December Park

by Ronald Malfi

  “That isn’t funny,” I told him.

  “You guys realize he’s real, right?” Scott said. “The cops finding that girl’s body in Satan’s Forest proves it. No one can say those other kids just ran away anymore. We’re not dealing with runaways or even a kidnapper. We’ve got our very own serial killer.” The look on his face suggested he was delighted at the prospect.

  “Just because a girl was murdered doesn’t mean those other three kids were killed,” I said. “It doesn’t even mean they’re related.”

  “That’s what everybody’s saying,” Peter added.

  “Not everybody,” Scott said. “The newspapers think they’re all related. You should talk to your stepdad,” he said, turning to Peter. Peter’s stepfather worked for the Washington Post.

  “Ed the Jew works in the goddamned classifieds,” Peter countered. “What would he know? Unless the killer’s taken out an ad because he’s selling a bicycle or a used washing machine . . .”

  “The cops haven’t suggested that they’re related,” I said.

  “No offense to your dad,” Scott said, “but the cops, they don’t know everything. I mean, if they did, they would have found those other kids, right?”

  I sucked some of my Coke up through a straw and said, “Yeah, I guess.”

  “If those three other kids didn’t run away,” Peter said, “and they were actually murdered by some nut—”

  “Serial killer,” Scott interjected.

  “Yeah, serial killer,” said Peter. “If they were murdered, then where are their bodies? The police would have found them by now.”

  “Maybe they’re hidden,” Scott said. “Maybe they’re down in the woods just like that Cole girl, only the cops haven’t found them.”

  “Impossible,” I said. “The police spent two days going through the whole woods. They had dogs with them and everything.” I knew this because I had ridden my bike to the park and watched the uniformed police officers comb the area with cadaver dogs straining their leashes.

  “Drug-sniffing dogs?” Peter said.

  “Body-sniffing dogs,” I said.

  Peter raised his eyebrows and looked impressed.

  “So maybe the other bodies are hidden someplace else.” Scott was unwilling to be deterred. Once he wrapped his mind around something, he never let it go.

  “Like where?” I said.

  “Like anywhere. I don’t know. Maybe he chopped the others up into fish food and dumped ’em in the Chesapeake.”

  “What about their bones?” Peter said. “You can’t chop up bones and feed them to fish.”

  “You can smash bones. You can burn them, too. Or maybe the Piper just threw them in the bay, too. Do bones float or sink?” He looked at me.

  “How the hell should I know?” I said. “How many bodies you think I’ve disposed of?”

  “And where would he be doing all this chopping?” Peter asked. “In his house?”

  “Sure,” Scott said. “Why not?”

  “If this killer of yours is chopping up bodies and dumping the pieces into the bay, how come he left that Cole girl in the woods?” I said.

  “Maybe he didn’t do it on purpose,” Scott said. “Maybe she would have never been found if that drunk MacMillan chick hadn’t driven her car off the road and into the woods.”

  “Okay,” I conceded. “That’s a good point. But it still doesn’t mean those other three kids were murdered.”

  “Yeah?” Scott said. “So let me ask you. If there’s no chance those other kids were killed, why were the cops searching the woods with cadaver dogs after they found the Cole girl? What else were they looking for?”

  Peter and I exchanged glances.

  Then, for the second time that morning, something slammed against the plate-glass window, causing the three of us to bounce up in our seats. Pressed against the glass, pink and hairless like two Easter hams, were the quivering twin lobes of Michael Sugarland’s bare ass. Watching our expressions from over his shoulder, he exploded with laughter, his mouth so wide I could count the fillings in his molars. He dragged his buttocks along the glass, and the sound was like the rubber heel of a sneaker skidding on a gymnasium floor.

  As luck would have it, this was at the same moment our waitress arrived and placed the check at the corner of our table.

  “Lovely,” she said and turned quickly away.

