Vernon kisses his cheek. The boy makes no response to this. Walking with him, Vernon says, “Some warm food and a bath and you’re going to be fine. I’m going to take you home then. Your legs are just cramped.”
Making his way to the cottage door, feeling with his fingers to find the doorknob, Vernon is saying, “We’re going to get everything straightened out now. You’re going to be fine, aren’t you?”
The boy doesn’t say; his eyes still do not appear to open all the way as Vernon carries him inside. “Aren’t you?” Vernon says.
The boy’s eyes roll yet again; they appear and roll away, and he doesn’t respond.
CHAPTER 6
DULAC FEELS A LITTLE STAGE FRIGHT. HE IS AT THE FRONT of Eric Wells’s homeroom, waiting for the children to settle and to be introduced by the teacher. They are merely children, he thinks, as a thought of Men Who Love Boys crosses his mind. Some are quite small, some bigger; they are the singular investments of their parents, he thinks. All things to their parents, more important than houses or jobs or cars. More important than anything. Was it true that they gave life its final meaning, as he had feared that morning?
While the teacher tells them about Eric, and explains who he is, he feels a little like a child himself, about to have to stand before the class and give a talk. When he has taken his place before them, though, and has said, “I’m here to ask you guys, you girls, too, to be my eyes and ears,” and sees them staring back at him, his stage fright gives way to other concerns.
Smiling, afraid they might be intimidated by his bulk, his general homeliness—thinking it is a job better done by Shirley Moss—he takes in a breath, like a child doing a report before class, and gives them his heartfelt pitch. Only true urgency within will create the same without, he has told himself.
“Listen now,” he says. “Listen to me, boys and girls. Someone knows something. Someone had to see something. Or they heard something. No matter what has happened to Eric, or where he is. Someone saw something. If he ran away—which we don’t think he did—or if some person or persons picked him up, probably in a car, or if someone got him to go into a house. Someone. Saw. Something. Eric had to walk, or he had to ride. Willingly, perhaps, but maybe there was a struggle. Someone knows something—because someone saw something or heard something, and police work has to do with getting through to what that person saw and heard—”
“What if nobody did see anything?” one boy asks.
“Even if the person doesn’t know it,” Dulac says, “they did. Someone saw something. It’s always that way, believe me.”
“What if he just ran away?”
“We don’t believe he ran away—” Dulac says.
“Why not?” one or two children ask.
“Well,” Dulac says. “He didn’t take anything with him. No possessions. No money. No extra clothes or food. Nothing. Which indicates to us that he probably did not run away. Do you understand?”
“All that Green Beret stuff he liked,” a boy calls out. “He even wrote—once—that they go in the woods—with nothing—and eat snakes to stay alive.”
The children hoot and laugh some, as Dulac says, “Wait, though. Those guys have knives and weapons. It isn’t as if they don’t have anything, do you see?”
“Green Berets have all kinds of stuff!” another boy calls out.
“Still,” Dulac says, “that’s the second or third time now I’ve heard that Eric has a special interest in military—”
“It’s just about all he ever writes or reads about,” the teacher says. “If Eric has a story to write, it’s about a man with a parachute, jumping from a plane. When we used reference materials, he looked up the history of hand grenades—really. In art class, I know, what he’s been drawing have been soldiers shooting rifles . . .”
The teacher has them all smiling, Dulac included, and he smiles again moments later, as he finishes his drive downtown and turns into his parking space behind the police station. He pauses. If the boy was that interested in the military or in survival, he wonders, couldn’t it mean that he is off somewhere testing himself?
No, he thinks. No, he’d still have taken things with him. A flashlight. A pocketknife. A rope.
Matches! he thinks, going into the building. Make a point to ask his mother to double-check if any matches are missing. Then he thinks, these were just children. Eric is one of them, and they are children, and aren’t they just about capable of anything? It is then, in a flash, that Dulac believes he understands why someone might steal a child, to give meaning to his life, a thought which suddenly frightens him.
