The True Detective

by Theodore Weesner

  A moment passes. The boy continues crying.

  “I said I would,” the boy cries then. “I wouldn’t promise if I wouldn’t do it. Please untie me. It hurts. Please.”

  Vernon turns to him. “You swear, on your honor?” he says. “You swear you won’t tell anyone? And you’ll be my friend, too?”

  “I swear,” the boys cries. “I swear I’ll do it. I’ll be your friend.”

  “You know the kids at school will make fun of you, they’ll tease you all the time if you ever tell anyone. It’s because they’re too young to understand.”

  “I know,” the boy cries. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise I won’t.”

  Vernon looks at him. Tears are coming once more into his own eyes. Reaching, pulling the sleeping bag away, he stuffs it over the back of the seat. “Okay,” he says. “I’m going to do it. I am. It’s up to you.”

  Untying the boy’s ankles first, he says. “You can’t ever forget what it is to make a promise. You can’t ever go back on a promise.”

  Eyes filled, tears on his cheeks, his nose running, he is untying the boy’s wrists by feel. “I’m letting you go because I’m your friend . . . because all I wanted was to be with you as your friend. That was all I wanted.”

  The boy lifts his hands. Vernon, sniffling still, sits back as the boy starts working to unlock the door. “No, no,” Vernon says to him. “It’s too far to walk. I’m going to drive you back.”

  “I’ll walk,” the boy is saying, pushing open the door. “I’ll walk. It doesn’t matter if it’s far.” He slides from the car, saying yet again. “I’ll walk. I don’t care.”

  Vernon lets him go. He presses his forehead to his hands once more on the steering wheel as he hears the boy slip and fall, it seems, in the accumulated crust of snow on the shoulder, as he feels cold air enter the car. He hears nothing then, nor does he see anything as he looks to the front of the car.

  The boy comes up beside the fender. It looks like he is losing his footing, trying to get around to the road. His hands free of the car, he is moving then, but it is clear at once, as he struggles to walk, that he is having difficulty moving his legs.

  Vernon closes his eyes, lowers his face to his hands. He is hurt. It’s so clear that he’s hurt. And he’s going the wrong way. He’s walking the wrong way. Everything is wrong. He doesn’t know where he is. Everything is wrong. “Oh, God,” Vernon cries into his hands.

  The boy is trying to hurry, Vernon sees, as he looks up once more and watches him. He’s hurt and he’s trying to hurry away.

  Through his tears, Vernon sees the boy moving along the dirt road. He doesn’t know where he’s going. Neither of them know where they are going. He sees the boy reach a hand to his seat in pain. He sees the boy hold himself like a child struggling to make his way to a bathroom. He goes on, though, stiff-legged, and it is so clear that he is hurt.

  Vernon stares down at the dials of his car for a moment. Then he turns the key.

  As the motor starts, he sees the boy glance over his shoulder. He sees the boy try to quicken his step, but there is no way for him to escape.

  Vernon presses the accelerator. The car’s wheels spit back some ice and gravel as they depart the shoulder, as they shift to the rutted roadbed.

  CHAPTER 3

  CLAIRE IS SEARCHING. SHE UNDERSTANDS THE IMPLICATION of Eric’s things not being there. Let things not be here, she is thinking. She is in their bedroom, on a chair at the closet door, when she hears the knock from below. Have ten minutes passed? Twenty? Where is Matt; why isn’t he going down? “Matt,” she calls. When there is no reply, she gets down from the chair and steps to the bedroom door. “That’s the policeman. Can’t you go let him in?” A spot in her mind is that she hasn’t found anything missing; but then she hasn’t had a chance to really look.

  The knock sounds again, the loose-hanging screen door slamming on each rap. “Where are you, Matt?” she calls, going into the hall, knowing from the closed bathroom door that he is there, hearing everything.

  Down the steep narrow stairway to the landing, she opens the door to an enormous man—he fills the doorway, in height and width—who is holding in view a police badge on a piece of leather. She says something, as does he, and then she is leading the way back upstairs, thinking how unwashed she looks, how worn and weary is their attic apartment, afraid all at once that the police won’t really help them because they are poor.

  Then they are in the living room. The man is glancing around; she watches him. He seems to fill the room, more like an elephant than a horse brought up the stairs, yet in his large wool shirt he looks ordinary. “I haven’t been able to find anything missing,” she is saying, trembling with odd fear.

  “Nothing, really?” he says, still looking around, taking things in. “Where’s your older son?” he adds, glancing down at her.

  “He’s in the bathroom; he’ll be right here.”

  The man nods. He seems so casual, as he keeps looking at things, which is bothering her by now. “You think he’s wearing what he had on when you last saw him?” he says.

  “Yes,” Claire says. “I would think so.”

  “No sign he stopped here, put on another jacket or something?”

  “No,” she says. “I haven’t found anything missing—not yet.”

  “Different shoes, something like that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You called his friends?”

  “I’ve called everyone I could think of.”

  “What did his teacher have to say?”

  “She hasn’t seen him. Not since he was in school on Friday.”

  “Did you look in your own car, see if he was asleep there?”

  “Well, we don’t have a car.”

  “Okay. You say his feelings were hurt over some money?”

  “It was fifty cents.”

  “His feelings were hurt badly?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How much money could he have had with him?”

  “Maybe twenty cents. We don’t have money.”

  “Would he have a bank, a piggy bank, any money he’d keep at home?”

  “Gosh, I don’t think so. Not that I know of.”

  “His brother might know, but you don’t think so?”

  “No, I really don’t think he could have any money.”

  “You keep money around, cookie jars, change, things like that?”

