The True Detective

by Theodore Weesner

  Stepping back around, he looks for the helicopter in the distance. Its fluttering sound seems to continue, although he cannot discern its flashing lights.

  CHAPTER 21

  THEY SIT OVER A BATTERED TIN TRAY WHICH HOLDS A SINGLE slice of pizza. They have eaten. Hunger has been the center even of small talk; energy has been given to chewing. Dulac is ready now to talk of other things, although he doesn’t know yet what he is going to say. Time, more than ever, crowds him. Hunching forward, more or less giving up on the last slice, he is trying to think how to start.

  “You have that,” he says, nodding at the remaining slice.

  “I’m sort of full,” Matt says.

  “You have it; I’m all finished.”

  “I don’t think I have room.”

  “Really?” Dulac says. “You’re just being polite.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t have to be polite with me, believe me.”

  “I am full.”

  “Eat that slice of pizza,” Dulac says.

  Matt smiles.

  “Okay, we’ll split it,” Dulac says.

  “Okay.”

  “See, you are still hungry,” Dulac says.

  “So are you,” Matt says.

  Dulac grins. I like this kid, he is saying to himself, even as he knows this was his predisposition. Using his fork as a knife, he wedges off a third of the slice, which he takes up in a fold in his fingers; he spins the tray around to Matt, saying, “There you go.”

  Matt follows suit.

  “I want to tell you to be strong,” Dulac says, coming to the end of his chewing.

  Matt looks to him.

  “This is a tough thing you’re going through,” Dulac says. “What I’d like to do is to tell you that everything is going to be okay. I’d like to say that. That I’ll intercede for you, take the heat, absorb the hurt and the nastiness, because that’s my job. But I’d be kidding both of us. I hope your brother comes home. I hope he comes walking in tonight, and that he’s fine. There’s a chance of that. You know, he is a tough little kid. Did you know that?”

  “I know that,” Matt says. “I didn’t. But I do now.”

  “This thing at McDonald’s, on Sunday. He tried to get away. That may seem easy in the movies or on TV, but in fact it’s not easy at all. It takes courage. It takes imagination. Those are important things, and he has them.”

  The boy keeps watching him.

  “At the same time, you have to know that he is in a tough situation. A dangerous situation. The guy drove off with him. From McDonald’s. So it shows that he’s trying to have his way, too. And he holds most of the cards. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  Matt nods.

  “This is what I’d say to you if I were your father,” Dulac says. “I’d say this may turn out to be rough, and you’re going to have to stand up to it. Like a man.

  “I mean you’re just a boy. You’re a fine boy. You’re a good person, I can tell. And you shouldn’t have to face up to something like this. But you might have to. Do you understand?”

  Matt nods again.

  “You don’t know where your father is?” Dulac says.

  “No, just that we heard he was in New Orleans.”

  “Do you like your father?” Dulac says, which is the question he meant to ask in the first place.

  “I guess so.”

  “I had problems with my old man,” Dulac says. “Not impossible problems finally. Problems just the same. At the time they seemed impossible.”

  The boy keeps watching him, listening to him in the dimly lighted pizza parlor.

  “I respected him, though,” Dulac says. “I loved him. You know—deep down?”

  Matt nods.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” Dulac says. “This time, when I was about your age—a little younger even, maybe Eric’s age—I began building this little miniature town in the dirt, next to the front porch. We lived in Quebec City at the time. I really got into this, but what it was was that my dad took an interest in it when he came home from work. So in a way I got into doing it for him. I had little trees and shrubs in the ground, you know. My dad, he put his lunch bucket right there on the porch steps and pretty soon was down on his hands and knees on the ground beside me. It’s one of the best memories I have of the old crocodile, you know. Maybe it’s the best. There was something he loved, that we loved together. However brief.

  “He showed me some more things to do, and it was funny, because he went into the house, got a spool of black thread from my mother’s sewing stuff, and she came out after him to see why he was taking her thread, and it was like we were both kids, the two of us.

