The True Detective (50 page)

“Mrs. Wells?” the woman says. “Is that your son?”

Claire looks to the woman and feels herself nodding as if in the body of another person, and just as gently and urgently as they led her in, they are leading her back out—the doors are held open—and back along the corridor, where she is reluctant to go. Wait, she wants to cry at them. Wait, I have to take care of Eric.

People shift and move before her in a space surrounded by glass and overcast daylight, and to the person squeezing her
arm along the way now, another woman, this one in dark clothing, Claire wants to speak, wants to be courteous in response to the attention being shown her, wants to thank people for being helpful, but she wants above all to go back to be with Eric, wants to say something, get out from herself something which is turning just under the surface like a fist, trying to find a way to break through.

She is walked along, though, through the air, across the parking lot. She knows then—it comes up in her—that she must go back to where they have just been, back where she is needed, that
this
is wrong, going away, going the wrong way, being led the wrong way as it seems she has been led the wrong way all her life . . . At the same time Claire knows that Eric is not alive anymore, that she may not go back to him, that there is only this floating along, this being led along, that this is what is left to her, knowing this as they approach a dark car, as she finds some words for the fist turning in her chest, and says, “You’re supposed to die first. You’re not supposed to live longer than your children.”

To which the policewoman, squeezing her forearm, replies, “I guess that’s true,” as she keeps guiding her into the car’s passenger seat, as Claire keeps looking back, keeps feeling the pull to the building they are leaving behind.

Stop!
she wants to cry.
Stop! Stop! Don’t you understand? I have to go back! I have to be with Eric! I am his mother! I have to be with my son!

The car doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn back. The policewoman slows down at an intersection, engaging the turn signal, which keeps poking at Claire as she sits there, as the car enters the street.

V
ERNON IS SITTING IN THE PARK BY THE RIVER
,
HIS ARMS
around himself for warmth. Walking here, leaving Islington Street at last when a string of police cars pulled away, he has walked past the police station again, again on the other side of the street. The police station is two blocks from where he sits now, a distance of perhaps a hundred and fifty yards. Sitting on a cement bench, he is staring across the mouth of the river to Maine, where rail cars squeak and squeal and bright flashes of light tell of life and work at the Naval Shipyard.

A man appears, walking a dog along the wharf. Moments later, a woman passes, walking two dogs on leashes, and these dogs, like the other, make added comments on existence to Vernon which he finds troubling to accept.

His mother is on his mind. A thought to telephone her has him staring between his legs at the pavement. The thought becomes a need. He’d like to do it. He’d like to let her know that he loves her. He’d like to hear her voice, no matter what she might say. He wishes to forgive her, for in this moment she seems a child to him and he wishes her peace and freedom, too. He has always disliked her, he sees, and yet, of course, he loves her. He can’t help it.

As he walks, his infatuation for the small oceanside town comes up again. Is it possible to feel love for a side street without sidewalks? For parked cars and wooden houses? For gutters
and drains? It is love he believes he feels. Now that he can
see,
he thinks, and knows that he could make a contribution—now that he perceives the center of all things—he can see, too, that it is too late. If he has always loved her, he wonders, does it mean that she has always loved him, too? In spite of everything? It’s what he’d like to ask her if he called her. Does she love him? If she does, it means something.

There are newspapers before a side street mom-and-pop store.
POLICE STYMIED IN SEACOAST KIDNAPPING PROBE
, a headline says. Yesterday’s news. Walking on, Vernon wishes he had not seen the headline. He will read no more newspapers, he tells himself, nor listen to any more television or radio reports. He will walk and think for a time. He’ll look at what there is to see.

No one stops him. Near the river once more, as he looks over an old drawbridge as well as at the soaring new highway bridge, both of them crossing into Maine, a thought runs though his mind of how he might feel there, on the other side, in another state, but the thought expires and he continues walking.

