And, of course, a name: Anthony. Alias or not, it could tell them something. Even as an alias, it might be known to others. Yes, Your Honor, we learned that the suspect had used the name Anthony in half a dozen different places, four of them alone on the day the Wells boy disappeared.
Was there any reason the secret witness would be putting them on? Of course, Dulac thinks. Main reason: he had picked up the boy himself. Another reason: a wish to protect someone. Protecting someone was not terribly remote, either. Clever, but not unique. The world of up-front sex. A companion (Dulac has difficulty with the term lover) commits a crime. A clever person might come in, be close to an investigation, attempt to turn it away from the actual offender.
Still, Dulac thinks, there’s nothing to suggest the witness is lying. Nothing about him seems deceptive, and nothing he has said so far suggests he is anything other than what he has said he is.
He’ll see, Dulac thinks. In about two minutes now, when he can see the guy’s face as he talks, he’ll see.
Use good judgment, Dulac reminds himself. Don’t be an old bull in a china closet. Be alert. Think. You can have the sonofabitch in hand by tonight. After the news. After the papers are on the street. Go with full disclosure, strike with everything. That’s probably the way to do it. Act quickly then. Listen carefully and act quickly. Avoid mistakes. With a little luck then, and another good break or two, you’ll have him. And the boy will be okay. A little worse for the wear, but okay.
Hearing footsteps on the wooden dock, he turns to see a man walking toward him. As if casually and not immediately, Dulac slips his hands from his pants pockets, where he had held them for warmth. The man is keeping his eyes on him, coming directly. Looks like an ordinary businessman, Dulac thinks. That Boston newscaster. No glasses. Receding hairline. That congressman from Maine, Your Honor. As the man is within a half a dozen steps, Dulac says, “Hullo there.”
“Hi,” the man says.
“You’re—who I think you are?” Dulac says.
“Probably. Lieutenant Dulac?”
“Right,” Dulac says, shaking hands, continuing then to show his shield, to verify his identity and to be official. “Your name?” he says.
“Can we wait on that?” the man says.
“Okay for now,” Dulac says. “I understand your concern,” he adds. “As I told you on the phone, I’ll do all I can to preserve your anonymity. I don’t see and my chief doesn’t see, right now, any reason why you’d ever be called to testify in this, although the chief says it isn’t out of the question, if we should end up in a strictly circumstantial situation. At that time, of course, you’d have the option to testify or not. Or you could be subpoenaed. Okay? For now, you can simply be a secret witness which is no different, really, from someone telephoning in a complaint and leaving the burden of proof up to us. If there was a reward, you’d be eligible for that, under this program, but there isn’t any reward. So far at least.”
“I’m not here for a reward,” the man says.
“Fine,” Dulac says. “That’s fine. The thing I have to get across to you, right now, is the time pressure we’re under. Frankly, we should have done this last night, or at five or six o’clock this morning.”
“You believe the boy is still alive?”
“Well, we hope so,” Dulac says, surprised. “If we can get any kind of lead on this guy, from what you have to tell us, our hope is—my hope is—we can maybe flush him out, or have someone identify him, without the boy getting caught in the crossfire.”
“I’ll do what I can,” the man says. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Good. What we need first of all is to have you work with one of our officers, to come up with a composite. I’d like this in this afternoon’s papers, which means it should be ready to be handed out at a press conference, which is scheduled for just about an hour from now. Okay?
“Then, I need to dig more deeply into your statement and get it on tape, to come up with more details, more information. As for you being seen—because all this needs to be done at the police station—my thought was to have you put on glasses, say, and a hat, for purposes of coming and going. You could even do a false mustache, if you wanted to. There’s a little shop down here, it’s like a head shop, where you can get such things—I can go in and get them, at our expense—so you wouldn’t be identifiable even to a clerk, it if came to that.”
“Lieutenant, aren’t we wasting time?”
