The Boy in the Park: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

I am, however, more than a little annoyed at the officer’s implication that the only explanation for the oddity of my report is that I must be an addict high on some mind-polluting cocktail. I know the circumstances are strange, but surely a more serious consideration is warranted. I can’t recall the last time I felt as if I’d been so summarily dismissed out of hand.

I should have ironed my clothes. Maybe worn a suit. On the television the men who walk into police stations in suits always get paid more attention. I’ll have to remember that if I’m ever back.

Still, I don’t apologize for the action. A knot in my gut was telling me that something wasn’t right, and it still is. I may not know that boy, but I know that these last two days are the only days I can remember that he hasn’t been in the park. Supportable by credible evidence or not, I know that something is wrong. There are certain things in life that you know with a type of knowledge that doesn’t rely on factual data. A kind of knowing that comes from a place other than the brain, and is all the more forceful because of it.

Yet as certain as I am that some sort of action has to be taken, one cannot wholly abandon the necessary course and flow of life. I’m back at the health foods counter this Sunday afternoon, as bereft of his presence as the past two. I have to calm myself down. We sell a powdered concoction that advertises itself as a ‘non-medical, natural Prozac alternative’. Something made from two parts garden weeds and one part homegrown (but organically certified) fungus. I’m agitated, but not an idiot. I’ll try that, perhaps, if two days become twenty.

It’s funny, really, how quickly emotion can shift intensity. Two days ago I was running through the park, convinced of the absolute, immediate need for desperate action – to save someone from something. Yesterday I was still flustered, and today I remain deeply concerned; but my pulse is back where it should be. I’ve counted up our stock of OrganoVit and protein shake powder (if I’m the only one who thinks the name ‘Brown Rice Proto-Power Blast’ is odd, maybe I really am off my gourd). I’ve balanced the ledger from my last two shifts. I’ve moved a respectable amount of stock. The day has, despite it all, become normal.

I must simply tuck down and ignore the one glaring, horrible abnormality. I was at my bench again for lunch. I had a coffee (back to black; it’s the new orange). I had my notebook with me, though I didn’t crack the cover. No verses since before …

But the boy didn’t appear. Of course. Why would he? The boy is gone. And I’m the only one who seems to know.

12 (#ulink_8ac000cf-5f71-52e5-b301-1cc4d3b10bc2)

Taped Recording Cassette #021C Interviewer: P. Lavrentis (#ulink_8ac000cf-5f71-52e5-b301-1cc4d3b10bc2)

The recording begins with a fluster of clicks and the scrape of the plastic recorder being slid across a table top. Five seconds in, a rustling of papers, then a sustained silence.

‘I’m glad you’ve finally agreed to talk to me again.’ The voice that breaks the silence is Pauline’s. Her tone is, as in the previous recordings, the practised, soft monotone of unreadable openness.

‘Only because they told me I had to.’

‘You don’t have to talk to me, Joseph. Not if you don’t want to.’

‘That’s not what the others say.’

‘You have to meet with me, that’s different. That’s part of the sentence. But Officer Ramirez told me you said you had something you wanted to tell me. That you wanted actually to speak.’

A pause, seven seconds.

‘I don’t want to tell you anything.’

Pauline doesn’t answer.

‘But,’ Joseph’s voice carries on a moment later, ‘I don’t think you’re going to leave me alone if I don’t.’

‘You can speak openly with me, you know that.’ An innocuous statement; a practised non-response to a provocation.

‘I don’t like what you said to me last time we met,’ Joseph says in return. ‘I don’t like being lied to. Not when things are this serious.’

‘Why do you think I lied to you?’

‘Don’t mess with me about this, bitch!’ The words are a flash of shouted rage. There is a clanking and thunder on the small cassette – a fist smashing into a metal table sending it rattling. Pauline recalls vividly the ferocity that had overtaken him, the way it shook his whole body. She’d forced herself not to react, to take bracing breaths of her own, culling the adrenalin down. She’d repositioned the recorder equidistant between them on the table. A few seconds later silence returns to the cassette, then her own voice. In repetition.

‘What makes you think I lied to you, Joseph?’

‘You know what. You know full well. It’s insulting for you to treat me like an idiot. To tell me I wasn’t married.’

‘More insulting than the thought of killing your wife?’

‘Don’t twist my words. I’m admitting I killed her. I know it was a bad thing. Wrong. But you’re twisting reality.’

‘Joseph, I’ve studied your file. Other people have studied your file. Your whole life was examined at the trial. You’ve never been married.’

A long silence. Sixteen seconds.

‘Things get left out of files.’

‘Not things like this. Not things like marriage, which can be verified so easily. And certainly not in a murder trial.’

‘Everything about that trial was stacked,’ the man protests. ‘It was a farce. You know it, I know it. Nothing there had any bearing on reality.’

‘You’ve said that to me before,’ Pauline answers, committing herself to nothing. ‘But …’ she hesitates. Through the tape, she can almost hear herself shifting tack.

‘Let’s go this route,’ she prompts. ‘Tell me why, precisely, you think you killed your wife.’

‘I don’t think, I—’

‘I know. You’re sure. But I want you to tell me why you’re so sure. What specific memories do you have?’

Joseph’s voice is vaguely distant when it comes back, as if he is searching his memory while he forms his words.

‘Her cheating had got to be too much. I couldn’t take it any more. I felt betrayed. All a guy ever wants is a woman to stand by his side, and if she can’t do that …’

‘How did you know she was cheating?’

‘It’s hard to pinpoint how a man knows these things. You just do. The good times were good, but a wife is supposed to be there for you. Not just for the picnics and the nights out on the town, but all the time. Even when you’re down, when life’s hard.’

‘And she wasn’t always there for you?’

‘It was like she’d be gone when I needed her most. Consistently. When I really needed her. The treats and kisses and tendernesses didn’t make up for that. I’d hit tough times and she’d be nowhere to be seen. Evaporated.’

‘Almost like she wasn’t—’

Pauline had so hoped he would finish the sentence, the way it needed to be finished. Instead, he’d simply cut her off, continuing his rant.

‘On the rare occasions she would actually stick around for the tough moments, she’d go all silent.’ His tone grows more resentful. ‘Cutesy quiet and noncommittal. She wouldn’t stand by me when I needed her.’

‘That … that can’t have been easy, Joseph.’

‘I guess I was fine for the romantic trysts and jaunts, but I wasn’t enough to satisfy her all the time. When things were difficult, she didn’t want a damned thing to do with me.’ He hesitates. ‘That’s how I knew there was someone else. Someone she was more attached to. And, well, after a while you reach a point where you’ve had enough.’

The recording captures the long lull that Pauline had permitted in their conversation. Finally, in more subdued tones, she speaks. ‘Let’s talk in more concrete terms, just for the moment. The actual killing, Joseph. Tell me what you remember about it.’

‘More than’s in all your precious court transcripts?’ he mocks. It’s clear he has no respect for whatever is in the court documentation.

‘Yes, more than what they contain. Tell me in your own words. Killing a person is traumatic, Joseph. I’m sure it’s vividly in your memory. Tell me precisely what you see when you look back on that event.’