  “No.”

  “None at all?”

  “Well, no. We just don’t have money.”

  “Money for the paper boy?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Well, I’ll need to ask your older son some questions, Mrs. Wells.”

  “Let me call him,” Claire says. Walking out and along the hallway, she whispers to the door, “Matt, will you come out of there! This man needs to talk to you!”

  As she returns to the living room, the oversized policeman says, “Tell me what happened last night, Mrs. Wells. Start with when you last saw Eric, up to when you called the police.”

  Claire describes looking over to see Eric standing at the wall by the pool game, and looking over again to see the empty space. They fix the time as six forty-five to seven p.m. She tries, too, to recall anyone else Eric knew, men or boys, being or not being there when she looked.

  She can recall no one offhand.

  “There’s a bar there? Most of the people there are adults?”

  “Well, there’s not a bar in the pool table area, but it’s right through an open door there.”

  “Did you see Eric talking to anyone?”

  “Well, no, I didn’t.”

  “Anyone, male or female, young or old? Anyone?”

  “No, no one at all.”

  “He had maybe twenty cents?” the large man says.

  “About that much.”

  “You called home then because you were worried, or because you usually call home?”

  “Well, the first time because I usually call when I’
m working like that. Or Eric calls me. But that’s one of those things he’s sort of growing out of.”

  “So you called home? What time was that?”

  “That would be about quarter to eight.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, there was no answer.”

  “So you went back to work?”

  “And began to worry, yes. Eric wanted to see this movie on TV and it just wasn’t like him not to come home. But, then, he is getting older and I thought he’d gotten sidetracked. Or that he was still mad about the fifty cents and wasn’t going to answer the phone. He was kind of tired, and he wasn’t in a real good mood.”

  “What happened then? When did you call again?”

  “Well, I was working. I kept thinking—what I do, at work like that when I want time to pass, I don’t look at the clock. It’s always like that when I’m not with my kids. I don’t mean at work during the day, but on weekends.”

  “When did you next call home?”

  “Half an hour later, I guess.”

  “Still no answer?”

  “No.”

  “How many times did you call and when did you get an answer?”

  “I guess three more times.”

  “The third time you got an answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was your older son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Matt?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time was that?”

  “That was about nine thirty. Or twenty-five to ten. I was really watching the clock by then.”

  “Okay. And the call previous to that? What time did you make that call?”

  “I guess nine twenty. About nine twenty.”

  “Matt was here then at nine thirty. What was he doing? What did you say to him?”

  “I’m not sure what he was doing. He’d just come in, and he hadn’t seen Eric. I had him check Eric’s bed while I held the phone. But Eric wasn’t here.”

  “Well, what did Matt say? Had he seen him? Did he have any idea where he might be?”

  “No, he hadn’t seen him and he wasn’t too worried. I said to him I was really getting worried, and he said, oh, he probably ran into some friends. And when I told Matt to call up friends of Eric’s who lived along the way—there were just two of them—he got kind of annoyed because, he said, he wanted to fix something to eat and watch TV. Anyway, I insisted and told him to do what I said and to call me back right away, and he did that.”

  “What did the friends say?”

  “Well, they hadn’t seen him since Friday in school.”

  “So Matt called you back and told you that, and then what happened?”

  “I just told Smitty I had to go. I really left them holding the bag down there, but I just said something was wrong at home and I was sorry and I had to go.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About ten.”

  “How’d you get home then?”

  “I walked. Like I always do.”

  “How long a walk is it?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “What was Matt doing when you got here?”

  “Well, he was in front of the TV. He was having a peanut-butter sandwich and a glass of milk.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We shut off the TV, and I had him help me call people. Eric’s friends. We called everybody we could think of.”

  “No one had seen him?”

  “No, not since Friday in school.”

  “Then you called the police?”

  “Well, first I went down and looked around the garage out there and the basement, although neither one of them belongs to us. I even looked under the beds. Just in case he was hiding there and playing some kind of joke. I just couldn’t believe he wasn’t here. I still can’t.”

  “Then you called the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “They told you about the twenty-four-hour policy?”

  “Yes, they did, but these two officers did stop by here. At about eleven thirty.”

  “Well, the reason for that policy is that most kids who run away show up again within twenty-four hours.”

  “I just don’t think Eric would run away. That’s what scares me.”

  “Okay. Still, most often it is the case, and most often the parents don’t think their boy or girl would do it. What it means is that there is a good chance Eric will come strolling back home any minute. He’ll be hungry and tired, and he’ll be ready to come back. He was a little angry, you say, and he is that age. Maybe his feelings were more hurt than you thought.”

  “Well, his feelings were hurt, it’s true. I know that. As much by his brother earlier in the day.”

  “Another thing is it is the weekend. That’s when children, boys especially, might take off on some adventure. To join the circus or something. They get an idea into their head. And there has been this warm weather.”

  “Well, the weather has been different.”

  “At the same time, I’m going to go ahead and get some stuff out on him, have people looking for him.”

  “You think he’ll just come back?”

  “Well, I hope so, Mrs. Wells. I’m concerned, I’ll tell you, that he apparently didn’t take anything with him, and that he had no money. So, I’d really like you to keep checking. And I do need to talk to your older son.”

  “I don’t know why he isn’t out here,” Claire says.

  “Mrs. Wells, listen. It is Sunday. So there’s no reason why your son would have to come home. It’s very possible he’s camping out in an abandoned house or something, to sort of teach you and his brother a lesson because he feels upset with the way he felt he was being treated. Do you understand? It’s possible, even, that he’s having the time of his life.”

  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.