Paranoid Park (14 page)

“Nah,” Paul answered. “But I go there. I’m not afraid of it.”

“Did anyone else go there, at any point during that week?”

No one had.

Detective Brady wrote this down. We talked some more, about other places people skate, which places had more Streeters, which places were more Prep.

After about forty minutes, Brady checked his watch. He had another high school to go to. He wrapped it up, giving each of us a business card and telling us if we heard anything to contact him.

“Skateboarders have a bad reputation in this city,” he said. “You guys could do a lot to improve that if you could help us out.”

Nobody seemed that enthusiastic. But Brady understood. He shut and locked his briefcase.

The meeting was over.

The seven of us headed straight for the restroom when we left the office. The bell was about to ring anyway; none of our teachers would expect us back.

We scattered around the boys’ room. Jared sat in a sink, Christian leaned on the windowsill, Paul Auster sat on the heater by the door.

“What is up with that guy?” said Cal. “Why does he think
we
know something?”

“Who is he even talking about?” said Christian. “I didn’t hear anything about a murder.”

“I never saw a cop interview people in a group like that,” said Paul Auster.

“That was seriously weird,” I said.

“Why do they even leave Paranoid open?” said Cal. “It’s so skanky.”

“Because it’s the best skatepark on the West Coast,” said Jared. Everyone shut up for a minute. “And now they probably
will
close it. And nobody good will ever skate in Portland again.”

“How do you figure it’s the best skatepark?” asked Cal.

“Any idiot knows it’s the best skatepark,” answered Jared firmly. “It’s been written up in every major skate magazine. Do you think Skate City has ever been in
Thrasher?”

“There’s chicks down there, too,” added Paul.

“Yeah,
Streeter
chicks,” said Christian. “With Streeter diseases.”

“Hey, if you got a condom it doesn’t matter.”

“Unless it’s crabs.”

“Or scabies.”

“Or lice.”

“Dude, crabs is lice.”

While the others talked, Jared turned to me. “So you didn’t go down there that night?” he asked.

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“And you went home? I thought you went to my house?”

“I did ... but I ... that’s what I meant. I went home to your house.”

Jared accepted my explanation. “Pretty weird, though. We were almost there that night.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t happen at Paranoid. It happened at some train yard. It was, like, a half mile away.”

“Huh,” said Jared. “How do you know that?”

“That’s what he just told us.”

“When that skinhead got stabbed,” Paul Auster told everyone, “his friends supposedly hunted down the guy and killed him and threw him in the river.”

“That’s stupid,” said Cal. “He’d just float back up.”

“Not if you put chains and cement around his ankles.”

“Yeah, but eventually your ankles rot and your bones disconnect and the rest of you comes up to the surface.”

“Or if they drag the river.”

“Yeah, or if they dredge it, or whatever,” said Cal. “My brother knew this guy who used to do that. They’d find, like, cars and refrigerators and stuff. He said they found a leg once.”

“Now I want to go check out Paranoid,” said Paul. “See what’s up. I wonder if everyone’s freaking out.”

“There’s probably cops swarming all over down there.”

“Maybe not,” said Jared. “You saw that guy. It looks like they’re trying a different approach. They’re going for the psychological trap.”

“Yeah, all that ‘we want to better understand your community’ crap. How stupid do they think we are?”

“Yeah, like cops ever trust skaters.
We want to help you with your reputation.
Sure, you do!”

“Yeah, how about that time you beat the crap out of those guys down at Suicide Stairwell for no reason? Were you helping us then?”

Everyone laughed. Paul Auster stuffed some gum in his mouth. “Frickin’ cops.”

That night I went home and found my aunt Sally in my kitchen. “Your mother went to stay with your grand-mother tonight,” she said. “She’s upset and isn’t feeling well.”

I didn’t see why we needed Aunt Sally around. It wasn’t like we were totally helpless. At least she made brownies. That’s what my aunt Sally always did when she got stressed.

Henry was sprawled in the living room, watching the big TV. I went upstairs to watch the news. I always watched the local news now, the long one at five thirty that had the most stuff on it.

I closed the door in the upstairs TV room. I turned on the TV and turned down the sound. The big story of the day was the new Trail Blazers coach. He was in trouble. He’d helped his players cheat in college and lied about some business deals. Now they were firing him. They showed him at a press conference lying about his lies.