  “He said to her, he said, ‘Just let us be now, this is important.’” Dulac lifts his glass as if to drink, even though it is clear that the glass is empty.

  “The thread was for telephone wires,” he says. “To go through our little town. And he showed me how to whittle twigs with his little pocket-knife. To make telephone poles. Jesus—God—you know, he gave me that knife. Right then. It was because—well, it was because he’d never gotten into something like that, before, with me. And because he liked it so much.

  “He came up with a way, too, to make fire hydrants by cutting a yellow pencil into segments and whittling on caps, in effect, by leaving a little of the lead sticking out. They were just perfect.

  “Anyway, what happened was I went to work again on the town the next day while my father was at work. He’d shown me a way to line little ditches with wax, paraffin, so the town could have a system of rivers and ponds and the water couldn’t seep through so quickly into the ground. Of course everything, all the work, was all the more special now, though, because I was doing it for him. I was doing what he had shown me and doing things of my own, and it was all falling into place, new things just kept presenting themselves, with immediate solutions, and all of it building up to his coming home from work again that afternoon.

  “Then—of course—it happened. I don’t know what I was doing. I’d gone for a jar of water or something. I came back around the house, and there was this boy—he was maybe sixteen years old—this boy—he was destroying everything. He was kicking it, caught up in a frenzy—kicking stomping, just obliterating everything we’d done.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been so shocked as 1 was in that moment. Or so hurt. The old man would never see it. We’d never work on it again. Not after that. It was senseless. What I did, at first—because this kid was a lot bigger and older—I cried. I cried, and tried to push him away. But it was halfhearted in a way, and he just held me at bay and kept up this violent kicking of everything on the ground.

  “Something happened then. You know there may be some truth in Superman, because I tell you this transformation came over me. Nothing mattered. Not to me. It didn’t matter if I got hurt. I took up this garden tool that was there on the porch. It was a hand tool, had three small metal prongs which were quite sharp. I was going to kill him. I was possessed. I was going to end his life, I was so upset.

  “I got him once. I got the tool in my hand, went at him. Came around with it, got him just above the waist—cut him in three places. Those were real cuts. He let out a scream then, and he backed off. And I moved after him with that garden tool.

  “He ran. He backed away first. I kept after him; I took another real swing at him. He was calling me a little sonofabitch, things like that, but then he took off running, holding his side where I’d gashed him.

  “I stayed after him. My anger was still there. Or my hurt. I ran, Jesus, did I run. To say I was just about out of my senses would be more like it. I knew I could outrun him. I knew it. I wanted to hurt him that badly. He could have been Jesse Owens—he could have run twenty miles—and I would have caught him. It was in me. Whatever it was, it was in me.

  “He actually ran two or three miles before I got him. There we were, running past houses, through alleys, around corners—this wild-eyed, terrified animal and this determined little kid
behind him, with a garden tool, who was crying away and was not going to give up under any circumstances.

  “Finally, when he turned between some garages, I came between them myself, and there he was, on the side of one, sprawled on the ground—he was sick he was so winded—and as I spotted him and moved on him, he was terrified and trying to disappear into the ground, into the base of that garage, and begging me not to hurt him and crying.

  “He changed my mind. I had him there; I had him cornered and at my mercy. I had that garden tool in my hand. I even had my father’s jack-knife in my pocket. And I had meant to make him pay, to pay far more than the three cuts he had in his side. Far more. He was crying. Begging me not to hurt him.

  “He changed my mind. I didn’t do it. I had come to hurt him. And I didn’t do it. I didn’t spit on him. Or kick him. I didn’t call him any names. I walked away. I knew at the time, somehow, I’ve known ever since, that what I did, what I didn’t do, was an act of cowardice. I’ve never gotten over it. Not completely. I was young. But I don’t kid myself, not anymore.”

  He looks over, sees the boy watching him. “If you were my son,” Dulac says, “that’s what I’d tell you. So you could learn—from my mistake—that you have to take care of yourself.”

