The True Detective (43 page)

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?

T
HE CALL COMES TO
D
ULAC 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?”

“He left in a rush, Lieutenant. Left a full can of beer he had just opened. The reason he left—well, I guess he was being hassled about the beer, but the roommate who called, named Duncan McIntyre, says the reason he left is he was trying to confront him about his suspicion, from having read the paper, and that Vernon left in a rush and was extremely agitated.”

“What does that mean about the boy? What do you think?”

“Jesus, I don’t know, Lieutenant.”

“One other thing. Call the campus police. Have them inform the university provost. Tell them we’ll want everything on this guy, right away. On the other roommates, too. We better check them out. Car registrations. Class schedules. Anything like that. Pictures, if they have them. Certainly of Vernon. We’ll want pictures of him as soon as possible. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Dulac hangs up then. His pulse, he realizes, is at work in his temples; his breathing, though, is calm.

“Gil, is it good news?” Beatrice says from the bedroom.

“Looks good,” he says, tying his shoes. “Looks good.”

“You’re going in?” she says.

“I’m on my way,” he says.

“Gil, you be careful now,” she says.

“I may be gone all night,” he says. “We have positive ID.”

“Call if you can,” she says.

“I’ll try,” he says, on his way to the stairs, fixing his holster on his hip and looking for his wool jacket as he reaches downstairs.

F
ORTY MINUTES LATER
, all is in place and they are ready to leave for the cottage in Lee. Dulac is at his desk, checking his list, trying to double-check all that needs to be put in motion or ordered up, while the five other officers who will be going along are either in the squad room checking their gear or close at hand.

Shirley. He wants to call Shirley, to have her there, and knows it is inappropriate that he make the call himself. It is not for personal reasons that he wants her there. Nor is it because she has been in the midst of things all along and might be angry over missing the main event. He wants her judgment. Who knows what might happen? They have positive ID. They have
an address. Two addresses. A twelve-year-old boy is being held. What if a standoff of some kind comes up? Who knows what kind of possible escapes the suspect might try to negotiate? Is he armed? What if he tries to take his own life? He wants Shirley there, that’s all there is to it. He just doesn’t know how to phrase it, or who to ask to do it, since those themselves are tasks he would turn to her to handle.

He looks to his list again. Five minutes and they will roll. Don’t miss things, don’t go off half-cocked, he is saying to himself. It’s time to earn your pay. This is it, he tells himself. This is it. A partial stakeout by the state police is already in effect. Good, he thinks. He just hopes they use restraint, that none of them gets too military, as the state troopers have been known to do. The APB on the car is in effect, through the tri-state area. If he knows, would he try to take off? Would he drive, ditch his car? Switch cars?
Does
he know?

A solution is in his mind all at once to another problem; stepping from his cubicle around the corner to the doorway to the squad room, he calls out, “Hey, somebody call Shirley Moss. Tell her she has to come in. You, Benedict, give her a call. Tell her things are popping and we need administrative help.”

At his desk again, he is turning to the next item on his list, the stakeout at the residence in Laconia—we could get pictures there, he is thinking—when Detective DeMarcus steps through his open doorway. “We got a problem with the campus police,” DeMarcus says. “The guy’s on the line right now. It’s been forty minutes at least since I called them, Lieutenant, and they haven’t done a thing, except call in this guy. He says they can’t cooperate unless they have a court order.”

“We don’t need a court order to investigate a suspect,” Dulac says.

“He’s on 2842,” DeMarcus says.

Dulac takes up his phone, presses a light. “Lieutenant Dulac,” he says.

“We’re not invading anyone’s privacy or violating any laws. We just need to know the addresses, schedules, certainly the home addresses of these four students so we can check them out. We’d appreciate your cooperation. We’re not asking for private records or anything.”

The man says, “How is it you believe these particular students are involved in something which apparently took place in Portsmouth?”

“What we believe,” Dulac says, “what we know, is that one of them is holding a missing twelve-year-old boy.”