Cars slide by, but he doesn’t look at them. Circling through town, he steps around a glossy ten-speed bicycle parked before the city library and looks on the bike’s complication of gears and wheels and cables, its seat and handlebars, a magical child-flight it suggests. He does have a soul, doesn’t he, he tells himself. He can tell now that he does, but he really has no idea if it may live on in any way on its own. These thoughts expire, too, disappear like expressions of breath as he continues walking and looking around.

A car passes—a Camaro—music for all to hear pouring from its opened windows. It is a teenage boy in the car, who should be in school and knows nothing, nothing at all, Vernon thinks. Can no one teach anyone anything at all? he wonders.

He tells the operator he is calling collect, which he is forbidden to do, and waits while the woman puts through his call. There are unusual clicks before the ringing begins. It rings four times and is not answered.

“There’s no answer, sir, would you like to try later?”

“Yes,” he answers.

He walks again. Having circled away from the police station, he realizes it is acting as a center of his movement. As he moves away, a feeling in him diminishes. As he moves closer, the feeling comes up again. The sensation is unusual but rich and magnetic in its way. He tends toward it again. A warmth spreads through him, too, as he tends toward it.

T
HE MEDICAL EXAMINATION OF THE CHILD
’
S BODY IS MORE
intriguing to R. Marc Miller, the researcher from the university, than had been the particular intrigue of the sex film. That was speculation. This is quite real. It is not a little amazing to him, spending virtually all his time in laboratories and libraries, that one in fact may lead to another. Here it is. And what a difference it makes, he cannot help thinking. As he thinks, too, notes to himself, how policemen, like the overweight detective who has also accepted reaching into a pea green surgical gown for this witnessing, are in immediate everyday contact
with psychology, sociology, and psychiatry and hardly know the names. Amazing.

How
is
the pathology of violence against women and children being verified here? he wonders. Did the film he was shown lead to this death, this loss of life, this theft of life’s simple intentions lying there on the chilled stainless steel table—warmed only, it seems, by the repeated flashes from the circling photographer’s two or three cameras. Is he here himself, this afternoon, to offer explanation, to pass judgment on these questions?

He would like to leave right now, he thinks, as the overweight detective shifts and he shifts, too, to have a view between the doctors closer to the table. He would like to leave and leave a note indicating that he doesn’t do it this way, he doesn’t generalize from individual examples of hard evidence, if they seem compelling or not. He just doesn’t do it this way. He works in tranquility is what he does. He works in reflection, with words or paper, with concepts, statistics, theories, diagrams. He doesn’t do this, doesn’t work in the flesh, under pressure of life, under pressure of death.

But he decides to stay. He decides in a blinking against an actual odor, to call up whatever strength it is he needs to stay. It’s the real world, made up of real people, he thinks, and maybe it will put hair on his chest. So he decides, shifting his feet, craning his neck for a better view, perking his ears for words spoken, ordering into operation his tried and true personal mechanism of information gathering:

PERSONNEL
.
Present at medical examination and autopsy, Portsmouth Hospital, in addition to lifeless body twelve-year-old Eric Wells, two pathologists, senior and apparently junior; two forensic lab people, state police, both male also; two attending nurses, both female; a police photographer,
also male; Lieutenant Dulac, Portsmouth detective in charge of investigation of what is now a sex murder; one hospital administrator, who is female; and myself.

CHARGE
.
Per instructions from Lt. Dulac—who, in all due respect, would seem to me to be in over his head on this case—to provide profile of person or persons who would abduct, molest, and kill twelve-year-old boy as indicated by evidence; to provide whatever psychological clues or insights suggested by the evidence of treatment of the child during his captivity, before and after death; to provide professional opinion concerning any possible relationship of previously critiqued porn film.

In view of the facts reported to me by Lt. Dulac that two separate vehicles are reported to have been observed by witnesses in area where body was dropped, one a silver-gray coupe-type vehicle, the other an off-white or beige-colored, perhaps home-painted, laundry panel truck-type vehicle, more than one person could be involved in abduction and murder, possibly even a female, given the apparent cleanliness of the child’s body as noted so far by the two examining pathologists.

