“Nothing real hot has come in. I just talked to this professor guy, from Boston, who said he thought a nonthreatening pitch, from me, as the boss, might get the guy to turn himself in. I’m just thinking about it and it sounds like a not-too-bad idea; I’m thinking of doing it. Have it on the eleven o’clock news. Problem is, I’d have to drive up to Portland and back, and it would take two and a half hours altogether.”
“And you don’t think we can manage things if you’re not here?”
“Sort of. No, the truth is, I want to be here.”
“Anything comes in, I can call you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I mean I don’t know about what you’re saying, but we can look after things here, I do know that. You can take the boy with you, the brother, stop and get something to eat.”
“This doctor suggested what I should do is dangle some kind of therapy, in exchange for the guy turning himself in. I told him we couldn’t do that.”
“The suspect?”
“Right, the suspect. What he said, though, what did make sense, was that as the officer in charge I would be known to this guy by now. Assuming he’s still around. That I would be the person he’s afraid of. That if I offered something like a little understanding—as opposed, say, to an appeal by the mother—that it could possibly do the trick. Just possibly.”
“Maybe you should go ahead and do it,” Shirley says.
“You think so? Nothing else seems to be working. There are so many opinions flying around you get a little shell-shocked.”
“I’ll help you set things up. I’ll call Matt Wells, too. Take him with you. Stop thinking everything’s going to collapse without you. Jesus, get a pizza or something. Anything comes in, I’ll have it to you immediately.”
“You think I should?”
“I do. I’m not so certain Eric Wells is still with us, to be saved, but if you think there’s a chance, you should do it. What else can you do?”
“Call him,” Dulac says. “Call the brother. Tell him I’ll pick him up in ten minutes. I’m going to call Portland.”
“Way to go, Gil,” she says, taking up the telephone on the table. “Use your office phone,” she adds.
Who the hell’s in charge here anyway? he says to himself, going on to use his office phone.
CHAPTER 15
SIX O’CLOCK. THEY ARE ALWAYS LATE, AND IT IS NO DIFFERENT this evening. In the Union, a five-story building built into a hillside as the crossroads of the campus—doors and ramps coming and going everywhere—Duncan McIntyre settles into a vinyl couch in a TV lounge to wait for the arrival of Leon and Wayne, to walk out to Leon’s car, parked on a side street, for the ride back to the cottage. This is assuming they will triumph over the urge to detour to one or another of the underground or aboveground town pubs, a tug-of-war they face every evening, in fact or in jest, depending on money, papers or exams, lingering hangovers, Celtics or Bruins games on TV, or the force of persuasion, of one or another of them, for or against the magnetic pull.
Although a large color television set, mounted on the wall, is playing across the room, Duncan makes his choice of a couch because of the presence of an apparently discarded newspaper, the Globe, he would hope, its sports section remaining more or less intact. Otherwise, even as it may be television news time, on the network channels, he would sit and watch one of the Star Trek or All in the Family reruns playing forevermore on whichever cable channel the television seemed always tuned to—to the apparent satisfaction of the scattering of students, mainly boys, who sit or lie, stare or snore, from the collection of other vinyl armchairs and couches.
The initial disappointment for Duncan, as he places his books down and takes up the paper, is that it is local rather than the Globe. The second disappointment is that it is the front section, which as he knows does not contain sports. So it is, by happenstance, that Duncan looks at the newspaper’s front page, and so it is that an unexpected process begins to occur within him.
Two-thirds or more of the top half of the front page is given not to a national or international news event but to the case of a local missing twelve-year-old boy and the suspect being sought in the case by the Portsmouth police. There is a picture of the boy, a photograph so blurred it looks like something from a spy movie, and a black-and-white composite of the suspect, a young man who looks threatening and ominous, missing only, it seems, some kind of tattoo or scar, and a picture of a large man standing beside a computer console next to two other men, captioned, “Police Lt. Gilbert Dulac, left, in charge of the investigation of missing Eric Wells, believes a computer may help return the Portsmouth boy home unharmed.”