  He says no more by way of giving advice. In a moment he merely says, “You want anything else?”

  “No,” Matt says.

  “Let’s roll then,” Dulac says.

  CHAPTER 22

  VERNON ENTERS THE COTTAGE ALMOST BRASHLY. AN ODD intoxication is in him. No one is in the kitchen area, though, and he isn’t sure he wants to tell them his big news anyway, whatever that news might be. Has he just won a scholarship to graduate school? Won the lottery? Walked away from a head on collision? Why does he feel so high? Opening the refrigerator, he removes a can of beer and it means nothing to him, pleases him, that the can of beer is not his to take.

  He pops the pop top, drops it into the hole so it may swim to the bottom.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” someone says.

  It is Duncan; glancing over, Vernon sees that Duncan has come from his room. He sees, too, an unexpected distance Duncan seems? to be keeping.

  “Those things get in people’s throats,” Duncan says. “You can gag on those things.”

  Vernon tips back the can, drinks a swallow.

  “Vernon, what is going on?” Duncan says.

  “What is going on?” Vernon says. “I’m drinking someone’s beer.”

  “I’m not talking about the beer.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m drinking someone’s beer, that’s all.”

  “I’m not talking about beer,” Duncan says. “Not at all.”

  Vernon only looks at him.

  “Vernon. You know what I’m talking about.”

  Vernon just looks at him, seeks to see into his eyes at the distance of the ten or fifteen feet that separate them.

  Then, out of the blue, Vernon says, “It’s all over now. No need to worry.”

  “What’s over? What do you mean?”

  “It’s over. Everything’s over. I’m drinking someone’s beer. I’ll pay for it. Tomorrow I’m going back to school.”

  “Whose beer is he drinking?” another voice says, and there is Leon padding out in his stockinged feet from the bedroom he shares with Wayne, on his way to the bathroom. As his question goes unanswered, he pulls up before going on into the bathroom. “I said, whose beer is he drinking?”

  “Just shut up,” Duncan says.

  “That’s my beer?” Leon says, coming over. There is Wayne appearing in the bedroom door, also in stockinged feet, a pencil in his hand, coming to watch.

  “Budweiser?” Vernon says.

  “Goddamit! That’s my beer, isn’t it!”

  “Leon, just hold it,” Duncan says.

  “That is my fucking beer!” Leon says.

  “I’ll pay for the beer,” Duncan says. “Okay.”

  Leon lets up, looks as if he wants to say something else but is holding it back.

  “Go to your room, I need to talk to Vernon,” Duncan says.

  Leon holds, as does Wayne back in the bedroom doorway.

  “It’s serious,” Duncan says. “Please.”

  Leon hunches, making an expression as he moves on into the bathroom and closes the door; Wayne retreats also, back into the bedroom, closing that door.

  Duncan steps closer, as if they may be overheard. “I believe I know what it is,” he says.

  Vernon looks at him, saying nothing. Then he says, “What what is?”

  “Everything,” Duncan says.

  Vernon looks at him. Turning then, placing the full can of beer on the counter, he starts in the direction of the door. “No one knows everything,” he says over his shoulder. “It isn’t possible to know everything.”

  Duncan, following after him, is saying, “Where are you going? You better stay here. You better do some talking. You said you’d do some talking.”

  Vernon, feeling he may be restrained, keeps moving, into the darkness outside, around to the driver’s side of his car.

  “Vernon, just wait a minute!” Duncan snaps at him in the darkness.

  Vernon holds with his hand on the door handle.

  “Where are you going?” Duncan says.

  “The library. I’m going to the library.”

  “The library? What are you talking about? Listen—I know. I know!”

  “Know what? What do you know?”

  “Vernon. I know.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have to go. I have to go. I have work to do.” Vernon is getting into his car, sliding in behind the steering wheel, starting the motor, moving on his way as if he is going to be stopped and held by Duncan, and made to talk, made to tell.

