doesn’t reply, he says, “Do you hear me? At least you could talk.”

“You fairy!”
the boy suddenly spits at him.

Vernon keeps driving. Stung, he doesn’t say anything. As the highway opens before him, offering a passing lane, he goes on to pass an oil truck with a low belly, thinking to try to argue his case, to explain that the charge isn’t fair, but lets it go and continues to feel unliked, which feeling is familiar and has always made his jaw sink, his words disappear.

The town is Northwood, a widening in the highway, a gas station or two, a small diner, some white houses. He decides to turn away from this westward direction, maybe turn south, not to get too far away from where he might escape his dilemma, Portsmouth.

He pulls in then on the all-but-empty blacktop stretching before a country supermarket. It’s a sudden decision, and he sits here with the motor running. The boy, he knows, is alert. Vernon thinks how they would both like to be back close to the ocean where the highways are lined with drive-ins for fried clams, soft ice cream, hamburgers, or on the beach itself with waves unrolling and birds darting around. Don’t stop here, he thinks then. Everyone will notice you if you’re the only stranger.

He turns off the motor, though, and takes out the keys.

“This is a test,” he says. “I’m going to get some food in there. You just sit still here. If you do anything, then I’ll know I can’t trust you. So don’t move.”

Coming back out of the store in only a minute, he can see that the boy is partially through the door on his side, struggling like a seal. Vernon runs to him, snaps at him,
“What are you doing?”
The boy has shifted, pulled the door lock—which is in the armrest—and opened the door a foot, in order to start pawing his way out to the blacktop.

Reaching a box of doughnuts to the back seat, Vernon lifts the boy, presses him back inside, and slams the door.
“Help me! Help—,”
the boy shouts as Vernon hurries around to the driver’s side. Jumping in, he turns on the radio, but it gives off no sound; fumbling wildly for the keys, he gets a key into the ignition and quickly has both motor and radio going loudly, as he pulls around to leave.

Driving along the highway then, as before, Vernon is trembling. The radio snapped off, the boy is gasping tears but saying nothing. Vernon is surprised at how shaken he feels. Rejection, even shock, is in his eyes once more and he doesn’t know what to say.

He keeps driving.

“I can’t believe you did that,” he says at last. “I can’t believe you did that.”

He drives on, drives into the unusual morning light crossing the highway through the trees, as if into some new plane of existence. “How can I ever trust you?” he says to the boy, almost in tears himself.
“How?”

T
HEY ARE THE CITY
’
S THREE RANKING POLICE OFFICERS
. Dulac, who has done most of the talking so far, and the captain, a man named Adam Sloan, and the chief, Pat Emery. They sit at the round table in the chief’s conference room before empty styrofoam cups. The chief, a short, blocky man with the manner of a school principal, was hired out of Providence half a dozen years ago. Adam Sloan, the captain, ever harsh-throated and red-faced, a large man like Dulac, has been around long enough to be considered homegrown, and is not, like the chief, on his last tour before retirement.

Called from their homes, the chief and the captain are also dressed casually. Maybe they are in a hurry to return home, Dulac isn’t sure. Contrary to his lecture earlier to the police cadet, they are not entirely eager, and the captain has just suggested for the third time that regular procedure be followed, that the twenty-four-hour rule be honored, to allow the boy time to return home.

“You realize,” the chief says, “no one is going to hassle us if it turns out this boy
has
been picked up. The right thing’s been done so far. In fact, we’re above and beyond so far. Officially, he hasn’t even been missing a dozen hours yet.”

“He’s been missing since six forty-five last night,” Dulac says. “It’ll be eighteen hours roughly at noon.”

“Still, he shows up in school in the morning and we’ll look a little foolish with fliers all over the place. You know what I mean?”

“We can survive that,” the lieutenant says. “The thing is, we’re going—”

“Gil, I know we can survive it,” the chief says. “We have to. The next time, though, people are going to say wait a minute now.”

“We can explain ourselves,” Dulac says, “if it comes to that. We can simply say we didn’t mean to put up a false alarm, it just looked real at the time. No one’s going to make a deal of it. We did it five times, okay. Not once.”

“I’m for the procedure,” the captain offers from the other side in his raspy voice.

“Gil, you’re convinced about this?” the chief says.

“It looks like what it looks like,” Dulac says. “That’s all I’m saying. Not a thing missing. Not one thing.”

“You’d put money on it?”

“I don’t want the kid to be abducted,” Dulac says. “I’d just as soon go home and read the Sunday paper. But it
looks
like that to me. It
feels
like an abduction. The kid never made it back home and his mother is certain he didn’t have more than twenty cents in his pocket. That he didn’t have money is why he was badgering her. She’s a nice simple woman who is worried to death. In my judgment—as I see it—something is wrong. He’s been gone overnight. He’s twelve years old. He’s on his way home to watch a movie on television. It’s something he wanted to see. It’s not like he was wandering around. He was going somewhere. Someone got in the way. We
have
to figure he was picked up. Don’t we? The longer we wait, chief, as far as I’m concerned the worse we’ll look in the long run.”

“You believe that?” the chief says.

“Of course I do. I know I could be wrong. I hope I am. Jesus Christ, this city’s been getting weird lately, let’s face it.”

“Now, now,” the chief says.

“I’m still for the procedure,” the captain says.

“Isn’t the best bet the father’s got him?” the chief says.

“I thought that,” Dulac says. “Now I’m not so sure. The mother’s so certain on the point, and the guy has never so much as written a postcard. Over eight years.”

“Well, okay. Legion Hall has to be the place to start,” the chief says. “When’s the mother coming up with her list?”

“As soon as we’re done here I’m going to pick it up,” Dulac says. “And a photograph of the boy.”

The chief pauses, taps a knuckle to the side of the table. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, this is what we’ll do. Go ahead and have your fliers made up. We’ll cover just that end of town. Work up the description and so on for radio and TV. Only, we’ll ask them to hold it until the six o’clock news. The boy comes walking in by then, you can make a couple of calls and cancel out. In either case, we’ll say ‘Portsmouth Police decided to move quickly in the case of a missing boy, et cetera.’ You see what I’m saying? Adam?”

“I’ll go along, if you say so. We should call up a file of known sex offenders, to see if any of them come in on the mother’s list.”