EXAMINATION
.
Pathologists and lab persons go over every centimeter of the child’s body, even before the actual autopsy begins, taking specimens and photographs, measuring exact dimensions of such things as an open wound in his skull. Noted here to me by pathologist that the boy’s hair was washed after the wound had been inflicted, whereupon I remark that the cleanliness and care of the body indicate to me the hand either of a true pedophile or of a female, possibly with a mothering instinct, suggesting
the possibility of more than one individual involved. To this the taller of the two state police lab technicians remarks it was his opinion, given the advanced condition of the body and its degree of dehydration and the clean smell of the boy’s hair and skin, that the boy has been bathed and washed after he died and I am asked if such care of an already dead child might suggest any psychological details of the killer’s makeup or state of mind. To this I reply the same as I had already indicated, that a true pedophile with a sexual fixation on children or an individual, female or male, with a particular mothering instinct is indicated by these details of evidence. Also, I point out, the efforts to clean the body after death, to make it presentable, would be part of an attempt on the killer’s part to expiate guilt and to minimize in his own mind the amount of damage he would know he has caused.

I am asked to step forward also to closely examine tie burns on the boy’s wrists and possibly on his ankles, which are not actual rope burns, the taller state police lab technician indicates, but probably caused by neckties used to tie the boy, given the minuscule synthetic fibers, blue-black and blue-green in color, they are able to detect and, however microscopic, to secure as evidence.

At this point, Lt. Dulac, stepping forward also, instructs all present and has us acknowledge that nothing more than rope burns will be indicated or disclosed outside this room, as the kind and color are evidence only the actual killer would be able to describe or produce; such ploys are common devices to weed out persons making false confessions, a peculiar phenomenon, the Lt. says, of highly publicized crimes. Cannot help wondering here if Lt. Dulac may not be guilty
of playing cops and robbers a bit in a small-town way, but of course criminal detection is his business more than mine.

Further examination and specimen taking of body cavities, including mouth, ears, and nose for possible presence of semen appear inconclusive. All such details of examination and discussion appear disrespectful to the little boy who is lying naked under the eyes of so many persons. A heartbreaking scene, really, if allowed to address one in this way. Amazingly sad to me to think that this very little boy with his very little penis, and without any pubic hair at all, has been the object of a sexual abduction and an assault which have led to his death.

Toe and foot areas found to be remarkably clean, as are finger areas. Toenails and fingernails determined to have been very recently clipped and scraped. Soap smells still present between toes and between fingers. Could be a fetish of some kind, or could be an attempt to remove any traces of evidence from the body, lab technician remarks, adding that in the latter instance—as an attempt to remove evidence—would seem to indicate an individual with some awareness of forensic science.

Examination of anal track areas staggering in its revelation of rupture and dilation from forced penetration. Extensive examination of this area, as initial shock wears off. Neck, back, and side areas examined closely for bruises, which are detected in the left neck area.

Yours truly steps forward at this point to bring out that while underpants were soiled, the buttocks area was clean, except for the presence of stool in the anal track, indicating the apparent dysfunction of the sphincter muscle, and that the child suffered fear or terror sometime before death at the hands of his captor.

Advised those present at this point, too, that bathing of the body after death, as well as manicure and pedicure, could have been in themselves the sexual acts of a pedophile and no less significant sexually to such an individual than the apparent forced anal penetration; at the same time, italics mine, that they could have been attempts to erase evidence. To which, not unexpected, one state police lab technician remarks, he loved him so much he killed him. To which I reply, in his mind he may have felt he had to kill him, but it wouldn’t seem likely that the killing in itself would have been pleasurable for him or a sexual act for him. To which lab technician remarks, how do you know that? To which I have to reply, I don’t. It’s an educated guess.