December Park

by Ronald Malfi

  Concerning the specific details of Holt’s disappearance, Chief Barber declined to go into the matter, though he insisted that his department is doing everything within their power to find out what happened to the boy. “We have recovered Howard’s backpack and have sent it to the lab to be analyzed,” said Chief Barber. “We have been conducting interviews and are following up on a number of leads.”

  As to what leads the department has received thus far, Chief Barber wouldn’t comment.

  The Harting Farms Police Department came under strict criticism last October when the body of fifteen-year-old Courtney Cole was discovered in a wooded area near Governor Highway, the city’s main thoroughfare. To date, the department has no suspects in Cole’s death, and it seems from an outside perspective that all leads have reached a dead end.

  “My heart breaks,” said a tearful Byron Cole, father of the deceased. “Someone should have been arrested by now.”

  Meanwhile, parent organizations and city council groups are in an uproar at what is perceived to be a cavalier attitude taken by Barber and his department.

  “These are children,” said Holly Dangliano, spokeswoman for the Protect Our Children Foundation. “It is deplorable how dismissive the local police have been throughout the past year.”

  Chief Barber was asked if the FBI should be brought in to assist in the investigation.

  “This isn’t a single investigation,” Chief Barber said. “These are six separate investigations.”

  When a reporter at the press conference repeated the question about possible FBI involvement, Chief Barber ended the interview without further comment.

  From the Harting Farms Caller, June 7, 1994:

  Barber Resigns

  Chief of Police Harold C. Barber announced his resignation yesterday during a press conference outside the county courthouse. County executives and parent organizations have been calling for Barber’s resignation since the body of fifteen-year-old Palisades resident Courtney Cole was discovered in the woods by December Park last October.

  “I feel I have done right by the community,” Barber said, his wife, Janet, by his side. “I feel I have done everything within my power. I am a servant of the people, and the people have voiced their opinion loud and clear.”

  Barber has served as chief of police for the Harting Farms Police Department since 1988, after replacing Arnold McDowell following McDowell’s retirement.

  Barber had come under close scrutiny last fall after the disappearances of thirteen-year-old William Demorest and sixteen-year-old Jeffrey Connor, both of Harting Farms. Police had no leads in either case, and Barber was criticized in the media and by several community organizations for his cavalier attitude and reluctance to address the situation with the urgency many thought necessary.

  “This [resignation] is long overdue,” Freeman Demorest, the father of William Demorest, said following Barber’s press conference. “Communication with the [police] department has been deplorable to say the least. It was clear from the beginning no one at the department took my son’s disappearance seriously. I was told many times that my son would eventually ‘turn up’ and that my wife and I were overreacting. I find that disgusting.”

  County selectmen will discuss the process for naming an interim chief later this week.

  “We’ve got quite a few candidates stepping up to the plate,” said Selectman Robert Gordon. “We will be appointing someone who understands the platform of the community and the concerns expressed by this unfortunate situation.”

  “It’s too little too late,” Demorest said. “I have been in touch with private investigators who have all told me the chances of finding my son alive are slim. The trail has gone cold. I blame the police. I blame Barber.”

  Many others have echoed Demorest’s sentiment.

  “There has been discussion about filing a lawsuit against the [police] department,” Gordon said. “We are not blind to this. Our hope is that with this transition we can avoid any legal ramifications and focus all our attention on finding these children and bringing the person responsible to justice.”

  Headline from the Harting Farms Caller, June 10, 1994:

  No Prints, Evidence on Holt’s Backpack

  From the Harting Farms Caller, June 11, 1994:

  Solano Named Interim Chief

  Deputy Chief of Police Michael Solano, twelve-year veteran of the Harting Farms Police Department, has been named interim chief of police last night by a vote of 4-0 from the county selectmen.

  “Solano possesses all the qualifications to best serve this community,” said Selectman Robert Gordon.

