Halloween and Other Seasons (26 page)

“I read that case after I got here,” Schneider said. “Tried to hang herself in a park—”

Now it was Grant’s turn to interrupt. “That’s what the report said. There were two other suicides, both of them successful, at almost exactly the same time. There was more to it than just a bunch of suicides, Len.”

Again, Schneider asked, “Like what?”

Grant shrugged, looking suddenly deflated. “Never mind. But here we are again at that special time of year in Orangefield, when the pumpkins get sold, Pumpkin Days come, the farmers get rich and weird shit crawls out of the woodwork. Only this year, my friend, for once it’s just plain old crime.”

Schneider said nothing.

Grant leaned forward and said earnestly, “What do you believe in, Len? What do you
really
believe in?”

Grant’s question was so unlike him, so unlike his meticulous procedural ways and evidence building, and his manner so suddenly needy, as if some sort of dam had burst within him, letting out all the fears he’d tucked away, that Schneider said nothing. He looked at his scotch, then drank it. He started to get up.

“I believe in not fucking up a second time, Bill. That’s what I believe in.”

Grant grabbed his arm and urged him back into the booth. His eyes pinned Schneider in place, like a butterfly to a board. When he spoke again his voice was level and harsh. “Take me seriously, Len. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about weird shit. At least not this time. The bad news is I think you just might fuck up again, if you’re not careful. I think you should let me have this case, after all. It was a mistake for me to let you take it to begin with. You’ve got that mess in Milwaukee so tied up with this that you’re liable to screw up. I’ve seen it happen. It happened to me, and just like you I was concentrating on payback instead of doing my job—”

It was Schneider’s turn to be level and harsh. He leaned forward in the booth. “That bastard Jerry Carlton sat there during his trial taking his watch apart and putting it back together. He never glanced at the jury, not once. At the end of the trial, he looked up from his watch and mouthed the word ‘Ted’ at me. That was the kid in Milwaukee’s name.” His voice was shaking. “I could have saved that kid, Bill.”

“Maybe,” Grant answered.

There was another two fingers of scotch in Schneider’s glass, and he drained it, poured again. Tears abruptly filled his eyes. “
I could have saved him
.”

“Like I said, maybe. Then again, maybe not. Maybe you still would have gotten there too late. Maybe Jerry Carlton would have killed him earlier, if he saw you coming. Maybe—”

Schneider drained his glass and gripped it so hard he could feel it getting ready to break. He looked at Grant, who was studying him; Grant’s pallor had assumed it’s yellow, haunted tinge.

“Be careful, Len,” Grant almost whispered. “Do your job and don’t let things get out of hand.” He paused to light yet another cigarette. “Advice from an old fart. Someone named Riley Gates, my mentor, once gave the same advice to me. He also saved my life by not shooting me when I was about to fuck up big time.” He gave a short, bitter laugh that ended in a cough. “He also saved my career, such as it is.”

The anger was back and this time when Schneider stood up Grant didn’t try to stop him.

“This case is mine, Bill. Stay the hell away from it. And I don’t need a goddamn mentor—especially not a burned out lush who’s seen the boogeyman one too many times.”

As Schnedier stalked off, Grant stared straight ahead, unconciously pulling another cigarette from his pocket. He didn’t look at it as he lit it from the one already in his mouth, which had barely burned.

“Careful…” he said.

6

Boring.

Here it was, almost time for the Pumpkin Days Festival, and Scotty Daniels was bored silly. He was sick to death of little kid stuff. In his kindergarten class, they’d already done their pumpkin cutouts for the windows, and made their “special designs” for the school projects display during the festival. They had already taken their bus trip to Mr. Frolich’s farm to pick their own pumpkins.

They had tied yellow ribbons for Jody Wendt to one of the sycamore trees in the field behind the school, and Scotty himself, who had been one of Jody’s best friends, had picked out a special pumpkin at Frolich Farm, which now sat on Jody’s empty desk. There was a bulletin board in the back of the room with cards and balloons remembering Jody thumbtacked to it.

And now, there was nothing to do but wait for the festival to begin.

Or:

Think about hunting the Pumpkin Boy.

