Copyright

HarperImpulse an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © A J Grayson 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover photography © Shutterstock.com / Cover design by Books Covered.

A J Grayson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008239367

Ebook Edition © February 2017 ISBN: 9780008239350

Version: 2017-04-08

Dedication

For Rachael

Epigraph

I am not certain I may ever know, ever understand, that which makes death what it is and sorrow so sadly, desperately haunting. I am not sure what it is that lingers, once everything else is gone. But I know the boy, alive through all his torments, and perhaps that is enough. Perhaps we are not meant to know anything more cosmic than one child, one face, one set of hands. In them, I have found enough grief to encompass the whole of creation.

—Dr Pauline Lavrentis

Interview notes

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

The Boy in the Park, Stanza 1

Part One

San Francisco

Chapter 1. Tuesday

Chapter 2. Wednesday Morning

Chapter 3. The Boy in the Park, Stanza 2

Chapter 4. Wednesday Afternoon

Chapter 5. Taped Recording Cassette #014A – Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

Chapter 6. Thursday Lunchtime

Chapter 7. Friday

Chapter 8. Taped Recording Cassette #014B – Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

Chapter 9. Friday

Chapter 10. Saturday – Office of Lieutenant Brian Delvay

Chapter 11. Sunday

Chapter 12. Taped Recording Cassette #021C – Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

Chapter 13. Monday

Chapter 14. Monday Afternoon

Chapter 15. Taped Recording Cassette #021D – Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

Chapter 16. Monday Afternoon

Chapter 17. The Boy in the Park, Stanza 3

Chapter 18. Monday Evening

Redding

Chapter 19. Wednesday

Chapter 20. Thursday

Chapter 21. Taped Recording Cassette #033A – Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

Chapter 22. Thursday

Chapter 23. The Boy in the Park, Stanza 4

Chapter 24. Thursday Afternoon

Chapter 25. Thursday

Chapter 26. Thursday

Chapter 27. Taped Recording Cassette #041D – Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

Chapter 28. Thursday

Chapter 29. Thursday

Chapter 30. Thursday

Chapter 31. Thursday

Chapter 32. The Boy in the Park, Stanza 5

Chapter 33. Thursday – Nightfall

Part Two

The Farmhouse, 1974

Chapter 34. The Porch

Chapter 35. The Kitchen

Chapter 36. The Living Room

Chapter 37. The Kitchen

Chapter 38. The Living Room

Chapter 39. The Living Room

Chapter 40. Christmas Day – Two Weeks Later

The Schoolyard, 1975

Chapter 41. At School – Two Months Later

Chapter 42. The Schoolyard

Chapter 43. The Boy in the Park, Stanza 6

Part Three

Redding

Chapter 44. Thursday – Nightfall

Chapter 45. Thursday – Night-Time

Chapter 46. Taped Recording Cassette #057A – Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

Chapter 47. Thursday

Chapter 48. Thursday

Chapter 49. Taped Recording Cassette #057A – Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

Chapter 50. Thursday

Chapter 51. Friday

Chapter 52. The Boy in the Park, Stanza 7

Chapter 53. Saturday

Chapter 54. Sunday

Vacaville, California

Chapter 55. Conference Room 4C – California Medical Facility – State Prison

Chapter 56. Conference Room 4C – California Medical Facility

Chapter 57. Taped Recording Cassette #058A – Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

Chapter 58. Conference Room 4C – California Medical Facility

Part Four

On The Road

Chapter 59. Wednesday

Chapter 60. Thursday

Chapter 61. Thursday

Chapter 62. Thursday Night

Chapter 63. Friday Morning

Nashville

Chapter 64. Friday Evening

Chapter 65. Sunday

Chapter 66. Monday

Chapter 67. Monday Evening

Chapter 68. Monday Evening

Chapter 69. Monday Evening

Part Five

Vacaville, California

Chapter 70. California Medical Facility – State Prison – The Present Day

Chapter 71. Conference Room 6A – California Medical Facility

Chapter 72. Friday – Two Weeks Later

Note

The Boy in the Park

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

The Boy in the Park, Stanza 1

Little boy in the park,

Little boy standing, lost.

The waters quiet, the tree-wings

dance

For the little boy still, unmoving.

The little boy with stick in hand;

Little boy weeping …

Little boy weeping …

PART ONE

SAN FRANCISCO

1
Tuesday

My bench in the park is old, tainted from moisture, tinged a faint green by the growth of a moss that will one day consume it. A brass plaque that was once a colour other than tarnished black notes that it is dedicated ‘To the Memory of Margaret Hoss, Beloved (1924–2008).’ Margaret’s bench, now mine. We sit together beneath the trees. We sit and we watch, and the world dances before us.

From Margaret’s bench I am afforded the best view in the park. It is not off one of the great grassy quadrangles, nor the main paved walkways that criss-cross the gardens. To find it requires taking one of the thousand dirt pathways that branch away from these, spidering into densely planted greenery that’s divided, for convenience, by continent of origin. My bench is in the hidden underbrush of Temperate Asia, and all around it are plants with names like Autumn Joy, Nymphaea fabiola, Emerald Cypress and Primrose Willow. The bench itself sits on a patch of wood chips – a place to rest one’s feet in the absence of mud. A private retreat. And descending below, spreading out beyond my toes, is the pond.

The pond is tranquil, even beautiful. Not the blue-basined, sanitized sort of water feature too common in public spaces (there’s one of those in the park, too, at the centre of its most obvious green lawn). The pond, though entirely manmade, is of a style au naturel. Just the right number of lily pads and watercress colour its surface. A few stones peek up from the brown water, often serving as perches for birds or even the occasional turtle. Surrounded by tall leafy trees, the pond is generally hidden from the breeze, and so almost always the texture of glass – and just as reflective.

I sit on my bench, the poet in the midst of poetry. It is an everyday thing, or almost everyday, this visit. I come with my little Moleskine notebook and stubby pencil, sometimes with a paper cup dredging coffee beneath a plastic lid marked with the brown imprints of my lips. And I, the poet, gaze into paradise. Outside the park, so close by, looms the paved wasteland of the city. I can hear it as I sit, there, out of sight. Cars (petrol, hybrid or electric, it makes no difference, really), skyscrapers, slums. But here, here a poet can come to sing his song to the greens and browns of nature, and witness it singing back.

A couple strolls by, arms linked at the elbows, smiling, a Nikon camera dangling from the man’s neck. There is a punctuated look in the woman’s eyes. Romance, keyed in by the scents of begonias and rhododendrons. It’s become a visible flush of redness on her face. I can tell she hopes it will become something more.

A chipmunk descends from a tree, marked by a small plastic sign as Picea orientalis, Oriental Spruce. He observes the layout before him, the inclines and dips of the soil. There is food here, a treasure trove of it; he seems fairly confident. A tail shivers in anticipation. Nearby a bird – a hermit thrush, I’m almost certain – swoops down and takes a perch on one of the rocks jutting up from the water. The breath from his wings ripples the surface, changing a still mirror into one of undulating motion.

There is a poem here. I can feel it. Woven into the greenery, the humanity, the natural ebb and flow of life. A poem, waiting to be found, waiting to be spoken. One that will sing of something brighter than the dark world that gives it birth.

And then, there in the distance, I catch it. The little brush of motion from the branches, customary and expected. I turn my head slightly, but I know what’s there. I’ve known since before the motion came. It’s familiar now, this sight, seen on eighteen months of afternoons just like this.

The little boy emerges from the boughs of the faux Asian foliage. He takes three steps to the edge of the manmade pond’s crafted waterline, to where his toes almost touch. He wears the same worn overalls, the same once-white T-shirt beneath them that I’ve seen him wear more times than I can remember. His blond hair is dishevelled, as all little boys’ should be. He holds a stick in his right hand and pokes it listlessly at the water’s edge, sending new ripples across the pond. He gazes vacantly out at these results of his movements. The jade treetops bend in a breeze that doesn’t descend to the tops of our scalps.

The boy is mesmerized. I am mesmerized. The bird on the rock clucks from somewhere beneath its beak then flaps its wings to take flight. The little boy doesn’t notice. His gaze is still on the ripples of the water, meeting other ripples, colliding gently in the swell of a scene fabricated by man, yet hauntingly serene. Almost inhuman. Almost free.

And I cannot quite see his eyes.

2
Wednesday Morning

There is a rail workers’ strike today. It’s the third this year, and I feel as a result as if I’m becoming an old hand at dealing with them. Taking the train normally saves me thirty minutes of traffic and $28 in a day’s parking charges, but a bus still beats out the car for second best. No reprieve from the traffic, but it’s a $2.50 ride and there’s a stop by the shop where I work, so I can hardly complain.

It’s meant a morning on a hard, plastic bench seat rather than a padded one, and a bit more jostling of starts and stops than my generally impatient personality would prefer. But the wheels on the bus have gone round and round, and I’m fairly certain I’ll get from point A to point B alive and unscathed.

I’d live closer to work if I could – the traditional commuter’s lament. There’s nothing in particular to recommend Diamond Heights, the neighbourhood south of the city that I call home, apart from the fact that it’s outside central San Francisco proper and, therefore, the grossly overinflated San Francisco housing market. The Planning and Urban Research Association designed the district as part of the Community Redevelopment Law of 1951, transforming most of its shanties into liveable quarters, one of which I call my own. On a rental basis, of course. To be honest, I can’t really afford living there, either, but it’s a full three or four degrees less unaffordable than even the smallest flat in the city would be, and those are the kinds of maths that make the impossible seem feasible these days. So it’s home. And it has the glamour of having diamonds in its name.

I can’t say I entirely mind the commute. As the sun rises over the hills in the morning, its rays bouncing up off the sea, San Francisco’s not a bad city to look at. I don’t know if it’s the beauty of the bay on its inland side, with its islands and hills and bridges, or the mystery of the endless, borderless ocean stretching out on the other, but something gives this city an aura – an otherness I’ve never felt replicated anywhere else. A sliver of land wholly encapsulated by the natural world, as if the earth herself had drawn a line around the silicon and steel and said, ‘This far you may come, you may make your homes and monuments. This far, but no further.’

The bus rounds a corner, swerving its metal bulk to avoid a tiny, parked Nissan, and pulls onto Lincoln Way. I’ve taken this line before, I know the route, but even so my heart flutters ever so slightly. It flutters because Lincoln brings us alongside my haven. Dylan Aaronsen’s perfect heaven. The place I most love.

