The True Detective (19 page)

She can’t believe anything. She won’t, she decides. She will not let herself accept that something is wrong. She starts the burner under the potatoes, turns the chicken where it is draining. Faith. In itself, she thinks, faith may help them. Help Eric. It has to be real, though. She has to believe. If she can believe, her belief may be the force which will do the job, will save Eric, whom she knows by now, at this odd Sunday hour, to be the center of her everyday life, the mere reason she lives. She knows this as she unwraps a stick of Blue Bonnet margarine. Her faith alone, and the chicken, may be the force which will bring him running up the stairs any minute, running into the kitchen hardly out of his jacket, which will wake her from this dream as the screen door, which he never closes quietly, at last, finally slams, because no one else ever takes those steps so quickly.

The margarine is melting. Believe it! she is saying to herself. Do your best. Do better than that. Believe.

Dinner’s under way,
she’ll say.
But it’ll be a few minutes yet. Watch TV for a while. Do you have homework to do?

She adds some oil, guides the melting margarine around with a fork. Where
is
Matt? Why
did
he take off like that? No, she thinks. Don’t let yourself get carried away. Matt’s a good boy. He’s a fine boy. He’ll be here any minute. They’ll both be here. We’ll eat dinner. In the servings of fried chicken, of potatoes and gravy, this nightmare will slide away, disappear into clouds of memory as a lesson against taking their love for granted.

She’ll never work nights or evenings again, she thinks. She tells herself this as she adds tablespoons of flour to a mixing bowl, as she reaches for salt and pepper.

Matt, come home and help me, she says to herself then.

She turns the chicken. It is browning on one side. There
is
a call in its aroma, she realizes. There
is
something there; it is almost comforting.

On a sudden urge, she opens the kitchen window three or four inches. Let it go out, she thinks, even as the air pouring in is chilly. She raises the window another several inches, imagines the smell of frying chicken traveling throughout the neighborhood, between houses, behind garages.

She sets the table. Something stops her, though. An instant of hesitation. Two places or three? Three, of course, she tells herself. She directs the other thought to the back of her mind. She will never do otherwise, she is telling herself, as she places the three plates and three silverware settings on the table, as she moves around and the chilly outdoors air is passing over her legs, as she tries to ignore her moment of hesitation, her moment of not believing.

M
ATT HAS AN IDEA
. A
S HE PEDALS DOWN
M
ILLER
A
VENUE
, coasting, sailing along for stretches at a time, a decisive feeling, a heroic feeling is rushing through him, through his fear, telling him where Eric is, telling him that he is going to discover him and set him free from a fallen beam, a jammed door, a collapsed floor that has him trapped. It’s an old barn, as they knew it the previous summer, a semi-abandoned one-story outbuilding out along Little Neck Road, and pedaling hard now over the pavement, Matt finds himself increasingly filled with a sense of mission.

They kept a stack of skin magazines in the outbuilding and it was where they went, throughout the summer, to look at the photographs and pictorials, to joke, to masturbate. They talked of the girls they would give anything to have join them there, although the closest they ever came to launching any of their schemes and dreams was Cormac calling across a street once to two girls—did they want to go to an old horse barn?—the several of them laughing wildly at the uninformed expressions on the girls’ faces.

Matt pedals on. Eric could really be here, he thinks. It’s a perfect place to hide out. It’s where he’d go, if he wanted to hide out. But something will have gone wrong. Matt will spot him through a pane of dark glass. He’ll signal him. Eric will signal back.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
Using a log, using his strength, he will hoist and shift and pull; he’ll set his brother free. Eric will be happy, as he leads him home. Maybe he’ll ride him on the bike’s handlebars. He can hear his mother exclaiming already,
Then here they were, coming down the street, both of them on that old bicycle, Matthew pedaling and Eric . . .
Vanessa will be there on the sidewalk. That big policeman will be there.
No big deal,
Matt will say.
I had an idea he’d be there.

