Writing the dedication to The Red Balloon was not an easy task. I kicked around quite a few different versions before finally settling on the one in the published novel. Part of my problem is that each time I would think that I was done, I would remember someone else who should be thanked, and I had decided long ago that I did not want to be one of those people who had an entire page devoted to thanking people inside the actual book. So I narrowed the list down to four people who were instrumental in the editing of the book and the decision to publish it.
There are, of course, a lot more than those four people who needed to be thanked, so here is the rest of that list. This list does not include the afore-mentioned four people, because my message to them is in the book (which you can buy here, of course) and I did not want to ruin the surprise. Their conspicuous absence in the following list probably makes it clear who gets thanked on paper, but I have a feeling they already knew they were in there to start with…
First and foremost, thanks to Noel Dietrich. Not only did she provide the photograph used on the cover (a photograph that I decided I wanted for the cover the moment I saw it), she also proved invaluable in helping me market the thing. Every good idea relating to the marketing of this book – this blog, the Facebook page, the Myspace page, the press release, the half-sheet fliers, Google books – came from her. If it was up to me, there probably would have been a mass email or two and a few bulletins on Myspace, so to say that I lucked out here is an understatement.
Thanks is also due to my marketing team of Alison and Beth, who did their best to spread the word about the novel electronically and by passing out fliers.
Extra thanks goes out to Matt B, who supplied me with my first beer many years back and indirectly influenced the writing of this novel. Let me state for the record, however, that although Matt shares the same first name with Matt Canagan, that they are nothing alike; the real-world Matt would never be a fan of professional wrestling.
Oh, and he has also never, to the best of my knowledge, drunk so much that he blacked out and then decided to run from the police.
I would also like to express my appreciation to Crystal and Astra, who provided me with quite a bit of support over the years, not just in terms of my writing but in helping me grow as a person. Without Astra, I would still think of children as an abstract concept instead of something more and more people my age are having, and without Crystal, my eyes would be much more closed to the ways of the world than they already are.
I would also like to credit Miss Bridges, my third grade teacher. I have never known what her first name was, even if she should be a Miss or a Mrs., but it was in third grade that I realized I wanted to be a writer, and it was her class that helped me realize this. It was in third grade that I wrote my first “stories” and although they were short, nonsensical, and poorly illustrated, everyone has got to start somewhere.
Finally, this novel wouldn’t be possible without either of my parents or my brother. They shaped my lives in more ways than I could count, and I am thankful for all the love and support I have received from them over the years. Also, to Rob: I am not a monkey.
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Friday, June 20, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Dungeon of Death
Scott Keith was kind enough to plug The Red Balloon, so here's a plug for his latest wrestling book.
Dungeon of Death is coming out in November and this time it is focusing on deaths in the wrestling world...as someone who has read him for years (since I was a freshman in college, which basically means I have been reading his rants for nearly a decade now), and owning his first four books, I am sure this one will be worth the wait as well.
To pre-order it, you can go here.
Read more...
Dungeon of Death is coming out in November and this time it is focusing on deaths in the wrestling world...as someone who has read him for years (since I was a freshman in college, which basically means I have been reading his rants for nearly a decade now), and owning his first four books, I am sure this one will be worth the wait as well.
To pre-order it, you can go here.
Read more...
Monday, June 16, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Another Excerpt
Chapter 2
Tim Einhorn had forgotten what Aeron’s Point felt like. It had been so long since he had been there. He’d left when he was eighteen to attend the police academy in nearby Bristol’s Row, a place that sounded much smaller than it actually was. It was three times the size of Aeron’s Point, large enough to need a sizable police force and its own academy. He’d lived in Bristol’s Row for the short time it took to complete the academy. And then he’d gone off to California. That was not standard operating procedure, not by a long shot, but he’d wanted to get as far away from the Point as he could, and his instructor at the academy had some friends in the Sunshine State. That was how he left Aeron’s Point behind him, a few days after his nineteenth birthday, and he had not looked back.
But here he was, nine years later, a dull ache on the left side of his neck where the bullet had grazed him and a heavy, water-logged feeling in his chest where a volley of bullets had cracked two of his ribs. Nine years later, and he was a different person. He was no longer an innocent bystander in the world, one who believed that the world was painted in black or white, good or evil, cops or robbers. No longer a virgin in every sense of the word; during his time in California, he’d known women and alcohol and drugs and he knew how hard it was to survive by himself on a patrolmen’s salary; he knew what it was like to eat ramen five days a week. But he was a detective now, the brand new gold shield in his pocket, still glinting in his mind’s eye with the reflection of flashbulbs at the press conference. Everything was different, from the way he dressed, to the way he styled his hair, the way he chewed nicotine gum almost relentlessly, but now that he stood in Northern Terrace Park, nothing was different at all.
He still felt like he didn’t belong. Still felt like the town was watching him, waiting for him to screw up. He would make a mistake, because his father was Edward Einhorn, and if Edward Einhorn’s son didn’t screw things up, then by God, nothing was right with the world. The shiny shield in his pocket didn’t mean anything to these people. This was a small town, the kind of town that didn’t forget when police officers accepted bribes. The rest of the Einhorn clan were good police, but that didn’t matter; Tim was the son of a dirty cop. The sins of the father, visited on the son. He had not stuck around to let himself be stigmatized. He’d gotten out before that could happen, but he’d come back at his uncle’s request. He’d never planned to return to the little New Jersey community. But here he was.
Here he was, about to enter a crime scene.
“Get your shield on,” Gerald Einhorn told him as he turned off his car. “Show them who you are.”
“They know who I am,” Tim said, softly, but he was already reaching for it. It was the middle of April, springtime, but warm weather had not come to the Point yet. The coat he wore was long, brown, clean-cut, brand new. It was a gift from Mayor Grivaldi, for saving his life. A trench coat in exchange for a nicked artery, two cracked ribs, and months of pain.
“Officially, you don’t have any power here. But as long as you’re with me, no one will question it.”
Of course they would. They would question it immediately. He was a California cop and this was not California. But they would tolerate it. With the kind of pull that his uncle had, they would tolerate it, up to a point. But he didn’t how what point that was.
He attached his badge to the pocket of his coat. It was the gold shield of a first-class detective, shield number 091781. The same number he held when he was a third-class police officer, but the gold shield was new, so shiny that it almost embarrassed him. In California, it would have been one thing. He was a hero back there, the man who saved the mayor’s life from a gang-banger. The bright shield meant something else here in Aeron’s Point. It meant he was brand new; a rookie, it meant he didn’t know what he was doing. Tagging along was a bad idea, he knew it deep down, but he could not refuse his uncle.
The first thing he noticed was the blood. There was blood everywhere. He had seen gory crime scenes before and he’d always had a good stomach for it. But this was something else. It wasn’t merely the fact that it was someone he knew. He had seen the bodies of friends and family and informants before. That made it tough, but this was worse. This was a girl who he had known growing up, a girl who had wished him good luck when he left town nine years ago. A girl who told him that she wanted to see California some day and asked him if she could come visit him when she was older. This was someone who had looked up to him in awe, someone who hadn’t seen him as “Edward’s kid.” This was a girl who had been shot six times and left to bleed to death on a playground.
“Chief,” a police officer behind a camera said as a greeting. It took him a moment to acknowledge Tim. “Detective.”