There, on our left, is the park. Somewhere in there: my little pond, my little bench. It will be a while until I can visit them – can retreat beneath those trees, away from all this noise – there’s still the morning’s work ahead. But just the sight is soothing. I suppose I’m an easy person to soothe. I wonder, for a moment, if everyone is like that, where merely the sight of something loved makes the demons run away and peace descend a little closer to the present.

Apart from the modified commute, this morning has been ritualistically predictable – both before and after. In some sense there’s little to say of such a start to a day. As one who’s never fully cottoned on to the social media trend, I find myself unexercised in articulating the vacuously ordinary and unremarkable, in ‘sharing’ something as mundane as the fact that I chose brown socks today rather than black, that I bit my cheek while brushing my teeth.

It’s simply been The Routine. Coffee, perhaps (definitely) too much. Two eggs. A scan over the emails that accrued during the night, mostly adverts and spam and announcements of new digital titles ‘We’re Sure You’re Going to Enjoy’ (though the whole phenomenon of digital books generally eludes me). Then the commute, then work, such as it is, with its customary temptations and boredom-inducing normalities. It’s hard to look at the day-to-day flow of a life and not conclude that the vast majority of it is wasted, cycling through conversations that have been had before, actions that have been done before, chasing goals that never provide the sense of completion they promise. It was that kind of morning. The expected kind.

I have no status that allows me to escape the dross of life through rank. I’m not the sort that can claim a renowned profession or a compelling job title, so mornings generally lead organically into the mundane of the day; and I don’t particularly mind this. It’s neither as exciting as it could be, nor as boring. I’m satisfied to reside in the middle.

There is one definitive job perk, though, and that’s my midday schedule. An extensive lunch break is one of the benefits of menial employment, and there’s little more menial than being a teller at a health food retail shop, selling vitamin capsules to yuppies whose only question is some repetitive variant on ‘Is this the organic version? I really want the organic version.’ I’ve been gainfully employed at Sunset Health Supplements for two years, and despite the persistent desire to toss our vapid customers off the nearest bridge (and we have a few good ones for that, here in the city), I have to admit that not once have I been denied an ample midday escape. One that gives time to walk down the bustling rush of 7th Avenue to Golden Gate Park, then the twisting bends of Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive to the iron gates mounted under pine-green signage that reads San Francisco Botanical Gardens. Two layers of fencing and turnstiles, fortress-like, as if the plants inside required prison-level security to preserve them from the outside world.

Today, at 12.11 p.m., I walked through those gates, produced my local ID so as to avoid the tourists’ entrance fee, and wandered through the greenery to my bench. To that spot where that which is expected is also that which is cherished. I took my familiar steps and thanked God it’s not just the dreary parts of life that are repetitive.

I have no coffee today, here on my perch. Enough of it has already worked its way into my system. It often does on mornings like this, which, though unremarkable, follow restless nights. I have too many of those, though there’s no discernible reason why I should. My job isn’t exactly the high-stress sort, and outside of work all is generally as peaceful as I could hope for. But still sleep is often slow in coming, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. I’ve tried the tablets, descended at times to drink, even given a shot to the soothing tones of a new-age SureSleep app downloaded to my phone for ninety-nine cents. But nothing really helps (and Apple won’t refund the ninety-nine cents). Insomnia is like an unwanted family member on a holiday visit. The more you wish he would leave, the more obstinately he remains.

So no coffee, but I have my notebook and my pencil – the productive equipment, and the food and the drink, of the poet. Which is what I consider myself and what I am, despite the fact of my rather more worldly employment. And the absence of a single published poem. A badge of honour, I’m convinced. True poets never publish. To publish a poem is to sell one’s soul, to befoul and dirty one’s words with consumerism and industrial approval-seeking. This is a realization almost all real poets come to, generally after their thirtieth or fortieth rejection letter. And however it may sound, it’s not hypocrisy, this: it’s the fruit borne of a slow evolution of genuine understanding. The kind of understanding I am proud to call my own, after many years of careful refinement.

Since I’ve been sitting here I’ve jotted down two lines of my latest poetic effort.

The tree-bough leans, its leaves an applause

Cheering in the wind

It’s what I’ve managed so far. And I’m not one to be too precious: it’s a bit shit. The muses have yet to find me at the pond today. No flashes of inspiration illumine me, no sudden bursts of creativity. That can be a frustrating thing; it’s driven some poets to madness. But today there are ducks in the water – a mother with three children paddling after her from one small bay to the next, seeking what only ducks know is there to be sought. That’s enough. I’ve learned that poems come when they will, they’re not things that can be forced. Being a poet is mostly about the waiting. Waiting for the right thought to take the right shape, then capturing it in words like pixels capture sights for a camera. And there are rice yeast tablets and kale extract drinks to sell in between, so I’m not going to find myself homeless.

Then, clockwork: he’s there again. The little boy. One of those once-surprises that’s become a predictable repetition of the good and welcome sort. I like that I see him every day, visiting this place just like me. I like his kiddish overalls. The white shirt that’s become a dusty brown is on display again, the armpits stained. His hair is dirtier than before. The stick again is in his hand, the tip piercing the water.

He seems to gaze vacantly out over the tiny expanse of our miniature sea. He doesn’t notice the ducks.

He never notices the ducks.

I squint my eyes. It looks like there’s a spot of blood on his arm, poor thing. Happens to kids.

It glistens in the midday light. Blood on the arm of the little boy. And like the ducks, like the wind, he doesn’t seem to notice.

3
The Boy in the Park, Stanza 2

The evening is coming,

The morning is gone;

Little boy with his playful heart

And castle and crozier and soldier.

Leaps, not knowing

where they shall land –

How little boys do play until

The day of youth is done.

4
Wednesday Afternoon

I’ve gone back to the shop and taken up my dutiful post. A steady stream of customers, none of them terribly interesting. None of them offensive. I ate a sprout and beancurd wrap for a bite, taken from our refrigerator in the back. Why pack a lunch when you work at a health food shop? I wouldn’t take the tablets if they were free (and Lord knows they aren’t), but the food’s a nice perk; at least, once you convince yourself that terms like ‘curdled’ and ‘fermented’ are actually positives and not the repellent horrors the words more obviously suggest.

I’ve developed the habit of eating when I return to work, after my outings, in the last five minutes of my lunch break (though my boss, Michael, doesn’t really mind if I nibble at the counter once my shift resumes). Eating at the pond always seems a touch vulgar. A cup of coffee, that’s different. Sip and watch and enjoy. But gnawing into a sandwich or wrap, face smothered in the cellophane wrapping with bits of lettuce and mayonnaise clinging to your chin … it seems like the trees, if they had voices, would snicker down and say, ‘All well and good that you visit like this, but honestly, couldn’t you do that sort of thing at home?’

So it’s here in the store that I’m chewing on my sprouts and former beans, and here that I’m pondering what came before. I am, I realize, a touch confused by what I saw in the park. It didn’t hit me then, but it’s stuck with me since. This boy and I have been sharing the pond for a year and a half, and I’ve never seen him injured before today. Not a bump, never even an obvious scratch. Then today, that bloodied arm … it’s troubled me more than it really should.

I think I’m most disturbed that he didn’t notice it. Or at least, he gave no visible signs of having noticed. There was blood that descended from a patch of raw skin above his left elbow, emerging just beneath the tattered hem of a short sleeve, which isn’t something a person simply stands oblivious too. Especially a child. I’m left wondering what caused it. A bad scrape from a fall? Rough play? In any case, what I’d seen was too much blood for a little child – the amount of blood you expect to draw tears. But there were no tears.

There was no expression on his shadow-hidden face. None that I could make out. The blood dripped a little, but his attention remained at the tip of his stick, tracing figure eights in the algae at the surface of the water. He appeared unfazed and unemotional.

I’m plucked back into the present by a woman who wants to know about dietary supplements. ‘The kind for losing weight.’ I walk her over to a whole shelf we have cunningly dedicated to this particular myth. HEALTHY RAPID WEIGHT LOSS is the sign we’ve affixed to the top of the section: words so oxymoronic that I’m surprised we’ve never been sued for deception.

The woman gasps, mystified at the array of bottles. It’s the gasp that comes with a look of excited enthusiasm I’ve seen many times before.

‘Which would you recommend?’ she asks. There are so many! Clearly, these are going to change my life!

She’s in her mid thirties, pudgy but not fat. Not as fat as the men who usually come to browse this section, who absolutely never want to talk to anybody about their options (if caught gazing at the weight-loss shelf, they usually swerve just to the right, where we’ve cleverly placed the Protein Muscle Bulk powders so as to save them the embarrassment of admitting what they were really looking for). The whipped cream of the woman’s mocha Frappuccino is piled high beneath a domed plastic lid, a crowning chocolate-covered coffee bean beginning to sink into its sugary pillow. She seems entirely oblivious to the irony.

‘A lot of people are going for the cinnamon extract,’ I say non-judgementally, pointing to a green bottle. ‘But others swear by the basic fibre capsules. They fill up the stomach with harmless bulk.’ A brown bottle. ‘Keeps you from wanting so much when you eat. So the theory goes.’

And they’ll each do you about as much good as closing your eyes, clicking your heels three times and hoping the fat will make a pilgrimage to Oz.

I artfully keep that last bit to myself. My job is to get her to pick a bottle, any bottle, and politely charge her the 450 per cent mark-up we make on what is mostly encapsulated sawdust with a token sprinkling of your favourite herb. I smile warmly, something I’ve practised. She goes for the brown bottle and I nod in knowing approval. A wise choice, ma’am. That’s the one I would have suggested all along. A few minutes later I have gratefully relieved her of $39.50. If she loses a pound from a fistful of fibre capsules three times a day, I’ll personally double back her money. But at least she won’t be suffering from irregularity.

My mind is back in the park. He remained a few minutes, there, the boy. Standing motionless on the far side of the pond like he always did, though not for quite as long, I think, as usual. When I saw his wound I felt the urge to say something. Are you all right? Did you fall? Do you need that looking at? But I sat quietly, instead, and I wished I’d had a coffee. Maybe that was selfish. I’m not used to looking after other people’s children. And after all, it’s just a scrape.

A few moments later, the boy plucked up his stick, turned and walked back into the greenery, into the depth of the park.

Tough breaks, kid. Everybody falls. Given the calmness of his demeanour, it was a lesson he seemed to have learned with grace and dignity.

