Wonderland

by Jennifer Hillier

  Thank you, Earl. Oscar allowed himself a small smile in the privacy of his office. Bianca would be pleased. Earl had managed to protect Wonderland while at the same time being forthcoming about what he knew about the Wonder Wheel Kid and Homeless Harry. Not an easy feat. Genius, really. He made a mental note to thank Earl at the Seaside Hospital gala fund-raiser in a few days, assuming they didn’t run into each other before then. Seaside was a small town, after all.

  The comments on Blake Dozier’s Facebook and Twitter page had climbed to well over a thousand. The commenters, who’d initially expressed admiration over Blake’s Wonder Wheel selfie, had then turned sympathetic when the news broke that Blake was considered missing. A flurry of comments saying “Stay safe, Blake” and “Come back to us, Blake” filled up the middle portion of the comment thread.

  But now, mere hours later, they were beginning to turn vicious.

  Someone had suggested that Blake was not really missing at all, that he had staged his own disappearance to draw attention to his picture. Another person, who’d apparently known him in high school, said that Blake had been an asshole who’d picked on him and so he wouldn’t be surprised if Blake was lying dead in a ditch somewhere after having messed with the wrong person. And yet another kid, a fellow climber no less, said that Blake shouldn’t even be calling himself an urban free climber because the Wonder Wheel was only 150 feet high.

  One minute social media was your friend and saying kind things; the next minute social media was a self-righteous bitch telling you exactly what a fuck-up you were. Oscar wondered if Blake Dozier’s father was reading these ugly comments.

  He had gone to look at the Wonder Wheel earlier that morning, and the crime scene cleaning team that Earl had sent to the park the night before had done a stellar job. No traces of Homeless Harry, aka Aiden Cole, remained, though Oscar was sure if you held up one of those special blue lights to the dark asphalt, you would see traces of him still there. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was what you could see, and everything appeared normal. The thick cardboard wall surrounding the base of the wheel had finally been removed. Even the stench was gone.

  It was as if nothing had happened at all.

  Oscar continued to watch KIRO-7 as Earl was peppered with a few more questions, to which he replied with vague, professional answers. In the background, standing slightly to the police chief’s left, stood deputy chief Vanessa Castro. Oscar leaned forward to get a closer look.

  Goddammit, she looked sexier than ever. It was a warm day and she wasn’t wearing a jacket, so her gun was visible in its holster. Her silk blouse clung to the contours of her curvy but athletic body, and her midlength dark hair hung in shiny, loose waves around her face. Minimal makeup, but she didn’t need any. Her eyes were large and expressive, and as Earl spoke, she scanned the audience, missing nothing.

  Oscar was doing a little digging into her background, and with the press conference over, he turned his attention back to his computer. A quick Google search had turned up several articles linking Vanessa Castro to the Marcus Henry trial—they were the first six hits. Apparently Seaside’s new deputy chief had been close friends with the drug kingpin, a friendship that dated back to when they were teenagers and Henry was still a resident of Seaside. It was brought up during the trial that Detective Vanessa Castro had been intimately involved with Henry before her husband died. After Henry’s acquittal, she left Seattle PD and joined Seaside PD, which suggested she’d been pushed out of her old police department.

  Further down the page of Google links was her late husband’s obituary. Dated six months earlier, it said that Major John Castro of the U.S. Army, retired, had died three days before Christmas at the age of forty-one, leaving behind a wife and two children. In lieu of flowers, donations should be made to the Magnolia Foundation. Oscar had never heard of it before, and when he clicked on the website, he saw that the Magnolia Foundation was a not-for-profit organization that assisted military veterans in receiving treatment for a variety of mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress.

  Interesting. Oscar had suspected that Vanessa had a colorful past—why else would someone choose to leave Seattle for Seaside, if not to get away from a colorful past?—but he hadn’t expected a recently deceased husband and a questionable relationship with a high-level drug dealer. Vanessa had told him she was in no place for a relationship, and Oscar was beginning to understand why. In that sense, she and Bianca were alike.