The outbuilding, though, when Matt arrives, shows no sign of having been disturbed. Leaning the bike against the front, lifting up the sliding door, as they always did, to slip in under, Matt can tell that no one has been here in some time. Within the old smell and the cool air inside, where there is only partial light from two filthy side windows, his heroic feeling disappears.

There is the familiar musty smell and he wonders if the magazines are still there. He shouldn’t even look, he knows, yet he wonders if they are there.

“Anybody here?” he says.

It is a smell of earth, and perhaps of oil. The hiding place for the magazines was down between two upside-down oil drums. He thinks of Vanessa, imagines her at home or out in the air with her friend, Barbara.

His arm is trembling some as he reaches between the oil drums to where they kept the magazines. They always joked about rats being in there, but it is not in fear of rats that he is trembling.

He is taken with the feelings of last summer.

Gripping the three-inch stack in his hand, he has to turn them side-ways to extract them from between the barrels. He places the stack on one of the barrels; dim light from a window is at his side. The magazines are familiar. Some things you never forget, he thinks, and from the covers he knows the contents of each. He is taken. The magazines themselves give off another familiar smell. Then he sees something he had not noticed before. On the cover of a magazine called
Swedish Exotica,
one of two naked women is black. He had not fixed on her before, but he does so now. Her breasts look almost streaked, as if dusted with beige powder; her nipples stick out like black fingertips. Even his hair feels aroused. He is taken.

T
HEY SEE THE BUILDING AND SLOW DOWN
. A
RED BICYCLE IS
leaning there, against the front, and they don’t stop at first.
Almost soundlessly they roll by, to take a look at the unexpected object. From behind the wheel, Dulac has taken up the mike to radio the station. Mizener is looking back over his shoulder.

Dulac gets Shirley Moss on the line and says, “We missed the older boy at the house. We’re on Little Neck Road now, at the mother’s suggestion. We’ve spotted a bicycle. Looks like a regular ten-speed boy’s bicycle. Red. Not new. Call the mother, Shirley, will you, and get right back to us. See if they own a bike. Over.”

Coasting yet, passed by a car, Dulac checks his mirrors to be sure they are out of view of the old building. He avoids raising the car’s brake lights until he sees that dips and curves in the road are in the way; then he turns around in silence in the two-lane road. They start rolling back slowly, waiting for the reply.

There is no sign of life about the building as it returns to view. The red bike remains in place. A pickup passes the other way. “Several kids involved in something would make more sense,” Dulac says.

“Like what?” Mizener says.

“A game. Something that got out of hand. Who knows? The brother could be locked into not letting it out no matter what.”

“Still wouldn’t explain his lie,” Mizener says.

“Oh, I think it could,” Dulac says, irritated this time with Mizener being disagreeable.

As they pass the building, looking it over, Shirley Moss is back on the radio telling them that the older brother apparently has the missing brother’s bike; the mother went down to the garage to check and the bike isn’t there; she feels certain it was there when she looked last night.

“We’re going to pick him up then,” Dulac says. “This is probably him. You know our location; we need assistance, we’ll let you know.”

Off the air, forty yards past the building, Dulac coasts across lanes to the left shoulder to park. He turns off the car’s motor and looks around through the rear window at the building. “Let’s be careful,” he says. “World gets stranger every day.” As Mizener is removing, checking, and replacing his .38 police special in his shoulder holster, Dulac adds, against his better judgment, “Be careful with that, too. These are only kids.”

Opening the door on his side, Dulac says, “You take the window on the side; I’ll take the door there.”

Leaving the car, not slamming the doors, removing their pistols and directing them skyward, they step back along the shoulder and approach the building. “Check the back,” Dulac whispers. “See if there’s a door there and let me know.”

Mizener slips away then to step through weeds to the side and rear of the building. Dulac takes a position next to the large door in front, positioning his ear to pick up any sounds from within. He hears nothing. He looks over the bike, sees how battered and rusted it is.

Coming around the corner of the building, Mizener, pistol still in hand, has a smirk on his face. He whispers, “You won’t believe it; this kid’s in there jerking off.”

“He’s what?”

“Is there a back door?”

