Old School by O'Shea Daniel B

Author:O'Shea, Daniel B. [O'Shea, Daniel B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: tinku
Publisher: Snubnose Press
Published: 2012-02-18T04:30:00+00:00

***

June, 1971

The kid had gone missing just before 3:00 p.m. Last week of school, first week of June, so it got dark late, and it was damn near dark now. It didn’t look like any runaway shit or some kid who’d gone off to a friend’s house and forgot to check in. No family crap that anybody’d heard, and a girl who was a class behind the kid had seen him talking to some guy in the parking lot at Schaefer’s Drugs, hippie looking dude, early twenties or thereabouts. Schaefer’s had a snack counter, kids from the school hanging out there sometimes. Girl said she seen the kid and the guy walking across the lot, like they were headed somewhere. Couple minutes later, she looks back, the kid was gone, the guy was gone, black Camero that had been there was gone. You can show ‘em all the stranger danger movies you want, but these slick kiddy fuckers, they got their ways.

This wasn’t one of those wait-a-couple-days, see-if-the-kid-turns-up deals. Had the wrong feel for that, plus the kid’s mom knew the mayor. So everybody was out with a copy of the kid’s school photo from the year before. It was Wednesday, so the kid was in his Cub Scout uniform the mom said. DeGatano was a detective, but it was all hands on deck, so he was marching a grid in Lincoln Park with a mess of patrol guys. Still lots of undergrowth back then, before they’d put in the pool and the ball diamonds and the tennis courts, so back in ’71 the park was just thirty acres or so of grass, scrub woods and brush. They’d get some hobos down along the east end sometimes, where the park butted up against the Burlington tracks. Nobody there when DeGatano worked his way down the right of way, he was just thinking it was time to get the flashlight out when he saw the silhouette.

The kid still had the Cub Scout shirt on, still had the kerchief thing on. But that was all he had on. Pants were gone, socks gone, shoes gone. The kid was hanging from a low branch of a burr oak, a couple feet off ground. DeGatano came at the body from the side, his flashlight out now, going around behind the kid. The kid’s hands were tied behind his back in some complex looking knot, a thin gruel of blood and shit and something else drying along the back of the kid’s legs and the inside of his thighs. DeGatano was pretty sure he knew what the something else was. He had to stretch up a little to reach the neck, check for a pulse, but the skin was already cool.

DeGatano started yelling for the other cops who were strung out through the park.

“Somebody get back to a car and call it in. We got a body down here.”

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