“We are. But I have to cover these things. Something else I need to know is how to get in touch with you, by phone, any time, day or night. Also, I want you to understand: first of all, this is admirable of you to come forward and take time like this to help. I want you to understand I will do all I can to protect your identity, but the thrust of all this, the purpose—my first responsibility—is to see if we can walk out of this without losing the life of a twelve-year-old boy. So, you see, you have to help, you see, irrespective of risk to you, simply because it’s your responsibility, because this boy’s life, if it isn’t lost already, is almost certainly at stake. Okay? There’s where we stand. I can’t guarantee your identity.”
Dulac looks to the man, trying to catch his elusive eyes; he adds, as the man doesn’t say anything, “I could lie to you.”
The man lifts his eyes then. “Lieutenant,” he says, “I think you’re sort of emotional about this.”
Dulac says nothing, looks back at the man as if he, Dulac, is a rock, as if he is not emotional at all.
“An appeal to my humanity,” the man says. “It’s what I’ve been waiting for all my life.”
“Good,” Dulac says. “Good. That’s fine. That’s good. Now we’re talking. What we have so far. We’ve ordered up printouts of every sex offender, first name Anthony or Tony, in the three-state area. What I want you to do, first off, is look at what photographs we do have, in case this guy wasn’t just using Tony as an alias.” Turning, Dulac has started walking back along the pier.
“I’m sure it is an alias,” the man says, walking beside him, “I used one myself. I always do in situations like that.”
“Okay,” Dulac says. “Okay. I understand. Still, it could tell us something. I’d like you to work right off, with an officer, to come up with a composite. Then, the questions, from two or three of us, to see what other details about this guy we can dig out of you.”
“I am going to pick up some glasses,” the man says. “And a hat, which I have in my car. Why don’t you go on Lieutenant, and I’ll catch up with you.”
Dulac pauses over this. “You’re not gonna take off on me, are you?” he says.
“No, Lieutenant, I’m not going to take off. I don’t want you to see my car, okay? I have an Indiana Jones hat in there, which I’ve never had the courage to wear, and if I’m going to go incognito, I might as well look neat, you see.”
“I’m not too crazy about letting you out of my sight,” Dulac says. “Not right now. You’re the key to my case, you know.”
“Lieutenant, you appealed to my humanity; it worked.”
“I said I’d need to be able to get in touch,” Dulac says. “Why don’t you give me some numbers now and at least a first name. In case you get hit by a car.”
The man is removing pen and notepad from an inside pocket, saying, “To get in touch with me—you mean to ask more questions? For what purpose?”
“That, follow-up questions, and maybe to look at a lineup or listen to a recorded voice maybe. I’m not sure. For example, a young man was reported to have visited a sex store, Saturday afternoon, to have viewed a film called Children in Bondage. The clerk there said this young man, who had an unusually reddish complexion, not only viewed this film but also asked if he—”
“Red cheeks?” the man says, glancing up from what he is writing. “Red cheeks—that’s what he said?”
“That’s right,” Dulac says.
“The guy I picked up had red cheeks,” the man says. “Did you ask me that? Did I say that?”
“The guy you picked up had red cheeks?”
“He certainly did. I’d forgotten that. He did, though. They reddened, you know, when he got embarrassed or excited—but that’s what he had. Red cheeks. It’s true.”
“Apple-colored?”
“Apple-colored is absolutely right,” the man says.
“Jesus Christ,” Dulac says. “This guy tried to buy child porn. That’s what the clerk says. Between about two and three. He went into the movie then. Children in Bondage. Which lasted fifty-five minutes.”
“I met him at five thirty,” the man says. “I bet it’s him. He was trying to buy child porn? That’s amazing, absolutely amazing.”
“Get your stuff,” Dulac says. “Come right back. Let me have that.”
“My name is Martin,” the man says, as Dulac takes the slip of paper from him.
