The True Detective (39 page)

“ ‘Suspect advises he spends fourteen hours a day working out, or walking the streets with his knapsack full of rocks and carrying a sledgehammer to build up his wrist strength.

“ ‘Contacted former live-in companion of suspect now living in Newington. She advised she has known suspect approximately two years and lived with him four months, with her son by a previous marriage, until last Thanksgiving when she moved out after she learned suspect was attempting to have sexual relationship with her son, who was eight at the time. She believes suspect capable of violence.’ ”

“Neil, he sounds weird, this guy does, but is he a suspect?”

“Well listen—”

“Neil, I don’t want to listen! Is he a suspect?”

“Well, come on, and take a look.”

Going along to the one-way window of the interrogation room, where another plainclothesman and a uniformed officer are watching, Dulac says, “Is this a lineup?”

“That’s coming,” Mizener says. “Where’s the witness?”

“He’ll be here any second.”

The men at the door titter, and shift aside as Mizener and Dulac approach. Mizener behind his shoulder, Dulac looks in.
There is the man standing naked in the corner of the small white room. A pile of clothing is on the old wooden table there. The man’s hair is dark and he is balding slightly. “He won’t leave anything on,” Mizener says behind him.

Dulac turns back. “Neil,” he says. “Step over here, will you.”

Three or four steps away, Dulac turns to face him. “Neil, that man is thirty-five or forty years old,” he says. “My God, don’t you understand that we have a suspect? What are you doing?”

“He looks like a suspect to me, Lieutenant.”

“He’s a mental defective. That’s what he looks like. Get him out of here! Get him dressed and get him out of here! What in the hell are you doing?”

“Lieutenant, look—”

“Don’t lieutenant me; don’t say another word. Do as I say or I’m putting you on report.”

Reentering his office, squeezing his temples in one hand, Dulac swings around into his chair and lights another cigarette. He sits, pulling his forehead in his fingers until he realizes the telephone is lying on its side. “Jesus Christ,” he says, and reaches to take it up.

He exhales. “Doctor,” he says. “I have only a minute now, so you have to make this quick.”

“Okay, fine, it’s an idea I have,” the doctor says. “A scheme. Use the truth. In a direct appeal. Broadcast a direct appeal, in which you say: To the person who picked up so-and-so, this twelve-year-old boy.”

“Eric Wells,” Dulac says.

“Right. Say: We know you are not happy in the situation you have gotten yourself into. We know you would like to return this young boy to his family before anything worse happens and so you may receive treatment so you will not commit this kind of
act again. We ask you to please put an end to the horrors you are causing yourself as well as your captive, and telephone the following number. Et cetera.”

“Doctor,” Dulac says. “I don’t think we could make a public offer of treatment. That’s something that has to be decided by a court. Besides, we don’t even know if the boy is still alive.”

“Well, to understand is to sympathize,” the doctor says.

“Fine, but my own sympathies right now are elsewhere,” Dulac says.

“To succeed, though, an appeal needs to be nonthreatening.”

“Fine. I understand that. It also has to be legal. I declare this guy is in need of treatment, it implies he’s mentally deficient. The worst lawyer in the world would get him an acquittal in half an hour. We are instructed, Doctor, policemen are, to not even say something like there’s a ‘weird’ person out there, or an ‘animal,’ because that kind of remark implies a perception of mental deficiency. Besides, if I offered this guy treatment, I’d be run out of town the next day. As I should be. This is not theory, Doctor, and it’s not alleged. The truth is, this guy could pick up another little kid.”

“Well, lieutenant, if your suspect is a true pedophile, as I suspect he is, he would have acted out of love to begin with. Desperate love, certainly, but love of a kind nonetheless. You offer understanding of that in some direct or subtle way—I think direct would be most effective—you might get him to come in. And it must come from you. As the authority figure, with your picture in the paper, the person in charge. He’ll know you by now, you see. Don’t turn it over to a policewoman or to the boy’s mother because you think they’ll be less threatening. Make an expression of concern for this young man.”

“Doctor, listen, I’ll think about it. Thanks very much for your help.”

“This person—listen, my friend—this person is
not
happy with what he has gotten himself into. Unless he has done this before, and gotten away with it, he is probably terribly confused right now.”

