In an opening sequence that’s about as grisly as they come, the mutilated body of an 11-year-old boy is found in the woods, deep in white suburban Georgia. As the evidence mounts, it points to one man only, but the case is far from closed.

From the standard setup, viewers of HBO’s dark new crime drama “The Outsider,” which debuts Jan. 12, might expect a more standard police procedural to follow. But anyone who has read the 2018 Stephen King novel on which “The Outsider” is based — or read anything by King — knows there is probably more to the story.

At least that much is clear by the pilot’s end, if little else: The suspect, a Little League coach named Terry Maitland, appears to have been in two places at once, 60 miles apart. He is somehow, irreconcilably, both innocent and guilty. And so, a fairly predictable opening spins quickly into a complex metaphysical inquiry that is also a poignant social allegory — as much “Twin Peaks” as “True Detective.”

What if the unspeakable evil is both outside us and of us? And where do we turn when all logic fails?