Once he’d gone I closed my notebook. The muses had still not come and there was no more time to wait for them. My two lines remained an unaccompanied duo. I rose from my bench, said farewell to Margaret’s ghost, and walked away.

That was hours ago. I must really be bored to have spent the afternoon dwelling on it as I have. The clock on the wall says 5.49 p.m. and I can’t imagine anyone is coming supplement shopping between now and six, so I flip the sign to ‘Closed’ and lock up. It’s enough for today. There’s a bus ride ahead. Home, and diamonds, and memories.

5
Taped Recording Cassette #014A Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

The recording hisses slightly as it begins, but she is content. The sound quality overall is good.

A rustle of papers before the dialogue ensues. When the voices emerge, their interactions pick up mid-stream; a continued recording from a continuing conversation. Not the first Pauline Lavrentis had had with him, and far from what would be the last.

‘I want us to return to yesterday.’ Her voice creeps out of the small speakers. In recordings she hears what always sounds an odd echo of herself. Her voice emerges as that of a woman of indeterminate age, though certainly without the lilt of youth she’d once had. It’s free of the humour she likes to feel she possesses, and the emotion by which her husband has always characterized her. That dispassion is intentional now, of course – speaking in just this way, in just this tone, has become a crafted skill – but it still sounds odd to her in the recordings, and she assumes it probably always will.

A pause.

‘What about yesterday?’ The voice that responds is a male’s, its own ambiguous qualities creeping through. Definitely not a child’s tones, but not an old man’s either. Somewhere in the vast expanse in between.

‘You said you killed your wife.’

A far longer pause. Plastic squeaks: the back of a chair bending under readjusting weight. Pauline leans towards the small recorder in its playback, straining to catch every sound.

‘I had to admit it eventually,’ the male voice finally responds. ‘Can’t keep everything bottled up. That’s what you’re always telling me, isn’t it?’ More fidgeting.

‘It’s good to talk,’ she answers with words she’d spoken a hundred times before, ‘to open up about ourselves.’ But not everything about this interview is usual. Some of her words are rarer, less customary on her lips. ‘I’ve been troubled by what you said.’

‘No shit.’ The male voice is flippant, now. The change happens quickly, seamlessly. ‘Can’t say I’m not troubled by it myself, lady. Terrible. Just a terrible, terrible thing. A man shouldn’t kill his wife.’

‘It’s not the killing that’s troubling me, Joseph.’

A hesitation.

‘You’re … not bothered I killed my wife?’ Genuine confusion sounds in the man’s voice. The cassette captures a different, halting rhythm to his speech. ‘That’s just sick.’

‘Killing is very—’

‘No, seriously,’ his words slice across hers. ‘You ought to be fucking revolted. I told you I killed my goddamned wife! Held a pillow over her head till she stopped breathing.’

‘I remember what you told m—’

‘What sort of callous bitch are you?’ His voice is angry now. Pauline recalls how swiftly it had changed, the features of his face altering along with it. ‘You’re always doing this! Playing with me. Finally getting me to open up, then you toy around.’ A pause. His breathing is heavy and angry. ‘Bitch.’

On the cassette, Pauline allows a silence to linger. The man’s breath continues to resonate. Several seconds pass. When Pauline begins to speak again, her voice has a different tone to it. A deliberate strategy, and on hearing it now on tape, Pauline is certain it was the right one.

‘Perhaps that isn’t where we should begin, today. Perhaps it’s too much.’ She’d let her focus remain vague, unclear whether she was speaking to the man or to herself. But then, more definitively, ‘Did you love her? Your wife?’

The question provokes a hesitation, captured on the miniaturized magnetic tape. ‘That’s … that’s a ridiculous thing to ask. Of course I loved my wife.’

‘And you remember that – that love?’

The pauses grow longer and more frequent. ‘You ask foolish questions. How could I not remember being in love? Obviously I remember it. We were head over heels. Full of romance. All that.’

‘It sounds very lovely,’ Pauline answers. Now, as then, his initial response provoked images of perfection. The kind of perfection she’d felt when she’d first met her husband, on those first dates when romance was everything and the world slipped away from her attention. For a time. And that was the key: for a time. Reality always steps back in. Pure romance is meant to give way to the sturdier, though sometimes less flattering, realities of genuine love.

‘Always been a traditional man,’ the male’s voice continues, ‘loving the lovely. She was the traditional woman, too, the kind any guy would want.’

A silence lingers between them. Finally, the sound of Pauline leaning in towards the recorder.

‘I told you before that something was troubling me about your recollection of the murder.’

‘I haven’t forgotten. Your reaction was just … sick. Most people, normal people, would be horrified. But you, you’re “troubled”.’

‘It’s not that I don’t find killing repulsive, Joseph,’ she continues. ‘I do.’

‘Then are you going to get to just what it is that’s “troubling” you?’ Sarcasm clings to his syllables.

There are more sounds of bodily readjustment. When Pauline’s voice returns, it comes from a place closer to the microphone. She’d positioned her body carefully, the memory still fresh in her mind. She’d brought her face closer to his, lined it up directly with his eyes.

‘I’m troubled, Joseph, because there’s a fact of this case that simply doesn’t mesh with what you’ve confessed.’

‘There’s lots of details. Not everything “meshes” in real life, and murder isn’t an everyday occurrence that follows ordinary rules.’

‘No, but usually the pieces fit together, once we look at them. The details of the crime, and of the criminal.’

‘You can’t expect me to remember every little detail perfectly.’

‘It’s not a little detail, Joseph.’ Her instinct, Pauline recalled, had been to offer a compassionate smile, something almost maternal. She’d forced herself to hold it back.

The man’s voice grunts in impatient displeasure.

‘Just get to the point, would you?’

‘Joseph,’ she answers, slowly, ‘the simple fact of the matter is, you didn’t kill your wife.’

Thirty-seven seconds of sustained silence. Not even the sound of breathing. As if the microphone has dropped out.

Then, the last word recorded on cassette #014A.

‘Bitch.’

6
Thursday Lunchtime

I’ve chosen a frou-frou coffee for my lunch break today: double latte with caramel syrup and whipped cream. There’s no particular reason I’ve switched from my usual black filter selection; perhaps it’s the slightly overcast sky, the nip of a chill in the air. Some days are bright on their own. Some need to be brightened up and sweetened, however artificial the sweetener.

I walk towards the park along my usual route. I have a full hour for lunch today – an extra fifteen minutes occasioned by the manager training in a new employee. ‘I’ll stay in and watch the counter with her for a bit,’ he said. ‘She can use the practice on the till. Have a good walk.’ That’s Michael. Not a bad man. Looks like death warmed over: pale, gaunt, waxy eyes and a head of hair so sparse that at a polite distance you can make out individual strands emerging like sprouts from a desert dry scalp. And he still manages to run a successful shop that sells health supplements and vegetable-based ‘miracle’ hair products.

Today is a ‘Free Day’ in the SF Botanical Gardens, meaning that as I approach I see larger than usual crowds strolling over the Great Meadow. They have these, every so often: days in which there is no entrance fee, even for non-residents – so the throngs of tourists ambling through Golden Gate Park have a chance to see one of the finer places in the city. A noble, civil attitude. I support it wholeheartedly. As long as it doesn’t become everyday and we locals get entirely run out.

Cindy is in the entrance booth, the one marked Tickets. ‘Good morning, Dylan,’ she says with a broad smile as I walk by. Cindy volunteers Tuesdays and Thursdays, and normally checks my driver’s licence each and every time I arrive, even though she’s known me for two years now. She’s a law student up the hill – a career that makes for that kind of attitude, I suppose. But she’s delightful in every other way. I smile back as I pass by, noting her kind eyes behind the massive orange plastic rims of her eyeglasses and the nod as she beckons me onwards. No IDs required today. Not on a Free Day.

It takes two left turns, a brief jaunt down a main pathway (today covered in people), and then a right onto a short, planked path into the trees before I arrive at the dirt walkway that leads to my pond. All in all, no more than five minutes from the entrance. Five minutes, and I’m in another world.

I set the caramel latte on the bench beside me, bid hello and a pleasant afternoon to the memory of Margaret, and pull out my notebook. Its home in my back pocket has left an indelible imprint on my khakis, every pair of them; and the shape of my ass has left the notebooks slightly bent. Every one of them. There are stacks, piled up at home. A lifetime of poetry, thus far read only by me.

I am not alone this afternoon. Free access and not-too-miserable weather have brought others into what is normally a rather secluded area. A group of children plays with stones off to my left, down at the water’s edge, their parents chatting idly behind them, visibly relieved that for the moment their offspring don’t require active observation. Further in the distance, a clutch of tourists with enormous cameras stops and starts along the beds by the water. I’ve never understood the fascination with taking pictures of plants, but these kinds of visitors are the standard, not the exception. The kind that take photos of flowers rather than actually see them – smell them, feel the way they reflect the light into your eyes, standing before their simple, unadorned magnificence. Surely this is a far greater thing than converting them to pixels. But I suppose there’s a whole generation, now, who simply do not know how to encounter anything directly. Human experience is mediated by a small screen held up between face and reality. Only what it captures is truly real. The memories of life have become confined to a span of 2.5 x 5 in (3.5 x 6 if you’ve got the latest model). On the periphery, nothing truly exists.

There has to be something tragic in this, there just has to be. I know we’re more connected than we’ve ever been, that it’s become the norm for the anonymous ‘us’ of the world to tweet and post and link to a degree that wouldn’t have been imaginable a generation ago. And I’m not against occasionally stepping into the public library and accessing the Internet with a swipe of my ID, to visit an online story or revel in the latest news of the day. But I cannot be the only one who feels more detached there than anywhere else. When I’m sitting beneath my trees and the water ripples beneath me, I feel more connected to the world than in any other spot. Even when there’s not another dot of humanity around me. But when I ‘connect’, when wires and satellites link my data stream to that of everyone else in creation, it’s then that I feel the most lost. The most alone.

And they make you pay for the experience.

Still, today is not about being alone. The tourists with their eyes pressed to their cameras may not notice the wide beauty of the periphery they’re avoiding, but for me the periphery is what’s interesting. Because there, at the edge of my vision, the branches wiggle again at the water’s edge.

In the usual spot.

I sit forward, unsurprised but eager. I’ve been looking forward to seeing him, to seeing the scrape that had upset me yesterday bandaged and a boy back to being a boy. Sure, the injury may have been unpleasant, but there are times when unpleasantness brings rewards. Now the boy will have war wounds to prove his courage and offer bragging rights before his peers. Every boy needs to have those: stories connected to little scabs, scars, offering fleshy proof that ‘I was brave, guys, and all grown up.’ Men seem to need them, too, though their scars tend to be deeper, their falls more brutal, and the evidence of maturity even more fleeting.