The photos and composite sketch mean little to Duncan in themselves, nor does the text of the article, except that it is something to read, more or less casually, as he checks his watch again to see how late Wayne and Leon are running tonight. Nor is it the case itself which is addressing his mind—such a case seems almost generic in newspaper offerings—rather that it is taking place in nearby Portsmouth, the neat little city over on the water which it seemed he like other students was always planning to visit.
Duncan smiles then, even snickers lightly, as a couple of details in the article—a silver-gray car, a man in his early twenties with a reddish complexion—make it sound, of all people, like their strange and needy housemate, Vernon, who has been following the weirdest schedule lately. Vernon, he thinks. Dear God, of course, he had promised to hear him out tonight, to help him with his problem.
With new curiosity and a tingling about his ears, however, Duncan finds himself looking hard at the composite, to see if there is any resemblance. There seems little. The hair looks black, of course, and the face appears too hard, too evil, to belong to anyone like Vernon, Glancing up then, seeing Leon and Wayne headed his way, Duncan misfolds the newspaper, lays it back where he had found it, and gets to his feet. Taking up his books, turning to join in procession with the other two, knowing he will make no mention here of the curious coincidence concerning the already much-maligned fourth in their household quartet, he joins, too, in a ragged ongoing exchange having to do with someone’s charge, somewhere, that amnesty amounted to repudiation of the charges against those who had escaped to Canada. . . . He will always remember, though, and will relate any number of times, the unsettling presence, a silent blinking light, which seemed to be signaling him even then from a remote corner of his mind.
CHAPTER 16
THE CALL COMES AS THEY ARE SHIFTING TELEPHONES, SWITCHBOARD, paperwork, and computer from one part of the squad room to another. The tip sheet will be marked 1825 hours, but Shirley Moss knows—will have noted—that it was closer to 1828. Dulac has left to pick up the brother to make the run to Portland, and a young officer named Benedict, assigned to the task force for the night shift, takes the call at one of two tables as Shirley and a cadet are lifting the other, which is stacked with two-story wire trays holding tip sheets.
Shirley lowers her side of the table to the floor and indicates to the cadet to do the same. She heard Officer Benedict say, “You saw the boy?” She holds, continues to listen to the uniformed officer’s questions. “They turned right?” the officer says. “That’s an easterly direction? The color of the car? Your name please?”
As the officer replaces the phone, even as he continues to fill in spaces on the form, Shirley says, “Someone saw the boy? Is that what they said? When?”
“I’m getting it down,” he says. “Just a second.”
Shirley holds—bristles some—watching him make added notations too slowly. “Well?” she says when he pauses.
“One second, please,” he says.
Again, she holds. He takes up the paper then, hands it to her. “There,” he says. “You want to file it?”
“File it? Is it a sighting or not?” she says.
“Are you in charge here?” he says.
“Just answer my question.”
“Aren’t they all?” he says.
“What are you saying?”
“I gave it an A priority. What are you saying?”
“It’s a sighting? Someone saw the boy?”
“That’s what he said. But it’s two days old and it’s a kid making the call.”
“Who said what?” Shirley says. “Kindly stop fucking around!”
The officer appears to freeze. “Easy,” he says.
She glares.
“Sunday evening,” he says. “Four p.m. McDonald’s—in Dover. This boy, he’s sixteen—he says a boy shouted that he was being kidnapped. From a car. At the pick-up window.”
“Shouted what?”
“Screamed is what he said.”
“Screamed what?”
“For help. That he was being kidnapped.”
“Then what?”
“That’s it. The car took off.”
“The boy screamed, and the person driving the car took off?”
“That’s what he said.”
“What about the driver?”
“No one he knew. He just said it was a man.”
“How old?”
“He didn’t say.”
“You didn’t ask him?”
“Hey—look—”
“What kind of car?”
“A gray coupe—it’s written down.”