“Doctor, I don’t think anyone is happy when they commit terrible crimes.”

“Well, this is an epidemic, isn’t it? It’s everywhere, isn’t it? You must try to understand that.”

“I’ve been trying.”

“It’s a new pathology, you know.”

“It is?”

“Absolutely. It isn’t surprising to me that this is happening, Children as sexual objects have been literally advertised for years now. This is not surprising. Not in a society where the moral climate has been exhausted.”

“A new pathology?”

“That is my belief.”

“Okay, Doctor, thanks again. I’ll think about making an appeal, like you said.”

“Another thing, you see, is that the pedophile is quite convinced he’s doing the child a favor by giving him or her the care and affection he or she doesn’t receive at home. We are no longer a child-oriented society. Not at all. Children are considered a nuisance, an expense. A man here, convicted of molesting children, said he picked out his victims by looking over a schoolyard to see which children looked lonely or unhappy, not well cared for, inadequate clothing and so on. Such children, he tell us, make up a significant percentage. What the pedophile does is capitalize on that vulnerability—that’s why this pathology is new. Television advertises general approval, parents are busy elsewhere; moral authority is being subverted—”

“Excuse me, Doctor,” Dulac says, “I don’t mean to be rude—don’t you ever stop talking? I have other things to do.”

“On this subject, no, I don’t stop talking,” the doctor says. “These phenomena need—”

“Doctor, I have to go. Call back sometime.”

“You put it that way, okay, Lieutenant.”

“Thanks, Doctor. I have your name.” Dulac replaces the receiver, gently. Following, he places his arms on the table and his head on his arms. He doesn’t close his eyes, however, and in a moment lifts his brow to read the clock.

Shirley. She is entering the door, under the clock, and he forgets the time, for the moment. She glances at him; he glances at her. Relief—a wave—passes over him. In a moment, he knows, as she hangs up her coat, she will join him at this first long table set up here for the investigation. Now two of the three phones are in use—his extension makes a fourth—and getting up and stepping over to the coffee maker, he looks back to see Shirley returning to the table he just left. Asking her with a glance and a pointed finger if she wants coffee, receiving a nod, he draws two cups and carries them back, one black, one with cream and sugar.

“Have you eaten yet?” she says, as he sits down.

“Not yet,” he says. “I thought you were bringing me something.”

“Don’t be fresh,” she says.

Confused by her remark, he lets it go. Fresh? “Did you contact the brother?” he says. “It slipped my mind; things have been hectic.”

“It’s not that busy though, is it?”

“No, it’s not. I expected more, to tell you the truth.”

“I talked to Claire Wells,” she says, “but I didn’t want to tell her we thought the boy, the brother, was being overlooked, so I
said you wanted to talk to him about some things. I said we’d call back, that it wasn’t important. What’s going on here?”

“Nothing real hot has come in. I just talked to this professor guy, from Boston, who said he thought a nonthreatening pitch, from me, as the boss, might get the guy to turn himself in. I’m just thinking about it and it sounds like a not-too-bad idea; I’m thinking of doing it. Have it on the eleven o’clock news. Problem is, I’d have to drive up to Portland and back, and it would take two and a half hours altogether.”

“And you don’t think we can manage things if you’re not here?”

“Sort of. No, the truth is, I want to be here.”

“Anything comes in, I can call you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I mean I don’t know about what you’re saying, but we can look after things here, I do know that. You can take the boy with you, the brother, stop and get something to eat.”

“This doctor suggested what I should do is dangle some kind of therapy, in exchange for the guy turning himself in. I told him we couldn’t do that.”

“The suspect?”

“Right, the suspect. What he said, though, what did make sense, was that as the officer in charge I would be known to this guy by now. Assuming he’s still around. That I would be the person he’s afraid of. That if I offered something like a little understanding—as opposed, say, to an appeal by the mother—that it could possibly do the trick. Just possibly.”

“Maybe you should go ahead and do it,” Shirley says.

“You think so? Nothing else seems to be working. There are so many opinions flying around you get a little shell-shocked.”

“I’ll help you set things up. I’ll call Matt Wells, too. Take him with you. Stop thinking everything’s going to collapse without
you. Jesus, get a pizza or something. Anything comes in, I’ll have it to you immediately.”