He dutifully emerges, as if on cue, and promptly takes his customary three steps down to the edge of the pond. Then, as always, he stands like a statue, his stick in hand, its tip just piercing the water. The familiar scene. My own comforting reassurance of normalcy. My heart loosens with gentle satisfaction.

But my breath chokes in my throat. The blood, I immediately realize, is still on his arm, just as fresh as yesterday. It glistens in the grey light seeping down from the overcast sky: moist, liquid, fresh. Even at the distance, I can see a stream of it flow along the path of his dirty skin towards his hand, trailing brown edges where the red blood meets dust and grime.

There is no bandage. His wound hasn’t been cleaned. Hasn’t been tended to at all.

But it’s not just the blood that stops my breath and keeps it halted. The blood’s not even the worst of it. There’s more, today. I’m glued at first on the injury I remember – poor child, still all scraped up – but finally my glance wanders a few inches to my left. Initially, I think it’s the shadows, a trick of the light; but then a sunbeam pierces the clouds and I see directly. The boy’s other arm is overwhelmed by something oval, black. I think at first it’s a patch of some kind, maybe a dark bandage over a different scrape. But it’s not fabric. Almost mirroring the wound on his left arm, I can see now that the large mark on his right is a bruise, deep and discoloured. The kind so dense it looks like it digs down to the bone. It extends over the whole of his forearm, from his elbow to the hand that clutches his favourite stick. Blues and purples and almost-greens that should never be the colours defining the skin of a boy.

I can’t fully focus. This isn’t right. A child so small should not be walking around with such wounds. I try to look into his face, into his eyes, to see if they’re watering, filled with pain. They ought to be filled with pain. But I can’t make out his features through the shadows and distance. Only the basic outline of his face, a few details – the bumps of his ears beneath his hair, the shadow that barely defines his nose. If only I could see him a little better; but the sunbeam is interrupted by tree branches high above, restricting its light to his shoulders and below.

I really have to approach him. Someone must take him to get cleaned up somewhere, at the very least. Get that scraped arm washed off.

But the boy senses my thoughts – his motions are almost that synchronized – and turns. Three steps and he is gone, the bristly green leaves of the Cryptomeria japonica brushing closed behind him.

EVENING

I cannot sleep. Not tonight. It’s not my usual insomnia, either. My normal night-time torture is more gentle: a sustained, unwavering, yet calm refusal to let sleep come, with no specific cause and no specific cure. I’ve grown accustomed to the ruthless consistency of its long-game attack. I know what it’s like to have no thoughts fill my head but still find sleep a foreigner, and to start counting sheep at number one, knowing I’ll easily make it to a thousand without my eyelids growing the slightest bit heavier. One sheep after another, waiting their turn without drama or protest, each mocking the sleep I crave.

But tonight’s insomnia is different, a punctuated sort of thing. Pokes and prods that bolt me to alertness every time I start to fade. And my body is actually fading, that’s the strangest part. I’m genuinely tired tonight. Exhausted. But each time my body starts to give way, to give in, my mind pounces and shoves sleep off.

I am thinking of the boy. He’s all I’m thinking about. Those arms, bloodied and bruised. The fact that I did nothing. I don’t understand his silence and I can’t fathom his threshold for what must be tremendous pain, but mostly I feel guilty that I saw a child with wounds he shouldn’t have had, whom no one had tended to since the day before, and now I’m here comfortably in bed – awake or otherwise – and I didn’t so much as say a word to console him. I feel ashamed, and embarrassed with myself.

This all must change, I resolve, and the change must begin with my behaviour. It’s not socially responsible just to sit on one’s own in such circumstances. I must take my courage in my hands and get my posterior off my bench.

Tomorrow, I’m going to say something.

7
Friday

The new day hasn’t begun well, and that’s not entirely a surprise. The organic Vitamin-C-and-Zinc tablets in the yellow jars are selling themselves, but my mind is otherwise occupied. The sun is brighter today – none of the half fog / half overcast sky that sullied yesterday – so I ought to be in brighter spirits. My mood so often follows the weather outside the window: bright when it’s bright, grey when it’s grey. But I’ve spent the morning grey when it’s orange, troubled, as I knew I would be, from the moment I awoke, by the memory of the boy.

Memory allows the space for analysis, and in the scope of such analysis I recognize that there are a few features about this child that should, just possibly, not have me in quite such a state over his present circumstances. He’s never looked entirely in top form, not on all the many occasions I’ve seen him. That’s the first reality that sinks in. He’s never been one of those made-up children that urban parents produce as if from a factory or mail-order supply. The kind sculpted out of name-brand ‘playwear’ that’s stain-, wrinkle- and pleasure-resistant, trained to hold their autographed football rather than throw it, ‘because the grass is so dirty, Junior, and leaves marks.’ The boy is rougher than that. A little out of place for the middle of San Francisco, as if the Midwestern prairies had lost one of their member in this peninsular metropolis; and this child, who would have looked at home on an Oklahoma farmstead, had found himself wandering through the cultured greenery a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley. Out of his environment, caught askance out of time, with a body and a posture not quite sure what to make of this different jungle. The kind of boy who inserts himself into a tyre swing and kicks until his feet are above his head and the arcs so high the rope goes slack when it crests. Who sits in the muddiest patch of the field, just to sense what it’s like to feel the liquid sludge seep over his ankles. Who’s never owned a ball, because balls cost money; but has also never wanted one, because he’s always had access to sticks, and sticks are so easily horses, and rocket ships, and swords and sceptres.

But children don’t wander alone from Little House on the Prairie to the Inner Sunset, I know this full well. The fact that he’s not an Abercrombie Child doesn’t mean he’s not from around here. Not everyone in the City on the Bay is rolling in start-up fortunes and Union Square attire, and it’s possible to be poor and haggard in the city. Perhaps more normal than I generally appreciate. It’s the glitter that catches the eye, they say. Beneath it there’s usually a lot more glue and bare cardboard than we care to notice.

I’m stuck in these memories, such as they are. Second day running he’s done that to me. And in the mix of them, I find myself calling back to the most unlikely of things; the one feature that really nags at my attention. To my puzzlement it’s not the blood, not even the bruise. Instead, what troubles me is the fact that he’s never looked me squarely in the face. I’ve often thought this peculiar, even penned it into one of the poems in my notebook. Kids normally look at everything. From the moment their eyes first open children are absorbing the universe, striving to interpret it. Relishing every sight – which to young eyes are usually new sights, never before seen – and adding them to the canvas of their experience of life. What sort of child doesn’t fit this bill?

But this child, this one unique, odd child, has never so much as lifted his eyes up to mine, though I’ve always sat in what is quite clearly his field of vision. Day after day, and not so much as a passing glance or a corner of his eye caught out of a corner of mine. But he’s never had a bloodied arm before, either, or black marks.

My thoughts drift, and I wonder who takes care of him when he leaves the water’s edge, when he makes his way home. Who touches his face and speaks soothing words to him? And why haven’t they bandaged the broken skin?

Every boy deserves soothing words when he’s done himself harm. Soothing words, a bandage, and the love that makes blood a little less terrifying.

LUNCHTIME

With thoughts like these occupying my internal attention, work before lunch sits in my mind like a kind of haze. I’m fairly certain I sold a good stock of pills to several people, at least enough to keep my manager smiling. But I did it all while staring out the glass storefront at the bright sunshine of this new day, only physically present in the little shop. The higher part of me was somewhere else. I was anxious. Anxious to get back to the park and settle my internal bets about the boy’s welfare. I wanted to see if he would be there again. If he was, I wanted to survey his condition; and assuming that it still contained any troubling elements, I was resolved to speak. I had even prepped my remarks in advance so as to be fully prepared for the encounter.

Hi kid. My name is Dylan. I usually sit over there around lunchtime. I would point back towards my bench. I saw you hurt your arms. Are your parents around? Can we get them to take a look at it?

During the night I’d determined this was probably a good approach. Casual, not too confrontational. Caring, I hoped, without being creepy.

But they’re only plans. Burns once wrote a poem about plans – something to do with mice and men. One every poet has to learn. I forget it now, but the gist sticks with me. Plan and plan and plan, and eventually something will come along to best your intentions. So lunchtime has come, and I’m resolved to put my own into immediate action before Burns’s mice have the chance.

I walk towards the park with unusual haste, each foot planted before the next with a few extra inches in my stride. I don’t have the full hour today that I had yesterday – apparently Michael’s new hire has become proficient enough on the till that more extended training isn’t required, so it’s to be my usual forty-five minutes and I want to make the most of it. Today, unlike most days, I actually have things to do.

My ID is already in my hand as I approach the ticket window and hold it up for Anna. She’s the one who works Fridays, whose hair is dyed a hazard-cone orange with roots that are almost black, gelled into little spikes that give her head the overall appearance of a badly spray-painted cactus. There are three slashes boldly shaved at angles through her left eyebrow, which I’m vaguely certain is a signal of something, but I have no idea what (perhaps she’s in a gang? though this seems unlikely. I’m not sure how many gang members have day jobs taking tickets in botanical gardens). Her grey T-shirt says BACK OFF in enormous lettering, and she’s affixed her Welcome to the Botanical Gardens, My Name is Anna and I’m Happy To Help You badge just above the final F of OFF.

Anna glances at my ID with relative detachment. She’s not so much interested in the name, Dylan Aaronsen, or the photograph that is obviously me. Her real interest is in the zip code provided at the end of my address – proof I’m a resident, which she then notes down on a sheet of paper that for some reason charts the number of daily visitors from each zip code in the region. I’ve often tried to imagine why this could be of interest to anyone; but I’ve also taken an oddly irrational pleasure in seeing more tick-marks by my own suburban zip code (94131) than by many others. On other days, I’ve entertained the idea that this says something rare and telling about what kind of people we are in Diamond Heights. The kind of people who like plants more than the Union Square elitists of 94108 and the Mission hippies of 94110. I’ve never seen a single mark next to the zip codes that lie along the beaches. That’s telling, too. Let them have their sand. We 94131’ers like our nature, and enough to travel a good hike to get it.

But today my mind is on other things. I at last step into the gardens, my ID returned to my wallet, and start to walk with purpose. These grounds normally cause me such delight, but today they are simply an avenue towards a destination.