“Christ,” Gerald said quietly. “This is a mess.”
Tim found it hard to breathe for a moment. He drew in a breath and it got caught in his chest. He wished he could chalk it up to the cracked ribs, but this had nothing to do with his injuries. He’d never seen a merry-go-round covered in blood before; it was one of the things he managed to avoid in California, although blood-spattered walls and alleys were common-place. The body was the worst part. He’d never seen this girl as a woman before, and for some reason this felt like more of an invasion of privacy than seeing his female neighbor in the laundry room in a bra and a pair of boxers. It might have had something to do with the fact that Terry’s joints had been reduced to pulp, or maybe it was the fact that she was tied spread-eagled. Maybe it was the thick gag in her mouth or the way her eyes seemed to be staring directly at him. Maybe it was everything.
He should not be here.
“Who found her?” Gerald asked.
The police officer with the camera – he looked like one of the Simone boys – lowered his camera for a moment and gestured towards the lake. At the edge of the lake, a jogger in baggy gray sweats was bent over, hands on his knees, shaking his head slowly in response to whatever question another officer was asking him. “Mister Goldstein was the one who found her during his morning jog.”
“You remember him?” Gerald asked.
“He teaches history,” Tim answered.
“Social studies,” Gerald said.
“Same thing,” Tim said. Tim had been in his class fourth grade. Goldstein had not aged gracefully. Most of his hair had fallen out and he’d developed a bit of a belly.
“We’ll have to go talk to him next,” Gerald said.
“How many times was she shot? Six? Or more?” Tim asked the cameraman. It was hard to tell, there was too much blood. He could see four distinct holes, one in each shoulder, one in her left elbow, one in her right knee; it was quick deduction to assume that there was a bullet in each joint, but there could have been more that were hidden by ragged flesh and bloody clothes.
“Looks like six,” the officer – probably Robert Simone – said. “Shoulders, elbows, knees.”
“Did you find any shell casings?” Gerald asked.
“None,” Jones said. “Not yet.”
“Keep looking,” Tim said. “Once the body is moved, make sure to check under the merry-go-round.”
“All right, detective,” Simone said.
“Come get us when Hackett arrives,” Gerald said.
“Should be here soon. Kelso called him right after you, Chief,” Simone said.
“All right,” Gerald said. “Detective, let’s go talk to Mister Goldstein.”
Kelso was new; Tim didn’t know him at all. That was strange; why would anyone transfer into Aeron’s Point? People left, but they didn’t come in. It was a tiny, isolated, xenophobic community. It wasn’t the kind of town that attracted people.
There was a puddle of vomit at Goldstein’s feet. It looked fresh; Tim had seen enough vomit on the job to get a good sense of what fresh vomit looked like. Goldstein had good cause to be sick – he surely had known Terry. Everybody knew everyone in the Point.
“How are you doing, Mister Goldstien?” Gerald asked.
“Jessie,” the teacher said. “Call me Jessie, Chief.”
“Jessie and I play cards together once in a while,” Gerald said to his nephew. “He usually wipes the floor with me.”
A look of surprise crossed Goldstein’s face as he looked up. “Timothy?”
“Hello, Mister Goldstein,” Tim said. “It’s Detective Einhorn, these days.”
“If we’re going to call you by your first name, you should do the same with us,” Gerald said. Tim would have preferred that things not move to a first-name basis. This wasn’t a bunch of guys sitting around playing cards, this was a crime scene.
“Sorry, Chief,” Goldstein said, shaking his head slowly. He appeared weak on his feet, but his face was flushed, not pale. “But it’s probably better we not do that.”
“What happened, Mister Goldstein?” Tim asked.
“I was out for my morning jog,” Goldstein began, before pausing. He took a deep breath and his face grew even brighter. “I always jog here. Nobody else does, they always go to the new park. But I’m always here every morning, from seven to eight.”
“Where are you parked?” Gerald asked.
“Same place I always park,” Goldstein pointed to the far side of the park. There was just a single car there, a brown station wagon. Terry had not driven here; otherwise, her car would have still been in the parking lot.
“Go on,” Gerald said.
“I usually just run laps around the lake for an hour. I started down there, near the parking lot. I guess I got three quarters of a lap done when I noticed there was a buzzard over on the playground, pecking at something. Wasn’t till I reached the bend and got close to the playground that I…” His voice trailed off and he suddenly doubled over, vomiting onto the ground. Tim moved his feet in the nick of time, barely avoiding splash back.
Kelso spoke up. “Soon as he realized who it was, he ran to the payphone over there by the parking lot and called the precinct. Simone and I were the first ones on scene. We secured the scene and called for back-up.”
“Jessie, Officer Kelso is gonna help you to your car as soon as you’re feeling able, and then he’s going to wait with you until you’re feeling fine to drive off. I want you to take the day off from work and get some rest. I’ll be in touch if there’s anything else we need from you.”
“It’s disgusting, Gerald,” Goldstein said, “what was done to her. I’ve never seen anything like that in my entire life. Never wanna see anything like that again.”
“We’ll take care of this, Jessie. Don’t you think about this no more.”
Goldstien chuckled softly. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that. Don’t think I’m ever going to stop thinking about this.”
They walked back towards the body in silence. Tim didn’t feel he had much to say, not yet. A new figure had appeared at the crime scene, a thin man with hair that was equal parts dark black and gray. He looked like a stereotypical mortician, which is probably what he was.
“Is that Hackett?” Tim asked.
“Don’t you remember him?”
“The name. Not the person,” Tim said.
“He’s aged quite a bit in the last few years. After his wife died, he kind of withdrew a little bit.”
“Her, I remember,” Tim said. When Tim had been young, there were few people his age who didn’t know about Virginia Hackett. She was relatively plain-looking, except for being blessed with the kind of chest that drove immature teenagers absolutely wild. But he barely remembered her husband. It wasn’t till he and his uncle reached the crime scene, and Tim saw him in person, that his memory was jogged. He looked much older than the fifty-or-so years he should have been.
“I just saw her a few weeks ago, Chief,” Hackett said as they approached. “Came in for her annual check-up. Fine condition.”
Gerald must have noticed the confusion on Tim’s face. “Once Doc Anton retired, Hackett took over as our local practitioner. Easier on everyone in the town, so’s they didn’t have to go over to Cedarville for a broken finger.”
“Good to see you, Tim,” Hackett said. “Wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Of course,” Tim said quietly.
“Care to make a rough guess as to time of death?” Gerald asked.
“Sometime between 5 and 20 hours ago.”
“Pretty general,” Tim said.
“Cut me some slack, I just got here,” Hackett said. He turned his attention to Simone. “I need pictures from every angle, at varying distances. Just to be safe.”
“Once you’ve made a cursory examination, sign off on the body so we can transport it back to your lab,” Gerald said. “We need to know what is going on here.”
“I won’t delay, Chief,” Hackett said. He ran a hand through his messy hair and sighed. “This is some mess here.”
“Sure is, Hack,” Gerald said.
“We got to find the guy that did this,” Hackett said.
“We’ll find him. Or her,” Tim said. This didn’t look like the type of thing a woman would do. Nothing could be counted out. Not this early into things.
“I was using ‘guy’ in the general sense, kid,” Hackett said. His eyes fixed on Tim’s scar. “How’s the neck?”