  He mentally cursed himself again. He had to stop comparing Vanessa—and every other woman he met—to his boss and former lover. With Bianca, it had always been just about sex, but with Vanessa, there was chemistry on all levels. Vanessa was smart and ambitious, but she also had a family. She seemed more centered, and softer in all the ways that mattered. She made Oscar want more. And he was ready for more.

  After more than twenty years with the park, Oscar wanted out of Wonderland.

  Having grown up in Seaside, he’d started working at the park as a part-timer when he was in high school. It was almost a rite of passage for the local kids that they’d work at the amusement park once they turned fourteen. Seaside’s World of Wonder, as it was originally called, had been created and built by Jack Shaw.

  Yes, that Jack Shaw, who’d built several of Seattle’s tallest buildings. Jack Shaw, who was one of the Pacific Northwest’s wealthiest men, according to Forbes magazine. Jack Shaw, who had a thing for young teenage boys, and who’d built World of Wonder just so he could have a legitimate reason to be around them. Jack Shaw, who’d eventually be accused of sexually assaulting more than half a dozen boys from the ages of fourteen to sixteen. Jack Shaw, who’d died horribly in a fire shortly after being formally charged with sexual abuse, and as a result had never been brought to justice.

  At least not the legal form of justice, anyway.

  Oscar was twenty-six and had just finished a five-year stint in the army when his mother told him the big news over dinner. She’d been thoroughly unimpressed with Nick Bishop’s decision to buy the park, and was delighted that Oscar hadn’t heard, because it meant she could drop the bomb herself while offering her opinions on the whole thing, of which there were many.

  “You should see the dump that the park is now, Ozzie,” Isabel Trejo had said to her son, lighting her third cigarette in a row. “Seaside’s World of Wonder. Christ. What the hell is Nicky thinking? Hell, I still remember it from when I was a kid. It was tacky even then, though of course when you’re a kid all you care about are the rides and the cotton candy. But it’s a fucking dump. If anybody should know that, Nicky should. He said he got it for a bargain price, and he’d have had to, because who else would buy it?”

  “It’s been for sale for a while, hasn’t it?” Oscar said, fanning the smoke away from his face. His mother didn’t notice. They were only halfway through their meals, and she would go through at least two more cigarettes before they were finished. Oscar hated the way she looked when she smoked. The skin around Isabel’s mouth was like paper, and it crinkled when she puckered to take a drag, instantly aging her twenty years.

  “It was on the market for a couple of years. I didn’t think Shaw’s widow would be able to give it away. Obviously, she was desperate to get rid of it. Not for the money, of course; that bitch is loaded. But she’d want it out of her life, you know? She’d want it away from her. Not that I blame her.”

  “I can’t believe Nicky would buy it. Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Kiddo, it’s all over town. Besides, I just talked to Betty at the bank.” Isabel exhaled a long stream of smoke from her nostrils. “I stopped in to get some cash and she couldn’t wait to tell me what he paid for it.” She said the number, and it was lower than even Oscar could have imagined. “Your loco friend is now the proud owner of the world’s ugliest amusement park. Christ, he’s not even thirty. What the hell is he thinking?” she said again.

&
nbsp; “Well, maybe he’ll fix it up.” Oscar’s mind was racing. “Make it all shiny and new. I’m sure he has a plan.”

  “With what money? He just spent it all to buy the goddamned park. He finally gets his big payday and this is what he blows his cash on? Un-fucking-believable.”

  All Oscar knew about Nick’s finances back then were the rumors he’d heard filtered through his mother. A couple of years after Oscar joined the army, Nick had been in a car accident, causing him to lose partial function of his leg, and he’d sued somebody and won. The full story, which he would learn from Nick himself later, was that an eighteen-wheeler had barreled through his car after it failed to stop at a red light. Nick had been rushed to the hospital with a leg that had been shattered in a hundred places (a likely exaggeration, but whatever), along with a broken arm. At the hospital, he’d contracted the infection that had caused permanent nerve damage, forcing him to walk with a noticeable limp even after his broken leg had healed. For two years after, he’d been embroiled in a lawsuit against both the trucking company (which had been aware that the brakes for the truck were in need of servicing) and the hospital (which hadn’t employed the correct safety measures to prevent a staph infection). And he’d won. How much, exactly, Nick had never confirmed, but it had clearly been enough to buy the park outright. The trucking company and the hospital both had deep pockets.

