Dear Whistleblower
A Mystery NovelBy Joan Rooney RiccitelliiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Joan Rooney Riccitelli
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4401-9282-1Chapter One
He was thirteen years old and an eighth grade honor student when he killed for the first time. Afterwards, whenever he thought about that New Year's Day at Runnel's Pond, Gerry's death seemed kind of funny to him. Not exactly funny ha-ha, although he did laugh about it later, but mostly funny odd. He had certainly wished Gerry dead hundreds of times, but the strange thing was that he really hadn't made any plans to kill him that day. None at all. And when he thought about it, he had been more of a passive participant as the whole scenario had played out naturally and almost magically with one event following the other as though preordained. Not to say that he had any qualms about what had happened. And certainly no regrets. Actually, he felt quite satisfied with what had transpired on the first day of that New Year. Gerry had got what he deserved. Had paid the price that all bullies should pay. It had been perfect. Well, nearly perfect. He did have one question. Some might say an unusual question. But often when he thought about it afterwards, he would ask himself if this - the first of his murders - really counted.
Looking back with almost total recall, he remembered that morning so many years ago as white - white sky, white fields, the kind of winter white that swallowed up the faded colors of the bare chiseled oaks and snow-encrusted firs. He pictured himself on that cloudy day, a teenage boy cresting the hill and crunching through the unmarked open snow toward Runnel's Pond. Warmly dressed in fleece and wool with a plaid muffler scarfed around his neck, he carried the new hockey stick that he had just gotten for Christmas over his shoulder like a rifle, and his black skates were loosely laced around his neck. He slowed for a moment at the large wooden sign with the message Private Property - No Skating - Trespassers Will be Prosecuted professionally painted on its surface. The sign was a joke. No trespassers were ever prosecuted by the wealthy Runnels who always spent the winter months at their Palm Beach home far from the Snow Belt. But the sign did keep most of the neighborhood children away and that made the pond almost always deserted and the skating all the better for those who dared to ignore the warning.
Powder kicking up ahead of him, the boy slogged on until he could see the pond through spreading firs at the far end of the Runnel estate. When he saw the lone figure in the distance, he quickened his pace. He had left within ten minutes of the phone call, but Buddy O'Hara was already there, skating on the cleared portion of the ice, putting one foot over and ahead of the other in practiced rhythm. There were calls of greeting, and the boy quickly changed into his skates and joined Buddy, easily falling into the pace.
They skated together for what seemed like a long time, the boy enjoying the cold air on his face and at the back of his throat - and enjoying the physical exertions of his maturing body. The pond was secluded, nestled in a vale, and the quiet was almost churchlike, noises from the Runnel mansion and the new residential streets muffled by the snow. The only sounds the boy could hear were the sharp scratching of their blades against the ice and the occasional cracking off of a branch deep in the woods.
"Glad you were home. Glad you could make it." Buddy, bareheaded, squinting, called over to him. Buddy was a short, fat-faced thirteen-year-old, but he was rich, very rich, a good athlete, and a class leader. The boy was glad too. Glad he had been home. Glad he could make it. He knew that Buddy had probably phoned him that morning because most of his popular friends were away for the Christmas break. Or maybe Buddy did have a foursome set up, and somebody had canceled out at the last minute. But the boy really didn't care why he had been called. It didn't matter. The important thing was that he had been invited. And this morning could change everything. Make a big difference in his life and advance his place in the pecking order at school. He had always felt different from the other boys. Somehow out of step and never really at ease with kids his own age. But this was the chance he needed, and he was thrilled to be asked to play pick-up hockey with Buddy and Jack Connelly, the two most popular boys in the eighth grade.
"It'll only be a couple of kids," Buddy had said on the phone. Well, that was fine with him too. More than fine. He'd stand out that way. The boy was a good athlete, and he was determined to show Buddy and Jack what an excellent skater he was. He was sure they would become his friends after today. This morning would be golden.
They finally skirted to a stop, ice chips flying.
"Jack is late. He should be here any minute," Buddy volunteered, looking toward the road above them. "Who's the fourth?" the boy asked.
"Gerry Weshie." Buddy had turned back and was now looking him full in the face so the boy didn't have a chance to conceal his expression. He hated Gerry.
"What's wrong?" Buddy frowned. "Gerry's a good kid."
The boy bit his lip and lied. "No. Nothing. Nothing's wrong. Yeah. Gerry's a good kid. A real good kid."