  As he backs around, in a flash, there is Duncan’s face, highlighted, saying something, calling something unheard. Was he asking him to stop? Was that what he was doing? What did he say before? He said something. What did he say? What was he talking about? He did not hear him. Whatever it was, he did not hear him. He did not. How could anybody be heard in the midst of all that was going on?

  CHAPTER 23

  THE CALL COMES TO DULAC AT HOME, AT SIX OR SEVEN minutes after ten. He is upstairs, where Beatrice is lying in bed watching television; he is reaching to untie his shoes when the telephone out in the hall rings. He knows at once. He simply knows. A fullness, and a restraint is over him as he steps into the hall to take up the receiver. He answers officially, saying, “Lieutenant Dulac.”

  “Positive ID,” the detective says to him from a squad room telephone. “Positive ID. Absolutely positive. A roommate. Our boy is a college student. Can you believe it? Studying some kind of science. Twenty-two years old. Everything fits, Lieutenant. The exact height. Rosy cheeks. It looks airtight. The guy’s behavior—”

  “What about the boy?”

  “Nothing on the boy, Lieutenant. Nothing. Nothing’s any different except we have positive ID. The suspect. The roommate believes the suspect knows that he’s been made. He was there—it’s a cottage in Lee these four students rent—he was there less than two hours ago. Eight-fifteen, about. Extremely nervous. Agitated. His name is Vernon Fischer. Vernon Fischer, F-I-S-C-H-E-R. Male Caucasian. Home residence I guess is Laconia. Only child. That’s all we know. Quiet guy. No known girlfriends. No known friends of any kind. Honors student. Can you believe it? One of these four students renting a cottage on Wheelwright Pond, in Lee. This is the first call, Lietuenant. Except for the motor vehicle check. Everybody down here is jumping. I tell you. Somebody said, as soon as the Lieutenant walked out, ten minutes ago, the call came in.”

  “Okay,” Dulac is saying. “Okay. Don’t let anything out yet. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Less than ten minutes. How did the roommate know? Did he confess? What happened? The question is, where is the boy? Is he holding the boy?”

  “Saw it in the paper. Says it took him more than an hour to believe it.” />
  “To believe it—really? Did he say anything about the boy?”

  “Nothing. Says he saw this Vernon earlier in the day, midmorning. At school. Says he looked haggard, very upset, sunken eyes and so on. That when he asked what the problem was, he said, Vernon said it was a life or death situation. He says this Vernon guy’s behavior has been erratic, very unpredictable for several days now. Since last Wednesday or Thursday. Says he was gone from the cottage much of the time, overnight several times, that he did not return at all on Saturday night, or—let’s see—for most of Sunday night, I believe—I’ve got it written down—and was gone all of the night last night. I’ve got to check on Monday. Anyway, Lieutenant, this is it. Call came in 2153. It’s now 2212. No action’s been taken yet. I told the roommate not to move, not to leave; I said if suspect returns they are to act as natural as possible and do nothing to restrain him. That’s it, Lieutenant. Motor vehicle checks by the way, so we have the address now, in Laconia. We’re waiting for you.”

  “I’m on my way. Call the state police, right now; call Lieutenant Heon, at home if you have to, tell him we’d like surveillance, undetected surveillance, on the residence in Laconia. Starting as soon as possible. Just in case he shows up there and has the boy with him. Call the attorney general, too; tell him what we’re doing, that we will be searching this cottage in Lee, impounding everything there for now, including any and all cars, and that we will be setting up a stakeout on this place for at least twenty-four hours. The same with Laconia. Ask Lietuenant Heon, by the way, if we can have some manpower help, unmarked cars and so on, for the stakeout. Do those two calls; I’ll be there in a few minutes. If our luck holds, we’ll have Mr. Vernon in no time. Maybe the boy will be home free, too. That’s how I want everything to proceed. With caution, in awareness that he is holding the boy. That he was caring for the boy, we know that, and that the boy is in danger. You say he left this cottage at eight fifteen; under what circumstances? Why did he leave?”