Through the swinging gate, walking to the special desk, he is confronted—all at once—by the cadet on duty, by Shirley turning from a computer console a dozen feet away, by Mizener entering from the corridor, and he has to hold up his hands to sort them out.
From the cadet he learns that the boy’s brother is back in the squad room. “He has an idea where the boy might have gone,” the cadet says.
“Okay,” Dulac says, imagining he is going to hear about something crucial at last, as he turns to Shirley Moss.
“I’ve studied the newspapers for the past four days,” she says. “Like you said. The only thing I’ve found is a movie—it’s a triple X movie—called Children in Bondage—playing in that state-line place called the Sex Barn.”
“Children in Bondage?”
“That’s right. I called to see if it’s still playing, but there’s no answer.”
“We’ll check it out,” Dulac says, turning to Mizener.
“We’ve got a guy,” Mizener says. “Called in, says he offered Eric Wells a ride outside Legion Hall Saturday night.”
“You’re kidding. Say that again.”
“What I said. This guy called, says he heard the report on the radio this morning. He remembered leaving the Legion Hall on Saturday. At about six forty-five. He says he offered the Wells boy a ride! He says he knows him. Says the boy turned him down.”
“I bet,” Dulac says.
“Can you beat that?” Mizener says.
“When did he call; did it just come in? Where does he live?”
“He called at eight twelve, so he checks out on that okay—right after the news.”
“Why wasn’t I called? Eight twelve? I hadn’t even left here by eight twelve.”
“It’s okay. The cadet who came on thought it was routine or something.”
“It’s not okay. Our cadets are too fucking polite!” Dulac says. “God-dam it!”
“I’ve checked the guy out,” Mizener says. “He’s single—has no record. I was just going to pick him up and wanted to know if you want to go.”
“I do,” Dulac says. “But I can’t. I have all these things to get rolling. No, I’m going to go. Just hold on a second. Let me see what the brother has to say—”
In the squad room, where Matthew Wells is sitting at one of the long wooden tables, Dulac says, “What’s going on? Come on in my office; I’m in a rush, I’m afraid. I’m glad you’re here, though. I was meaning to call you. I want you to make a list for me of all your adult friends. Men you and Eric would know. Coaches, Sunday school teachers, neighbors, family friends—anyone like that, okay? Anyone you’ve ever known.”
In his office, where Dulac motions to Matt to sit down, he says, “What is it? What’s cooking?”
“I thought of something,” the boy says.
“Okay, go on. What is it?”
“Well, this might sound kind of dumb, or something, but you said—you told me, you know, to try to think of things that someone would run away over, or run away to. You said, like kids used to run away to join the circus—”
“Right.”
“Well—I’m not so sure about Eric—but what a person would run away for . . . would be a rock band. You know, to be the sound man or something. The equipment man. Just about anybody I know would take off if they had a chance like that. I would,” he adds.
Dulac is watching him, taking in what he is
saying. Okay, he says to himself. That makes sense. “Okay, Matt,” he says, deciding to use his name. “That makes sense. Have there been any rock groups around; was anything like that around on Saturday?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What about the high school?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. We’ll check it out. It’s a good idea. It’s a smart idea on your part. We’ll check it out and I’ll let you know. Okay? You check it out, too, okay?”
“I know why, too,” Matt says then.
“You know why about what?” Dulac says.
“Well, why you’d take off with a group like that.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s so you’d be part of something. So you’d belong to the group, instead of just watching them. You’d be on the inside.”
“On the inside of what?”
“Everything.”
“As opposed to being on the outside?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that how you feel—on the outside?”
“I guess I do.”
“You have your family. Your mother and your brother.”
“I know,” Matt says.
Dulac looks at him, notes to himself that the father’s whereabouts is unknown, has been for eight years. Then he says, “Matt, your idea is fine. We’ll check it out. You have any other ideas, be sure and let me know. And do that list for me, too.”