“Tell the cadet you’re there to see me,” Dulac says. “He’ll ring me.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” the man says, as he moves away to the left.
Dulac, watching a moment, goes to the right, slipping the paper into his wallet. Already his mind is on the consequences of the press conference. It has to be him, he keeps saying to himself. It has to be him. Red cheeks. Kiddy porn. A wayward missile looking for a target. It has to be him. He feels certain of this, if it’s good police work or not.
He strides along. He has to be local, he is thinking. There’s the license plate—and only local yokels would know about the Sex Barn. No, no, that’s not true, he thinks. There’d be networks. When it came to sex, there’d be networks.
You better slow down, Dulac says to himself as he turns the corner to the police station. You could still be wrong about this. This rosy-cheeked guy in his gray car could show up and clear himself in ten minutes. You could be wrong all the way around and end up looking like a world-class fool. And you’re going to endanger the boy, you’d better recognize that. If he isn’t already a statistic, like Shirley said. If the guy isn’t already in Miami, on the beach, or in Montreal. Or looking for another child to pick up. You’re going to tighten the screws on this sonofabitch and that’s going to endanger the boy.
You have to do it, you have to use it at the press conference, Dulac says to himself, reaching the door and entering. You have no choice, really. You have to do it because it has to be done. It’ll scare the shit out of the guy, for sure, if he’s still around. At the same time someone is going to know him. A neighbor, at least, or a co-worker or landlord or gas station attendant is going to know exactly who he is. A mailman. His wife or parents. His boyfriend or girlfriend. No question—with all they have to go on, one person at the very least is going to call in, and if they are lucky, if they can somehow slip up on him or make contact with him—if it isn’t too late—the little Wells kid is going to come walking out. As in some child’s game in darkness, he’s going to be home free.
The odds have to be fifty-fifty. Don’t they?
CHAPTER 7
ON THE THIRD FLOOR, VERNON IS SITTING AT A CARREL NEXT to a window. A chill is reaching from the glass to his side but there is little or no sound up here. There are no voices. He hears the wind come up now and then like a distant airplane in the gray sky. Then he doesn’t listen. Perhaps he thinks. The partial enclosure of the metal desk provides some privacy within the privacy of the seldom-used floor. It’s a place to hide, here above the world, and he is hiding. Resting. Trying to rest. Calm down and think, he keeps saying to himself.
No one would look here, he thinks. If only he could stay here. If only he could close off something like a corner for himself on this side of the third floor and stay here forever. There was heat. Running water. Books to read—a window from which to watch life go on, to watch it change out there as it passed by, year after year.
Time passes. He stares out over buildings and treetops. The sky remains gray, painted-over gray. Under the sky, in the parking lot a few hundred yards away, there remains something, a small space, significant to his mind. Will someone make the discovery? Will they trace his car and trace him—appear here in a moment to take him away?
At the same time there is a feeling of some safety in this hideaway corner. No one would think to look here, he keeps telling himself. Even if they had found the boy and traced his car, they wouldn’t look here. They’d go to the cottage. They’d question Duncan, and Leon and Wayne. Placing his head on his arms on the desk, thinking, Vernon stares away at nothing. In time his eyes close, and he dozes some. Coming around in a moment, he feels troubled again. Something is out there. Everything is wrong. The terror will not go away.
This is Tuesday, he thinks. Only last Friday, even Saturday, his life was okay. He was miserable over what was happening with Anthony, but it wasn’t like this. He was unhappy and helpless. So it seems now. But it was nothing like this. This is like death. It is death. The tremor within him is the tremor of death. His heart knows it, feels its nearness.
If only they would catch him. If only the progression of fear within him would stop. Would someone listen to him? He’d tell everything. Would they let him explain? Would anyone listen? What a godsend it would be if merely one person in the world would listen, would hear his explanation, if they understood him or not.
