THEY ARE THE CITY’S THREE RANKING POLICE OFFICERS. Dulac, who has done most of the talking so far, and the captain, a man named Adam Sloan, and the chief, Pat Emery. They sit at the round table in the chief’s conference room before empty styrofoam cups. The chief, a short, blocky man with the manner of a school principal, was hired out of Providence half a dozen years ago. Adam Sloan, the captain, ever harsh-throated and red-faced, a large man like Dulac, has been around long enough to be considered homegrown, and is not, like the chief, on his last tour before retirement.
Called from their homes, the chief and the captain are also dressed casually. Maybe they are in a hurry to return home, Dulac isn’t sure. Contrary to his lecture earlier to the police cadet, they are not entirely eager, and the captain has just suggested for the third time that regular procedure be followed, that the twenty-four-hour rule be honored, to allow the boy time to return home.
“You realize,” the chief says, “no one is going to hassle us if it turns out this boy has been picked up. The right thing’s been done so far. In fact, we’re above and beyond so far. Officially, he hasn’t even been missing a dozen hours yet.”
“He’s been missing since six forty-five last night,” Dulac says. “It’ll be eighteen hours roughly at noon.”
“Still, he shows up in school in the morning and we’ll look a little foolish with fliers all over the place. You know what I mean?”
“We can survive that,” the lieutenant says. “The thing is, we’re going—”
“Gil, I know we can survive it,” the chief says. “We have to. The next time, though, people are going to say wait a minute now.”
“We can explain ourselves,” Dulac says, “if it comes to that. We can simply say we didn’t mean to put up a false alarm, it just looked real at the time. No one’s going to make a deal of it. We did it five times, okay. Not once.”
“I’m for the procedure,” the captain offers from the other side in his raspy voice.
“Gil, you’re convinced about this?” the chief says.
“It looks like what it looks like,” Dulac says. “That’s all I’m saying. Not a thing missing. Not one thing.”
“You’d put money on it?”
“I don’t want the kid to be abducted,” Dulac says. “I’d just as soon go home and read the Sunday paper. But it looks like that to me. It feels like an abduction. The kid never made it back home and his mother is certain he didn’t have more than twenty cents in his pocket. That he didn’t have money is why he was badgering her. She’s a nice simple woman who is worried to death. In my judgment—as I see it—something is wrong. He’s been gone overnight. He’s twelve years old. He’s on his way home to watch a movie on television. It’s something he wanted to see. It’s not like he was wandering around. He was going somewhere. Someone got in the way. We have to figure he was picked up. Don’t we? The longer we wait, chief, as far as I’m concerned the worse we’ll look in the long run.”
“You believe that?” the chief says.
“Of course I do. I know I could be wrong. I hope I am. Jesus Christ, this city’s been getting weird lately, let’s face it.”
“Now, now,” the chief says.
“I’m still for the procedure,” the captain says.
“Isn’t the best bet the father’s got him?” the chief says.
“I thought that,” Dulac says. “Now I’m not so sure. The mother’s so certain on the point, and the guy has never so much as written a postcard. Over eight years.”
“Well, okay. Legion Hall has to be the place to start,” the chief says. “When’s the mother coming up with her list?”
“As soon as we’re done here I’m going to pick it up,” Dulac says. “And a photograph of the boy.”
The chief pauses, taps a knuckle to the side of the table. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, this is what we’ll do. Go ahead and have your fliers made up. We’ll cover just that end of town. Work up the description and so on for radio and TV. Only, we’ll ask them to hold it until the six o’clock news. The boy comes walking in by then, you can make a couple of calls and cancel out. In either case, we’ll say ‘Portsmouth Police decided to move quickly in the case of a missing boy, et cetera.’ You see what I’m saying? Adam?”
“I’ll go along, if you say so. We should call up a file of known sex offenders, to see if any of them come in on the mother’s list.”
“It’s being done,” Dulac says.
“Tomorrow,” the chief says, “if the kid hasn’t shown up, we’ll put it out to the newspapers and to the networks in Boston. What about the budget, Adam?”
