Author: Eliza James

On this day, a young woman sat on the bridge cross-legged staring at the water of the creek rushing beneath her. It was a decent sized creek especially during the spring when the run-off from the mountains rushed downhill in rapids and became a small river.

Katie enjoyed the solitude and the sound of the water and would often bring her journal with her to write her thoughts and poetry as it came to her. There was a enough room on the bridge that she was able to side and look through the railing and people could still cross easily behind her.

She had been sitting there for about a half an hour when elevated voices broke through the sound of the rushing water. She looked up to see a man holding a camera that was strapped around his neck. Behind the man were two other men and a woman, all of whom looked irate and were chasing after the first man.

When he reached the bridge he turned around and shouted back at the others and insisted he had done nothing wrong. When the small mob didn’t stop but continued to give chase, the man was forced to retreat across the bridge.

The three pursuers didn’t seem committed enough to continue their pursuit across the bridge, but remained on their side standing guard. The man with the camera turned around and saw that they were not coming after him and stopped running.

He began shouting and waving his hands at the injustice of their verdict all the while insisting that he was perfectly within his rights to take pictures at a public place.

The others simply stood with their hands on their hips immobile, glaring in his direction.

Meanwhile the girl began to feel a bit frightened as the man was on one side and she didn’t know how dangerous he was, and the three angry pursuers were on the other side and she didn’t know how dangerous they were. Either way, she found herself in the middle of their argument with no way to escape. She shrunk as low as she could and tried to be as unnoticeable as possible, but she didn’t really need to bother. Neither was aware she was there.

The man shifted his argument from needing to take pictures, to needing to get back to his car. Again, this was met by the silent and immovable guard. Eventually he gave up and began to walk down the path towards what Katie assumed was another bridge so he could get back to their side.

The three waited about 10 minutes to ensure the feisty photographer would not come back, before returning themselves to the playground.

Thinking the excitement was over, Katie remained where she was and quickly began to scribble in her journal all that had just happened. Unbeknownst to her, it was not the last she would see of the photographer that day.

The next two people to see the man with the duck did not personally come forward with their story. Instead, their account took a more circuitous route. Being only 7 years old, they were unaware anyone was looking for a man with this description and did not feel the need to come forward. However, as luck would have it, they found the story so amusing that not only did they spend the next hour giggling uproariously as they recounted the hilarity they had witnessed, but they shared the story to everyone and anyone who would listen. Eventually, the story reached the ears of a mother who realized that perhaps this account may be of some use to the investigation.

It began with a game in the park where they would run to the top of a grassy hill that overlooked the duck pond. Then, they would race to the bottom by rolling rapidly downward. The fun was trying to run back up the hill with the world still spinning around and collapsing halfway up.

They were in the middle of their game when they noticed a tall man, very old in their opinion, running after a duck. The kids stopped what they were doing and stared at the man. Every once in a while the man would dive at the duck and try to tackle it like a football player only for the duck to leap into the air and fly out of reach. It would then waddle about the grass again.

This continued as the pair made their way closer and closer to the pond and eventually the duck launched out into the water swimming away from the man. The kids were initially disappointed that their fun had come to an end assuming that no adult would ever think of jumping into the water to continue the chase.

They were delightfully surprised when the man, without hesitation dove straight in and landed on top of the duck submerging them both.

What everyone failed to notice was an elderly man sitting on a bench nearby with his cane and a bag full of bird seed surrounded by a flock of hungry ducks. Clearly not finding this as amusing as the children, the elderly man immediately leapt to his feet, shuffled shin-deep into the pond, and started whacking the potential duck murderer on the head with his cane.

The kids, thinking this was even more hilarious dissolved into laughter as the man splashed his way back out of the pond, his hands over his head while the man with the can shuffled after him, still brandishing his cane in the air threateningly. Meanwhile, the duck had finally had enough and it squawked as it flew away in the other direction.

The potential duck-murderer escaped into the woods with blood on his forehead, and as far as the kids were concerned, they never saw him again.