  “I hear the people of this city loud and clear,” Solano said during a press conference last night, following his selection. “Your concerns will not fall on deaf ears.”

  Solano’s first order of business is to institute a 9 p.m. curfew throughout the city.

  “This will go into effect immediately for anyone under the age of eighteen,” Solano said. “Exceptions will apply for anyone with summer jobs or other unavoidable circumstances.”

  Solano was asked if this curfew should be interpreted as the police department finally acknowledging the possibility that children have been abducted and not simply run away.

  “The time for ignoring the obvious is over,” Solano said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Fear Closes In

  School was out.

  Yet summer was hesitant. As if tempered by the events of the past year, it was reluctant to push the gray and mild spring away, letting it linger like bad memories. Highways shimmered with a mixture of rainwater and oil while flowers refused to bloom, disillusioned by the terminal skies.

  The disappearance of thirteen-year-old Howie Holt caused the city to fold in on itself. Distrust was palpable; it was in everyone’s eyes now. Courteousness was replaced by suspicion. Father Evangeline quit bringing people up on the pulpit; his Masses were cursory and without feeling, as if he was in a hurry to be done with the whole ordeal. At the deli, Mr. Pastore no longer engaged me in idle chatter when I picked up my grandmother’s groceries. People made anonymous phone calls about their neighbors’ so-called suspicious activity. Our neighborhood watch tripled in size.

  My father spoke little of the changes in the police department, though his face betrayed the stress and exhaustion from which he suffered on a seemingly daily basis. On his days off, which were few and far between, he spent much of his time trimming the shrubs and the pin oaks that had become saggy because of all the recent rain, mowing the lawn, chopping firewood we wouldn’t need until late September, or smoking Romeo y Julieta cigars in one of the old wicker chairs on the back porch. At supper, he tried to affect a pleasant demeanor, engaging in conversation as best he could, but his eyes had begun to deaden with strain and, I thought, bitter reflection.

  His distancing troubled my grandmother, who complained about it not to my father but to my grandfather. She felt the job was wearing at my father. She often said, “It’s eating him up.” I wondered how much was the job and how much was Charles. Charles’s birthday was fast approaching, and with each passing day my father grew darker.

  The police-enforced curfew put a damper on the opening of summer vacation. Most nights I was home before the nine o’clock curfew, having come home for dinner only to remain there for the rest of the night.

  The search for Howie Holt curtailed our visits to the Dead Woods, too, since there were always cops around. Uniformed officers patrolled the park grounds, dump yards, and schoolyards on foot. Sometimes they walked German shepherds on leashes. There were county police cars stationed at various intersections, helping to augment local law enforcement. Men in dark suits were spotted around town, usually one or two at a time, although they could be found having lunch or dinner together in some establishment, their matching suit jackets draped over the backs of their chairs, their voices conspicuous in their quietness.

  There were rumors that plainclothes policemen wandered the streets, pretendi
ng to be average Joes, buying coffee at The Bagel Boutique or chatting with the greasy, nervous salesmen at the OK Used Kars lot. My friends and I frequently saw them in December Park, strolling by themselves while pretending to admire the walnut trees or sometimes pausing to watch a pickup baseball game. They stood out like gorillas someone had dressed up in people clothes.

  Our little city had made the national news, and there was even an exposé about the disappearances on one of those weekly news programs. An attractive woman with coiffed hair and glossy pink lips interviewed some of the parents of the missing children, as well as the spokespeople for the Courtney Cole Memorial Charity and the Protect Our Children Foundation. Former Chief of Police Harold Barber was demonized while the interim chief, Michael Solano, declined to be interviewed.

  As we had done with the other missing children, Peter and I took to our bikes one sunny afternoon and rode out to the Holt household on Ridgley Avenue. Scott came with us. Adrian hadn’t been waiting on the curb for me this morning, so I wasn’t sure where he was, and Michael was enjoying a stint in summer school.