Scotty had first heard about the hunt from his older brother Jim, but the story had traveled like wildfire through all of the schools in Orangefield. One of Jim’s friends, Mitchel Freed, claimed he had seen a boy made out of silver stilts with a pumpkin head walking through one of the fields at the edge of town; Mitchel’s older brother was a police officer and claimed that the Pumpkin Boy had visited Mrs. Wendt after Jody disappeared. Soon there were Pumpkin Boy sightings everywhere, so many that the
Orangefield Herald
had carried stories about it, which Jim read out loud to him.

But when he asked if he could go with Jim when he and his friends went looking for the Pumpkin Boy tonight, Jim had only laughed and ruffled his hair.

“No, way, little man! Mom would kill me if I took you.” He looked suddenly serious and said, “And anyway: Mitch and Pete and I might get killed!”

Then he laughed and walked away to use the phone.

Scotty could hear him using it now, arranging for Mitchell to come by in ten minutes and that they’d go in Jim’s car.

Bored.

Scotty wandered into the family room, where his younger sister Cyndi was watching the Cartoon Network. He sat down grumpily next to her on the couch and tried to wrestle the TV remote from her hands. She clutched it tightly and said, “Hey!” Finally he gave up and threw himself into the far end of the couch, among the sofa pillows, and folded his arms, feeling ornery.

He glanced out the window to the street, where a passing car’s headlights momentarily blinded him. He continued staring, and when his sight came back he was staring at Jim’s car at the curb.

The trunk was open.

A sudden idea formed in his mind.

At that moment he heard Jim get off the phone, yell down to the basement to tell his father that he’d be going out for a little while. After his father answered with a grunt, he heard Jim, loudly as always, go into the bathroom in the hallway, slamming the door behind him. In a moment there was water running, and the sound of Jim’s bad singing voice.

Scotty got up off the couch and walked past Cyndi, who didn’t even look his way, her eyes glued to the television screen.

Scotty went quickly to the hallway, removed his jacket from its hook and put it on.

He eased open the front door and slipped out, closing the door with a quiet
click
behind him.

It was chilly out, and there was a breeze. Scotty zipped his jacket all the way up to his chin, and ran to Jim’s car.

The trunk was indeed open. Inside were the bundled old newspapers that Jim was supposed to bring to the recycling center. There were three bundles, thrown in carelessly.

Scotty pushed two of them aside, snugged himself into the trunk, and then worked the trunk lid partway down.

He hesitated.

From around the corner, someone appeared, walking briskly.

It was Jim’s friend, Mitch.

Scotty held his breath and snuggled down.

Whistling, Mitch bounded past the car and up the steps to the front door of the house.

Scotty peeked out.

At that moment the front door opened, swallowing Mitch.

Without further hesitation, Scotty closed the trunk all the way.

He heard the solid click of the latch, but immediately saw the glowing escape bar that Jim had showed him when he’d bought the new car. Of course Jim had showed him how it worked—then told him a few gruesome stories about older cars that didn’t have the device, and what had happened to the kids who had been trapped inside. One of them, which Scotty didn’t believe, involved a baby that had accidentally been locked in the trunk of a car one summer day in 1960: “…and when they opened the trunk that night they found the baby cooked alive, looking just like a roasted pig!”

Scotty began to think about that baby. His heart pounded, and he was just about to reach for the glow bar and sneak back into the house when he heard the front door of the house open. Almost immediately, the car rocked on its shocks as Jim and Mitch jumped into it.

In another second the car pulled away from the curb, the two older boys laughing.

Almost immediately, they started to talk about girls.

They made one other stop, and Scotty heard one other boy, who he guessed was Pete Henry, get into the car. The talk was still about girls, but then it eventually turned to the Pumpkin Boy.

“You think he’s real?” Pete Henry’s voice asked.

Mitch immediately answered, “It’s real, man. I told you what my brother said. It’s a fact that it went to Jody Wendt’s house, scared his old lady half crazy. Dragged her into the house after she fainted, then left. And my brother said a couple of tourists from Montreal were picking pumpkins out at Kranepool’s Farm and saw it walking through the woods. Just taking a stroll. My brother talked to them himself. He says there are at least ten other reports on file. One guy said he threw rocks at it, but he was drunk so the cops didn’t take him too seriously. The Pumpkin Boy’s real, all right.”