“You think I should?”

“I do. I’m not so certain Eric Wells is still with us, to be saved, but if you think there’s a chance, you should do it. What else can you do?”

“Call him,” Dulac says. “Call the brother. Tell him I’ll pick him up in ten minutes. I’m going to call Portland.”

“Way to go, Gil,” she says, taking up the telephone on the table. “Use your office phone,” she adds.

Who the hell’s in charge here anyway? he says to himself, going on to use his office phone.

S
IX O
’
CLOCK
. T
HEY ARE ALWAYS LATE
,
AND IT IS NO DIFFERENT
this evening. In the Union, a five-story building built into a hillside as the crossroads of the campus—doors and ramps coming and going everywhere—Duncan McIntyre settles into a vinyl couch in a TV lounge to wait for the arrival of Leon and Wayne, to walk out to Leon’s car, parked on a side street, for the ride back to the cottage. This is assuming they will triumph over the urge to detour to one or another of the underground or aboveground town pubs, a tug-of-war they face every evening, in fact or in jest, depending on money, papers or exams,
lingering hangovers, Celtics or Bruins games on TV, or the force of persuasion, of one or another of them, for or against the magnetic pull.

Although a large color television set, mounted on the wall, is playing across the room, Duncan makes his choice of a couch because of the presence of an apparently discarded newspaper, the
Globe,
he would hope, its sports section remaining more or less intact. Otherwise, even as it may be television news time, on the network channels, he would sit and watch one of the
Star Trek
or
All in the Family
reruns playing forevermore on whichever cable channel the television seemed always tuned to—to the apparent satisfaction of the scattering of students, mainly boys, who sit or lie, stare or snore, from the collection of other vinyl armchairs and couches.

The initial disappointment for Duncan, as he places his books down and takes up the paper, is that it is local rather than the
Globe.
The second disappointment is that it is the front section, which as he knows does not contain sports. So it is, by happenstance, that Duncan looks at the newspaper’s front page, and so it is that an unexpected process begins to occur within him.

Two-thirds or more of the top half of the front page is given not to a national or international news event but to the case of a local missing twelve-year-old boy and the suspect being sought in the case by the Portsmouth police. There is a picture of the boy, a photograph so blurred it looks like something from a spy movie, and a black-and-white composite of the suspect, a young man who looks threatening and ominous, missing only, it seems, some kind of tattoo or scar, and a picture of a large man standing beside a computer console next to two other men, captioned, “Police Lt. Gilbert Dulac, left, in charge of the investigation of missing Eric Wells, believes a computer may help return the Portsmouth boy home unharmed.”

The photos and composite sketch mean little to Duncan in themselves, nor does the text of the article, except that it is something to read, more or less casually, as he checks his watch again to see how late Wayne and Leon are running tonight. Nor is it the case itself which is addressing his mind—such a case seems almost generic in newspaper offerings—rather that it is taking place in nearby Portsmouth, the neat little city over on the water which it seemed he like other students was always planning to visit.

Duncan smiles then, even snickers lightly, as a couple of details in the article—a silver-gray car, a man in his early twenties with a reddish complexion—make it sound, of all people, like their strange and needy housemate, Vernon, who has been following the weirdest schedule lately. Vernon, he thinks. Dear God, of course, he had promised to hear him out tonight, to help him with his problem.

With new curiosity and a tingling about his ears, however, Duncan finds himself looking hard at the composite, to see if there is any resemblance. There seems little. The hair looks black, of course, and the face appears too hard, too evil, to belong to anyone like Vernon, Glancing up then, seeing Leon and Wayne headed his way, Duncan misfolds the newspaper, lays it back where he had found it, and gets to his feet. Taking up his books, turning to join in procession with the other two, knowing he will make no mention here of the curious coincidence concerning the already much-maligned fourth in their household quartet, he joins, too, in a ragged ongoing exchange having to do with someone’s charge, somewhere, that amnesty amounted to repudiation of the charges against those who had escaped to Canada. . . . He will always remember, though, and will relate any number of times, the unsettling presence, a silent blinking light, which seemed to be signaling him even then from a remote corner of his mind.