Then the murder came up. They had a new graphic for it. Instead of the train tracks they’d been using, the little picture beside the woman’s head now was a skateboard. Underneath, it said “Paranoid Park Murder.” I crawled closer to the TV screen and turned up the volume slightly.

“... Area police continue to focus on an unauthorized skatepark underneath the Eastside Bridge, known by locals as ‘Paranoid Park.’ The unsanctioned skatepark is about a quarter of a mile from where the body was found. Police say a community of homeless youth have been known to loiter in the area....”

They had video footage from Paranoid. A guy with his shirt off did a front-side grind for the camera.

“Meanwhile, police continue to interview people here at the park, as well as local teenagers....”

There was a short bit of video of a college girl who had obviously never been on a skateboard in her life. She had a tie-dyed shirt and a nose ring; she probably went to Reed. “Eastside Skatepark is part of this community,” she said. “It’s organic to its site, and we have to value that....”

The newswoman added that the police still considered the incident a possible homicide.

The weather came on. I turned off the TV and went to my room. I had homework to do. I hadn’t studied for anything in weeks. I couldn’t let my grades completely nose-dive; it might arouse suspicion.

But I couldn’t do homework. I opened the book, stared at it, but my brain wouldn’t focus. So I lay on my bed and got out the card that Detective Brady gave each of us.

 

DETECTIVE MATTHEW BRADY
PORTLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT
HOMICIDE DIVISION

Along the bottom was a phone number and a Web site and an anonymous phone line to call in tips. I wondered if Jared would turn me in if he knew. I wondered if Scratch would turn me in. Maybe there was a reward. Would someone like Scratch turn me in for a couple hundred bucks? Probably. It didn’t matter. They would catch me in the end. Or maybe they wouldn’t. The world was so random. One of the things I’d seen on the Internet was that only a third of murder cases were ever solved. And this wasn’t even necessarily a murder. It might still only be an accident.

Detective Brady returned to our school a couple days later. An announcement from Mrs. Adams called Jared Fitch to the principal’s office. I knew immediately it was Brady. From my science class I could see part of the faculty parking lot. I couldn’t see a police car. He probably didn’t have one anyway; he probably had an unmarked. I still knew it was him.

I sat in my class. I could feel the pressure of Detective Brady on the school grounds. Would he call us in one at a time? Probably. Adults loved the one-at-a-time approach. Maybe he just wanted information. It made sense. Who would know about Paranoid Park better than skaters? Or maybe they got Scratch and he confessed and told them the murderer was a Prep, a nice kid from the suburbs. And now they were hunting that person down.

I stared out the window. I imagined riding to the police station, my hands cuffed behind my back. That would be fine with me. It really would. I was done. There was no point now. My life sucked so much, I might as well get caught.

I smiled as I thought that. I almost started to laugh. A week before, I had been so scared I was pissing myself. Now, with a homicide detective a few hundred feet down the hall, I was thinking,
What are we having for lunch today? I wonder if Dustin liked his board? I wonder how many years I’ll get in prison?
I was like, dude, whatever. I didn’t care. I was sick of worrying about it. Whatever happened, happened. Go ahead, Brady, I thought.
Bring it on.

The bell rang. I walked to Jared’s locker to see what was up. He wasn’t there. I saw Cal in the hall. He grabbed my arm. “Is that detective guy here? Is he gonna call us all in?”

“How would I know?” I said.

“Man, I hate things like this.”

“What do you care? You didn’t do anything.”

“I know,” he said. “But I hate cops.”

“When have you ever dealt with cops?”

“I dunno. You know what I mean.”

I walked away. I went to my next class. And then about halfway through it, there was a new announcement. It was me this time. My name. My name and no others.

I was to report to the principal’s office. Now.

I walked slowly, calmly through the empty hallway. I felt proud of myself in a way. I was handling this. I was dealing with it.

In my mind, I rehearsed my story. We had planned to go to Paranoid, then Jared bailed to party with the girl at Oregon State and I drove around. I went back to Jared’s and spent the night. Then I went home the next morning.

That was my story and I’d stick to it. If they busted me, they busted me.

I walked into the office. Mrs. Adams led me around the counter, through the hall, and into the same room we’d been in before.

Detective Brady sat reading some papers, making notes. He sipped a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. I watched him more closely than at the first meeting. He looked tired today. I wondered how old he was. Thirty? Thirty-five? I also noticed he had a redneck haircut—no sideburns, too short on top. He was probably from the East Side himself.