“It’s fine,” Tim said. It was fine as long as you didn’t mind a throbbing ache and an itching sensation underneath his skin. “Looks like she was shot six times.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hackett said. “All in the joints, looks like. Probably bled out, but she may have gone into shock and died. I’ll get her cleaned up.”
“Make sure you run a blood test, see if anything was in her system.”
“We don’t have many problems with drugs in town,” Gerald said to Tim. “But it’s a good idea to run some tests, see what comes up.”
“Standard procedure, Chief,” Hackett said. “Why don’t you two work on finding out who killed her, and I’ll get to work on seeing what did it.”
“We’re gonna head over to Ted Marshall’s house to let him know. Then we’ll probably head to the school. Page me when you get anything.”
“Sure thing, Chief,” Hackett said. He turned away from them, crouching down next to the body, immersing himself in his job.
The silence continued to hang over them as they walked back to Gerald’s car. They both nodded to the officer posted at the park’s entrance and crossed underneath the yellow tape. As they were nearing Gerald’s car, Tim noticed a news van approaching from down the road. This was going to blow up once the reporters found out what had happened in the park.
“Try to take it easy, Tim,” Gerald said as they reached the car.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Tim said.
“Being so formal with Jessie. Telling Hackett how to do his job. And I saw the way you looked at Simone and Kelso.”
“We’re on the job. We shouldn’t be going around calling people by their first names. We shouldn’t be personally involved in this.”
“That’d be fine, if we weren’t involved. But we are.”
Tim sighed and got into the car. He waited until Gerald was seated and the car was started before saying anything. It took him that long to formulate the proper response. “It feels strange to be back here.”
“I’m sure it does,” Gerald said. “Almost been a decade since you left.”
“Everybody still remembers what my father did,” Tim said.
Gerald put the car into gear and pulled out of the maintenance drive way before the news van had even come to a stop. Tim saw a reporter and a camera man getting out of the van in the car’s passenger-side mirror. They shrank to little dots as the car sped away. “Yeah, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Sure it does,” Tim said. “Nobody thinks I should be here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hackett. Goldstein. They think I’m an outsider.” That made sense, of course, because he was. “They don’t want me on this case.”
“You’re a detective, Tim,” Gerald said. “You don’t get to be a detective by being a screw-up.”
“I was promoted because I was injured in the line of duty.” Tim sighed. “I don’t belong here, Uncle Gerald.”
“Too bad,” Gerald said. “Because we have a job to do. And we’re going to do it.”
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Tim Einhorn had forgotten what Aeron’s Point felt like. It had been so long since he had been there. He’d left when he was eighteen to attend the police academy in nearby Bristol’s Row, a place that sounded much smaller than it actually was. It was three times the size of Aeron’s Point, large enough to need a sizable police force and its own academy. He’d lived in Bristol’s Row for the short time it took to complete the academy. And then he’d gone off to California. That was not standard operating procedure, not by a long shot, but he’d wanted to get as far away from the Point as he could, and his instructor at the academy had some friends in the Sunshine State. That was how he left Aeron’s Point behind him, a few days after his nineteenth birthday, and he had not looked back.
But here he was, nine years later, a dull ache on the left side of his neck where the bullet had grazed him and a heavy, water-logged feeling in his chest where a volley of bullets had cracked two of his ribs. Nine years later, and he was a different person. He was no longer an innocent bystander in the world, one who believed that the world was painted in black or white, good or evil, cops or robbers. No longer a virgin in every sense of the word; during his time in California, he’d known women and alcohol and drugs and he knew how hard it was to survive by himself on a patrolmen’s salary; he knew what it was like to eat ramen five days a week. But he was a detective now, the brand new gold shield in his pocket, still glinting in his mind’s eye with the reflection of flashbulbs at the press conference. Everything was different, from the way he dressed, to the way he styled his hair, the way he chewed nicotine gum almost relentlessly, but now that he stood in Northern Terrace Park, nothing was different at all.
He still felt like he didn’t belong. Still felt like the town was watching him, waiting for him to screw up. He would make a mistake, because his father was Edward Einhorn, and if Edward Einhorn’s son didn’t screw things up, then by God, nothing was right with the world. The shiny shield in his pocket didn’t mean anything to these people. This was a small town, the kind of town that didn’t forget when police officers accepted bribes. The rest of the Einhorn clan were good police, but that didn’t matter; Tim was the son of a dirty cop. The sins of the father, visited on the son. He had not stuck around to let himself be stigmatized. He’d gotten out before that could happen, but he’d come back at his uncle’s request. He’d never planned to return to the little New Jersey community. But here he was.
Here he was, about to enter a crime scene.
“Get your shield on,” Gerald Einhorn told him as he turned off his car. “Show them who you are.”
“They know who I am,” Tim said, softly, but he was already reaching for it. It was the middle of April, springtime, but warm weather had not come to the Point yet. The coat he wore was long, brown, clean-cut, brand new. It was a gift from Mayor Grivaldi, for saving his life. A trench coat in exchange for a nicked artery, two cracked ribs, and months of pain.
“Officially, you don’t have any power here. But as long as you’re with me, no one will question it.”
Of course they would. They would question it immediately. He was a California cop and this was not California. But they would tolerate it. With the kind of pull that his uncle had, they would tolerate it, up to a point. But he didn’t how what point that was.
He attached his badge to the pocket of his coat. It was the gold shield of a first-class detective, shield number 091781. The same number he held when he was a third-class police officer, but the gold shield was new, so shiny that it almost embarrassed him. In California, it would have been one thing. He was a hero back there, the man who saved the mayor’s life from a gang-banger. The bright shield meant something else here in Aeron’s Point. It meant he was brand new; a rookie, it meant he didn’t know what he was doing. Tagging along was a bad idea, he knew it deep down, but he could not refuse his uncle.
The first thing he noticed was the blood. There was blood everywhere. He had seen gory crime scenes before and he’d always had a good stomach for it. But this was something else. It wasn’t merely the fact that it was someone he knew. He had seen the bodies of friends and family and informants before. That made it tough, but this was worse. This was a girl who he had known growing up, a girl who had wished him good luck when he left town nine years ago. A girl who told him that she wanted to see California some day and asked him if she could come visit him when she was older. This was someone who had looked up to him in awe, someone who hadn’t seen him as “Edward’s kid.” This was a girl who had been shot six times and left to bleed to death on a playground.
“Chief,” a police officer behind a camera said as a greeting. It took him a moment to acknowledge Tim. “Detective.”
“Christ,” Gerald said quietly. “This is a mess.”
Tim found it hard to breathe for a moment. He drew in a breath and it got caught in his chest. He wished he could chalk it up to the cracked ribs, but this had nothing to do with his injuries. He’d never seen a merry-go-round covered in blood before; it was one of the things he managed to avoid in California, although blood-spattered walls and alleys were common-place. The body was the worst part. He’d never seen this girl as a woman before, and for some reason this felt like more of an invasion of privacy than seeing his female neighbor in the laundry room in a bra and a pair of boxers. It might have had something to do with the fact that Terry’s joints had been reduced to pulp, or maybe it was the fact that she was tied spread-eagled. Maybe it was the thick gag in her mouth or the way her eyes seemed to be staring directly at him. Maybe it was everything.
He should not be here.
“Who found her?” Gerald asked.