As the boy leaves, Dulac holds at his desk for the moment, looking for something elusive to fall into place, and goes on his way when it doesn’t, thinking what a pathetic thing that was for a kid to say, what an unfortunate way to feel, to look to a fucking rock band as a place to which to belong.
CHAPTER 7
VERNON IS AT THE STOVE, STIRRING A PACKAGE OF CHICKEN noodle soup into lightly bubbling water. The boy is across the room, lying on his side on the ratty couch. With a warm washcloth, Vernon has cleaned the head wound. Thinking now to cover him, Vernon turns the gas burner down to a blue circle and goes to his bedroom to retrieve a blanket.
The boy lies there; he gives no sign of consciousness, although it is clear, in his faint periodic gasps, that he is breathing steadily. Vernon chooses to believe he is asleep. Now that they have settled in and Vernon has had some coffee, he feels less frantic and less frightened.
“How does your head feel?” Vernon says to him.
There is no response. Vernon leans forward, to look once more at the head wound. While he washed the wound and the surrounding hair earlier, the boy’s gasping had increased and he seemed once to all but wake up—which allowed Vernon to continue to believe he was merely drifting in and out of sleep.
“I wish you’d wake up,” Vernon says now.
There is no response. Vernon looks at him. Pulling the blanket to his shoulders then, leaning down, he kisses his cheek. Then he gets to his feet.
He stirs the soup. What are you going to do? he asks himself.
The wave of fear, familiar by now, comes back up in him.
He glimpses the impossibility of everything.
His worry lessens, though, as he stands stirring the soup. Turning off the burner, he goes to the couch and uses a pillow to prop the boy into a partial sitting position. With a coffee mug a third full, some milk added, he returns and sits beside the boy.
The soup works. He tries a partial spoonful, and although part of it runs over the boy’s chin, a taste gets down and—to Vernon’s amazement—the boy’s eyes move and he begins to come around. “Here you are,” Vernon says, as the boy’s eyes continue to open groggily and close again.
“Another little taste now,” Vernon says. The boy takes in the warm liquid from the spoon. His eyes seem to roll some but return to center as he continues to take the sips Vernon lets slide into his mouth. Vernon’s hopes are coming up again, trying to take hold.
“There you go,” Vernon says. “Now you’re going to be okay. This is better. Now you’re going to be okay.”
Finishing the third of a cup of soup, Vernon goes to the stove for more—adding another dash of milk—but when he returns, the boy’s head has rolled back to the side and he appears once more to be dozing. Vernon puts the soup down and leans close to feel and hear the boy’s breathing. It seems more even now. He’s resting, Vernon thinks. He’s resting. Of course he’s tired. Who isn’t tired?
Back at the stove, however, taking spoonful sips of soup himself, he feels his relief interrupted again by waves of fear. With sudden clarity, options cross his mind. He can return the boy home. Or he can take him to a hospital. He will have to do something. He can’t keep him here.
He may have to do something more drastic, he thinks, as if on the sudden passing of a breeze.
In the next moment, as if he is another person, he raises another spoonful of soup to his mouth. You are going crazy, he says to himself. You have to get this over with. You have to. You should be in school.
He hears something. His scalp tingles. Looking to the door, to the windows, he sees nothing, hears nothing. His heart had stopped, is thumping now. He tries again to listen.
He exhales and inhales but seems to have lost his strength. Checking to see that the boy hasn’t moved, he steps to the windows which are close to the door. Trying to look out from beside the windows, he sees nothing. Moving into the entryway between doors—where it is cold—he looks along the driveway-roadway, and to that side of the house, but sees nothing there either. The sound was right here, he thinks. Well, it could have been an animal, he thinks, deciding to step outside. Even a bird.