“What if we really find it?” Jim said. There was uncertainty in his voice.

“If we find it, we kill it!” Pete Henry said. “Then we get the reward money!”

“There isn’t any reward money,” Mitch replied immediately. “Use your head, Pete! If we bring it in in one piece, we’ll get in the papers. Then maybe somebody will write a book, and we’d be in that, too. If there’s a book we could probably get some money out of it.”

“I still say knock it to pieces!” Pete answered. “I ain’t letting that thing near me!”

“You bring the camera, Pete?” Jim asked idly.

There was silence for a moment, then Pete Henry’s dejected voice mumbled, “I forgot.”

Jim and Mitch roared with laughter.

Jim said, “That’s okay, Pete. I brought my kid brother’s camera. You’re covered. Here, take it. And don’t lose it.”

Scotty almost shouted out with annoyance, but kept his tongue.

“Good,” Pete said. “If we get a picture, that would be almost as good as capturing him. I bet the
Herald
would pay us for that.”

Mitch laughed. “I heard they’ve already gotten a bunch of phoney pictures. One of them was a scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head.”

Jim chimed in. “There was a story in the paper today. Another photo they got was of some guy’s kid with a costume on, holding a pumpkin in front of his face!”

They all laughed. In the trunk, Scotty smiled. Jim had read him that story.

Suddenly the car moved from smooth road to a bumpier surface. It was harder to hear what the boys were saying with the added noise. One of them—it sounded like Pete—said, “How much farther?”

“Couple miles,” Jim answered. “I want to get as close to the site as we can. You sure the police won’t bother us, Mitch?”

“My brother said they packed up and moved out. Dug a bunch of holes but found nothing.”

“You really think this Pumpkin Boy snatched Jody Wendt?”

Mitch replied, “Who knows? Most of the places he’s been seen are around this spot. You got a better idea?”

Again there was silence.

“I still say we should kill him,” Pete Henry said.

“Maybe he’ll kill
you
!” Jim said, and then there was another, longer, silence.

Eventually the car came to a stop, after going into and then leaving a pothole.

“I think we ought to leave it here,” Jim said, his voice clearer.

“Sounds good to me,” Mitch said.

Car doors opened and then closed. There were sounds of fumbling and then Scotty heard them leaving the car.

The shuffling footsteps suddenly stopped.

“Hey, Pete, did you bring the camera?”

Amidst more laughter, Pete said, “Shit,” and Scotty heard a car door open and then close again.

“Yeah, I’ve got it.”

“And you brought a flashlight?”

Again the word: “
Shit!
”

Mitch laughed. “Stay with me, bozo. If we find the Pumpkin Boy, we’ll let him eat you.”

“Eat
this
,” came Pete Henry’s reply, and again there was laughter.

The voices, laughter and shuffling steps receded.

In a few moments, Scotty was alone.

And, suddenly: he
felt
alone.

He realized he had not brought a flashlight, either.

And where was he going to go?

He had no idea where he was, or where to look.

He knew his only chance to find the Pumpkin Boy was to trail along after his brother and his two friends.

Otherwise, he might as well stay in the trunk of the car.

He reached out and pushed the glow bar.

Instantly, the trunk popped open.

Scotty climbed out.

It was not as dark as he feared. There was a fat rising moon that peeked through the trees with yellow-gray light, and Scotty’s eyes were already used to being in the dark from being in the car trunk. The car was parked on the side of a rutted dirt road, with thick woods to either side.

He could still hear Jim and his friends, though barely; there was a blurt of laughter and he went that way, to the left of the car, into the woods.

To his relief, there was a narrow path, half-covered in leaves and pine needles.

The laughter came again, a little closer, but still far away.

And then, suddenly, there was real silence.

It was as if a stifling cloak had been thrown over the forest—nothing moved, or breathed.

Scotty became very afraid, to the point where he had no further interest in the Pumpkin Boy. All he wanted to do was go back to the car and wait for his brother to come back.