The police officer with the camera – he looked like one of the Simone boys – lowered his camera for a moment and gestured towards the lake. At the edge of the lake, a jogger in baggy gray sweats was bent over, hands on his knees, shaking his head slowly in response to whatever question another officer was asking him. “Mister Goldstein was the one who found her during his morning jog.”
“You remember him?” Gerald asked.
“He teaches history,” Tim answered.
“Social studies,” Gerald said.
“Same thing,” Tim said. Tim had been in his class fourth grade. Goldstein had not aged gracefully. Most of his hair had fallen out and he’d developed a bit of a belly.
“We’ll have to go talk to him next,” Gerald said.
“How many times was she shot? Six? Or more?” Tim asked the cameraman. It was hard to tell, there was too much blood. He could see four distinct holes, one in each shoulder, one in her left elbow, one in her right knee; it was quick deduction to assume that there was a bullet in each joint, but there could have been more that were hidden by ragged flesh and bloody clothes.
“Looks like six,” the officer – probably Robert Simone – said. “Shoulders, elbows, knees.”
“Did you find any shell casings?” Gerald asked.
“None,” Jones said. “Not yet.”
“Keep looking,” Tim said. “Once the body is moved, make sure to check under the merry-go-round.”
“All right, detective,” Simone said.
“Come get us when Hackett arrives,” Gerald said.
“Should be here soon. Kelso called him right after you, Chief,” Simone said.
“All right,” Gerald said. “Detective, let’s go talk to Mister Goldstein.”
Kelso was new; Tim didn’t know him at all. That was strange; why would anyone transfer into Aeron’s Point? People left, but they didn’t come in. It was a tiny, isolated, xenophobic community. It wasn’t the kind of town that attracted people.
There was a puddle of vomit at Goldstein’s feet. It looked fresh; Tim had seen enough vomit on the job to get a good sense of what fresh vomit looked like. Goldstein had good cause to be sick – he surely had known Terry. Everybody knew everyone in the Point.
“How are you doing, Mister Goldstien?” Gerald asked.
“Jessie,” the teacher said. “Call me Jessie, Chief.”
“Jessie and I play cards together once in a while,” Gerald said to his nephew. “He usually wipes the floor with me.”
A look of surprise crossed Goldstein’s face as he looked up. “Timothy?”
“Hello, Mister Goldstein,” Tim said. “It’s Detective Einhorn, these days.”
“If we’re going to call you by your first name, you should do the same with us,” Gerald said. Tim would have preferred that things not move to a first-name basis. This wasn’t a bunch of guys sitting around playing cards, this was a crime scene.
“Sorry, Chief,” Goldstein said, shaking his head slowly. He appeared weak on his feet, but his face was flushed, not pale. “But it’s probably better we not do that.”
“What happened, Mister Goldstein?” Tim asked.
“I was out for my morning jog,” Goldstein began, before pausing. He took a deep breath and his face grew even brighter. “I always jog here. Nobody else does, they always go to the new park. But I’m always here every morning, from seven to eight.”
“Where are you parked?” Gerald asked.
“Same place I always park,” Goldstein pointed to the far side of the park. There was just a single car there, a brown station wagon. Terry had not driven here; otherwise, her car would have still been in the parking lot.
“Go on,” Gerald said.
“I usually just run laps around the lake for an hour. I started down there, near the parking lot. I guess I got three quarters of a lap done when I noticed there was a buzzard over on the playground, pecking at something. Wasn’t till I reached the bend and got close to the playground that I…” His voice trailed off and he suddenly doubled over, vomiting onto the ground. Tim moved his feet in the nick of time, barely avoiding splash back.
Kelso spoke up. “Soon as he realized who it was, he ran to the payphone over there by the parking lot and called the precinct. Simone and I were the first ones on scene. We secured the scene and called for back-up.”
“Jessie, Officer Kelso is gonna help you to your car as soon as you’re feeling able, and then he’s going to wait with you until you’re feeling fine to drive off. I want you to take the day off from work and get some rest. I’ll be in touch if there’s anything else we need from you.”
“It’s disgusting, Gerald,” Goldstein said, “what was done to her. I’ve never seen anything like that in my entire life. Never wanna see anything like that again.”
“We’ll take care of this, Jessie. Don’t you think about this no more.”
Goldstien chuckled softly. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that. Don’t think I’m ever going to stop thinking about this.”
They walked back towards the body in silence. Tim didn’t feel he had much to say, not yet. A new figure had appeared at the crime scene, a thin man with hair that was equal parts dark black and gray. He looked like a stereotypical mortician, which is probably what he was.
“Is that Hackett?” Tim asked.
“Don’t you remember him?”
“The name. Not the person,” Tim said.
“He’s aged quite a bit in the last few years. After his wife died, he kind of withdrew a little bit.”
“Her, I remember,” Tim said. When Tim had been young, there were few people his age who didn’t know about Virginia Hackett. She was relatively plain-looking, except for being blessed with the kind of chest that drove immature teenagers absolutely wild. But he barely remembered her husband. It wasn’t till he and his uncle reached the crime scene, and Tim saw him in person, that his memory was jogged. He looked much older than the fifty-or-so years he should have been.
“I just saw her a few weeks ago, Chief,” Hackett said as they approached. “Came in for her annual check-up. Fine condition.”
Gerald must have noticed the confusion on Tim’s face. “Once Doc Anton retired, Hackett took over as our local practitioner. Easier on everyone in the town, so’s they didn’t have to go over to Cedarville for a broken finger.”
“Good to see you, Tim,” Hackett said. “Wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Of course,” Tim said quietly.
“Care to make a rough guess as to time of death?” Gerald asked.
“Sometime between 5 and 20 hours ago.”
“Pretty general,” Tim said.
“Cut me some slack, I just got here,” Hackett said. He turned his attention to Simone. “I need pictures from every angle, at varying distances. Just to be safe.”
“Once you’ve made a cursory examination, sign off on the body so we can transport it back to your lab,” Gerald said. “We need to know what is going on here.”
“I won’t delay, Chief,” Hackett said. He ran a hand through his messy hair and sighed. “This is some mess here.”
“Sure is, Hack,” Gerald said.
“We got to find the guy that did this,” Hackett said.
“We’ll find him. Or her,” Tim said. This didn’t look like the type of thing a woman would do. Nothing could be counted out. Not this early into things.
“I was using ‘guy’ in the general sense, kid,” Hackett said. His eyes fixed on Tim’s scar. “How’s the neck?”
“It’s fine,” Tim said. It was fine as long as you didn’t mind a throbbing ache and an itching sensation underneath his skin. “Looks like she was shot six times.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hackett said. “All in the joints, looks like. Probably bled out, but she may have gone into shock and died. I’ll get her cleaned up.”
“Make sure you run a blood test, see if anything was in her system.”
“We don’t have many problems with drugs in town,” Gerald said to Tim. “But it’s a good idea to run some tests, see what comes up.”
“Standard procedure, Chief,” Hackett said. “Why don’t you two work on finding out who killed her, and I’ll get to work on seeing what did it.”
“We’re gonna head over to Ted Marshall’s house to let him know. Then we’ll probably head to the school. Page me when you get anything.”
“Sure thing, Chief,” Hackett said. He turned away from them, crouching down next to the body, immersing himself in his job.