Five minutes later. I’m at my bench. I don’t sit down in a usual way: today isn’t about a gentle relaxing into place and breathing a little more deeply for the peace of it. I sit today with purpose, as if my butt plopping onto the wood will trigger the events I want to happen next.

The sun is bright and the water is dead still. There are no throngs of visitors this afternoon. Not every day draws the crowds, and it’s an unpredictable game, guessing what factors pull them in and what fend them off. It’s not always an exact correlation of sunshine-to-crowds or fog-to-emptiness. I’d have thought it would have been, that’s the sort of formula that makes sense; but today is a case in point against.

It takes a few seconds, given my swirl of thoughts, but I eventually calm myself down and shake off the various annoyances of the walk: the noise of the traffic along the road, the seemingly unnecessary ritual at the gate. I’m able to take in a few, deep, wonderful breaths of the fresh park air, scented with a touch of the must that comes off the still water. I’m refreshed. And in that relaxed state I realize that my stillness here is a little unusual.

I am, in fact, not only absent a crowd today. I’m entirely alone. Entirely. And the reality of that strikes out at me all at once.

The boy isn’t here. It’s past time for him to be here, and he isn’t here.

This isn’t right. This isn’t how these days go, I tell myself, agitated. My mind is immediately analytical. I come, I sit, and he appears. That’s the pattern. I’m used to the pattern.

My pulse is quickening. I can sense my heart thumping in my chest – and for an instant I feel absurd. Why this fuss? It’s just a kid with a scraped arm and a bit of a bruise. God’s sakes. You’re obsessing.

Yet I’m infinitely relieved when a second later I hear a rustle in the trees. I glance across the pond to the boy’s usual spot, expecting my consolation – but there is nothing there. A strange tingling starts to build up in my spine. Then, two college-aged students emerge from a different spot, giggling at each other with heavy book bags over their shoulders. They are the sources of my noise.

I have to calm myself down. I’ve become entirely too worked up over this whole thing. I don’t know this boy from Adam. His life is none of my business. I focus on the college students instead. They’re amused by whatever stories they’re telling themselves. They’re that age, so it’s probably something to do with alcohol, workloads, or sexual escapades – the only three categories of mental focus for the 18- to 22-year-old college crowd. For an instant, I desperately wish I was in college.

Then, to my relief, the longed-for moment comes. Branches rustle again, and from his spot the boy finally emerges onto the landscape of the pond.

I can feel the breath ease within me, like a great release from an over-inflated tyre. He’s here. And I can sense my curiosity pique as I squint in the sunlight to examine him from afar.

And then the colour starts to drain from my face – I can feel it disappearing – as I gaze upon what, despite everything, I was not prepared to see.

The blood still drips down his left arm. The bruise still covers his right. And today there is a great, blue patch of swollen skin beneath one of his eyes. Strange, that in the shadows from the trees I can’t make out the eyes themselves – I couldn’t tell you their colour, the length of the lashes around them – but the bruising on his face broadcasts just fine across the distance.

No, enough of this, I say to myself. A boy shouldn’t look like that.

More giggles come from the college students. They’ve now planted themselves on a patch of grass off to the left, facing each other, and are oblivious to the world. If they weren’t they would see him, and they would be as concerned as I am.

I rise from my bench. My words are scripted, and I know the little dirt pathway that leads around the pond to the spot where he’s standing. But I don’t want the child frightened by my bursting out of the woods without a little hint of warning.

‘Hey, kid,’ I call out from just in front of my bench. My voice echoes slightly over the water. The boy doesn’t seem to hear. His expression remains fixed, gazing out over the lilies.

‘My name’s Dylan.’ I start to move in his direction. My plan has begun. Burns may have ploughed over the nest of his mice and sent their intentions awry, but mine are being put into motion. I’ll be able to offer the boy some help, if he’ll let me. At least he isn’t running in fear at the sound of my voice.

But suddenly I freeze. I’ve barely made it a few steps, but I can’t move; my feet seem anchored to the soil. Something happens that has never happened before. An arm emerges from the greenery behind the boy. I can’t see the body it’s connected to, but it’s a large arm. An adult arm. And it reaches out with a practised violence – the kind of motion that can only be called that: violent – and grabs the boy by the back of the overalls. The arm pulls and the boy is yanked in reverse, his stick falling from his grasp.

‘Stop!’ I shout, but in an instant the boy is gone, his body gathered into the dense branches, out of sight, the heels of his shoes dragging in front of him.

8
Taped Recording Cassette #014B Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

As the recording resumes on its B-side, the tension between the male’s voice and Pauline’s is high.

‘Didn’t kill my wife?’ Joseph yells, spitefully. ‘I don’t know what in the godforsaken pits of your deranged mind you’re talking about, but this is going way, way past anything that “therapy” is supposed to be good for. You can’t just baldly call me a liar. Why would I lie about something like this?’

‘I’m not necessarily saying you’re lying, Joseph,’ Pauline answers, ‘but—’

‘Not lying? You’re flat out telling me that the one thing I’m flat out telling you isn’t true. What else would you call that?’

A slight pause. Hearing the recorded hesitation, Pauline recalls how she’d searched for the right word. ‘A mistake.’

‘A mistake!’ A hand slams down on a table. ‘A mistake! This isn’t like you’re asking me to do math problems in my head, woman! I killed my wife. Took a pillow, slammed her head down onto the floor. Held it over her face and watched her body writhe until it didn’t move any more. Dead. Telling you this isn’t a mistake of my memory!’

His words are enraged. There is genuine disbelief in them, utterly uncomprehending of the blanket rejection of his claims.

Pauline’s voice returns, with the same practised calm she had trained herself to manifest in situations like this. ‘There are reasons I’m calling it a mistake, Joseph, but it will do little good for me to explain them outright. It’s better if you can come to it yourself. Maybe you—’ Her voice hesitates, then she seems to start again afresh. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me more about her. Your wife.’

The man’s breathing steadies. ‘What do you want to know?’ Then, with a snort, ‘What can I tell you that you’re not just going to call more lies, or “mistakes”?’

Pauline doesn’t fall prey to the provocation but answers calmly. ‘What do you remember about her? About the two of you together?’

‘I remember plenty. All the normal stuff.’ Joseph’s words are gruff.

‘So tell me about that,’ she prompts. This is good territory; the opportunity to speak about ‘normalcy’ has a tendency to calm people overcome with the unusual. She remembers the moment, sat there across from him. ‘Tell me about the normal stuff.’

‘Falling in love. Romance. The way we’d look at each other.’ His voice slows, as if his words are retreating into memory, but he grows more stolid and sturdy as he continues.

‘We were so happy. When it was just us, with no one else around. It was like there were only two of us on the planet. The sun and the stars and the moon disappeared, and there was only her and me. It would be like that wherever we were, whatever the circumstances. She’d look into my eyes, and I’d look into hers, and the universe would just melt away.’

He hesitates. His voice bears the traces of embarrassment, as if speaking this way, in his current position, is a sign of weakness and immaturity.

‘That sounds very comforting,’ Pauline says encouragingly. Hearing her own words played back to her now, they seem mildly inadequate. His emotions were coming through. She could have prompted him more. Encouraged him.

‘She was nothing but love and warmth,’ he continues, and Pauline is drawn back to the moment. He hadn’t needed further prompting; he’d swept himself away. On the cassette his embarrassment is instantly gone. ‘Blonde hair, she had, and big blue eyes. Soft cheeks and a killer laugh. She’d take my hand in hers, wrapping her fingers through mine, and take me on walks. I’d never gone on walks before her, never been interested. But walks with her were like dreams. We’d go out together, sit on a big blanket and have picnics. Can you imagine that? In this strange world, having picnics out in the countryside?’

Pauline’s voice offers a soft, noncommittal chuckle. The kind that broadcasts pleasant encouragement without meaning anything on its own.

‘She would make the most amazing treats for me. Out of nothing. I don’t know how she did it. It’s not like we had cash flowing out our pockets night and day, but somehow she’d fabricate the most perfect foods for those outings. Sweets. Savouries. And there would always be a little card tucked into the picnic basket. Something handmade, brilliantly drawn, with some inside joke written out inside. We would laugh until we were in giggles.’ His voice trails off again. Then, in barely more than a whisper. ‘She was one of a kind. Nobody else like her. I wanted it to be just us. Us and no one else.’

Pauline lets the remembered narrative halt, allows some silence to buffer her next question.

‘Do you ever wonder, Joseph, whether you were too lucky?’

It was the question to which Pauline had known this whole line of discussion would have to lead. His response, however, had been hostile and resistant.

‘There you go again!’ his voice taunts from the recording. ‘I tell you something simple, something straightforward, and you go off toying about with words. Playing your games.’ He’s vocally irritated. ‘What’s that even supposed to mean, “too lucky”?’

‘I mean,’ Pauline’s voice comes back calmly, ‘do you ever sometimes feel that this perfect marriage, this perfect woman, that they’re almost too perfect to be …’ She allows her voice to trail off.

Joseph doesn’t pick it up. Pauline hadn’t wanted to push. Instead, she’d made the decision to shift tack once again.

‘Something must have happened, if everything was once that idyllic.’

The man’s breath picks up pace, and his words are harder when they return.

‘Everyone has another side to them. Everyone, even her.’

Silence. She lets Joseph recollect, uninterrupted, before he speaks again.

‘I got to the point where I knew there must be someone else. I don’t know the exact moment it hit me, but after I’d figured it out it all made perfect sense. She was in love with another man.’

‘You’d had suspicions?’

Joseph’s voice hardens. ‘I had reasons to be suspicious.’ He doesn’t elaborate.

‘And?’ Pauline finally asks.

‘I don’t know when it started. Probably’d been going on for years. But that was it. That’s when I knew.’

‘Knew what, Joseph?’

‘Knew I had to kill her. Knew she couldn’t be allowed to live.’

The statement comes as a definitive finish, and a long silence follows. Pauline’s voice, however, returns with a new, slightly firmer tone.

‘Joseph, I’ve looked at your file. I even did a little research last night, from home, to examine things further.’

She recalls that she’d looked down at her stack of notes as she’d delivered the comment, a strategy to suggest definitiveness. Certainty, even of things unknown. It was a true comment, as far as it went – Pauline had indeed spent at least an hour the night before, just before sleep, with Joseph’s file open on her knees, the comforter of her bed a makeshift reading desk as she tried to ponder a way forward for the next day’s interview.