  We caught a double feature at the Juniper, This Island Earth and The Incredible Shrinking Man.

  During the intermission, Scott leaned close to me and said, “He must live right here in town.”

  “Who?”

  “The killer,” he said, his breath smelling of buttered popcorn. “The Piper. Don’t you think so?”

  I didn’t answer.

  There was a moving van in the driveway of the old Dunbar house next door by the time I pedaled home. It was about time, seeing how the new neighbors had been moving around inside the house for weeks now. I assumed they were old, since most of the old people I knew—including my grandparents—didn’t venture outside the house very much.

  I drew figure eights in the street on my bike as the movers hauled furniture and cardboard boxes into the house, hoping to catch sight of our new neighbors. At one point I thought I saw someone in an upstairs window peering down at me. I stopped in the middle of the street and looked up. There was certainly a face, white and round yet otherwise indistinct, in the window. To my surprise, it looked like a child, maybe even someone my own age. I waved, then immediately felt like an imbecile when the moon face retreated into darkness.

  One of the movers grunted and stepped down the ramp at the back of the truck. He carried two cardboard boxes, one stacked on top of the other. Printed in block capitals in black marker on both boxes were the words comic books. One corner of my mouth tugged upward in a half smile.

  I pedaled to my house, hopping the lip of the driveway and coasting up onto the lawn. The air smelled strongly of fireplaces, and a lazy plume of blackish smoke spiraled out of the Mathersons’ chimney across the street. I stowed my bike against the side of our house, then went inside.

  “New neighbors’ moving van finally showed up,” I told my grandmother as I flitted by her on my way into the kitchen. She was perched on a chair near the window in the living room, knitting. The curtains were swept back; apparently she had been spying on the comings and goings next door as well.

  “I haven’t caught sight of them yet,” she called to me. “Have you?”

  “No.” I grabbed a Coke from the fridge and popped the tab, then joined my grandmother by the window. I strategically positioned myself behind her chair so she couldn’t see the bruises on my face. “But a couple of the boxes were full of comic books.”

  “I’ve baked a fresh batch of oatmeal raisin cookies.”

  “Great,” I said. “I’m starved.”

  “I meant for you to take over.”

  “To the new people? Do I have to?”

  “Don’t be impolite, Angelo.”

  “Okay. I’ll do it after dinner. Did you make extra?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Save some for your dad and grandfather, though. And don’t eat too many and spoil your appetite.”

  I went into the kitchen, snatched a handful of my grandmother’s fantastic cookies, then pounded up the stairs to my bedroom. My dad and grandfather were in the backyard cleaning wet leaves from the barbecue pit. I watched them through my bedroom window but didn’t want to alert them to my presence lest I’d be wrangled into their effort, not to mention I’d have to explain what happened to my face.

  After I finished the cookies, I slipped a Bruce Springsteen cassette into the tape deck and picked up my acoustic guitar to strum along, keeping one eye on the window and the work being done in the yard.

  When my grandmother called them both in for dinner, I shut off my music and darted into the upstairs bathroom to wash my face and hands. By the time my dad had come in through the back door, tired and breathing heavy, I had already dropped into
my seat at the kitchen table, ready to face the inevitable.

  “When’d you get home?” my father asked, peeling off his checkered flannel jacket and draping it over his chair. He went to the sink to wash his hands.

  “Just a few minutes ago,” I lied, grateful that my grandmother was out of earshot.

  When he came back to the table, he paused once he got a good look at me. “What happened to your face?”

  “It was stupid,” I said. “We were playing baseball in the park, and someone hit a pop fly. I went to catch it, but the sun was in my eyes, and it hit me right in the face.”

  “Ouch.” My father took my chin in his hand. He tilted my head to the side to examine my injuries. “One ball got you in the eye and the lip?”

  In a small voice, I said, “I guess so.”

  “Must’ve been some hit.” He smiled wearily at me. “I guess your friends had a good laugh at that one.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What park?”

