“One. Two. Three! Go!” Mrs. Henderson cheered.
All of the children let their balloons go. The white sky was filled with little dots of color like a painting. The sky was beautiful and vast and quiet as a prayer. Christopher looked up at the floating cloud. White like the plastic bag. The words came to him in an instant.
A snow day.
The headache stopped with the answer. Christopher hadn’t realized how much pain he was in until it was gone.
“What if we had a snow day, guys?” Christopher asked.
“That would work!” Special Ed said. “Too bad you don’t control the weather, Chris.”
That night, after his mother fell asleep, Christopher marched out to the woods. He walked right up to the white plastic bag.
“I don’t know if you’re real or not. But if you exist, you have to help me finish the tree house. And if you don’t exist, then I will stop building it. I don’t care if my head explodes. Because I am not doing this alone anymore. I need proof. So, talk to me. Please, talk to me.”
In the silence that followed, he stared at the white plastic bag, floating silently on the low-hanging branch. Christopher’s voice rose.
“This is your last chance. I need a snow day to finish the tree house. So, you better make it snow, or I swear I will never believe in you again.”
Chapter 32
A blizzard.
God dammit, the sheriff thought. The last thing I need now is a blizzard.
The weatherman predicted two inches of snow. He was off by a foot. The schools had already been closed for the day. Mill Grove Elementary. Both middle schools. The high school. The snow was so bad that even the Mt. Lebanon School District closed down as opposed to saddling its youth with one of their legendary “three-hour delays (no morning kindergarten).”
The kids were outside with their sleds and their snowmen. The sheriff would have much rather been a kid running around with a sled than a grown-up trying to figure out if the town would have enough money in the budget for additional road salt. When he was a kid, he hated the salt that took away the snow. Now he hated the salt even more.
Because it took him away from the case.
Maybe it was the fact that it involved Kate Reese’s kid. Maybe it was the fact that the sheriff was used to a city pace, and as much as he initially wanted the quiet life of a small town, he wanted to do real police work again.
Whatever it was, it seemed like the more time he spent in those woods, working the crime scene and looking for clues, the more engaged, focused, and passionate he felt. If he didn’t know any better, he would say that he was almost becoming smarter. Because even with all the distractions, he was able to turn four basic pieces of information…
A boy.
Eight years old.
Fifty years ago.
Buried alive.
…into a near-positive ID of the child. He would need a DNA test to confirm it. But he was almost sure of the victim’s name.
David Olson
The sheriff sat at his desk. He opened the cold-case file and unfolded the brown, faded Missing poster. David Olson was such a cute little boy. Big cheeks. Big smile. Even with the missing front teeth.
The same missing teeth they found on the skeleton.
The sheriff moved the poster aside and looked at copies of all the newspaper clippings from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the old Pittsburgh Press before it shut down. There was even a mention of it in the local Pennysaver.
According to the papers, David Olson was at home with his older brother and the brother’s girlfriend. His parents were downtown, enjoying a show at Heinz Hall after a dinner at the Duquesne Club. According to the initial police report, the older brother said that someone had placed a baby carriage on their porch with a tape recorder playing a baby’s cries. The perp (or perps) must have used this diversion to take David Olson from his bedroom.
The police pulled out all the stops (and spent most of the town’s budget, the sheriff knew) to close down roads and highways. Deputies and volunteers walked through the entire town, including the Mission Street Woods. But in the end, they couldn’t find so much as a footprint.
It was as if David had been taken by a ghost.
When they were unable to find a suspect, the suspicion turned to the family. To sell a few papers, some muckraking reporters accused David Olson’s father of killing his own son. The “Mad Dad” story stuck for a little while, especially when it was discovered that the family had taken out a whole life policy on David. But without any proof, the story quickly died (along with the newspaper sales), and the reporters focused on the older brother.
The worst of them accused the older brother of murder. The best of them simply asked the question, “How does it feel to know you were there when David was taken?” The older brother, to his credit or detriment, was very open with the reporters to keep the story alive. But eventually, other news became more interesting, and the family was left with the burden of being the only people who knew how the story ended. How the crime was never solved. How the perp (or perps) were never caught. How the family was left to find meaning in the place of answers. How the town stopped looking because they were out of leads and needed the money for road salt to keep the rest of their population safe.
The sheriff put the case file away with the Missing poster on top. Then, he looked up at all the current Missing posters on his bulletin board. Faces of men, women, and children. Sheriff’s departments would send these pictures to one another like boys trading baseball cards. All in the hope (vain or real) that by some miracle, a child taken in Hershey would wind up in Philadelphia. Or the old man with dementia who wandered off in Harrisburg would somehow find his way to Pittsburgh. Sometimes, the faces changed when a child was rescued, Grandpa was found, or a teenage runaway decided that the hell at home was nothing compared with the hell on the street. But as much as the faces changed, the bulletin board never did. It was always full like the opening of The Brady Bunch.
The board was such a constant that the sheriff rarely noticed a particular face above the others. But there was one Missing poster that stood out to him now. Maybe it was her age. Or her blond hair. Or the fact that she looked a little like the girl with the painted nails. Whatever it was, the sheriff was always aware of one missing girl.
Emily Bertovich.
She had gone missing four months ago, but her parents must have had some pull in their hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania (or a whole lot of money). Because her case was still treated like it was twenty-four hours fresh. New pictures. New posters. Even the old milk carton campaign came back for this girl. Her poster looked as new and freshly printed as David Olson’s was brittle and faded. Someday, Emily’s poster would be old, too. And hopefully, she would be safe in her mother’s arms. The sheriff could feel his mind wandering again from Emily Bertovich back to the girl with the painted nails, but he quickly stopped himself.
He had work to do.
The sheriff went outside to dig his car out of the snow. Then, he drove his cruiser over the salted roads, looking at the children playing on the 3 Hole Golf course with that amazing sledding hill. He saw the little kids in their colorful jackets running up the white, snowy ridge.
Just like balloons in the sky.
He cracked the window a little to take the fog off his windshield. Fresh, cold air filled the car. He heard the children and their screams of delight as they raced down the hill and ran back up only to race down it again. The sound made him smile. A bright moment in a grey day.