The silence continued to hang over them as they walked back to Gerald’s car. They both nodded to the officer posted at the park’s entrance and crossed underneath the yellow tape. As they were nearing Gerald’s car, Tim noticed a news van approaching from down the road. This was going to blow up once the reporters found out what had happened in the park.
“Try to take it easy, Tim,” Gerald said as they reached the car.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Tim said.
“Being so formal with Jessie. Telling Hackett how to do his job. And I saw the way you looked at Simone and Kelso.”
“We’re on the job. We shouldn’t be going around calling people by their first names. We shouldn’t be personally involved in this.”
“That’d be fine, if we weren’t involved. But we are.”
Tim sighed and got into the car. He waited until Gerald was seated and the car was started before saying anything. It took him that long to formulate the proper response. “It feels strange to be back here.”
“I’m sure it does,” Gerald said. “Almost been a decade since you left.”
“Everybody still remembers what my father did,” Tim said.
Gerald put the car into gear and pulled out of the maintenance drive way before the news van had even come to a stop. Tim saw a reporter and a camera man getting out of the van in the car’s passenger-side mirror. They shrank to little dots as the car sped away. “Yeah, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Sure it does,” Tim said. “Nobody thinks I should be here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hackett. Goldstein. They think I’m an outsider.” That made sense, of course, because he was. “They don’t want me on this case.”
“You’re a detective, Tim,” Gerald said. “You don’t get to be a detective by being a screw-up.”
“I was promoted because I was injured in the line of duty.” Tim sighed. “I don’t belong here, Uncle Gerald.”
“Too bad,” Gerald said. “Because we have a job to do. And we’re going to do it.”
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Thursday, June 12, 2008
The Red Balloon: An Excerpt
Chapter 1
Matt Canagan woke up with a pounding headache and the taste of vomit already in his throat. He realized that he was on the floor of his bedroom, because he recognized the carpet that was pressing against his face. He lay there for what seemed to him to be quite a long time, but in reality took only a few short moments, and his stomach began to spin. He realized he was going to vomit and he stumbled to his private bathroom and fell to his knees in front of the toilet.
Every contraction of his diaphragm was a sharp knife in his side but there was nothing he could do to stop it. His stomach heaved and he emptied the remaining contents of it into the porcelain bowl. A sour stench, something akin to burgers and fries and what was probably Blue Devil Beer, filled the tiny bathroom immediately. His bathroom had never smelled of daisies or fresh fields, but he generally took care to keep the place clean; that effort was pissed away in the time it took to turn the clear water of the bowl a murky brown.
After four or five long heaves, his stomach seemed to be empty. One final heave sent immense pain ripping into his diaphragm. He blinked through tears, the pounding in his head getting worse as razor lines of fire ripped through his esophagus. He didn’t trust himself to let go of the bowl, afraid that if he did, he would fall over and end up making a mess on the floor.
When he was sure that he was done, he gently lowered himself onto his rear and reached up to flush the toilet. His vision seemed to be wrapped in a thick haze, so it took him two tries to bring his hand to the handle. When he finally caught his fingers on it, they slipped off the first time and he cursed under his breath. The noise immediately seemed to boom in his own ears, even though he was sure that he had spoken very quietly. He reached for the handle again and this time it caught; the sound of the toilet flushing made him bring both hands to his ears in order to block some of the noise.
He sat in the darkness of the bathroom, leaning his back against the door to the shower stall and clutching his head between his knees. He hoped that doing so would make the room stop spinning at such crazy angles. He wondered how much he had drunk the night before to produce such a throbbing headache. The stench of beer and fast food had filled the room by now, even after the expurgation had been flushed down the drain, so he must have downed a ton. He had gotten trashed on Blue Devils in the past, yet he’d never had a hangover quite like this before; it was a new experience and not one that he wished to repeat. He sat, thinking, trying to remember how much he had drunk, but it was a fool’s errand. How much he had drunk was just as gone as what he had been doing while drinking. It was always that way with him and Blue Devils.
It took some time for the room to stop spinning, what seemed like an eternity to him but what surely was no more than a few minutes. His sense of time and space was always useless the morning after, and it wouldn’t properly return for several hours. He looked at his watch, taking the time to turn his head slowly as he brought his wrist up into view. He stared at his wrist. It took him several moments before he realized that he was not wearing a watch. That was unusual, too, because he always wore his watch. He checked his other wrist, but it wasn’t there, either. Strange. Without a watch, the best he could guess was that it would be at least two or three more hours before everything started to make proper sense again. Some aspirin might help to cut that time down, though; sometimes it helped. Sometimes, but not usually.
He crawled forward in the darkness, reaching hands out blindly. He could not properly judge the distance to the sink and he did not want to run into it. He’d done that before, a few months ago, and he’d managed to knock his nose hard enough to draw blood. That had certainly not helped with the hangover, and he didn’t want to do it again. He found the sink and then slowly pulled himself up to his feet so that he could reach the medicine cabinet.
There was a light right about the mirror, operated by a small button. His fingers stumbled across it and he pressed it. The center of the horizontal bulb flashed with a dazzling white light and then the bright light spread across the entire surface of the glass. He squinted and raised his hand as rays of too-bright light stabbed into his eyes and his pupils dilated. The pounding increased in tempo and he swung the mirror open so that he would not have to stare at himself. He knew what he looked like the morning after; hair out of place, bloodshot eyes with huge bags under them, a pallid face that would frighten most able-bodied men. He was not a pretty sight when he was hungover.
He found a bottle of aspirin, the generic supermarket kind of aspirin. He didn’t have the cash to be able to afford any name brand product of medicine. It didn’t matter. Aspirin was aspirin, as far as over the counter stuff went. None of the name brands really worked any better than any of the others, despite what their TV commercials claimed, and the generic supermarket brand was cheaper. He popped the supposedly-child-proof cap off – anyone with half a brain could pop it open, even a child – and poured some pills into his open hand. The entire bottle emptied in a rush, filling his palm to overflowing and losing some down the drain. He sighed and turned his palm over, dropping everything into the basin. He reached down and his fingers found two pills. He popped them into his mouth and dry-swallowed them. Mission accomplished, he shut the bright light off and swung the mirror closed. It banged loudly as the door slammed into place and Matt used the sink to lower himself back down to the ground.
As he always did the morning after, once he’d emptied his stomach, he began to wonder what he had done while drinking. It was a futile gesture, as always. No matter how hard he tried, he was not going to remember where he’d been or what he’d done. Drinking made him do interesting things, but it also did interesting things to him. He suffered blackouts on a regular basis, regular meaning every single time he drank.
After wasting a sufficient amount of time trying to remember what he’d done, he gave up, right on schedule. Following that, he forced himself to stand and left the bathroom. Cool air rushed up his boxers and he wondered what he’d done with his pants. He didn’t usually undress when he got home from a night out, but all that he was wearing was a pair of wrinkled boxers and a white tank top. He must have undressed himself or been undressed by someone else. The chances of someone else undressing him were slim to none. No one would have undressed him and then left him to sleep on the floor beside his bed. Even ignoring that, no one in their right mind would actually go home with him. Jen was usually the one to get him home safely, and there was no way in hell that she would have undressed him.