  “Huh?”

  “What park were you playing at?” he said, sitting down across from me.

  “Oh. December Park.”

  “Hmmm.” He unfolded his napkin. “Do me a favor and stay out of that park, will you?”

  “How come?”

  “Just for a while. If you’re gonna go to a park, go to one closer to home.”

  “Is it because of that girl? The dead girl?”

  That weary smile reappeared but only for a second. “I’d just feel more comfortable if you stuck closer to home, Angie.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  As my grandparents filtered into the kitchen, I had to retell the phony story about taking a baseball to the face to each of them. My grandmother set the food on the table, and the four of us ate to the soundtrack of my grandfather’s intermittent proselytizing about the tragic state of the country—there was a new clerk at the cigar shop he frequented who didn’t speak English.

  I thought about Scott’s request of me—that I should ask my father about the disappearances of the kids from town. I had no idea how to broach such a topic with him—he never spoke of his work to me or my grandparents—and I didn’t expect he’d even take my questions seriously if I did bring it up.

  I supposed other guys my age would have fawned over the idea of their father being a police detective—it was no different than how my friends obsessed over the fact that there was a gun in my house—but I hardly ever gave it any thought. I had no clue if my father was good at his job or not (though I assumed he was), how he felt about the work he did, or how long he planned on doing it. I didn’t even know if he had ever shot anyone. I never asked and he never brought it up. To some degree, he had shared those things with Charles, but that had been in a different lifetime.

  After the table was cleared and my grandparents retired to the den to watch television, my father remained at the table, sipping a glass of red wine and gazing absently out the window. I refilled his wineglass and was about to replace the bottle in the cupboard when he said, “Was this your first fight?”

  For a second, I didn’t know what he was talking about. He had caught me with my guard down, as he so often did. There would be no use trying to convince him of the story about catching a pop fly with my face. “Uh, yeah, I guess. How’d you know?”

  “You think I was never fifteen?”

  “I just didn’t want to get into it,” I said.

  “Who was it?”

  “Some guys from school.”

  “Guys? More than one?”

  “Well, only one of them hit me.” I wasn’t going to go into detail about how two of Keener’s friends had held my arms while Keener pummeled me.

  “Did this guy start it?”

  “Yeah.”

  He smiled with just the corner of his mouth. “Did you finish it?”

  I couldn’t help but smile a little, too. “Sort of.”

  “You remember me teaching you and your brother how to fight?”

  “Sure,” I said. He had brought home sparring gloves from the police department’s gymnasium and taught us the fundamentals of self-defense. Never start a fight, he’d told us, but never let someone put their hands on you, either. Know how to protect yourself.

  My father looked at his wine, then peered out the window.

  It had just started to get dark, and I could see groups of costumed children going door-to-door. They pounded down the twilit causeways, their pillowcases bottom heavy with candy. Minivans prowled at a distance behind them, filled with parents who were more cautious this year.

  “Grandma said I gotta go next door and take cookies to the new people who moved in,” I said.

  “Sounds good,” said my father, still staring out the window.

  A few minutes later I pulled on my Windbreaker and, balancing a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies in one hand, walked next door. The moving van had left sometime around dinner, and the whole house was once again deathly quiet. Even the trick-or-treaters knew enough to avoid it, although that was probably because it still looked like no one lived there.

  For one split second, I wondered if I’d dreamed the whole thing—the moving van and the movers, the boxes of comic books, and, most implausibly, that pale moon face in one of the upstairs windows.

  I walked up the porch and knocked on the door. Then I peeked in the narrow window running down the left side of the door but couldn’t make out anything but dark, angular shapes. There were no lights on inside. I knocked a second time and continued to wait. Farther down the street, the Wilbers’ Rottweiler barked at two young kids dressed as Aladdin and Jasmine.

  I was just about to leave when the front door opened partway. A woman of indeterminable age stood on the other side. There was a look of distrust bordering on hostility on her face.

