The True Detective

by Theodore Weesner

  “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.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THEY ARE DRIVING, GOING NOWHERE. AT 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?”

  CHAPTER 5

  THEY 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 be
en 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.”

  “It’s being done,” Dulac says.

  “Tomorrow,” the chief says, “if the kid hasn’t shown up, we’ll put it out to the newspapers and to the networks in Boston. What about the budget, Adam?”

  “It’s going to be a problem, just calling in people today. I’d say keep the crew as lean as possible. Neil Mizener, say, to assist. Then, two uniformed officers to do a neighborhood search and canvass; they can call in a couple of cadets to help with that. How’s that sound?”

  “One other thing,” Dulac says, “How about Shirley Moss coming in at five, to set up a base operation here? She can do a central clearing thing, deal with the phone, build the file, and so on. Keep an eye on the cadets. Shirley’s good at that.”

  “Okay,” the chief says. “You could get a bunch of calls. Shirley can handle that. Use 4022.”

  “Okay,” Dulac says. “Good. Only two uniformed isn’t enough. Four is more like it.”

  “Two,” the chief says.

  “This, then,” Dulac says. “We run it on the six o’clock news. Say it gets to be eight or eight thirty, and the kid is still out there somewhere—how about asking the Boston stations to run a nine o’clock spot on a boy missing in—”

  “No, that’s out,” the chief says.

  “They’d never do it anyway,” the captain says. “Not this soon. You know something else, Gil? You put out a blitz like this, you’re going to scare the shit out of whoever is holding that kid. They could get nasty with the kid.”

  “Aren’t chances just as good they’ll let him go? Chief, what’s your feeling on that?”

  “Well, gee, chances are of course, if he’s been abducted, it’s someone known to him or in his own family. As you know. And that they’ve taken very few steps to cover themselves. Chances are, of course, if it is an abduction, that he’s dead by now. That’s the way it usually goes. You know? Anyway, of course you’re going to scare whoever picked him up, if that’s what happened.”

  “I’ll still put my money on the father,” the captain says.

  The chief is backing away from the table, taking up his empty cup. “Tell Shirley to keep me informed,” he is saying. “Regular updates. I’ll be home all day and all evening. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Dulac takes up his cup, too, and the metal ashtray as he has used. He brushes his hand over his area of the table, before heading back to his cubicle.

  Detective Sergeant Mizener—Neil—welcomes the call. “I’m about to take my oldest kid’s head off,” he says to Dulac. “It’s just as well I get out of here.”

  He is not a close friend and Dulac doesn’t know if his oldest is a son or a daughter. He believes the man has four children. They have never clashed but have always stayed more or less aloof from one another.

  Shirley Moss is less willing. Her husband’s sister and brother-in-law are supposed to stop by. “What the hell,” she says.

  Dulac explains the case. “Shirley, you were my recommendation,” he says. “And it looks a little scary to me. This boy’s been missing since yesterday evening.”

  “Who is it?” Shirley says.

  “I’ll tell you when you get here. It’s a little boy—nobody important.”

  Dulac makes other calls. He confirms Claire Wells’s account with the bartender Smitty. “Claire is just a good soul you can always count on,” the man says. “I had an idea it wasn’t any small thing when she said she had to leave even though it did leave us shorthanded.”

  “Anything unusual happen before or after?” Dulac asks.

  “Nothing,” the man says. “It was just another Saturday night.”

  When a false note rings for the first time Dulac almost misses it. It comes in a phone conversation with the older son’s friend, fifteen-year-old Cormac Hughes. “I’m sorry,” Dulac says to him. “You say you and Matt split at about five thirty? He left the movie theater?”

  “Yah,” the boy says.

  “How did he leave—why did he leave? Was the movie over?”

  “The movie wasn’t over. He just left. He got up and walked out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was acting weird, that’s all.”

  “How so, weird?”

  “I don’t know. It was like he was mad.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know,” the boy says.

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He just said he was leaving. Said he’d see me in school.”

  “He never acted like that at other times?”

  “No. Never.”

  “You see him after the movie or any time since?”

  “Nope.”

  “What time did you leave the movie theater?”

  “I don’t know. Six thirty or so.”

  “Okay,” Dulac says. “Listen. I don’t want you to talk to Matt or to anyone else in the meantime about this. Not even to your parents. We’re going to stop by and get a statement from you. So you stick around until we get there. It’ll be within an hour.”

  “What’s happening?” the boy says.

  “I’ll tell you when we get there,” Dulac says, and concludes the call.

  He pauses to think a moment then over the yellow pad on his desk. The hours match up. He sits staring away. “Jesus,” he says aloud. “His brother . . .”

  CHAPTER 6

  CLAIRE IS IN THE CHILLED CRAWL SPACE LOOKING INSIDE cardboard boxes. She knows too well that there is no recent photograph of Eric here, or anywhere; still she keeps looking as if there is. She has put aside a collapsing shoe box filled with photographs she is going to take out to the kitchen table in a minute to inspect. They are old, though, she knows, and will provide nothing showing what Eric looks like now. In the meantime, she is looking wherever she can think to look, on that huge detective’s suggestion or insistence on the phone that some Instamatic or Polaroid snapshot might have made its way home and ended up somewhere, that a photograph is important.

  Backing out, getting to her feet in the living room with the old shoe box, she starts to the kitchen. “I can’t find anything,” she calls down the slight hallway to Matt. “Can you?”

  There is no reply.

  Shame is what is bothering Claire as she places the box on the table
. It is shameful, she believes, not to have any recent pictures. Her sons growing up so fast and changing so much. It’s as if, without pictures, their life adds up to nothing.

  The handful of old photographs she lifts from the box begins to touch her all at once, however mixed and confused they are in time and place. There is Helen, her sister, who lives up near Bangor still. There are Helen and Manse. Warren in his army uniform. There are her mother and father in separate small photographs with disintegrating, scalloped edges. There, everywhere, is time passing. Shooting stars.

  It is a pet, though, her childhood dog, Bonnie, that strikes her with loss. She had forgotten Bonnie. She never thought of her at all anymore; she’s been dead now some thirty years. In the photograph, however, the dog calls up all that had ever been right in her life.

  She continues. There is Warren and the boys. They are so small, such disguises of themselves, and they are innocent while Warren, in retrospect, is not. She sees into him here, although she hadn’t seen into him at the time. She experiences wisdom she has never experienced before. What keeps stabbing her in the photographs is the foreshortening of life. In perspective, it is all so misunderstood.

  She lifts and sorts. Altogether, there are hardly a dozen pictures of Matt and Eric, together or alone, and she knows even as she sets them aside that they are useless to her present need. Nor does she know why she has sorted out both when of course it is only Eric’s picture they are coming to pick up.

  She looks over the dozen. None will do. All are too old. Too young. Or they are blurred, some of them, so they look like old black-and-white pictures taken from a speeding car.

  Here’s Eric. He’s in those little tan swimming trunks he had, standing ankle-deep in the lake near Bangor when they visited her sister. Sunlight is in his eyes. His head angled one way, his eyes squinting. It was several summers ago. Three? Could it be four? She knows it’s her most recent picture of Eric. She knows this but isn’t ready to admit it to herself, as if to do so will say the intervening years have not quite happened.