We’ve seen 3 of the four men that witnesses claimed to see. Now we arrive at the fourth. He was noticed by Mrs. Waters who, coincidentally also saw the first man. She had already left, returned home for lunch, when she decided to come back to the park in the late afternoon to enjoy more of the beautiful April sun. Luckily her bench was once again free and she was able to people-watch at her leisure from her favourite spot.

The first thing she noticed was a tall man setting up a blanket on the grassy area close to an old oak tree. He caught her attention because he initially laid the blanket in the shade of the tree only to change him mind moments later and pulled the blanket out into the sunshine.

When he stood back to admire his work, he changed his mind again and moved the blanket into the shade. Then, finally, he pulled it forward just a bit so that it was half in-half out of the sun.

He then began to unpack a cooler of food that was sitting near the tree and carefully arranged the contents onto the blanket. When he was done he stood up, brushed off his pants and pulled a small box from his pocket. That’s when Mrs. Waters realized what he was doing and her face broke into a grin.

He opened the box and plucked out what was inside, examining it in the sunlight. It was unfortunate timing as right at that moment a dog had escaped his owner and came barreling down the hill to where he stood. In his shock, he dropped what Mrs. Waters assumed was an engagement ring just before the golden retriever reached him and began nuzzling his legs with his snout.

The owner of the dog, thankfully wasn’t far behind and managed to secure the dog to it’s leash. The damage however, had been done. The dog and the owner walked away leaving the man to his desperate search of the overgrown grass.

With his head bowed low he didn’t see the approaching duck until it dug its beck into the grass right near the man, scooped up an item and swallowed. By the look on the man’s face, the duck had just eaten a very expensive treat.

Seconds later, the man lunged for the bird and just barely missed. The bird, very used to humans, flew a couple feet to the side and continued to waddle about looking for food in the grass. This gave the man another opportunity to lunge, but once again the bird escaped.

Mrs. Waters watched with a mixture of horror and hilarity as the two leap-frogged about the park and disappeared through some trees towards the pond. After this, Mrs. Waters did not see either this man nor the man from that morning again. Not realizing there was any danger, she returned home for her dinner of toast and jam.

On the other side of the park is a baseball diamond. On this particular day, like most days in spring, there was a game being played. Huddled in the top right corner of the bleachers were three ten-year-olds forced to be there by their parents to watch their older siblings play. As this was hardly the first game of the season, and the players were by no means professionals, they had long since lost interest.

They were giggling and goofing off as bored kids often do, when they heard the roar of a corvette pull into the parking lot behind the bleachers. One of the kids peered threw the bars of the bleachers and exclaimed knowledgeably both the make, model, and year of the cars. The other two looked over and nodded appreciatively pretending they were about to say the same thing, but gosh darn it, Ashley beat them to it.

A tall man with glasses got out and walked towards the bleachers and sat on the bottom row near the edge. He pulled out a box of what looked like chocolate covered almonds and started sucking and munching on them.

The kids in the bleachers quickly lost interest in him and turned back around to look at his car. Not long after, Justin who didn’t garner quite as much joy from cars was distracted when the man got up not long after he sat down and stumbled towards the trees. Rather than walking to one of the paths, he simply disappeared into the thicket.

Justin waited a few minutes, but when it looked like the man wasn’t coming back soon, he snuck down to the front row and grabbed a fist full of chocolate-covered almonds before scampering back up to his friends and sharing his loot.

At approximately the same time that the kite escaped from the young boy, a mother pushing a stroller with her 6-month-old came walking down the path with her 4-year-old in tow. They were off to the playground. The woman was exhausted after staying awake most of the night with her 6-month-old, but her 4-year-old was off the wall with energy and excitement.

Later, when she heard the description of the man who died, her mind immediately leapt to the man she saw as they walked to the playground and her heart ached.

He was chasing a kite with a young boy running frantically behind him. At one point the kite rose up steeply into the air then began to fall. A grin broke across the man’s face followed by a look of dismay as a gust of wind swept it up and threw the kite into the woods where it became entangled high up in the branches of a tree. The man stood staring up at the flapping red kite and the young boy burst into tears.

She heard that the body was found in the woods and worried that this man had been the one to die. The memory of the young boy crying surfaced and she found herself holding her daughter closer that night.