Matt sat down on the edge of his bed and looked at the clock on his desk. The numbers seemed to be larger and brighter then normal, but he could read them. Almost eleven o’clock. He probably should have been in school by now, but he was in no condition to be driving to school, much less sitting in class. All the bright lights and talking students would drive him out of his mind. When he spent the night drinking, he was usually sober enough to interact with the world by noon. But with the pounding in his skull seeming to be never ending, it might be a few hours after that before he could finally get about his day.
At a quarter after eleven, he stood up. The world seemed to shimmer – the edges of objects kind of faded from one position to another, a strange melting jump-cut that seemed quite uncharacteristic of his hangovers – and then things straightened out as he walked across the room and left his bedroom.
The hallway that led to the living room was a cramped tunnel. Light trickled down from the living room, sunlight illuminating the room at the end of the hallway; his parents had undoubtedly left the living room curtains open. Most of the month had been cloudy and rainy, but now that the weather was changing for the better, the two of them had been doing everything in their power to bring the outside in. His father worked for the parks department, his stepmother was a zoo keeper, and both of them were in love with the outdoors. Matt had not inherited that love from his father and had not learned it from his stepmother; his favorite activities generally involved a bottle in his hand.
He walked down the hallway, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. When that failed to wake him up, he abandoned that tactic and tried to get some of his hair from out of his face. Even under the best circumstances, his hair was a curly mess of medium length platinum blonde locks. Most people assumed that his hair was the result of powerful chemicals or hours spent at the beach, but his hair was just naturally bright. Except for a brief period during his sophomore year when he’d dyed it brown, it had always been that way. Its length varied; sometimes a crew cut, sometimes long and tied in a ponytail, his haircut depended on a variety of factors. No matter the length, however, it was always a curly mess. As he ran his hands through his hair, his fingers caught in knotted strands and pulled painfully at his scalp. He abandoned trying to fix his hair and decided to wait until he got into the shower to do something about it.
“Dad? Gina?” Matt asked as he emerged from the dark hallway and into the bright cavern of the living room. He raised his arm to shield his face and protect his bloodshot eyes from the sunlight pouring into the room. The room’s color scheme – brown carpet, brown-red furniture, walls that were some kind of tan color that he’d never liked – seemed to leap out at him as he entered the room. On a dark, cloudy day, the room was a depressing mess of second-rate furniture and messy stacks of books and magazines that would get read eventually, if not soon. On a sunny day, the entire room seemed to laugh and scream and pulse with life. But there was no life in the house, except for Matt and a cat named Jingles that was probably curled up in a ball on some windowsill. His parents were at their jobs. The only reason he called out was to make sure that they were gone.
When no answer from either one of them was forthcoming, he moved directly over to the windows and closed the curtains. One of the heavy curtains – thick, cumbersome, hideous monstrosities that the stepmother had picked out – upset Jingles from his sleep and caused the cat to yell at him. Shutting one set of curtains substantially lowered the amount of light in the room, enough so that Matt plopped himself down in one of the red-brown chairs instead of shutting the rest of them. He threw his feet up on the coffee table, upsetting a stack of magazines and sending them spilling to the floor. His senses dulled by the previous night’s activities, it took him a while to gain his composure and pick them back up.
When his parents weren’t working, or picnicking, or hiking, or gardening, they were reading. Any time that outdoor activity was prohibited by the weather, they were immersing themselves in books and magazines. His father mainly perused books about trees and plants and the weather. His stepmother read nature magazines and journals concerning animal sexuality and the feeding habits of certain animals that would never, ever come to New Jersey. Matt didn’t have much time to read for pleasure. Besides school – which he usually did attend, when he wasn’t nursing a hangover – he had other things to occupy his time. Although some of his friends joked that his only job was drinking, he did have a part time job; he spent thirty-five hours a week at the PointRX, the town’s largest drug store. School and work prevented an excess of time for extracurricular activities.
That wasn’t to say that he didn’t have hobbies. He treasured the free time that he did have and he used the time as wisely as he could. He was a huge sports fans, and although baseball caught his attention more than anything else, he also tried to watch as much football, hockey, and soccer as he could. Professional wrestling was another of his hobbies, a hobby that his three hundred plus video tape library exhibited quite well. When he could find the time – which wasn’t often – he found himself involved with cars, particularly with the upkeep of his eighty-nine Mustang, a gorgeous piece of machinery that was currently sparkling in the driveway next to his house. And then there was drinking; couldn’t forget that. He loved parties and went to every single one that he heard about. Big or small, it didn’t matter. He managed to get drunk at every single one of them and, although he frequently made an ass out of himself, nothing that bad had ever happened. Only real problem with drinking, Matt thought, was the hangovers. And the blackouts. But they weren’t really anything you had to worry about unless you were an alcoholic.
Once he’d straightened up the magazines, he leaned back into the chair and crossed his arms behind his head, making an uncomfortable pillow out of them. He let his eyes fall closed for a few moments. He woke back up when Jingles jumped up into his lap and tried to walk up his chest, making sure to stick his furry little face right into Matt’s. The cat’s green eyes looked huge, mere centimeters from touching his own.
“This is ridiculous, you know,” Matt mumbled. Sometimes he was convinced that the cat knew why he occasionally skipped school; this was not the first time the cat had scaled him in order to stare him down. It was almost as if the cat disapproved of his drinking, but that was nonsense. “Get off of me, you fat cat.”
The cat continued to stare into his face. Jingles was not fat. If anything, the cat was malnourished, but it wasn’t from a lack of care on the Canagan’s part. They always made sure Jingles had plenty to eat and drink, cat food and tuna and water and milk, but Jingles never ate much. Matt had never, in his entire life, seen a cat eat less than Jingles and manage to survive. Jingles wiggled his nose at Matt’s words and then sat down on his chest, leaning forward and continuing to stare into his eyes.
“Get the remote,” Matt said. “Fetch.”
Not surprisingly, the cat didn’t move.
Matt picked Jingles up, drawing a meow of protest in the process, and set the cat down on the floor next to the chair. Matt leaned forward and picked the remote up from the table. He turned the television on and immediately lowered the volume, keeping it as quiet as possible. The hangover was still present and he didn’t need excess noises messing around with his system.
Instead of seeing the local weather – his parents had a habit of keeping the television in the living room turned to the local cable access channel twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week – he was treated to a news bulletin. Matt leaned forward, squinting at the screen. It was a live news report from Northern Terrace Park; Mark recognize it instantly, having been there more times in his life than he could count. Yellow crime scene tape criss-crossed the entrance to the park. Matt increased the volume, ignoring the pain that throbbed around in his skull; he wanted to know what was going on.
Leslie Doren, the town’s only female reporter, looked to be under the influence of a mind-altering substance. Her skin was pale white and she seemed to be shaking. Matt wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him, but the living room was in perfect synch now, and the background on the television was not shaking. At first, he thought it was quite unprofessional of Leslie Doren to appear so visibly shaken on camera. A few moments later, he realized that her appearance was completely understandable. After all, a crime had been committed in the park, and the victim had used to live on the same street as Leslie Doren.
Matt had good reason to be shaken, too. The victim was a girl named Terry Wessel. He had known Terry for years, gone to the same schools as she did, been in some of the same classes. For a while, they had been friends.
In fact, they had been more than friends, for a while. But all that had changed with a very messy break-up.
**********************
The Red Balloon by William Kaye IV, copyright 2007. Available 06.17.08.
