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

by A J Grayson

  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?’