“It’s going to be a problem, just calling in people today. I’d say keep the crew as lean as possible. Neil Mizener, say, to assist. Then, two uniformed officers to do a neighborhood search and canvass; they can call in a couple of cadets to help with that. How’s that sound?”
“One other thing,” Dulac says, “How about Shirley Moss coming in at five, to set up a base operation here? She can do a central clearing thing, deal with the phone, build the file, and so on. Keep an eye on the cadets. Shirley’s good at that.”
“Okay,” the chief says. “You could get a bunch of calls. Shirley can handle that. Use 4022.”
“Okay,” Dulac says. “Good. Only two uniformed isn’t enough. Four is more like it.”
“Two,” the chief says.
“This, then,” Dulac says. “We run it on the six o’clock news. Say it gets to be eight or eight thirty, and the kid is still out there somewhere—how about asking the Boston stations to run a nine o’clock spot on a boy missing in—”
“No, that’s out,” the chief says.
“They’d never do it anyway,” the captain says. “Not this soon. You know something else, Gil? You put out a blitz like this, you’re going to scare the shit out of whoever is holding that kid. They could get nasty with the kid.”
“Aren’t chances just as good they’ll let him go? Chief, what’s your feeling on that?”
“Well, gee, chances are of course, if he’s been abducted, it’s someone known to him or in his own family. As you know. And that they’ve taken very few steps to cover themselves. Chances are, of course, if it is an abduction, that he’s dead by now. That’s the way it usually goes. You know? Anyway, of course you’re going to scare whoever picked him up, if that’s what happened.”
“I’ll still put my money on the father,” the captain says.
The chief is backing away from the table, taking up his empty cup. “Tell Shirley to keep me informed,” he is saying. “Regular updates. I’ll be home all day and all evening. I’m not going anywhere.”
Dulac takes up his cup, too, and the metal ashtray as he has used. He brushes his hand over his area of the table, before heading back to his cubicle.
Detective Sergeant Mizener—Neil—welcomes the call. “I’m about to take my oldest kid’s head off,” he says to Dulac. “It’s just as well I get out of here.”
He is not a close friend and Dulac doesn’t know if his oldest is a son or a daughter. He believes the man has four children. They have never clashed but have always stayed more or less aloof from one another.
Shirley Moss is less willing. Her husband’s sister and brother-in-law are supposed to stop by. “What the hell,” she says.
Dulac explains the case. “Shirley, you were my recommendation,” he says. “And it looks a little scary to me. This boy’s been missing since yesterday evening.”
“Who is it?” Shirley says.
“I’ll tell you when you get here. It’s a little boy—nobody important.”
Dulac makes other calls. He confirms Claire Wells’s account with the bartender Smitty. “Claire is just a good soul you can always count on,” the man says. “I had an idea it wasn’t any small thing when she said she had to leave even though it did leave us shorthanded.”
“Anything unusual happen before or after?” Dulac asks.
“Nothing,” the man says. “It was just another Saturday night.”
When a false note rings for the first time Dulac almost misses it. It comes in a phone conversation with the older son’s friend, fifteen-year-old Cormac Hughes. “I’m sorry,” Dulac says to him. “You say you and Matt split at about five thirty? He left the movie theater?”
“Yah,” the boy says.
“How did he leave—why did he leave? Was the movie over?”
“The movie wasn’t over. He just left. He got up and walked out.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was acting weird, that’s all.”
“How so, weird?”
“I don’t know. It was like he was mad.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know,” the boy says.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He just said he was leaving. Said he’d see me in school.”
“He never acted like that at other times?”
“No. Never.”
“You see him after the movie or any time since?”
“Nope.”
“What time did you leave the movie theater?”
“I don’t know. Six thirty or so.”
“Okay,” Dulac says. “Listen. I don’t want you to talk to Matt or to anyone else in the meantime about this. Not even to your parents. We’re going to stop by and get a statement from you. So you stick around until we get there. It’ll be within an hour.”
“What’s happening?” the boy says.
“I’ll tell you when we get there,” Dulac says, and concludes the call.
He pauses to think a moment then over the yellow pad on his desk. The hours match up. He sits staring away. “Jesus,” he says aloud. “His brother . . .”