The boy mentally kicked himself for the slip. Gerry was popular too. Mostly for his athletic prowess. Over six feet tall and husky at fourteen, he was by far the best football player in the eighth grade, and the only boy who could routinely park one over the fence when he came up to bat. Buddy could not know that Gerry was a bully, a sly bully who took pains to shield this part of his character from the students who mattered. Since school had started in September, the boy had been forced to check the halls before passing, and now he was even taking the long way home to avoid the torment. Gerry was a master at picking on smaller kids, and the boy who was a year or two away from his growth had become his chief victim. Punches that hurt disguised as horseplay. Noogies on the head. The names - sissy, fruit, pansy. The same names that his father called him.
The boy groped for an excuse to leave but it was already too late. Two boys, their arms full with hockey sticks and tall brown paper bags, had just appeared, churning the snow ahead of them as they hurried down the path from the road. It was Gerry with his grown man's body and ravaged complexion, wearing a straw sombrero for some reason that day, followed by Jack almost as tall, but boyishly slim with the Black Irish good looks that all the seventh and eighth grade girls found so appealing.
"Hey. Good to see you," Jack said with a smile and a friendly nod of his head as he sat on the rocks and put on his skates.
"How ya doing?" Gerry held out the sombrero, dramatically bowed in his direction, and gave the wide smile, which by now was so familiar to the boy that he even saw it in his nightmares. The boy could only manage a strangled "Hi," to Gerry before he turned and greeted Jack.
In a few minutes all four boys were on the ice. "You're with Gerry." There was unquestioned authority in Jack's young voice as he gestured at him. The boy could only nod his head up and down in acquiescence. What did it matter? Gerry would get to him. But within a few minutes, the boy was surprised to see that it would be all right. There was no bullying or teasing, and Gerry was more than cordial as they worked as a team for the next hour. They won repeatedly, humming over the hard surface, shooting the puck into the old frozen basket, which was locked into the ice. It was fun, more than fun, as they all whooped away at their efforts, and laughed good-naturedly when Gerry did a well-controlled pratfall and sprawled on his back. As the morning wore on, the boy began to think how wrong he had been. Gerry was quite a guy. Really funny. No wonder he was so popular. And the boy could imagine that now he would be popular too.
Years later whenever he looked back at that roller coaster day, he would remember the camaraderie of that morning - the skating, talking, smoking, and drinking the beer that Gerry had brought - as one of the best times of his life.
Around noon, they broke for lunch. "I've got food, guys. Tons of food," Jack said. Out of the two paper grocery bags came an assortment of sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, crinkly bags of potato chips, Hershey bars, Hostess cupcakes, and bottles of orange soda and cola.
"And here's more brew, and our church key too - and I'm a poet and I don't know it," Gerry said with a smile as two more bottles and the bottle opener appeared. The four of them sat on the snow-dusted granite outcroppings near the woods, laughing and talking as they ate, hiding the beer from the only other skaters who had appeared after them - a young married couple swinging a red snow-suited child between them. Within a half-hour, the adults and their child were gone, and Gerry reached into one of his bags to produce a half-full fifth of Johnny Walker Black and smiled. "Here's something that should give us a charge. My old lady won't miss it. She was still sleeping off last night's party when I left. She'll think one of her friends walked off with it. Her hard luck. Our good luck." The bottle was passed around, and the boy swigged with the others, enjoying the harsh unfamiliar taste and the heat of the liquor on that cold morning.
Although when he looked around, he realized that the sun was struggling to come out, and it was considerably warmer.
After lunch Jack again asserted his authority as class president. He looked at the boy. "Sides aren't even. You take Buddy this time. I'll play with Gerry." Winning with Buddy as his partner, the boy was so intent on the game that he did not notice Gerry's face starting to turn red and ugly, unhappy at being shown up by the two smaller boys who seemed able to slip by and around him almost at will and score time after time. It was only a game, but it was a game where Gerry did not excel, and that was something that he could not tolerate. Soon he was back to being a bully, back to picking on the boy when Jack and Buddy were turned away. Pushing roughly using his superior weight, playing dirty.
Finally, just as the boy was going in for a goal that he could already taste, his legs scissoring, the puck in perfect position, he was blindsided from the left as Gerry stuck out his hockey stick and tripped him. The boy plunged forward, flailing to keep his balance as the gray ice rose up to meet him. Unable to break the fall, he landed heavily on his right knee, ripping his pants and tearing his flesh bloody. He tried to get up and slipped, falling back again. Now blinded with pain and anger, tears came to his eyes. Gerry was there first, apologizing in a loud voice, covering up in case Buddy and Jack had seen what he had just done. "Hey, I'm sorry. Sorry. I was just kidding. I didn't mean to catch you with my stick. My fault. I owe you one. Are you all right?"