‘They won’t let me see my file,’ the man’s voice answers.

‘That’s standard procedure.’

‘So … what’s in it?’

‘There are records from the trial. From your previous escape attempts. But mostly it’s notes from conversations like these. From talks you’ve had with other people. Some from talks with me.’

‘Fat lot of good they do, any of them.’ Joseph’s voice is disgusted.

‘There’s also biographical data about your life.’

Four seconds of silence. Joseph’s voice is vaguely confused, vaguely annoyed when it returns. Pauline now leans towards the recorder again, eager to relive every sound from the tensest moment of that interview.

‘It can’t be complete,’ he says. ‘My file, my details. I haven’t told them everything. I thought that’s why we were here. You want to drag the rest out of me.’

‘It is. But some things aren’t buried away inside.’ There is a soothing compassion to her voice, now. The balance between firmness and tenderness at this moment was critical. ‘Some things can be checked on externally.’

The cassette almost manages to capture her slow draw of breath before her next words.

‘Joseph, I know you don’t want to hear this. Especially after all you’ve just recounted, I know it’s going to be hard to hear it again.’

His breathing audibly deepens on the recording, as if he’s steeling himself for something.

‘You didn’t kill your wife,’ Pauline repeats.

‘Screw you! This again! How would you know?’ Pure rage is captured in the magnetic reverberations. ‘I’ve never told anyone what I did! I’ve always passed it off as someone else’s crime. But you told me you wanted me to be honest!’

‘And I do.’

‘Then – dammit. I just opened up to you! It’s you who’s the liar. A liar and a hypocrite.’

The sound of another chair bending under a repositioning of body weight. It comes from the right speaker, the one on the side of Pauline’s voice.

‘I want you to be honest with me, Joseph. Honest enough to admit that you did not kill your wife.’

‘Damn you! I told you yesterday that I di—’

‘I want you to be honest enough’, her voice breaks through his, ‘to admit that you’ve never been married, Joseph. That you never had a wife at all.’

9
Friday

I am racing towards the boy’s spot by the pond as fast as I can run. The pathway is narrow, but I’ve walked it plenty of times – enough to know where the large roots jut out from the ground, where there are protruding stones and dips in the soil. My footing is sure.

It can’t be more than thirty yards, but it’s thirty yards blind, where I can’t see his position through the thick of green overgrowth and artfully planted forestry. To my left the whole time, as I circle anticlockwise around its circumference, is the pond. It glistens and sparkles through the branches at the edge of my vision.

I’m out of breath when I arrive at the spot. It’s more to do with adrenalin than with the run itself, surely, but I’m panting heavily.

There is no one here. I step over to the water’s edge. The stick is lying on the muddy shore, half in the water, half out. His stick. I pick it up, as if it presents some tangible connection to the boy – and I’m not surprised that it does. I’ve always been a deeply tactile person. My grandmother’s crocheted shawl brings back more memories of her than any photographs, because when I fold my fingers through its loops and draws, I can feel her. I can feel the warmth of her wrapping me up in it, rocking me on her knees. ‘Little Dyl, little Dyl,’ falling out from between false teeth whenever I needed a little boost. Rocking and humming a tune I never quite remember, though I can almost hear its music, surrounding me in that wonderful, loving, protective cocoon.

I curl my fingers around the stick. It doesn’t have bark so much as it has skin, leathery and dry, knobbed and creased. The pads of my fingers trace its stalk a few inches, taking in its unique texture. There is a patch, a little over halfway up its length, where the roughness becomes smooth. The echoes of a tight, repeated grip. The boy and I are momentarily connected: this is something he touched, and I can feel the imprint of his little hands.

It’s while I’m crouched down, senses taken up in this tactile encounter, that I notice the two parallel tracks in the mud. They’re there, just beside where the stick had lain. Lines scraped into the earth; and suddenly I realize what they must be. Trails left by small sneakers, heels dragged at an angle as the feet that wore them were pulled in reverse. These are the concrete evidence of whatever it was I had witnessed from across the pond.

The lines, I notice, are perfectly parallel. No wiggling. No remnants of protesting squirms. The boy hadn’t resisted when he was pulled.

I lurch upwards. The tracks lead straight back into the branches, and I thrust myself in after them. The boy must be here, he and whoever grabbed him. It’s an emotional thought, but I entertain it. I want to entertain it. They can’t have gone far. I can still find them.

Yet there is no one in the trees. The shoe trails stop as the ground turns from pond-side mud to vegetation-covered earth, and I feel myself growing frantic as my only clues to his whereabouts fade away into the mix of ground cover and rotting leaves. I scan around me for any signs of his presence.

‘Kid!’ I cry out again, and I’m aware of the strange sound of panic in my voice. ‘Kid!’

No one answers, and I’m not surprised. Somewhere inside, I think I know the boy is gone, but I can’t simply stop looking for him. I take a few steps further into the trees, knowing that after five yards a major, paved pathway bisects this part of the park. Within a few seconds the soles of my shoes touch the black tarmac.

There is movement now – bodies strolling this way and that, taking in the sights. My glance flits from one to the next. Be him, be the boy and whoever took him. But there are no small children. Only happy couples, a few loners. A druggie. More college students on lunch breaks, necking.

I’m frantic now. I start to jog along the path, glancing at each group of people I pass. They look at me with puzzled expressions, and I can’t blame them. I feel foolish, flustered like this over someone else’s child, running around like a madman with a stick in his hand.

But that arm shouldn’t have appeared from the trees. The boy shouldn’t have been pulled away.

‘Have you seen a small boy, about this high?’ I ask an elderly couple dressed in matching cardigans, who until that point had been entirely captivated by the knuckled, crevassed bark of an enormous Monterey Cypress. I hold my hand slightly above waist-height. The boy is small.

They shake their heads. The woman has wrinkled skin and a compassionate, grand-maternal smile. ‘Your boy run off, son? Don’t worry. They do that. Probably just playing hide and seek. This is a great place for it.’

I think about smiling back, but my feet are already moving me away.

Why do I need to find this child? I quiz myself, my breathing growing shallower, faster. Let him be. There’s probably a perfectly good explanation. A concerned parent pulling a child back from perceived danger at the water’s edge. A family spat that looked worse than it was without context. (What parent doesn’t occasionally grab his child by the clothes and pull him back into line? And what child wouldn’t go limp in resignation as he’s hauled to a punishment for a rock fight with his sister, or a toy stolen from his brother?)

I start to calm myself down – to force the matter with a slower pace and deep, controlling breaths. But I keep walking, keep scanning the surroundings.

Little boy, little boy

Little boy in the park …

The words of one of my poems come back to me in my search. I don’t know where they come from, why they hit just now; but this is a routine experience for a poet. Poetry emerges from memories into moments, generally uninvited and unannounced. And these stanzas are familiar, though suddenly tainted with new meaning.

Little boy standing, lost …

I strain to see him, the verses repeating in my mind. My pace gradually slows to a stop. I stand beneath an overhanging elm. The vastness of the park stretches out before me.

I’ve reached the last couplet of my poem. I don’t want to say the words.

Little boy weeping …

Little boy weeping …

10
Saturday Office of Lieutenant Brian Delvay

It is discouraging to walk into the office of a law enforcement officer and immediately sense a spirit of mistrust and disbelief, but this is precisely what I feel as I enter into Lieutenant Brian Delvay’s office at mid-morning. I’d asked to speak with someone involved in missing persons, and after being kept waiting for almost an hour while others in the office conferred and passed the request from one set of ears to another, I’d finally been led through the back to a small room in which Delvay was waiting for me. I don’t know if he’s a man who doesn’t enjoy his job, or if for some other reason he’s just become a rather jaded character, but there was little eagerness in his eyes as I approached his workspace, and there’s little there now that I’m sitting before him.

He produces the requisite form from a drawer in a clanking, metal desk. He lays it flat on the surface, cracks his knuckles, and takes up a pen in his right hand. This all appears to be a routine of which he’s long since grown tired. He fills out a few lines in silence before finally raising his head to look directly at me. His hair is greasy, lumped strands flopping down from what were probably neatly combed rows when he left home this morning. I can smell that he’s a heavy smoker. He looks like he spends too much time at the gym. His arms are disproportionately massive in comparison to the rest of his torso.

Behind us, the door to his office still open, there are noises of the general melee of others going about their business.

‘I’m told you want to speak with me about a missing person.’ He places the tip of his pen inside one of the fields on what looks like a bespoke form. ‘Can you tell me your relationship to whomever it is you believe has gone missing.’

I immediately dislike the flippancy in his tone.

‘I’m not related,’ I answer. ‘I’m reporting the abduction of a little boy.’

Officer Delvay squints his brows and scribbles down a few words.

‘A boy, then. How long has the boy been missing?’

‘Since yesterday afternoon at twelve forty-nine p.m.’

He looks up. ‘That’s awfully specific.’

‘That’s the last time I saw him. I know the time because it was just at the end of my lunch break. I’m there every day. In the Botanical Gardens. I saw him, and then he was gone.’

I’m not surprised that there’s a look of suspicion in his eyes. The words sound strange even to me, and were I not sure of what I’d witnessed I would be inclined to disbelieve myself.

‘What’s this boy’s name?’ Delvay asks.

‘I don’t know.’

He peers at me for a few seconds, then returns to writing on the form. I’m pleased that he’s taking down the details. I wasn’t able to do anything directly for the boy yesterday, but this feels like a concrete step in his favour. Something I can actually contribute to his well-being, being penned on an official document by an officer of the law.

‘It’s strange to me that you’re filing a report without knowing the boy’s name,’ the officer finally says.

‘I’ve never met him before,’ I answer honestly. ‘I’ve only seen him in the park.’

Officer Delvay’s eyebrows wander up his face. He can’t seem to help it. Surprise is evident on all his features. He scribbles on the form in earnest, which I take as an act aimed more at calling himself out of his surprised stare than of actual note-taking. It’s clear I’m not convincing him.

‘If you don’t know the child, don’t even know his name and you’ve only ever seen him in a park, then how can you know he’s missing?’

I squirm a little in my seat. I’m entirely aware how strange this whole scenario is.

‘Because I haven’t seen him in the park lately. I always see him there. It’s been a daily thing. For as long as I can remember.’

‘You – watch this boy in the park?’ The officer is now squinting out a sentiment other than simple curiosity.

‘It’s nothing like that,’ I answer. God forbid he should believe I would do, or even think, anything untoward to a child. The notion is repugnant. ‘I go there every day to sit and write. And he’s always there. Always.’