  Yet unlike with the other kids, we happened on the scene when it was still fresh and new, and we weren’t prepared for it. The Holt house had balloons, stuffed animals, and bouquets of flowers on the front lawn, up the driveway, and around the perimeter of the front stoop. It looked like a parade float. The small two-story house was dark, the window shades drawn.

  There was an HFPD cruiser parked farther down the block, a dark shape propped up behind the wheel. In thoughtful silence, the three of us assessed that we had about two minutes before the cop got out of the car and informed us that this wasn’t a carnival attraction and we should get lost. So we got lost.

  We purchased two six-packs of Jolt from the Generous Superstore, and Peter, Scott, and I went down to Solomon’s Field. We sat in the shade of the underpass, drinking sodas like dockworkers chugging beer on lunch break. We had dropped our guard after learning that Nathan Keener had started working days at the Ralston-Redmond Brothers junkyard and wasn’t out patrolling the neighborhoods for us anymore.

  “Ed the Jew says the FBI has been hanging around town,” Peter said. “He thinks they’re helping the local cops work the case on the Piper behind the scenes.”

  Scott handed me a fresh can of Jolt. I popped the tab and chugged half the can, wiped my mouth on my arm, and handed the can to Peter.

  “There were some guys in dark suits checking out the quarry at the end of my block the other day. They drove by in an unmarked police car.” I knew what one looked like since my dad drove one, and I had easily spotted the red and blue lights hidden behind the Crown Vic’s grille. “If there’s FBI in town, I don’t think they’re working with the local police. My dad seemed surprised to see them.”

  “The Piper got that Holt kid in broad daylight,” Scott said. “What’s the point of a nine o’clock curfew if kids are being swiped in the middle of the day?”

  The Cape was an alternating panorama of farmland, beaches, and woods sequestered from the rest of the city not only by distance but by economic status. It was one of the poor neighborhoods, separating our section of Harting Farms from the industrial park. Nonetheless, it was still a risky move approaching a kid in the middle of the day. Particularly just as school let out.

  “The news is saying that the Piper could be someone from town that these kids know,” Scott said. “They would go with him and not feel threatened. That’s how he’s able to take them so easily and without leaving any clues behind. Not even signs of a struggle.”

  “Like a teacher,” Peter suggested.

  “Or a cop,” I said.

  Later that afternoon, we hung around Fairway Court where Michael lived, waiting for him to come home from summer school. We had the remaining cans of Jolt Cola stowed in Scott’s backpack and our headphones on.

  Michael, lanky in khaki shorts and a Ghostbusters T-shirt, met us at the end of the block an hour later. Water-soluble tattoos, which he’d been collecting from boxes of Cracker Jacks for weeks, covered his forearms. He had his backpack slung over one shoulder.

  Scott looked at the digital clock on his Walkman. “Did you actually get detention in summer school? Is that even possible?”

  “Miss Huber loves me, didn’t want to let me go,” Michael said. “The poor lady said she’d miss me too much if I didn’t hang around an extra hour to clean up the classroom and wash the blackboard. Who am I to break her heart? Anyway, where’s Poindexter?”

  We all shrugged.

  “I called his house this morning,” Michael said, dropping his backpack to the curb, “but his mother said he wasn’t home. It wasn’t even seven yet. Where would he go that early?”

  I tried to imagine Doreen Gardiner’s dead voice over a telephone line. I imagined it sounded like the automated phone calls we sometimes got at the house confirming my grandparents’ medical appointments.

  “You think she would report him missing if something happened to him?” Scott said as we hoisted our bikes off the pavement and Michael ran up to his garage, where he threw his backpack inside and came out riding his Mongoose. “Like, if he vanished? Angie, you said she was a weirdo, but do you think she wouldn’t—?”

  “I don’t know what she’d do,” I said truthfully, hopping on my bike. “And what are you saying? That something might have happened to Adrian?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just weird that we haven’t seen him all week.”