“Did they order food?”
“I guess so. That’s what he said.”
“Did they pick up the food?”
“Look—if you will just hold your ass—this is probably a prank by school kids.”
“They took off? That sounds like a prank? Did they pick up the food?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? Did they pay?”
“No. I believe he said they did not pick up the food. I don’t know if they paid. I gave this an A priority. A so-called sighting is supposed—”
“There are sightings and there are sightings,” she says, starting to move past him.
“I thought I was the officer here,” he says. “You’re the secretary.”
“Get out of my sight,” she says. “Go do some push-ups.”
Tip sheet in hand, Shirley returns across the room to the telephone at her table. She can go through the radio switchboard and speak to Dulac in his car, or she can call the TV station directly and have him summoned to a phone. Forty minutes. Forty-five. She decides to try the latter first, leave a message, then see if he can be raised by radio. As it happens, just a moment after she has spoken to a woman in Portland and has turned to speak to a detective about the distance over which they may speak by car radio, her telephone rings and it is Dulac, having just walked into the TV station.
“It’s an apparent sighting,” she says. “It all seems to fit. The only problem is that it’s two days old, it happened two days ago, on Sunday evening.”
As he asks questions and she gives added details, he interrupts her, saying, “He was alive and being cared for. That’s what this means. It was twenty-four hours after he was picked up and he was alive—and being cared for. It was an order for two?”
“I’m not sure,” Shirley says.
“Bring him in. Pick him up—have him picked up and brought in for questioning.”
“We’ll do it, Gil. Don’t worry. Do what you have to do. There are a couple detectives here. And Mizener’s around somewhere.”
“Don’t have Mizener do it. Jesus—Eric Wells was okay Sunday. That puts you in a tough position, doesn’t it? If you abducted a kid and you’re caring for him. Listen, I’m going to go ahead with this. It could be important. Have this McDonald’s boy brought in, right away. Have someone other than Neil Mizener pick him up and question him. I’ll check back with you, in a while, to see what you have.”
The detective to whom Shirley conveys Dulac’s orders is named DeMarcus. As he leaves with a uniformed officer to drive to Dover and pick up the boy—a good ten-minute drive—Shirley sits down with the tip sheet and telephones the McDonald’s restaurant, to prepare for the detective’s arrival. She asks to speak first to the boy, who is sixteen and named Steven March. A sensible-sounding boy, he says to her. “Everybody thought it was some kind of gag, but if it was a gag, would they leave the money behind—and the food?”
“Of course not,” Shirley says. She asks to speak to the manager, to make arrangements to have him leave his job, probably, she tells him, for an hour or more.
“He’s supposed to work,” the man says. “This’ll leave us shorthanded.”
“Sir, listen,” Shirley says. “I think this is far more important right now. A squad car is halfway there already, to pick him up.”
“How do I know you’re a police officer,” the man says.
“I’m not,” she says. “The officers coming to pick him up will identify themselves. We’re working against time. You can leave him on the clock or charge whatever time he misses to the Portsmouth PD. You can charge it to me personally; Shirley Moss is the name.”
“And your position is what—if I may ask?”
“I’m just a pushy secretary, Jesus Christ. What else do you want to know?”
A moment later, the telephone back in its cradle, Shirley draws part of another cup of coffee and lights a cigarette. To settle her system, she tells herself. Then she thinks, it does mean he was alive; it’s a good thing Gil keeps that in mind because it’s something which could otherwise be forgotten. To be alive. For the first time, she feels a flicker of hope.
CHAPTER 17
NEAR THE CAMPUS, IN THE EVENING AIR, VERNON IS WALKING again. All within him feels snarled. Somewhere, on a town street, he turns to walk in the direction of his parked car. It seems impossible to him that the car and the boy will be where he left them, yet he has a sense that they will not have been discovered. Nor—as he walks—does his movement here, his being, seem to be part of reality. Not now.
