December Park(61)

“Dad?”

“Hmmmm?”

“What do you think happened to those other kids? Do you think the same person who got Courtney Cole got the rest of them?”

He faced me, and I could tell he was debating whether he should pacify me or tell me the truth. “Yes. I think it’s the same person.”

I nodded. Only vaguely was I aware that I had dug my fingernails into the flesh of the apple while awaiting his answer.





That night, after everyone had gone to bed, I flipped the blankets off my perspiring body and crept out into the hallway. It took an eternity to get past the traitorous floorboards outside my father’s closed bedroom door and down the stairs. I didn’t turn on a light until I made it to the kitchen, and even then the only light I switched on was the single tube light over the sink; it cast an almost iridescent penumbra across the length of the countertop.

My father’s empty coffee mug was still on the table. The papers were gone, though I noticed his battered cordovan briefcase with the brass clasps propped up in the doorway. I picked it up, noting how heavy it was, and set it carefully on the table. I covered each clasp while I popped them open, muffling the sound.

Chewing on my lower lip, I opened the briefcase. Papers bristled out. Manila folders, industrial staples, large metal clasps on stacks of printed pages stared up at me. I thumbed through one of the packets. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Another stack of pages, this one nearly as thick as a phone book, contained addresses and phone numbers, social security numbers, license plate numbers.

I sifted through the rest of the paperwork until I located a blue case file at the bottom of the briefcase. There were no labels on the cover, though there were a lot of pages filed inside it. It was the file my father had been reading earlier that evening. I opened it and instantly recoiled at the sight of the dead, ruinous face of Courtney Cole.

I redirected my gaze toward the soft tube light humming above the stainless steel kitchen sink. A sour breath exhaled through my flared nostrils. When I looked back down at the photograph, it was still just as gruesome, yet somehow I was able to look at it now without horror.

The photograph had been taken while Courtney Cole was still in the woods; I could see that her head, cocked strangely on her neck, still lay among a bed of sodden black leaves. Her two gelatinous eyes reminded me of automobile headlights after they had become foggy with moisture. Mottled black-purple bruises ran from temple to jawline on the right side of her face.

I turned to the next page, which showed another photograph of the dead girl, this time with the head wound as the subject of the shot. I examined it in all its stark and morbid detail.

Dented, I thought again, same as I had on the day I saw the cops pulling her up the embankment, although I now found the word to be foolishly inadequate. It was a horrible, vivid gash, the skin busted apart and fringed in congealed black blood. At the center, whitish triangles of skull protruded through a terrible divot. Bits of dirt and little pebbles were stuck in the blood. There was a yellow ruler beside her head, measuring the diameter of the wound.

Similar photos followed. There were others taken at the morgue, for she was now splayed out on a stainless steel table with a white sheet draped to just below her collarbone. She looked more lifelike somehow under the fluorescent lights, though the discoloration of her flesh was more prominent. The photos toward the end were of the surrounding woods, but I couldn’t identify what purpose they might serve the police.

I flipped to the next tab in the case file to find a stack of coroner’s reports and various handwritten notes. I skimmed the typed parts and skipped the illegible handwritten notes. Blunt force trauma, it read in one of the boxes.

The sound of someone moving around upstairs caused me to freeze. I held my breath, listening. It had sounded like the groaning of bedsprings or possibly one of the noisy floorboards at the top of the stairs. I waited, anticipating the all-too-familiar sound of my father’s tendons popping as he descended the stairs. But that sound did not come.

For a moment I considered closing the file and creeping back up to my room. But in the end, I decided to comb through the rest of it, pausing only to read the boldface type in various reports.

The final packet of papers contained more handwritten notes as well as a single-spaced typed sheet of paper. I realized that I was reading the statements made by Courtney’s parents, Byron and Sarah Beth. There was no revelation in either statement—their daughter had simply failed to return home one evening—until I reached the end of Sarah Beth’s. It was a simple recounting of the clothing her daughter had been wearing on the day she disappeared—a purple sweater, jeans with sequins on the rear pockets, a white knit coat, white tennis shoes.

And a heart-shaped locket.

I stared at the words until my eyes burned from not blinking. When another creaking sound from above filtered down the stairwell, I closed the file and stuffed it, along with the rest of my father’s paperwork, into the briefcase. I set the briefcase back in its place on the floor, then took the stairs up to my bedroom. Given the strength of my beating heart, I knew sleep would be a long time coming.





Chapter Ten


The Rebels of Echo Base





My revelation about the heart-shaped locket convinced them all. How could it not? Adrian beamed, and Scott joined him in crowing as if it were some victory. Peter and Michael shared matching looks of amazement. And then, of course, they wanted to go to the woods and see what else might have been left behind, what clue may have been overlooked by the police. They wanted to search.