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2

Back in the Day

The next night, the moon was fat and full and creamy in a faultlessly clear, liquid sky. The silvery stream of illumination poked through the parkside trees, leaving a sharply defined pattern on the ground, like spots on a dalmatian. Out in the open, around the softball diamonds, the light was bright enough to read a newspaper.

Brandon and Alice Parkinson were walking their kinky-haired gray labradoodle, Lloyd, on a grassy ramble along the edges of Shawnee Park. A retractable leash allowed the dog to dash into the trees and tangle himself in brush, but no matter, the Parkinsons were not in a hurry. They enjoyed the warming spring evenings, the air as soft as a cashmere blanket, a relief from the cold edges of a recently departed Minnesota winter.

Alice was back from Chicago, a visit to her parents. She’d taken the Empire Builder train to and from St. Paul. She was still afraid to fly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon two years earlier. As a side benefit, she felt confident in transporting six ounces of primo weed back from Chicago, where her mother had a tight connection with a dealer. She would not have been confident bringing it back through O’Hare’s airport security.

As they walked, they could hear the faint but unmistakable sound of Britney Spears singing “Oops! I Did It Again,” which must have been coming through an open window somewhere in the neighborhood, another sure sign of spring. Brandon carried a flashlight, the better to untangle the dog when that became necessary. He flicked it off and on as they walked along the line of trees at the far edge of the playing fields.

Lloyd checked out a dried pile of dog poop. Alice pulled him away and said to Brandon, “Stop hogging the J, for cripes sakes.”

Brandon passed the joint, Alice took a toke, held her breath for a few steps, let the aromatic smoke filter slowly out her nose. Alice was a believer in the slow nose exhale, that the sensitive nasal linings transmitted the THC more rapidly to the brain, made the high stronger and more resonant.

She passed the joint back and they ambled on, letting the dog lead. They’d been talking about their teenaged daughter, Shona, who was showing an intense interest in a particular boy in school. Brandon called him “the rat” because of his distinctly ratlike appearance, a thin face with a prominent nose and a pointed chin on which the kid was attempting to grow a beard.

“That’s really unkind,” Alice said, reaching a point in her stoneage where everything went mellow. “He can’t help his appearance.”

“Of course he can,” Brandon said. “He even dresses like a rat.”

“That’s true,” Alice conceded. Brandon passed the J and Alice took a contemplative toke and passed it back. As she exhaled, she said, in a squeaky voice, “I’d prefer not to have any ratlike grandchildren, if I can avoid it. Especially not when Shona’s in tenth grade.”

—

Lloyd had drifted deeper into the trees and was pulling at the leash. “He’s tangled up again, goddamnit,” Brandon said, pecking at the joint.

“Gimme some light, I’ll get it.” As Brandon shined the flashlight back into the trees, Alice pushed a branch aside, following the leash to the dog. When she got to him, she stopped. Looked. Looked again, into the bright puddle of moonlight. “Brand! What the heck is that? What the heck is it?”

She swiveled back, dragging the dog behind her. She hugged Brandon around his waist. “It looks like…”

Brandon, who’d played high school football back in the late ’70s, knew no fear. He stepped into the trees, Alice behind him, holding on to his belt, and turned the flashlight toward a white lump.

The woman had been butchered.

She lay on her back, half upside down in a depression in the damp earth. She was mostly nude. She’d been ripped from sternum to pelvic bone, stabbed multiple times in the face and eyes, neck, and upper chest. Her body was a ghastly pale lump in the now sepulchral light of the moon. And he could smell her: a butcher shop odor, mixed with a fecal stink.

Brandon said, “Oh, fuck me,” turned away, backtracked, and vomited on Alice’s shoes.

After discovering the body, the couple, stoned to the gills and panicked, crashed through the brush and trees, dragged the frightened dog into the open, and ran toward the house where Britney had been singing her song, now replaced by the Backstreet Boys with “I Want It That Way.”

They were running for what they thought might be their lives, between the ballfields, to a parking lot. There, stopping to catch their breath, they called 9-1-1. Ten minutes later, they led a squadron of Woodbury cops back into the trees and the body.

After a quick survey of the murder scene—a mutilated young woman with blond hair, half-wrapped in a silky blood-soaked blouse and beige skirt—the cops called the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul and asked that a crime scene crew and investigators be sent over immediately.