Outside, he startles nothing. There is only the stillness of the overcast air. He looks around, down over the pond, which is as gray once more as the sky. A wooden boat is upside down on the bank there, where it has been all year.
Nothing. There is nothing around but the depressing color of ice, here and there. The chilled air and gray sky. His life; this impossible situation.
He looks to the trees and above the trees, in the direction of the university. He is missing two classes this morning. He is missing his time in the library, too, hiding at a desk in the second floor stacks where he usually spends much of the day writing papers or studying or daydreaming. Mainly studying. His life, as he has known it, is not going on as it had before.
The fear which passes through him then affects his eyes. What is all this? he asks himself. Dear God, what is all this? Does he really think he can just walk away from this?
CHAPTER 8
MIZENER DRIVES. AS HE HAS ARRANGED, THEY MEET THE man at the main gate to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and he seems only too willing to return with them to the police station. Dulac’s thought is that an innocent person would want only to make his statement, and turning to look at him in the back seat, he says, “Mr. Nagy, you’re not going to lose pay for this, are you?”
“I’m on the clock,” the man says.
In a moment, Dulac glances back again, as Mizener drives. The man is about forty, with a bony face and thin blond hair; that steak sauce guy on television but harder-looking, Dulac thinks. “We need to make a list of everybody who was in Legion Hall,” Dulac says. “It’ll take a little time. And we have some photographs we’d like you to look at. And we want your statement on tape, that is if you don’t mind.”
“Photographs of what?” the man says.
“Known sex offenders,” Dulac says, glancing back. “Right now you’re the last person we know of to see Eric. Maybe one of these people was at Legion Hall. There’s always a possibility, too, that you saw something you don’t know you saw.”
Dulac doesn’t especially like the man. He sure as hell knows they’re after more than a statement, Dulac thinks, and he’s sitting on it, being coy about it back there. Being coy about something. “You’re single, Mr. Nagy?” he says.
“Divorced.”
Eyes front again, Dulac sees Mizener side-glance at him, but reads nothing in his glance.
At the station, in the interrogation room, they hear from
the man how he noticed Eric Wells walking on the sidewalk, recognized him as someone he had seen a number of times at Legion Hall, and pulled over to offer a ride. The boy shook his head and said, ‘No thanks.’ That was it. No one else was around. And no, he had not talked to Eric Wells at Legion Hall, and he wasn’t sure if he had seen him there or not, although he thought he had. He was certain he had seen him at other times, usually around the pool tables.
Down the hall then from the interrogation room, where they have the man making up his list, Mizener confides to Dulac, “Lieutenant, this guy seems pretty straight to me.”
“Meaning what?”
“Just that he doesn’t look like anything other than a good citizen who has come forward with some information. I don’t see why we should give him a hard time.”
“Neil, we’re going to read him his rights, and we’re going to polygraph him.”
“We’re going to what?”
“The guy is thirty-eight years old. He lives alone. Saturday night, by his admission, he stops to offer a ride to a twelve-year-old boy. If I did not verify someone presenting that kind of pattern, man, I’d be derelict in my duty.”
“And he called in to offer help.”
“As you know, it would not be at all unusual for a person to attempt to be close to an investigation of his own crime. That’s nothing new. It’s consistent. It’s not contrary. It’s consistent.”
Mizener looks at him, the faint smile on his face not friendly.
“The guy may well be what you say he is,” Dulac says. “I can see that. But we have to clear him. We don’t have any choice. I’m going to have the brother polygraphed, too, because he’s not out of the woods yet either, as far as everything is concerned.”
“You still think the brother’s a suspect?” Mizener says.
“No, I don’t,” Dulac says. “But it’s not a runaway anymore. Kid’s been gone two nights now. He did not show up in school and what we have, we have to admit, is a probable abduction. This is where we’re supposed to earn our pay. We’d never be forgiven if we did not polygraph the brother. Certainly this guy. We’d really be small-town if we just took this guy at his word.”
The True Detective Page 19