And then in a lower voice that only the two of them could hear, "Little girlie OK? Little pansy crying? Little fruity gunna tattle on mean ole Gerry?"
As the boy sat on the ice, struggling to catch his breath, his heart pounding and his knee in pain, he saw how things were. How things would be. How foolish he had been to think that anything had changed because of today's hockey game. How crazy he had been to believe that Gerry would be his friend at school, and that the bullying would stop.
When he finally got up with a pull from Buddy's hand, the boy had to use every ounce of self-control he had to keep from hurling himself at Gerry. But reason prevailed. He knew that if he threw the first punch, it would be no contest. He'd be pulverized into the ground. The boy brushed the forearm of his jacket across his still-watery eyes, and turned away so that Jack and Buddy could not see his face. He forced himself to speak calmly and keep the tears from his voice. "I'm all right. It was just an accident. Let's take five. I need to see if my knee's OK. See if I can still skate."
Rage coursing through his body, he skated away from the other three boys toward the far end of the pond now gilded by winter sunlight. His mind was flipping through his options, and they were certainly few in number. Tell Buddy and Jack how Gerry had deliberately tripped him? How Gerry had been bullying him? It was unlikely that the two class leaders would take his side since he was the outsider, and Gerry was their friend. Go to his parents? He wished he could tell them how Gerry had been tormenting him for months now, but if he did, he knew that his father would just taunt him as a coward for running away from a fight. He felt cornered, all alone with nowhere to turn. No one to help him.
As he skimmed along the cleared section of the pond between white curved drifts, he thought of the one attempt he had made to settle the problem by seeking help from his eighth grade teacher, Miss Lane. Lois Lane just like Superman's girlfriend. He was a model student who went out of his way to butter her up and tell her what she wanted to hear, so he had been sure that she liked him and would intervene.
It had been during lunchtime in mid-November when Gerry had hurt and embarrassed him by bending his arm behind his back and frog marching him in the basement hallway to the hoots of some younger boys. That had been all he could take, and he had finally decided that he had to tell, even if it was tattling. He was disengaged from his studies all that afternoon as he planned his approach to Miss Lane. Lingering after the dismissal bell at three-thirty, he waited around in the playground until all the other eighth grade students had left. When he was sure that all the classmates were gone, he hurried back in to his room, and caught Miss Lane just as she was letting the Mercator map at the front of the room snap up into a roll. A slight, almost frail, woman, with a halo of over-permed hair, neither young nor old, Miss Lane had at first seemed very concerned when he began talking between gulps and sobs. Talking about the bullying. The name-calling. The hurt. But her concern had quickly turned to unease as he poured out the repetitious episodes of the bullying and his own humiliation. When he had finished, she had moved away to her desk and had nervously smoothed out the skirt of her shirtwaist dress.
Her first words were not encouraging. "I think you may be misunderstanding the situation," she had begun. "You're one of the brighter boys in class, and Gerry may just want to be your friend. He probably doesn't know how to approach you in the right way, and thinks that this horseplay will catch your attention."
"No, no," he had insisted, and gone over the recent incidents, this time much more vehemently. Finally, he was sure that he had gotten through to her, and that she believed him. But when she spoke, she was just mouthing empty words. "Bullies are all cowards," she had said. "You just have to learn to stand up for yourself."
She had seemed to be talking to a point just over his head as she recited the hackneyed words, which offered him no solace at all. Then she looked him directly in the eyes. "You've told me that you're thinking of becoming a teacher yourself someday. If you ever do become a teacher, you'll see that you can't get involved in petty quarrels between students. You can't take sides. It's better when students work out their problems themselves. It's good training for life."
He stared at her, mouth partially open, incredulous that she was not going to help him. Seeing the disbelief in his face, she went on, "When you're a little older, you'll come to realize that teasing is just a normal part of growing up. I know. I was teased a lot as a girl because I've always been as skinny as a rail. So my advice to you is just ignore Gerry and walk away. I think he may be teasing because he sees that he can get a rise out of you."
There was a pause. He gulped again, and she seemed to feel she had to say more. "I have an idea that you might want to think about." He waited. " Why don't you take one of those Charles Atlas courses and build yourself up?"
She looked away and was finished with him. Finished with a distasteful problem, which she did not want to take on. She reached for her coat, which was draped over the back of her desk chair, and started to shrug into it. "And now if you'll excuse me, I have to get some things together. I have a meeting at another school."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dear Whistleblowerby Joan Rooney Riccitelli Copyright © 2010 by Joan Rooney Riccitelli. Excerpted by permission.
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