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Matt Canagan woke up with a pounding headache and the taste of vomit already in his throat. He realized that he was on the floor of his bedroom, because he recognized the carpet that was pressing against his face. He lay there for what seemed to him to be quite a long time, but in reality took only a few short moments, and his stomach began to spin. He realized he was going to vomit and he stumbled to his private bathroom and fell to his knees in front of the toilet.
Every contraction of his diaphragm was a sharp knife in his side but there was nothing he could do to stop it. His stomach heaved and he emptied the remaining contents of it into the porcelain bowl. A sour stench, something akin to burgers and fries and what was probably Blue Devil Beer, filled the tiny bathroom immediately. His bathroom had never smelled of daisies or fresh fields, but he generally took care to keep the place clean; that effort was pissed away in the time it took to turn the clear water of the bowl a murky brown.
After four or five long heaves, his stomach seemed to be empty. One final heave sent immense pain ripping into his diaphragm. He blinked through tears, the pounding in his head getting worse as razor lines of fire ripped through his esophagus. He didn’t trust himself to let go of the bowl, afraid that if he did, he would fall over and end up making a mess on the floor.
When he was sure that he was done, he gently lowered himself onto his rear and reached up to flush the toilet. His vision seemed to be wrapped in a thick haze, so it took him two tries to bring his hand to the handle. When he finally caught his fingers on it, they slipped off the first time and he cursed under his breath. The noise immediately seemed to boom in his own ears, even though he was sure that he had spoken very quietly. He reached for the handle again and this time it caught; the sound of the toilet flushing made him bring both hands to his ears in order to block some of the noise.
He sat in the darkness of the bathroom, leaning his back against the door to the shower stall and clutching his head between his knees. He hoped that doing so would make the room stop spinning at such crazy angles. He wondered how much he had drunk the night before to produce such a throbbing headache. The stench of beer and fast food had filled the room by now, even after the expurgation had been flushed down the drain, so he must have downed a ton. He had gotten trashed on Blue Devils in the past, yet he’d never had a hangover quite like this before; it was a new experience and not one that he wished to repeat. He sat, thinking, trying to remember how much he had drunk, but it was a fool’s errand. How much he had drunk was just as gone as what he had been doing while drinking. It was always that way with him and Blue Devils.
It took some time for the room to stop spinning, what seemed like an eternity to him but what surely was no more than a few minutes. His sense of time and space was always useless the morning after, and it wouldn’t properly return for several hours. He looked at his watch, taking the time to turn his head slowly as he brought his wrist up into view. He stared at his wrist. It took him several moments before he realized that he was not wearing a watch. That was unusual, too, because he always wore his watch. He checked his other wrist, but it wasn’t there, either. Strange. Without a watch, the best he could guess was that it would be at least two or three more hours before everything started to make proper sense again. Some aspirin might help to cut that time down, though; sometimes it helped. Sometimes, but not usually.
He crawled forward in the darkness, reaching hands out blindly. He could not properly judge the distance to the sink and he did not want to run into it. He’d done that before, a few months ago, and he’d managed to knock his nose hard enough to draw blood. That had certainly not helped with the hangover, and he didn’t want to do it again. He found the sink and then slowly pulled himself up to his feet so that he could reach the medicine cabinet.
There was a light right about the mirror, operated by a small button. His fingers stumbled across it and he pressed it. The center of the horizontal bulb flashed with a dazzling white light and then the bright light spread across the entire surface of the glass. He squinted and raised his hand as rays of too-bright light stabbed into his eyes and his pupils dilated. The pounding increased in tempo and he swung the mirror open so that he would not have to stare at himself. He knew what he looked like the morning after; hair out of place, bloodshot eyes with huge bags under them, a pallid face that would frighten most able-bodied men. He was not a pretty sight when he was hungover.
He found a bottle of aspirin, the generic supermarket kind of aspirin. He didn’t have the cash to be able to afford any name brand product of medicine. It didn’t matter. Aspirin was aspirin, as far as over the counter stuff went. None of the name brands really worked any better than any of the others, despite what their TV commercials claimed, and the generic supermarket brand was cheaper. He popped the supposedly-child-proof cap off – anyone with half a brain could pop it open, even a child – and poured some pills into his open hand. The entire bottle emptied in a rush, filling his palm to overflowing and losing some down the drain. He sighed and turned his palm over, dropping everything into the basin. He reached down and his fingers found two pills. He popped them into his mouth and dry-swallowed them. Mission accomplished, he shut the bright light off and swung the mirror closed. It banged loudly as the door slammed into place and Matt used the sink to lower himself back down to the ground.
As he always did the morning after, once he’d emptied his stomach, he began to wonder what he had done while drinking. It was a futile gesture, as always. No matter how hard he tried, he was not going to remember where he’d been or what he’d done. Drinking made him do interesting things, but it also did interesting things to him. He suffered blackouts on a regular basis, regular meaning every single time he drank.
After wasting a sufficient amount of time trying to remember what he’d done, he gave up, right on schedule. Following that, he forced himself to stand and left the bathroom. Cool air rushed up his boxers and he wondered what he’d done with his pants. He didn’t usually undress when he got home from a night out, but all that he was wearing was a pair of wrinkled boxers and a white tank top. He must have undressed himself or been undressed by someone else. The chances of someone else undressing him were slim to none. No one would have undressed him and then left him to sleep on the floor beside his bed. Even ignoring that, no one in their right mind would actually go home with him. Jen was usually the one to get him home safely, and there was no way in hell that she would have undressed him.
Matt sat down on the edge of his bed and looked at the clock on his desk. The numbers seemed to be larger and brighter then normal, but he could read them. Almost eleven o’clock. He probably should have been in school by now, but he was in no condition to be driving to school, much less sitting in class. All the bright lights and talking students would drive him out of his mind. When he spent the night drinking, he was usually sober enough to interact with the world by noon. But with the pounding in his skull seeming to be never ending, it might be a few hours after that before he could finally get about his day.
At a quarter after eleven, he stood up. The world seemed to shimmer – the edges of objects kind of faded from one position to another, a strange melting jump-cut that seemed quite uncharacteristic of his hangovers – and then things straightened out as he walked across the room and left his bedroom.
The hallway that led to the living room was a cramped tunnel. Light trickled down from the living room, sunlight illuminating the room at the end of the hallway; his parents had undoubtedly left the living room curtains open. Most of the month had been cloudy and rainy, but now that the weather was changing for the better, the two of them had been doing everything in their power to bring the outside in. His father worked for the parks department, his stepmother was a zoo keeper, and both of them were in love with the outdoors. Matt had not inherited that love from his father and had not learned it from his stepmother; his favorite activities generally involved a bottle in his hand.
He walked down the hallway, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. When that failed to wake him up, he abandoned that tactic and tried to get some of his hair from out of his face. Even under the best circumstances, his hair was a curly mess of medium length platinum blonde locks. Most people assumed that his hair was the result of powerful chemicals or hours spent at the beach, but his hair was just naturally bright. Except for a brief period during his sophomore year when he’d dyed it brown, it had always been that way. Its length varied; sometimes a crew cut, sometimes long and tied in a ponytail, his haircut depended on a variety of factors. No matter the length, however, it was always a curly mess. As he ran his hands through his hair, his fingers caught in knotted strands and pulled painfully at his scalp. He abandoned trying to fix his hair and decided to wait until he got into the shower to do something about it.
