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

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