True Detective (Spoilers) an alternative theory

My sister liked the ending of True Detective.  Spoilers will follow.


She liked the character growth for Rustin Cohle and his new view of the world.  I liked that too (though I found it a bit reminiscent of Tommy Lee Jones' voiceover at the end of No Country for Old Men).  Like her, I'd also love to see a sequel or series about the new adventures of Hart and Cohle Private Investigators.  Particularly if they made their focus child abductions.


(As a side suggestion, I like the Jack Carpenter books by James Swain, (Midnight Rambler etc.) about a cop turned private investigator who investigates missing children... might work perfectly for the series).


So while I agree with her about that, and I agree I still like the series, I continue to struggle with all the loose ends and perceived inconsistencies of the ending.  Accordingly, I have an alternative theory about the ending.


Have I left enough room for those who want to be warned of spoilers?


I continue to cling to my idea of a greater conspiracy surrounding the child abductions.  While I can recognize that banality of evil may be an underlying message, I don't think it fits with what we saw on this show.


But what if Russ was right not to trust the two interrogating detectives?  They're the ones who called the case wrapped with the death of the maintenance man, they're the ones who didn't investigate his father any further, and also seem to have closed the case on the suspicious death of Billy Tuttle.  Although they pulled it out to threaten Cohle, they didn't seem to have any interest in pursuing it after the death of maintenance man.  And while the closing of the file and the death of maintenance man gave Cohle the closure he needed to be able to let the case go, was there legitimate ground for investigating him in the first place?


Assume for the moment that there is a conspiracy.  Hart and Cohle get called in for questioning to find out how far they got in their earlier investigation, particularly whether there was information that didn't make it into the file.  They investigate what, if anything, Cohle may have learned from or about Billy Tuttle before he died.  They find he's investigating on his own and may have been continuing to harbor suspicions about Billy Tuttle and the governor and the role the state police may have played in covering up and failing to link the child abductions.


They can't hold him, let him go.  Hart gets close to the investigation (my original theory, posted here http://readwhilewalking.blogspot.com/2015/02/true-detective.html posited that Hart could have been involved in the child abduction ring or conspiracy, though I thought it was a stretch.  I like his character, don't want to think he was involved (and I still think it's a stretch), but if he was, they have an inside man to the investigation, who then points Cohle at the maintenance man and finds tax records supporting this approach.  If Hart's not involved, then the death of maintenance man was just fortuitous for them to wrap the case.


So was maintenance man involved?  Perhaps... probably in working with Reggie Ledoux and perhaps the killing of Dora Lang.  But not necessarily in the abduction of children or the killing of Marie Fontenault.  The same problems identified in my earlier post about the conclusion of the show
(Read While Walking: True Detective Conclusion (spoilers). Review and commentary.) apply here to the access and ability of maintenance man to effect these crimes, to tape them and to justify Billy Tuttle's access to the tape, as well as the inconsistency of one serial killer ritually killing adult women 17 years apart and the balance of the time killing children according to a different ritual.  My recollection is what tied maintenance man to Dora Lang was the finding of a knife consistent with her knife wounds, but I don't recall hearing anything about DNA, fingerprint or other evidence.  If Carcosa was the site for keeping trophies, I'd expect to find trophies of the killings, but it doesn't necessarily mean maintenance man was responsible for those killings.


So the interrogating detectives can gloss over all of this, and send Cohle on his way by simply telling him maintenance man was connected to all the crimes, Cohle got the killer and no need to ask any further questions.  Cohle's free to go and they won't ask any more questions about Billy Tuttle.


Although I still like the idea that Cohle's been undercover investigating the child abduction ring, it's not essential to this theory (though again, potential spin-off series could be other cases Cohle was working in the last 8 years).  Just that Cohle was a threat, and the case had to be closed.  Interrogating detectives did that, Cohle has moved along and (perhaps) the abductions continue unabated.


In that case, the "true detective" shouldn't stop investigating when he or she reaches what appears to be a tidy conclusion with the perpetrator dead.  A true detective needs to keep asking questions until all the loose ends are tied up, because a true solution fits all the pieces together.  That's what haunted Cohle for 8 years, because it was what he and Martin did in 1995.  By failing to follow the clues to their conclusion another woman and a number of children died.  Now he's doing it again.