  The money to renovate World of Wonder had ultimately come from the bank in town. The amusement park had long been an eyesore for Seaside, and with Jack Shaw finally dead, nobody was more invested in seeing it cleaned up and thriving than the town was. Though Nick Bishop had no credit to speak of, his loan application had been pushed through. And a year and a half later, Nicky reopened the park, changing the name and rebranding it Wonderland. It was now bigger, with more rides, more games, and more food. Wonderland had turned a tidy profit ever since.

  But some things remained the same. Nick hadn’t wanted to change everything. “Part of the appeal of Wonderland is the memories,” he’d said once, when Oscar had suggested replacing some of the older attractions with more modern ones. “Adults spend a lot of time here with their kids, because it was magic for them when they were kids. If we change too much, it ruins the magic.”

  Nick understood that part of the park’s appeal was its retro vibe, therefore many of the attractions that had been part of the original World of Wonder were still here. The Tiny Tom Donuts hut, for instance. The sign looked exactly the same as it had back in 1985, with the neon cat dancing while holding a doughnut in its paw. Every other year the wires would short out and an electrician would be called in to repair it, but it was still here. The Hot Diggity hot dog stand, the Merry Go-Round, Adventure Mountain, the Puppet Theater, the House of Horrors, the Giant Octopus, the Clown Museum—these were all attractions that had been at the park since the beginning, since Oscar had been a fourteen-year-old Wonder Worker himself, since he’d survived Jack Shaw.

  Nick could never really explain to Oscar why he had wanted to revive this place, though the two men had talked about it a couple of times. And Oscar could never really explain why he had agreed to work for his friend. But now, much older and wiser, it all made sense why the two of them had been drawn back to Seaside’s World of Wonder.

  Working here every day, the place where so many awful, terrible things had happened to him, allowed Oscar to feel in control. It was, in a weird but effective way, a very empowering thing to be back at the place where as a teenager he’d felt so helpless. Working at the new Wonderland, for him and for Nick, and maybe even for Glenn Hovey, was like the ultimate fuck-you to Jack Shaw. A way of showing the dead pedophile—and the rest of the world—that he was just fine. Fuck you, you couldn’t break me. Fuck you, I’m not damaged. Fuck you, I’m second-in-command of the Pacific Northwest’s largest amusement park, and so how do you like that, you pathetic, disgusting sonofabitch?

  But now it was time to move on. He’d been thinking about it for a while now. Even Nick had gotten to a point where he’d wanted to leave. Now Oscar did, too, though he had no intention of leaving the park under the same circumstances Nick had. Bianca had been furious.

  There was an old bar and grill on the beach that had been empty for a while. Owning his own business had always been Oscar’s dream. As if on cue, his cell phone rang.

  “Oz, it’s Wendy Kerse from Seaside Credit Union,” the woman on the other end said. “I just realized there’s a couple of forms I forgot to have you sign when you were here a few days ago. Are you able to come in today?”

  “I can come around noon, if that works,” Oscar said. “Thanks, Wendy.”

  He hung up and exhaled. Buying the restaurant was the riskiest thing he’d ever done. It needed a complete renovation to get it where he wanted it to be, and he knew next to nothing about running a restaurant. But still, he could envision how it would be once it was all finished. Live music on the weekends. Cuban pulled-pork sandwiches. Mojitos. Fresh seafood. Tapas at happy hour. He already had a name for the place. He would call it El Mago. The Wizard. Because he was Oz, of course.

  He was daring to imagine a different life, and it was scary as hell.

  He already knew what Bianca would say when he told her. She would say, “Stay.” She would say, “Don’t leave me.” She would say, “I can’t run this place without you, Oz.” Things she’d been saying to him for years already, and they had worked. He hadn’t been able to walk away. Because he had loved her. He still loved her.