  “Hello,” I said quickly, almost robotically. “I’m Angelo Mazzone. I live next door. Here.” I proffered the plate of cookies. “My grandmother made these for you.”

  The woman eased the door open a few more inches, the hinges squealing. She was haggard looking, with blonde streamers of hair framing her face. She wore no makeup and had very thin lips. Her eyes would have been pretty if only she adopted a softer countenance. I thought that maybe she looked older than she was.

  She reached out for the plate of cookies.

  I surrendered it to her, thinking, There is no way she can pull that plate through the opening in the door. She will have to open it wider. The thought was like cold water running down my spine; for some inexplicable reason, I didn’t want her to open the door any wider.

  “That’s very kind,” said the woman. She possessed the small, timid voice of a squirrel. The door squealed some more as she pulled it open farther. Behind the woman I noticed a heap of cardboard boxes and furniture covered in ghostly white sheets. “Please come in.”

  I wanted to say no, but my feet were already carrying me over the threshold before I knew what I was doing. When she shut the door behind me, it was like being sealed up in a tomb.

  “I’m Doreen Gardiner.”

  “Hi.”

  “That’s some makeup.”

  I made a sound that approximated, “Huh?” before realizing she was referring to my bruised eye and split lip. “Thanks,” I said, allowing her to believe it was part of a Halloween costume. Maybe Scott had been right, and I should have draped my father’s old boxing gloves around my neck.

  “Do you want to wait here a moment while I get Adrian?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “Have a seat inside and I’ll fetch him.”

  The pronoun him threw me. The only Adrians I had ever known had been girls.

  Doreen Gardiner waved me toward an adjoining room that, when the Dunbars had lived here, had served as a sort of parlor room, with plush chairs and a fancy love seat covered in clear plastic. It hardly looked like the same room anymore. There were no chairs, so I sat atop a box labeled books and watched as Doreen Gardiner mounted the stairs to the second floor. She walked with the hampered
gait of someone suffering from osteoporosis, though she couldn’t have been more than forty-five. Maybe even younger.

  I looked around the room. The walls were barren and scuffed, the ceiling pocked with water damage. The carpeting was an ancient shag the color of oxidized copper. The Dunbars had been an elderly couple who’d been meticulous about the upkeep of their house, so I was surprised to find it in such poor condition.

  Overhead, I heard footsteps followed by a muffled conver­sation. Then silence.

  I must have sat on that box waiting for ten full minutes before I heard footsteps pattering down the staircase. I stood up.

  The boy who appeared at the bottom of the stairs was small, thin, timid as a mouse. His hair was the color of wheat, and his eyes, swimming behind the lenses of thick black frames, were so pale they looked nearly colorless. He wore a Spider-Man sweatshirt that looked too small even for his insignificant frame, the sleeves stopping several inches above his frail wrists. I knew without question that it had been his face I had seen in the window.

  “Hey, I’m Angelo. I live next door. You can call me Angie.”

  “I’ve got an aunt named Angie,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets.

  I realized that we were two boys who both had girls’ names. When he didn’t introduce himself, I said, “Your name’s Adrian, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’d you move from?”

  “Chicago.”

  “Cool.” I thought about sprinting out the front door. “How come you came to Maryland?”

  “My mom’s job moved her here.”

  While I found it jarring to think of that walking scarecrow of a woman holding down a job let alone being someone’s mother, I merely continued to smile and nod like an imbecile.

  “Is that real?” He pointed at my face as he leaned closer for a better look at the bruises.

  “Unfortunately, yeah,” I said, instinctively leaning away from him.

  “What happened? Did you fall off your bike?”

  “No. I got jumped by a couple of guys.”

  Adrian’s mouth tightened into a knot.

  “It’s not a bad neighborhood,” I said. “I mean, there are some jerks wherever you go, but for the most part everyone is cool.”