To his faint surprise and greater dismay, the car is where he left it. He doesn’t go to it directly. Students and others pass in the evening air, within streetlights, store lights, car lights. Walking to the curbed, window-lighted sidewalk before the row of stores, he passes shoppers carrying grocery bags, people in a hurry, and tells himself that no one cares anyway, because no one has time to care.
Beyond the supermarket, at a dimly lighted sub shop, he pauses at the door, then enters; he tries to remind himself not to look suspicious. Within, where a thin waiter-cook is placing a long open-mouthed sandwich on a counter, where others are waiting, Vernon stands and stares for a moment at the overhead wall menu, then turns and walks back outside.
A moment later, passing through a dream in which he walked across a parking lot, stepped between cars, and opened an unlocked car door, he is sitting in the darkened driver’s seat. He exhales. With his right hand he reaches and feels that the boy is still there. He knew he was there, and he decides this time not to reach under the sleeping bag to see if his body is warm or cold, if his pulse will still speak up to him as it did before. What does it matter?
His mother is on his mind. She may have been lurking at the edges of his thoughts all along, as he was thinking of someone to whom to turn. If he told her everything at last? If he told her of his magazine and of his dreams? If he told her about Anthony, and his fears and his loneliness? Would she help him? Would she understand or try to understand? No, he knows she would not, yet appealing to her is something to do, a last-ditch attempt maybe to put things right. Laconia is only a forty-five-minute drive. What does he care about time or anything else? Why should he?
He starts his car.
He knows his mother will not help him. She will only rage at him. Why why why? He knows he will not be able to confide in her. Yet, he thinks, maybe he will and maybe she will. If he goes close enough, if he sees her, perhaps she will know enough of the world, will see into things in a way that she may come to his rescue.
Elsewhere, later—he knows he is near Concord, near the middle of the state—he stands outside his car in a brightly lighted self-serve gas station, adding seven dollars�
� worth to his tank. The car had sputtered to him a moment earlier. As he stands outside the car now, it seems alive to him with its particular cargo.
He stands holding the chilled pump handle. The ramp onto north-south Interstate 93, the long way home, is just a minute away. Laconia is twenty minutes north. His mother will be there. She will nearly die when he tells her there is an unconscious boy in the car, but when he tells of the accident, when he explains that he had only wanted to have him as a little brother, she will try to help. She will call a lawyer, he imagines, and the police, and an ambulance. For the first time in days, in years—in all his life, he thinks, as far as his mother is concerned—things will begin to sort themselves out. If she wants to move away, he thinks again, he will understand. And at least if they do send him to jail, he will finally be able to fall asleep. Today will have been the worst day of his life. Tomorrow will be less so, and he will let her go and never make any claims on her again.
Pulling around to leave the gas station, he sees a State Police car go by, headed in the direction from which he has just come. Yes, he thinks, the way to slip through unnoticed is to do nothing suspicious.
Maybe this little boy will just come around once a doctor has a look at him, Vernon thinks, driving. In a day or so, he’ll be back in school. With some stories to tell, Vernon thinks. And he could be okay himself, even if he has to spend some time locked up somewhere. Wasn’t that the key—to return things to what they had been before? The problem was telling his mother. He’d do it, though; then he’d do his time in jail. And he’ll never ask her for anything again, if that’s what she wants. He’ll tell her that, he thinks. I’ll never bother you or embarrass you again, and I’ll never hurt anyone again, as long as I live.
He drives. There is little traffic on the divided highway at this dark, evening hour. Another thought he has—to save his mother the trouble—is to turn around and drive back to Portsmouth. Go to the police station there. Just walk in, go up to that detective and say, I’m the person you’re looking for. I’m sorry for what’s happened. The little boy is out in my car. He’s in a coma but that’s because of an accident. I only picked him up because I couldn’t help myself. I only wanted him to be my friend. A little brother. I didn’t mean for him to be hurt. I’ve never hurt anyone before in my life, and I didn’t mean for this to happen.
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