The True Detective (25 page)

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?

M
IZENER DRIVES
. A
S 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.”

“Whatever you say,” Mizener says.

“I’ll be right there. There’s something I have to do before I forget.”

Returning along the corridor to the front of the station, Dulac crosses to the special desk set up for the case and motions to a second cadet who is on duty there during the day.

“You guys, listen to me,” he says, getting the two together. “A call came in this morning, at eight twelve, on a man
admitting
he was the last person to have seen Eric Wells. Admitting he
offered
Eric Wells a ride. For some reason I wasn’t notified about that call. I don’t know why I wasn’t notified. My guess is that some people don’t quite believe this is for real, and I’m up to here with that number.

“We’ve got to get sharp. If somebody has picked up this kid, he’s not going to be a goddamn green-eyed monster with scales. Okay? He’s going to be somebody like you or me. And somebody like you or me
has seen
something or
knows
something. If we’re lucky, and
listening
, that person is going to tell us what we need to know.

“I don’t mean to be mad at you. But you have to stop being so fucking
thoughtless.
At the slightest whiff of anything, from now on, you call me. Call anybody. Ask any question. Call the governor if you have to. Wake him up. Wake me up. Wake anybody up. That’s your job. You want the world to make fools of us? Well, I don’t either. So let’s do what we’re here to do.”

On a glance, Dulac turns and heads back along the corridor to the interrogation room. Entering, closing the white door with its one-way mirror, he says to Mizener, “Did you tell him?”

“More or less,” Mizener says.

“Mr. Nagy, listen,” Dulac says. “We’re going to read you your rights, and we’re going to take your statement from you again. And I want to ask you right now if you would be willing to submit to a lie-detector test.”

“This is what I get for trying to be helpful.”

“Well, we appreciate your being helpful,” Dulac says. “We do. All I can do, I guess, is ask you to understand the position we’re in. Okay? Now, would you be willing to take a lie-detector test?”

“I don’t care. If those things are accurate, I don’t have anything to hide.”

“Fine. Mr. Nagy, would you like to have an attorney present? Right now, before we go any further, we can—”

“Look! Let’s just get on with it. I don’t need any goddamn lawyer, because I haven’t done anything. Except try to help.”

“Neil, finish up here, will you? Read Mr. Nagy his rights. Take his statement. On tape. Make an appointment for a polygraph this afternoon. Mr. Nagy, thanks very much for your cooperation. We’re sorry to inconvenience you. Again, I ask that you understand the position we’re in. We simply have to clear you, because you are the last person to see Eric Wells. Thank you.”

Asshole, Dulac thinks of the man, walking to his cubicle. Once there, however, lifting his glass ashtray, as always, from the top of a notepad left on his desk, he adds to himself, and you’re being an asshole cop, too, so cool it a little. Chances are nine out of ten the guy is doing exactly what he says he’s doing.

Dulac has things to add to his list, others yet to check. He adds
Rock groups
and
Children in Bondage—Sex Barn. See Shirley,
he writes after one, dittos it for the second.

He adds
Media,
meaning he wants to think it out for himself, and discuss with the chief and with Shirley Moss, too, the effect that afternoon of the story appearing in the newspaper. If the boy is being held, what are the risks of the story in the newspapers? After
Media,
he writes
Press conference?

On another line, he adds
Weather/Explore,
to indicate that he needs to think out and discuss with others, too, any implications of the unusually warm weather they had at the time the boy disappeared. Ships in harbor, he thinks. Stowing away. Sailboats. Swept out to sea.

He returns to the first entry on the list, one he has yet to cross out.
Father. Warren R. Wells. 48. Believed to reside in New Orleans. No record in New Orleans 2/15/81. Believed to be alcoholic.
Pondering this a moment, he adds,
Desertion? Effects?

He dials Shirley Moss’s extension then, to ask her to come back to his cubicle to talk. “Shirley,” he says.

“The Sex Barn,” she says at once. “That movie. Gil, I just got off the phone to someone there. A real jerk. Refused to give his name. He refused to even say if the film played there on Saturday. A really nice guy. I told him we have a child missing. You know what he said? He said, ‘That’s your problem.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

“Shirley, I’ll take a ride out there in a while,” Dulac says. “I have some other things I need you to take on—and some things
I want to talk to you about. I’ll come out there,” he says as an afterthought.

Dulac replaces the receiver. Standing, he takes time enough, after slipping on his suit coat, to light a cigarette, take a puff, to check his hardware under his coat flap. Then he takes up the notepad to leave with Shirley on his way out, to have her check and ponder. Slow down now, he adds to himself then as he recognizes his own insistent heartbeat. Slow down. You never will beat the sonofabitches if you go at things like a madman.

T
HE BOY
’
S EYES ARE OPEN
. R
ETURNING FROM THE BATHROOM
, from washing and shaving, seeing him propped on the pillow, Vernon says, “Well, look who’s awake.”

The boy’s eyes move some, otherwise he gives little sign of recognition. He looks like a child awake but still partly asleep.

“Let me get you some more soup, and some milk to drink,” Vernon says.

The boy remains propped in the same place when Vernon settles in again on the couch beside him. The boy does not look frightened or startled now; he appears distant and exhausted.

He opens his mouth to take in the lukewarm chicken soup, and he tips his head to accept swallows of milk. “That’s the way,” Vernon keeps saying. “That’s the way.”

In time, the boy shakes his head, however faintly, to say he has had enough. Vernon reaches the soup mug and glass to the table. “It’s not actually my milk,” he says, but the boy gives no response.

“Are you tired?” Vernon says. He is thinking that he wants to like the boy again.

The boy hunches his shoulders slightly, to say he doesn’t know.

“Do you know where you are?” Vernon says.

The boy seems only to look at him from his distance, his chin more down than up.

“Do you know where you are?” Vernon says.

The boy shakes his head slightly, to say no.

“Does your head hurt?”