CHAPTER 8
WALKING INTO THE POLICE STATION, TELLING THE CADET on duty that he is there to see Lieutenant Dulac, Matt is directed instead to a woman working next to a uniformed policeman at a long table, in a far corner of the room. Both the woman and the policeman are holding telephones to their faces, listening and talking; inviting him with her eyebrows to state his purpose, the woman then covers the receiver with her free hand. She says to him, “Wait just a minute, please,” and Matt retreats a step and a half and stands looking around while she turns her face down and finishes her call.
“You’re Matt, aren’t you?” the woman says to him.
“Yes,” Matt says, pleased to be known.
“The lieutenant’s busy right now,” the woman says, keeping her eyes on him. “What did you want to see him about?”
“Oh, nothing,” Matt says.
“Nothing’s ever nothing around here,” the woman says. Again, there are her eyebrows extending an invitation. “If it’s an emergency—” she says.
“Oh no,” Matt says. “No, it’s nothing.”
“I don’t mean to pry,” she says. “We’re all working on your brother’s case. The lieutenant’s in the interrogation room right now, but he’s going from there into a press conference. I’m going to tell him you stopped by, and he’s going to ask me what it was you wanted. You see?”
“I just wanted to see him,” Matt says.
“That’s all—nothing in particular?”
“No, that’s all.”
“Okay. That’s fine. The thing is, he’s really busy right now. After the press conference he has to go meet with some expert at the university, because this guy doesn’t have time to come here. Who knows when he’ll have lunch.”
“I understand,” Matt says.
“How old are you?” the woman says then.
“Fifteen,” Matt says.
“Tenth grade?”
“Ninth.”
“You’re home from school today?”
“I went,” Matt says. “Then I left.”
“You felt out of it.”
“I sure did.”
“Well, it’s a hard time. Is your mother at home?”
“Yeah.”
“You feel out of it there, too?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll tell the lieutenant you were here, that you wanted to see him. Because you’re feeling out of it. Okay?”
“Okay,” Matt says, feeling better, smiling some.
“Where can he reach you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, I’ll pass on the message. I know he’ll want to see you, so you check back in, okay? This afternoon.”
“Okay,” Matt says.
“I mean that,” the woman says.
Matt looks at her.
“You look after your mother, too,” the woman says.
“I will,” Matt says.
HEAD DOWN INTO the wind, though, as he walks along Marcy Street close to where the wide river begins to open into the harbor, it is not the care of his mother which is on Matt’s mind but an idea all at once of yet another place to look for Eric. Only a block and a half ahead, over a causeway, he can climb down the rocks and search the shore around Pierce Island, a semi-forbidden, uninhabited island attached to downtown where he and Eric have explored before. Perhaps he will find him there, he thinks, as his hopes become airborne again. That will show Lieutenant Dulac, he thinks. It will show them all.
He imagines Eric in a cave. Waiting to get aboard a passing ship. Maybe caught in the rocks. For however off-limits the sandy-rocky beach was to their mother, the water was one of those places toward which Eric was always tending.
Down over the barricades and fifty yards along, however, Matt has a sense of being wrong. He will have to go all the way around the island, however, just to be sure. Something called him; he can take no chances, even if the weather here is wetter and windier. What if Eric was near the tip of the island, his foot pinned by a rock?
Vanessa keeps flashing into his mind, too, but he looks away from thinking of her. There is the choppy cold water, its whitecaps coming up. And the Naval Shipyard across the harbor; trying to spot ships over there, especially subs, lying in the water, was one of Eric’s favorite activities. Could he have gone over there, trying to drive away a submarine?
What happened between him and Vanessa never happened at all, Matt thinks then. It was a dream. He’d show her, too. Still, it is the big cop who holds the center of his mind, the big cop’s smile.
What if Eric just came walking along the beach? he thinks, pushing through weeds to another stretch of sand. It seems so possible, Matt looks ahead over approaching rocks, to see if he will appear, experiences disappointment as an empty stretch comes into view.
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