But then she remembered that there’d been someone else. Another man that day who’d fit the description and someone she’d much preferred to have died. Not that she wanted anyone to die, she reminded herself, but perhaps he wouldn’t have been so badly missed.

This man she saw later. They had already wandered over to the playground and Jessie, her daughter had been running around the apparatus for the better part of an hour. Like most kids she had already made two new friends, declared them her best friends, and had a falling out. She was whipping tears from Jessie’s cheeks and consoling her after her last epic fight with an aggressive young boy who insisted he was the only one who could operate the digger he’d brought from home.

It was at this point that she realized the mood around the playground had shifted and many of the parents were on their feet. She stood up and moved to the side to see past the monkey bars. A tall man with a camera strapped around his neck was the focus of their attention. Two other men were advancing towards him and from what she could gather he’d been talking pictures of the kids and they’d only just realized none of the kids were his.

Taking this as a final cue to go, she gathered Jessie up and together they pushed Phoenix in her stroller back out of the park. As they wound their way down the path she noticed that the red kite was still flapping away trying desperately to escape it’s tree warden.

On this particular day, there were four men who were seen in the park who matched the description of the deceased. Mrs. Waters saw two of them. She arrived at the park at 8 am as she always did and sat down on her bench.

She believed the bench was hers because she’d been the one to donate it to the park in memory of her husband Harold: a man whose memory she enjoyed far more than his actual presence.

As was her daily routine, she sat on the bench and observed people walking through the park and playing. That morning seemed to be busier than usual as it was the first sunny day after a long stretch of rain.

Initially, it was mostly the usual morning joggers mixed with families with young kids who had already been up since the crack of dawn.

By about 10 am, a father with his two young sons began to set up their kites. There were two kites, one for each son. One was red, the other blue.

Mrs. Waters noticed the father was tall, although at 5ft 2 most people seemed tall to her. He had dark hair and glasses and he looked like he was in about his mid-30s.

It took a bit of time, but eventually they got the blue kite off the ground. The older one of the boys held tight to the handle holding the string. The kite flapped in the wind swooping and diving. Although the wind wasn’t terribly strong that day, but it was enough to keep the kite in the air.

They managed to get the red kite off the ground in half the time and Mrs. Waters smiled as she watched the kids. The father stood behind the younger boy and together they held the string. However, as kids are want to be, the boy saw his older brother managing quite fine on his own and wanted to show he was capable too. He pulled away from his dad, who reluctantly acquiesced and in seconds the kite was free, flapping across the greenspace towards the edge of the forest. The father and younger son immediately took off running after it. Mrs. Waters laughed appreciatively remembering her own children’s antics when they were that age.

She found it decidedly less funny when she later learned of the tragedy and fervently hoped that he was not the man who’d died.

* * *

On the edge of the city there is a park where people gather either to give their kids a chance to burn off energy, to feed the ducks, to enjoy a picnic, or to take in nature on a hike.

There’s a playground usually filled with squealing, laughing, and sometimes crying children. If you follow the path you’ll find yourself in the middle of rolling greenspace where people play frisbee, suntan on a blanket on the grass, read a book, or enjoy a picnic. There’s also a small creek where ducks like to skim the surface. And if you keep walking you’ll eventually reach the baseball diamond.

The park is bordered by a forest of trees where, if you follow the path over the bridge you’ll find hiking trails of various levels of difficulty winding through the trees. This bridge takes you over a creek that rushes through slopping banks on either side.

Most days the park is a conduit for enjoyment. A beloved space for most of the city’s citizens. But on this particular day, for this particular person, a shadow of grave misfortune befell him.

When the body was found and a description of the man and day he was thought to have died came out, many potential witnesses came forward.

“I saw him chasing a duck! Funniest thing I ever saw.”

“He was the creepy guy taking photos of the kids at the playground. Looks like he got what was coming to him.”

“Wasn’t he the guy we saw at the baseball game yesterday?”

“Was that him? I guess it could have been.”

Over and over, someone saw him here. Someone saw him there. Most are mistaken, but someone did see him. If only they’d paid a bit closer attention, he might still be alive. Then again, if they had, someone else may have died.