Officer Delvay sets down his pen and leans back in his chair. He looks exasperated, annoyed.

‘I don’t know what to tell you. We can’t file a missing persons report on a child we can neither name nor identify, and whom you don’t even know is actually missing.’

‘But I saw him taken.’

Delvay stiffens. He grabs his pen again. ‘You personally observed a child being abducted?’

‘I saw a hand grab him and pull him back from the edge of the pond.’

The officer contemplates this for a few seconds. His words are choppy when they come. ‘Pull him back?’ he asks. ‘From a pond?’ Suddenly his tone is tainted with sarcasm. ‘Maybe it was one of his parents.’

‘I don’t know his parents. I’ve never set eyes on them.’

The pen is flat again. Delvay’s expression is broadcasting unsalvageable disbelief. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

‘Why aren’t you taking this more seriously?’ I ask. I’m deeply annoyed.

‘I’m sorry, but I’m taking it as seriously as I can. You’re suggesting you witnessed someone pull back a young child from a spot too close to the water of a pond, who could easily have been his parent. You don’t know. That’s not an abduction. That might just be good parenting.’

‘But he was hurt.’

‘All the more reason to keep him from playing off on his own. And by the water!’

I can feel my body sagging in frustration. Officer Delvay is trying to look sympathetic, but it is evident he isn’t feeling it.

He hesitates, then looks directly into my eyes. ‘While you’re here, maybe you can tell me, for the report … are you on any medications?’

I’m startled by the question. ‘Medications?’

‘Anything new? Anything that might be, I don’t know, impairing your judgement?’

I’m confused for a few seconds, but suddenly his meaning registers. He thinks I’m drugged up. Thinks I’m inventing all this. Here I am, trying to help an innocent child, and this worthless police officer is asking questions about my mental clarity and what pills I might be popping to cloud it.

‘No,’ I snap, rising to my feet, ‘I’m not taking any medications.’ I stress the final word. We both know it’s code for what he’s really suggesting, and I might as well have said ‘crack’ or ‘meth’. Me, a man who works in a health food shop!

‘And I don’t appreciate the insinuation,’ I add, straightening my shirt in the only act of demonstrative protest I can think of. ‘I’ve come here to be of help, and to ask for yours. Not to deal with your jaded attitude. There’s a boy in trouble.’

I make to sit back down, but Delvay is now standing. There is an air of finality to his demeanour. He’s showing me the door, figuratively and literally.

‘I’m sorry, there’s really nothing we can do. If you’ve ever got something substantive, you can always come back, Mr … Aaronsen, is it?’

I nod. I’d given my details to the desk clerk when I first arrived. ‘You’ll make a proper note of all this, at least?’ I ask as I leave.

‘You can be sure of that. I’ll put everything in the file.’

That, at least, makes me feel a little better. Because I’m quite certain that the boy is missing, and that at some point others are going to become aware he’s missing, and these notes are going to be important.

11
Sunday

I am not sorry that I went to the police yesterday. Not sorry, though I do feel a bit the fool. What I must have looked like, an almost middle-ager in a stressed state, trying to attract police interest to a case in which an unknown child, of unknown parents, with no name, vanishes from nothing more than a pattern of being present beside a pond to which I’d grown accustomed. I’m not a nutcase, but hell, after that display I’d be hard pressed to prove it.

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
Taped Recording Cassette #021C Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

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.’

A pause. ‘You’re sure this isn’t just a little bit sick, you wanting me to relive all that? You get some twisted pleasure in the gory details?’

She doesn’t reply. The question isn’t really a question.

‘I remember her eyes,’ Joseph finally says. ‘They were alive, just like always. Mad at me, upset maybe. Not sure what was going on, but they definitely weren’t peaceful and loving like they sometimes were. I don’t know. The way eyes look on the face of someone who knows they’re going to die.’

‘She knew she was going to die?’ Pauline asks.

Joseph doesn’t directly answer the question. ‘Then I remember them when I was done. Her eyes. They weren’t alive any more. They just stared at me. They didn’t blink. They were finished.’

She allows some time for them both to reflect on this statement.

‘You said, “when you were done”, just now,’ she eventually says. ‘What did you mean by that?’

‘Sometimes I think you just aren’t listening to me at all,’ the man’s voice answers, sighing with frustration. ‘Done killing the bitch. I thought that was obvious.’

‘Joseph, I need you to try to be more specific. What, precisely, do you remember doing to her?’

Pauline recalls, now, the mounting frustration she’d felt at this point in the conversation. He was so close, so very close.

‘I told you last time. I smothered her with a pillow. Held it over her face until she couldn’t breathe. Until she stopped moving.’

‘No, Joseph,’ Pauline’s voice counters. ‘There was no pillow.’

‘Ah! You admit it!’ Another fist on the table. Joseph’s voice is energetically animated. Vindicated. ‘Your word games have caught you out! You admit I killed her. You admit I had a wife! See, you can’t lie to me. Not about this kind of stuff.’

‘No, Joseph. You’ve never been married.’

‘You just acknowledged the murder! You can’t say I got the details of the killing wrong – “there wasn’t a pillow, Joseph”,’ he squeaks out the words in mocking, mimicking tones, ‘and then tell me there wasn’t a killing!’

Another silence. Twelve and a half seconds.

‘Joseph, there was no pillow. There was no wife. But you’re right, there was a murder.’

The longest silence on cassette #021C. Forty-one seconds. Each one of them had been agonizing. Pauline’s skin had been pinpricks of expectation. She’d watched Joseph’s face contort from surprise, to anger, to confusion, and finally to a muddled, confounded blankness.

‘I don’t understand,’ he finally answers.

‘Joseph, please listen carefully to my next question. Can you do that? Can you promise me you’ll listen to what I’m going to ask you, and think before you respond?’

He shuffles. ‘Whatever. I’ll listen.’

‘Thank you, Joseph. I appreciate that. Now, I’m going to need to ask you what you remember about the boy.’

13
Monday

Damn, if I’m not sick and tired of poetry. I can’t think of how many years I’ve been writing it; there are at least forty notebooks full on my shelves at home – but for what? How many times can ‘dancing sunlight crest the hills’ or ‘artful emotion hug the embrace of day’? I’ve done all the metaphors. I’ve called love everything it can be called, and only on days like today do I start to realize that I haven’t come close to saying anything at all about it. Saying what it really is. Not that I would know; but I know enough to be certain that no stanza ever written has done it the tiniest fleck of justice.

I fling my black Moleskine down in disgust. Margaret’s bench receives it silently. It’s taken this angry assault before. Every so often I go through a poet’s tizzy, convinced momentarily of the senseless uselessness of it all and avowing never again to waste the earth’s depleted paper supply with more vulgar verse. The fit is generally accompanied, like today, with the flinging away of the notebook in disgust. Twice my pencil has even been tossed into the foliage as an extra act of rebellious defeatism.

But I always go back for the notebook, if not for the pencil. It’s far easier to rebel for a moment than for a lifetime. I long ago figured out that the reason the hippie movement died out was because it just takes so much bloody energy constantly to protest everything, no matter how much pot and free love might be involved. When it comes to my own literary rebellions, the weaker but more practical half of my brain always figures that I’d better not actually leave my scraps behind, lest, at the most basic of levels, I find myself in my next fit of disillusionment without anything to fling away in disgust.

For the moment, though, screw it. I’ve been sitting here for the past twenty minutes, trying to wrest a few good lines out of the bowing branches and larger than usual flock of waterfowl on the pond this lunchtime, but it isn’t working. Today the Black Princess water lilies just look like aquatic weeds and the ducks like pond rodents with their butts up in the air as they poke their bills beneath the surface for some revolting, muck-smeared bug.

For an instant I realize that this is nonsense, that the difference between poetry and pessimism rests entirely in the state of wonder with which a person looks at the world around them. But I’m not feeling any wonder today. Today, I’m just seeing the duck butts.

I’d feel wonder, I’m sure, if I knew what had happened two days ago. Then I’m sure my life would feel normal and I’d be able to operate in my usual style, all my emotions appropriately intact. Instead, I have the sinking feeling in the pit of my belly that I might not feel anything at all until I know what’s come of my boy.

My boy.

I’m too much a poet not to notice the shift into the personal possessive.

I gaze out over the pond. One of my pencils is down there, below my perch, somewhere in the greenery, rotting away.

Beyond, on the far shore, I see the spot where the boy ought to be standing. He isn’t, of course. He wouldn’t be. But his stick is lying in the mud, its point touching the water.

And for just an instant, I think that this is wrong. That I’m sure I took that stick with me when I ran after him. That it shouldn’t be there at all.

Memories are strange beasts, impossible to control. I am not sure what keys one into place now, at this precise moment. Maybe it’s the abnormality of the situation, evoking a normalcy from the depths of my mind to try to counterbalance it, to set things into their customary equilibrium – but for just an instant both stick and circumstance disappear. It’s no longer today. The spot is the same, vaguely, but the day is different. I am back in the midst of wonderful moments. At one supremely wonderful day. The day I first saw him.

It’s eighteen months ago, perhaps. Maybe twenty. I’ve been visiting my bench by the pond for at least six weeks, and I’ve started calling it that. ‘My bench’. I’ve staked my claim. Planted my flag. Clichéd my rhetoric, perhaps, but I’ve found my spot.

I took my time settling on just which one would be called my own, back in those days. There are hundreds of benches in the park, I don’t think that’s an exaggeration, and they come in every conceivable type of setting. Open air, in the midst of large quadrangles. Tucked amongst tended flowerbeds. In stone form within the Succulent Garden, surrounded by the potent scents of rosemary and a hundred other herbs. Hidden in darkness beneath the redwoods. Alongside accessible footpaths.

There are even more just like this one, alongside ponds, of which there are four or five in the gardens and dozens in the park as a whole. So that factor alone can’t account for my taking to this bench in the way I did. It is, like so much in life, in the mixture of things. Just the right amount of shade, without being dark. Near the water, but far enough from its edge to avoid the bugs. Blooming, colourful plants amidst the greenery below, but not so many as to feel you’re sitting in the middle of your grandmother’s flowerbed. That, and it’s a bit off the beaten path – a cliché that’s perfectly literal in this case. The path to this spot isn’t beaten down by the same amount of foot traffic as so many others. It’s still a bit raw, a touch wild.

For a moment I think again of the stick, of the present, but memory has too powerful a hold.