“Why do you believe that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Dulac takes a partial breath. “Listen,” he says, “I am not going to review our case with you at this time. Either provide the information we’re after, and do it now, or I will have the state police at the door of the university chancellor in ten minutes; if that isn’t enough, I’ll have the governor’s office in touch with the chancellor in fifteen. And believe me, they will have court orders.”

“Listen to me for a minute now—,” the man begins.

“I’m not listening to you for a minute,” Dulac says. “Or half a minute.
Where in the hell are you coming from? We are busting ass here to save the life of this twelve-year-old boy!”

As the man begins, “Lieutenant—,” once more, Dulac’s telephone starts to ring and he cuts the connection by switching to another line, saying, “Dulac here.”

“Lieutenant Heon,” the person says. “Will we be needing dogs?”

“I hadn’t thought of dogs,” Dulac says.

“We have two bloodhounds that are really beauties,” the state police lieutenant says. “Unless you object, I’ll just have them available, along with their handler. You never know in a
situation like this. If your boy is holed up somewhere, or if he has moved the little boy around. What you need to do is bring a piece of the boy’s clothing. In a paper bag. Not plastic. We’ve had problems with plastic.”

“Okay, fine,” Dulac says.

“We’ll just have them stand by, in the parking lot there of the State Liquor Store. We need them, we’ll call them in. Now, Lieutenant, you got your search warrant in order?”

“We’re all set,” Dulac says. “A couple last-minute things and we’ll be on our way.”

“Surveillance at the family home in Laconia is in place,” the state police lieutenant says. “What we have there at the present time is a darkened house. A small wooden frame house, two-story, a five- or six-room house, and the corporal there happens to know that the suspect’s mother, a woman named Teri Fischer, works as a waitress at a restaurant called Brando’s, that she is there at the present time, at work, that she lives alone and generally arrives home between eleven thirty p.m. and midnight.”

“Lieutenant, I don’t want your guys to get too close now,” Dulac says.

“Righto, Lieutenant, we understand.”

“What we have now,” Dulac says, “is a college student, age twenty-two, a real loner apparently, harboring a twelve-year-old boy. It’s necessary that we proceed with great caution.”

“Understood, Lieutenant, understood.”

“I don’t want to get into a conflict of authority on this,” Dulac says. “It’s important, it’s crucial that nothing be done to aggravate the situation or push this guy over the line. What we want to do is bring the boy home.”

“Righto, Lieutenant. We copy. That’s what we want to do—bring the boy home. My men are well instructed per your
instructions; they spot this car, they are to follow, to call in help, to approach with extreme caution.”

“A small thing,” Dulac says. “We just hit a snag with the campus police at the university. Can you have the attorney general get through to the university chancellor, inform him that the campus police are refusing to cooperate.”

“The campus police are refusing to cooperate?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, my word. What’s the problem?”

“Authority, I guess.”

“We’ll get ’em, Lieutenant. See you at the liquor store, Lee traffic circle, rendezvous 2330 hours.”

Off the phone, Dulac returns to his list. Yes, of course, he thinks, the APB should be all New England, and they should put reminders out to the customs people at the border. He’ll have DeMarcus take care of that. The photograph, he thinks. Did he mention the need for a photo to the state police commander? He cannot remember if he did or not and reminds himself to mention it in the rendezvous in the liquor store parking lot, before they go ahead and move on the house.

The last item on his list is the phrase and question mark:
Status of boy?

Was he being kept in the car? Dulac asks himself. Why would Vernon return to the cottage by himself? Was the boy in the car? Tied? Was he harbored elsewhere? How could this Vernon character leave him and be on the campus that morning? Did he have access to some other shelter? A barn? A garage? As he was buying him food at McDonald’s, did that not imply an intent to care for the boy? Certainly it does, Dulac says to himself. And given all the signs this suspect has left in his wake, does that not imply that he is
not
a calculating or hardened criminal?
Certainly, Dulac thinks. No question there. Is he therefore less dangerous? What is his frame of mind? Does he really know they have a make on him?