“Dad? Gina?” Matt asked as he emerged from the dark hallway and into the bright cavern of the living room. He raised his arm to shield his face and protect his bloodshot eyes from the sunlight pouring into the room. The room’s color scheme – brown carpet, brown-red furniture, walls that were some kind of tan color that he’d never liked – seemed to leap out at him as he entered the room. On a dark, cloudy day, the room was a depressing mess of second-rate furniture and messy stacks of books and magazines that would get read eventually, if not soon. On a sunny day, the entire room seemed to laugh and scream and pulse with life. But there was no life in the house, except for Matt and a cat named Jingles that was probably curled up in a ball on some windowsill. His parents were at their jobs. The only reason he called out was to make sure that they were gone.
When no answer from either one of them was forthcoming, he moved directly over to the windows and closed the curtains. One of the heavy curtains – thick, cumbersome, hideous monstrosities that the stepmother had picked out – upset Jingles from his sleep and caused the cat to yell at him. Shutting one set of curtains substantially lowered the amount of light in the room, enough so that Matt plopped himself down in one of the red-brown chairs instead of shutting the rest of them. He threw his feet up on the coffee table, upsetting a stack of magazines and sending them spilling to the floor. His senses dulled by the previous night’s activities, it took him a while to gain his composure and pick them back up.
When his parents weren’t working, or picnicking, or hiking, or gardening, they were reading. Any time that outdoor activity was prohibited by the weather, they were immersing themselves in books and magazines. His father mainly perused books about trees and plants and the weather. His stepmother read nature magazines and journals concerning animal sexuality and the feeding habits of certain animals that would never, ever come to New Jersey. Matt didn’t have much time to read for pleasure. Besides school – which he usually did attend, when he wasn’t nursing a hangover – he had other things to occupy his time. Although some of his friends joked that his only job was drinking, he did have a part time job; he spent thirty-five hours a week at the PointRX, the town’s largest drug store. School and work prevented an excess of time for extracurricular activities.
That wasn’t to say that he didn’t have hobbies. He treasured the free time that he did have and he used the time as wisely as he could. He was a huge sports fans, and although baseball caught his attention more than anything else, he also tried to watch as much football, hockey, and soccer as he could. Professional wrestling was another of his hobbies, a hobby that his three hundred plus video tape library exhibited quite well. When he could find the time – which wasn’t often – he found himself involved with cars, particularly with the upkeep of his eighty-nine Mustang, a gorgeous piece of machinery that was currently sparkling in the driveway next to his house. And then there was drinking; couldn’t forget that. He loved parties and went to every single one that he heard about. Big or small, it didn’t matter. He managed to get drunk at every single one of them and, although he frequently made an ass out of himself, nothing that bad had ever happened. Only real problem with drinking, Matt thought, was the hangovers. And the blackouts. But they weren’t really anything you had to worry about unless you were an alcoholic.
Once he’d straightened up the magazines, he leaned back into the chair and crossed his arms behind his head, making an uncomfortable pillow out of them. He let his eyes fall closed for a few moments. He woke back up when Jingles jumped up into his lap and tried to walk up his chest, making sure to stick his furry little face right into Matt’s. The cat’s green eyes looked huge, mere centimeters from touching his own.
“This is ridiculous, you know,” Matt mumbled. Sometimes he was convinced that the cat knew why he occasionally skipped school; this was not the first time the cat had scaled him in order to stare him down. It was almost as if the cat disapproved of his drinking, but that was nonsense. “Get off of me, you fat cat.”
The cat continued to stare into his face. Jingles was not fat. If anything, the cat was malnourished, but it wasn’t from a lack of care on the Canagan’s part. They always made sure Jingles had plenty to eat and drink, cat food and tuna and water and milk, but Jingles never ate much. Matt had never, in his entire life, seen a cat eat less than Jingles and manage to survive. Jingles wiggled his nose at Matt’s words and then sat down on his chest, leaning forward and continuing to stare into his eyes.
“Get the remote,” Matt said. “Fetch.”
Not surprisingly, the cat didn’t move.
Matt picked Jingles up, drawing a meow of protest in the process, and set the cat down on the floor next to the chair. Matt leaned forward and picked the remote up from the table. He turned the television on and immediately lowered the volume, keeping it as quiet as possible. The hangover was still present and he didn’t need excess noises messing around with his system.
Instead of seeing the local weather – his parents had a habit of keeping the television in the living room turned to the local cable access channel twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week – he was treated to a news bulletin. Matt leaned forward, squinting at the screen. It was a live news report from Northern Terrace Park; Mark recognize it instantly, having been there more times in his life than he could count. Yellow crime scene tape criss-crossed the entrance to the park. Matt increased the volume, ignoring the pain that throbbed around in his skull; he wanted to know what was going on.
Leslie Doren, the town’s only female reporter, looked to be under the influence of a mind-altering substance. Her skin was pale white and she seemed to be shaking. Matt wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him, but the living room was in perfect synch now, and the background on the television was not shaking. At first, he thought it was quite unprofessional of Leslie Doren to appear so visibly shaken on camera. A few moments later, he realized that her appearance was completely understandable. After all, a crime had been committed in the park, and the victim had used to live on the same street as Leslie Doren.
Matt had good reason to be shaken, too. The victim was a girl named Terry Wessel. He had known Terry for years, gone to the same schools as she did, been in some of the same classes. For a while, they had been friends.
In fact, they had been more than friends, for a while. But all that had changed with a very messy break-up.
**********************
The Red Balloon by William Kaye IV, copyright 2007. Available 06.17.08.
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Monday, June 9, 2008
The Red Balloon
Matt Canagan, a high school senior, wakes up one morning to find that he has no recollection of the previous night's activities, and his t-shirt is covered in blood. When he turns on the television and sees that his ex-girlfriend, Terry Wessel, was found murdered the night before, he realizes something has gone terribly wrong.
Detective Timothy Einhorn hasn't been to Aeron's Point since his father was revealed to be a corrupt cop. But when his uncle, the chief of police, brings him in to investigate Terry Wessel's murder, he finds himself struggling to prove to the town of Aeron's Point that he is different from his father. Everyone in town thinks that Matt murdered his ex-girlfriend, but Tim is not so sure.
Unfortunately, the fact that Matt has decided to run from the police until he remembers what happened that night brings them screaming into conflict with each other.
*****************************************
The Red Balloon is the debut novel from William Kaye IV. It will be available on 06.17.08.
Read more...
Detective Timothy Einhorn hasn't been to Aeron's Point since his father was revealed to be a corrupt cop. But when his uncle, the chief of police, brings him in to investigate Terry Wessel's murder, he finds himself struggling to prove to the town of Aeron's Point that he is different from his father. Everyone in town thinks that Matt murdered his ex-girlfriend, but Tim is not so sure.
Unfortunately, the fact that Matt has decided to run from the police until he remembers what happened that night brings them screaming into conflict with each other.
*****************************************
The Red Balloon is the debut novel from William Kaye IV. It will be available on 06.17.08.
Read more...
Friday, June 6, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
The Red Balloon is a novel by William Kaye IV about a teenager who has no memory of his actions, a young detective with something to prove, and a small town with a very dark secret.
All will be revealed on 6.17.08.
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All will be revealed on 6.17.08.
Read more...
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