Since the day I first arrived here, since I found this perch and christened it my own (with all due respect to Margaret, whose claim is more memorialized than present) there was very little to surprise me. I cherish that as well. What sort of people are they that spend their lives chasing after surprises? Some may crave the burst-through-the-woodwork spontaneity of the unknown, but I’ve always preferred the peace that comes from comfortable regularity. Some have called me predictable. I’ve always thought them incomprehensibly daft. Is it ‘predictable’ to cherish the familiar face of a friend? Or a scene one has grown to love?

But one surprise did, in fact, come into my otherwise unsurprising retreat. Two days ago, in the past-that’s-present, the way memories go. A Monday, so vividly clear now. I was just starting what I hoped would be one of my longer poems, an exercise in iambic pentameter (I don’t usually write in meter), and I was distracted mid-iamb by a rustling of the otherwise silent greenery.

I didn’t know where to look, at first. There’s so much of it. Part of the appeal of this place is that the pond is completely encircled by trees and dense shrubbery, embraced by it. A flutter in the branches could have come from anywhere.

But sight is far more precise than sound. Green everywhere, rustling leaves everywhere – but a small figure that stood only in one spot. A little landing at the edge of the water, almost immediately across the pond from my perch on the bench. The foliage reaches out nearly to touch the shore, thick and dense; but just at its edge is a foot and a half of hard-packed mud that leads into the water itself.

And on the muddy shore stood a little boy.

I’d never seen him before, which is part of what made his impression on me so interesting. Not being a man with children, or with any cause to be around children regularly, it could realistically be said that most boys are boys I’ve never seen before. For that matter, apart from customers in the shop, most people of any age are people I’ve never seen before. I am not the socialite that culturally advanced mothers hope their sons one day will become, climbing up civic ladders on the shoulders of fleets of ‘friends’ who bear that title after a single lunch together or chat over a Starbucks counter. I have two friends: Greg, whom I haven’t actually seen in six years, but who sends an email on most major holidays and with great faithfulness a week or two after my birthday; and Allen, a co-worker with whom I’ve grown close enough that I suppose by most standards we’ve crossed the amorphous line that distinguishes acquaintances from friends. He owes me three drinks down at the Mucky Duck bar on 9th. That’s a good measure, I should think. Only friends owe each other drinks.

But this boy, who in the present moment is the cause of my angst, was then a complete stranger to me. I’m not even sure just how or when he appeared on the shore of my pond. When I looked up, he was there. He can’t be more than four or five, though I’m hardly the best judge of ages (I still consider Allen’s daughter, Candy, to be three, the age she was when I first met her five years ago).

I find myself at a loss for words to describe him – a strange position to be in, for a poet. He’s a touch over half my height, scrawny, brownish hair in a fluff over his ears. His arms look a bit like wires, but dirty wires, well used. He wore a white T-shirt under his overalls on Monday, and again yesterday. I can’t say it was clean, or that it might smell too nice were one close enough to catch a whiff. But boys play, don’t they? He’s a long way off from puberty and the special reek boys develop when the hormones hit, but sweat is sweat and will stain the clothes of a boy as well as a man.

His overalls are the lighter, rather than the more common darker, denim blue, just a little too short for him. Probably in a growth spurt.

You’ve probably seen this kid. At least, I felt I’d seen him before, or at least the image of him. Mark Twain had him in mind when he dreamed up Tom Sawyer — this exact boy. Add a straw hat and a Mississippi steamer and you’ve got the principal casting for Huck Finn sorted. Throw in a lovable golden dog and you’ve got Travis Coates getting ready to run after Old Yeller. Put him in the Catskills and you’ve got Sam Gribley on his side of the mountain. He’s that boy, all those boys. A bit out of place for modern times, perhaps, but the traditional image in all its details.

Yet there’s something more about him. Something as unknown as known. Something I couldn’t quite grasp, back then. Or now. I haven’t been able to get a good look at his face – not yet, not even after all these months. The shadows in this part of the park sometimes play havoc. Maybe that’s part of it. But a faceless child is a little … well, eerie.

I was sure, though, at that first sighting, that I’d see it soon enough. Each day the boy came back. Same spot, same still posture. Playing with a stick, though barely that. He just stood there, really, but he seemed content enough.

And I returned too, again and again. It became my habit. Nothing to do with him. Yet I would still sit on my bench, my notebook open on my knee and pencil knuckled tightly in my hand – and I would gaze out over the water. Waiting for him to appear.

14
Monday Afternoon

No, the stick definitely should not be there. My comforting recollections have puffed out of existence as fast as they came and I’m bound back to the present. Here, now, I’m absolutely certain that I picked the stick up when I went looking for the boy after The Disappearance. I’m sure I walked with it into the trees. I don’t know where I left it, but I know I never returned to the boy’s spot.

But there it is. Today. Impossible. Wrong.

I’m already walking down that path again as the thoughts come – the familiar ring around the pond. Walking this time, though, not running. I arrive after a few moments, half expecting the vision to be gone. An illusion. The stick, though, is lying where I’d seen it, its wispier tip still in the water.

I reach down to pick it up, and I’m momentarily taken over, again, by that stark feel of wood on skin. Rough, natural, completely earthy. But there’s more to the feel: today there is memory. The kind of memory that resides in fingertips and nerve endings more clearly than brain synapses. This is not a lookalike, not a similar piece of forested remains. I have felt this stick before. I have held it.

Two days ago.

I’m not sure it’s possible for a heart to ‘suddenly’ beat twice as fast as it had been a moment before. I’ve read this in books, but I’ve always shied away from using the expression in my poems. It doesn’t seem like organs should really work that way. But my pulse is certainly racing forward right now at a speed it wasn’t before this moment. Maybe there is meaning in certain catchphrases, just like there is good in certain evils, truth in certain lies.

It’s important that I don’t panic. What happened on Monday was close to panic, and the outcome was less than fruitful. I have to keep my wits about me. Be calm, I command myself. And then, with a familiar retort, Don’t repeat Nashville.

It’s my own stock phrase (we all have to have them) for moments of too-intense emotion. Don’t repeat Nashville. Had I never gone there, never ventured out to see the music scene and taste a culture I’d never known, I’d be a happier man. But I went. Curiosity is a hard cat to kill. I went, and I heard the music, and I saw the scene. And I discovered Jaegermeister, as well as the tolerance I thought I had for Jaegermeister. My closest friend at the time, Greg, should have known better than to let me drink the way I did; but Greg had also simultaneously discovered Jaegermeister, so we were sort of together in the proverbial boat.

The boat tipped when Greg’s stomach turned inside out. That’s how I remember it: not just vomiting, not just retching. It was as if his stomach simply inverted itself. In a single instant, what had been inside was out – and it was everywhere. Disgusting, and everywhere.

I was sure that Greg was dying. Stomachs aren’t supposed to do that. The quantity and the suddenness were unbelievable. Everything was tinged a surreal brown from the drink, and that didn’t help; but in the amalgamation of it all I simply lost my wits. I panicked. I started to perform CPR on him after he fell to the floor, and had to be ripped off his chest once everyone else in the bar convinced the bouncer this wasn’t a good idea, as Greg hadn’t lost consciousness or stopped breathing. I, however, was in a panicked frenzy. I punched at the bouncer, on impulse I suppose, but this was an even poorer choice of action than the CPR. The fist that swung back at my head was like an iron cannon. I can still see the lights that flashed through my vision as I planted my face into the wet, wooden floor. None of the shake-it-off-and-swing-back magic of action films. One punch and I was levelled. Levelled until consciousness returned. When it did, attention had shifted entirely away from me and was focused on Greg, who seemed to be tottering on his feet in the midst of a huddled crowd. I can’t explain why (I’ve tried so many times, for years), but I was convinced the whole bar had surrounded him, to finish the upheaval of his flesh that his drinking had started. They weren’t there to help him: they were going to hurt him. They were menacing beasts, that’s how I saw it. My Jaegermeister vision. So I crawled up onto my knees, then my feet, and snuck to the back room to a payphone and called the police. My friend was being assaulted. Violently. They were trying to kill him. Get here quick. I read the address off the typeset note behind the plastic sheath of the payphone.

The police arrived a few minutes later with guns drawn. Two shots were actually fired, thank God not at any people but as warnings into the floor when the bouncer and an associate, charged up on emotion and surprised at the sight of firearms, initially lunged at the intruders. But the badges that the officers held high stopped them before real damage was done.

Greg was fine. Sick as a rat, and had to have his stomach pumped; but I was jailed for the first time in my life. A fucking monumental overreaction, dipshit. If you can’t hold your liquor, stay the fuck out of a bar. That’s how the booking officer put it. Not wrongly. I still cringe when I think of it.

I cringe right now. I’ve already charged into the police station over this boy. I’ve already run around the park accosting elderly couples. Overreaction. Stop it. Don’t pull another Nashville. But there’s a force inside me, the same, perhaps, that possessed me on the floor of that Southern bar. Don’t stop. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

I peer down at the ground beneath my feet. The parallel lines of heel scuffs I’d noticed two days ago are still there, though slightly less distinct now. Mud doesn’t hold shape for long. The only witness to the something that I know I saw is fading. Soon there will be nothing left at all. No testimony. No—

I can’t finish the thought, and it’s not for overemotive speculation. There’s something else, there in the mud, something I’ve only just spotted. Less distinct than the fading trails, but there. Footprints. Little ones, the size a child’s shoes would make. Right there, following the same path as the trails.

And more importantly, the footprints are pressed on top of the trails. First they point forwards, out to the water; then back, towards the trees.

I squeeze my hand so tightly around the stick that its rough edges begin to cut into my palm. I’m shaking. I don’t know why, but I’m instantaneously certain. The boy has been back. He’s come back here, and he’s left me his stick.

In the next seconds I try to figure out what this could mean. Why return at all? It certainly hasn’t been at his usual times; I’ve been here every day. And he’s never before left anything behind. Not until—

They say realization ‘hits’ you, and I know exactly what they mean. It comes at me like a two-by-four straight across the eyes.

He’s come back to leave a message. He’s reaching out to me.

There is no reason I should think like this. Part of me knows immediately that it’s illogical. Spectacularly unlikely. When I’d called out to him before he hadn’t responded, hadn’t shown any sign at all he’d heard. Yet maybe he had. Maybe my voice had reached him and in the midst of his – I struggle to find an emotion to apply to his consistently emotionless visage – in the midst of his whatever

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