“I didn’t even look. Doesn’t look like it.”

“Did he see you?”

“I don’t know. I might have shadowed the window.”

“Well, go back, and keep an eye on the rear, too. I’m going to call him out.”

Dulac waits several seconds, as Mizener is gone.
Jerking off?
he thinks. Is he serious?

Firmly, to project his voice into the building, he says, “You. Inside. This is the police. Stop whatever you’re doing and come out. Right now! Matt, do you hear me?”

When there is no reply, Dulac says, “Is that you, Matt? Tell me that you hear me. Right now!”

“I hear you,” a voice says from within.

“Come out right now. Keep your hands up and in full view.”

Still nothing happens. Dulac shouts.
“Now! Come out of there!”

“I have to push this door,” the voice says.

“Okay, push it! And come out!”

The door lifts outward and there is the boy, crouching to squeeze through, straightening as he is free of the heavy door and looking slighter and younger than Dulac remembers him looking. There, too, is Mizener reappearing as Dulac, returning his pistol to its holster on his hip, is saying to the boy, “Turn around, hands against the building, legs apart.”

Matt complies, although he says, almost cries, “What’s the matter?”

Dulac frisks him. “Straighten up now,” he says. “Put your hands behind your back. Here, turn around.”

Dulac handcuffs him, and turning him, almost spinning him back around, he says, “Matt, I’m going to read you your rights now.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Matt says, with little strength in his voice.

“Matt, just listen to me,” Dulac says. “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right . . .”

“I didn’t do anything,” Matt says, and he is beginning to cry.

“You’re in there jacking off and your little brother’s missing?” Mizener says. “Cut out the shit.”

“Do you know where Eric is?” Dulac says. “Matt, do you know where your brother is?”

“No,”
Matt says. “I don’t know where he is.”

“Matt, I’ll ask you again. Do you have any idea at all where your brother is?”

“I don’t,”
Matt cries.
“I said I don’t. I don’t.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Yesterday,” Matt says. “Just like I said.”

“How do you explain being here, doing this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why’re you out here jerking off in this building?” Mizener says. “Answer the question!”

“I don’t know. I just was. I just was, that’s all.”

“Anybody else in there?” Mizener says.

“No.”

“Was your brother in there?”

“No. You mean now?”

“Now—or yesterday? Was your brother in there?”

“No,” Matt says.

“Would you be willing to take a lie-detector test?” Dulac says.

“Yes,”
Matt says. “Yes. I haven’t done anything.”

“Matt, we’re going to take you back downtown, to ask you some more questions. I just want you to tell me again if you know anything at all about the whereabouts of your brother.”

“I don’t.”

“If you know anything, Matt, you better tell me right now.”

“I don’t,” Matt says. “I really don’t know anything. I don’t.”

“Sergeant Mizener saw you in there masturbating. Why were you doing that?”

“I don’t know. I just felt like it. There’re some magazines in there, that’s all.”

“Where were you last night, Matt, from six to nine thirty P.M.?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? I guess you don’t. Is anyone inside this building, Matt?”

“No.”

“Okay. Neil, let’s call somebody to keep an eye on this place. On the bike, too, and the door. We’ll have to call the state police lab people. Come on, let’s go; this way, Matt.”

“I was just with this girl, that’s why I lied about last night,” Matt says.

“We’ll talk about it downtown, Matt. Just come on, so I can get somebody out here. Neil, look through the windows while I go call. Don’t touch anything. Just try to be sure there’s no one else in there. You can prop that big door open to throw some light in there, but don’t walk in; leave it all as clean as possible.”

“There’s nothing in there,” Matt says.

“And you said you were with your friend Cormac last night,” Dulac says.

“That’s the only lie I told,” Matt says. “It was because I was with this girl.”

At the car, guiding Matt with his handcuffs into the rear seat, Dulac radios in, calling for a patrol car to come out and stand watch on the bike and the outbuilding. Then he radios the New Hampshire State Police in Concord, telling them he needs a lab crew to check out an old wooden building in the missing child case on which they have already received a bulletin.