December Park(112)

“Two crazy child killers who happen to be terrorizing the same city at the same exact time?” Peter said, wrinkling his nose. “That sounds highly unlikely.”

“It would be too much of a coincidence,” I added.

“Unless it’s not a coincidence at all,” Scott said, already buying into Adrian’s theory.

Michael said, “What do you mean?”

“Like, what if they’re working together?” Scott said. “We’ve got a guy down here checking out our stuff and Mr. Mattingly hanging around the Werewolf House. They could both be the Piper.”

Peter made a sour face that suggested he didn’t believe it was possible. I silently agreed with him.

“So what do we do about all this?” Michael sat on the ground and crossed one ankle over the other.

“I don’t know,” Adrian said.

“We could go knock on the English teacher’s door, tell him we know who he is and what he’s been doing,” Michael said.

“Yeah,” Peter groaned, “that’s brilliant.”

“Wait a minute,” Scott said, his eyes brightening. “That’s not such a bad idea.”





At Scott’s house, we put the plan into action. Among the junk that Scott’s aunt had salted away in the Steeples’ basement were countless magazines, everything from National Geographic and Newsweek to more obscure periodicals with tattooed men and marijuana leaves on the covers. We flipped through them, cutting out letters from the pages, which we then glued to a sheet of typing paper.

Once we finished, we had something that looked like a ransom note from a movie.



WE know who YOU are & what you HAVE done

Wearing a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves, Scott folded the letter and tucked it inside a plain white envelope. He wet a sponge at the kitchen sink, then daubed the glue strip with it to seal the envelope. With more than just a hint of pride, he grinned at us, claiming to have seen it in an old black-and-white movie. Probably Hitchcock.

“What the hell are you dweebs doing?” Kristy, Scott’s older sister, stood in the doorway. She was twenty and home from college for the summer. She wore black leggings and a satin blousy thing that clung to the contours of her breasts. She was attractive in a dark and devious way—what some people might misconstrue as slutty—and, like her brother, was unpredictably intelligent.

Her voice startled the five of us. We were seated around the table like conspirators. Scott yanked the envelope off the table and hid it in his lap.

“Seriously,” she said, snapping gum. “What are you bozos up to?”

“None of your business,” Scott shot back. “Get lost.”

“You can’t bullshit me. You’re up to something.” She looked around the table. “You,” she said to Adrian. “I don’t know you. What’s your name?”

“Adrian.”

“You part of this sordid cabal now?”

Adrian said, “What?”

“Never mind.”

Scott scowled at his sister. “Don’t you have some pituitary case you should be humping in the back of a car somewhere?”

“You’re f*cking puerile.”

“Hey, Kristy,” Michael said. “Show us your tits.”

“You’d have a heart attack, you spaz.” She went to the fridge, grabbed a can of Diet Coke, then stalked out of the kitchen.

“She’s your sister?” Adrian said. He remained staring at the doorway, as if in anticipation—or hope—that Kristy would return for an encore performance.

“Unfortunately,” Scott grumbled.

“Aw,” Peter cooed. “Our little buddy’s got a crush.”

Adrian blushed. “I do not.”

“You’re right,” Michael jumped in. “He does. Look—he’s turning red as a tomato.”

“They grow up so fast,” I said, adding my two cents.

“I don’t,” Adrian insisted. “I don’t have a crush. No way.”

“Cut it out, guys. You’re making me sick,” Scott said, placing the envelope back on the table.

Our plan was rudimentary at best. Nonetheless, Adrian, Scott, and Michael were all completely on board. Peter thought we were wasting our time. I had a deeper resignation—namely, that if we got caught perpetrating this foolishness, I could never look Mr. Mattingly in the face again. And I had been kicked out of one English class already.

None of us knew exactly where Mr. Mattingly lived, so Scott retrieved the most recent Harting Farms phone book from the pantry. However, there was no Mattingly listed.

Scott went into his father’s study and returned with a pamphlet supplement to the phone book, which some of the neighborhoods released midyear to keep the comings and goings updated. Scott flipped through the pages. “Here it is. David and Tina Mattingly, 1597 Beauchamp Drive, Parliament Village. It says they moved into town on August 5.”

“When did William Demorest disappear?” Peter asked.

“It was the end of August. I don’t remember the exact date.”

Peter moved his lips as if he were chewing something.

“Okay, we got the address. Let’s do it already,” Michael whined.

We all got on our bikes—Adrian on my handlebars—and rode out to the section of town designated as Parliament Village. It was a nice June day, the heat index slowly creeping toward ninety. Kids zipped up and down the streets on bikes. On Beauchamp Drive, four young girls sat on someone’s front lawn around a circular wooden table having a tea party. Amidst all this summertime normalcy, it was almost possible to believe that the Piper was nothing more than a figment of a paranoid town’s imagination.