  “Should we go to his house and see if he’s okay?” Peter suggested.

  I shrugged.

  Our ride to Worth Street was shadowed by the seed that Scott had inadvertently planted in all our heads: would we have any idea if Adrian had been abducted by the Piper? It was possible, wasn’t it? I suddenly felt like a coward for not knocking on the Gardiners’ door sooner.

  When we arrived at Adrian’s house, we pulled slow figure eights in the street on our bikes. No one wanted to knock on the door. It had been many months since I’d told my friends how creepy Adrian’s mother had been, but my description must have been vivid enough to ward them off permanently.

  Eventually Scott stopped his bike and shot daggers at me. “We’re here now. Someone needs to do something.”

  “Don’t look at me,” I told him.

  “Shoot,” Michael said. “Mothers hate me.”

  “So does everyone else,” Peter said, but we were all too wound up to laugh.

  Scott asked Peter for four cigarettes, and Peter reluctantly handed them over. Scott broke one in half—“Hey!” Peter said, frowning—then tucked all four into one fist so only the filters poked up. He held his fist out, and we brought our bikes in around him.

  “Who wants to draw first?” Scott said.

  Michael plucked one from Scott’s hand. It was whole.

  “Gimme that.” Peter snatched the cigarette from Michael and tucked it behind one ear. Then he looked uncomfortably at the remaining cigarettes in Scott’s hand.

  “Just pick one,” Scott urged him.

  “Fine.” He did. It was also whole. Relief spread across Peter’s face.

  Scott repositioned his fist in front of me. Like someone just handed me a gun in a round of Russian roulette, I stared at his hand and felt my mouth go dry.

  Peter lit his cigarette and blew smoke in my face. “Do it, Mazzone.”

  Turning my head away, I blindly snatched one of the cigarettes from Scott’s hand. I heard my friends make an “ooh” sound. I looked at the cigarette in my hand to find that it, too, was whole.

  Scott revealed the broken cigarette in the center of his palm. “Crap. Best two out of three?”

  “No way,” Peter and Michael harmonized.

  Scott set his bike down and threw the cigarette at Peter on his way up the Gardiners’ driveway. It was like watching someone forced to walk the plank of a pirate ship.

  “Ditch the smoke,” I said to Peter.

  He tossed the lit cigarette on the ground.

  Scott knocked on t
he door and waited. Nothing happened. He knocked again. Finally, when it seemed we might all wait around until the world ended, Scott turned and looked at us. He held up his hands in a sign of surrender, then turned his ball cap backward on his head.

  Michael used his finger as a gun and pretended to shoot at Scott, and Scott proceeded to do a commendable rendition of a cowboy tap-dancing over bullets. That was when the front door opened.

  “Shit,” I muttered. “His mom.”

  Scott faced the woman. He readjusted his ball cap and shifted from one foot to the other while he spoke to Ms. Gardiner.

  She listened, cocking her head like a snow owl, her face carved in half shadows. She was gaunt, cadaverous, her movements like a Disney animatronic slowly winding down. Then she said something to Scott. He nodded dumbly.

  Out of nowhere I wished for Scott’s benefit that he would suddenly blink out of existence—Please, God, let him vanish and not have to talk to that scary witch for one more second.

  The door closed, and Scott moved slowly back down the slope of the lawn. His dejection was evident in every fiber of his body. “He’s not home,” he said, picking his bike up off the pavement.

  We all looked at each other.

  “Then where is he?” Peter said eventually.

  “She didn’t say.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “Fuck, no.”

  Peter retrieved his cigarette off the ground. It was still lit. “You should have asked.”

  “You would have asked? Give me a break. You didn’t even want to go up there.” Then Scott looked at me. “She had this huge fucking scar on her neck.” He ran one finger across his jugular.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen it.”

  Michael turned his bike around and faced the intersection of Worth and Haven. Scraps of paper and street sand blew across the pavement. “Let’s get out of here.”