  But he was beginning to realize that love was overrated. Love made you do stupid things. Awful things. Terrible things. Things you knew were very, very wrong. Even when the person you loved didn’t love you back.

  Fuck, especially when the person you loved didn’t love you back.

  SEVENTEEN

  The television in the living room was a bit loud, but Vanessa wasn’t about to tell Ava to turn it down. Things had been so tense between them lately, and all she wanted was to try and keep things peaceful as best she could. They had barely spoken since their big fight, and Vanessa had no idea how Ava was feeling these days. She didn’t have a clue whether her daughter liked her job at Wonderland, whether she was making any friends, whether things were getting better for her in Seaside. Forcing Ava to talk was a bad idea. All Vanessa could do was hope her daughter would come to her when she was ready.

  She had a lot to keep her busy in the meantime. With Blake Dozier officially declared a missing person, she now had three missing persons cases, and it was three too many, as far as she was concerned. Mind you, Aiden Cole’s status was now technically a homicide. Her conversation with David Cole had gone as well as could be expected, but it was always difficult to hear a grown man cry.

  “Thank you,” he’d said, his voice thick. “I appreciate you letting me know.”

  “I really didn’t do anything,” Vanessa said, which was true. The body had just shown up. “But if there’s anything you need, any questions I can answer for you, please call me anytime, day or night. It’s still an active investigation, and I’ll keep you updated as often as I can.”

  “Is it true . . .” There was a hitch in David Cole’s voice. “Is it true that his face . . . his face was eaten . . .”

  “Your son died quickly, Mr. Cole.” Vanessa spoke as gently as she could. “When he was struck, it was with such great force that he was likely knocked unconscious immediately. He would not have felt or been aware of anything after that.”

  She cursed the Wonder Worker who’d posted the picture of #HomelessHarry on Twitter in the first place. They’d tracked him down and he’d been fired, according to Donnie, but the damage that he’d done to Aiden Cole’s father could never be undone. David Cole had probably been following the Homeless Harry case with interest, as everyone else had, and to learn that the dead body was actually his missing son had to be a nightmare. She could only hope that he hadn’t seen the actual photo.

  “Why
did they think he was homeless?” David Cole asked. “Do you think Aiden spent the last three years starving on the streets of some city somewhere? Why didn’t he just come home?”

  “I don’t have the answers to that, Mr. Cole,” Vanessa said. “But I promise you, I will find out who did this. I am so incredibly sorry for your loss.”

  “Did you know that I’ve kept his room exactly the same? I don’t drink orange juice, but Aiden likes it, and I still buy it every couple of weeks in case he comes home . . . and now I know he’s not coming home . . .” David Cole broke down, sobbing, and a moment later, the phone disconnected.

  Vanessa had lost a husband, but never a child, and the grief David Cole was feeling was unfathomable.

  The case files for Aiden, Tyler, and Blake were spread out in front of her, and Vanessa stared at them all, trying to make sense of them. They’d all been Wonder Workers when they’d gone missing. They were all eighteen. They were all white. While on the surface it might seem like they had a lot in common, they didn’t really, because most of the population of Seaside was Caucasian. And the overwhelming majority of Wonder Workers were under the age of twenty-one.

  What was the goddamned connection?

  Donnie Ambrose had offered to help her go over the cases, but she’d been taking up too much of his time lately, and there were other major crimes for the detective to work on. He’d made her promise to call him if she got stuck on something, and in the meantime, he’d continue to do what he could to find Blake Dozier, and also Glenn Hovey.

  Vanessa had found herself irritated with Earl Schultz’s press conference, in which he’d so cleverly exonerated Wonderland of any responsibility concerning both Aiden Cole and Blake Dozier. No evidence of foul play on park premises? Maybe that was technically true, but that didn’t mean that Wonderland didn’t have everything to do with what happened to them. Which Vanessa believed in her gut they did. She’d complained about it to Donnie over the phone earlier, who at this point was the only person she trusted.