by Ritter, Todd
*
Kat waited until dinner to follow Jocelyn Miller’s advice. Even then, most of the meal had passed in silence before she just blurted out, “Are you having problems at school?”
James, who had just taken a bite of mashed potatoes, shook his head.
“Are you sure?” Kat pressed.
This time James spoke, the mashed potatoes gray and gooey on his tongue. “I’m sure. Honest.”
So much for the principal’s theory about kids wanting to discuss their problems.
“You know you can talk to me, Little Bear. If something is going on at school, it might help to tell me about it.”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
Part of Kat’s job was trying to figure out who was lying and who was telling the truth. Usually, it was easy. Liars avoided eye contact. They stayed frozen in place as they spoke. They tried too hard to summon honesty in their voices. James was displaying all three characteristics, so she asked him one last time.
“Positive?”
“Positive.”
“Then how is the fifth grade going? You didn’t say much about it yesterday.”
“I didn’t get the chance.”
Kat felt another twinge of guilt. The night before, she and Nick had spent the dinner hour discussing Charlie Olmstead and the other missing boys, much to her son’s boredom.
“You have the chance now. I’m all ears.”
“It’s different,” James said.
“Different how? Harder? More intimidating?”
She knew it was too many questions, but she was so happy that James actually seemed to be opening up that she couldn’t stop herself.
“I guess,” James said. “Math is harder.”
Kat’s cell phone, which had been silenced for dinnertime, started to vibrate. It sat an arm’s length away on the table, its buzz causing the nearby silverware to rattle. She ignored it, even though it was most likely Nick finally returning her call.
“Do you think it’ll be too hard?” she asked James.
“I’ll get the hang of it.”
The phone continued to go off. Each vibration shimmied it closer in Kat’s direction. She had to will herself to not reach out and grab it. Instead, she leaned toward it, trying to glimpse the caller ID. But whoever was calling had given up, and no name or number was visible. The phone once again sat in silence and stillness.
“What about science?” she asked. “Will you be studying anything neat?”
“I hope so. We might get to dissect a frog.”
Her phone jumped to life again, vibrating its way even closer to her elbow. Whoever was calling, desperately wanted to talk to her. She needed to answer.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she told James. “I really need to get this.”
James folded his arms across his chest and stared at his plate. “Fine.”
Grabbing the phone, Kat got up from the table and moved into the kitchen before answering. “Hello?”
“We found him.” It was Nick, of course. “At least, we probably did.”
“Found who?”
“Noah Pierce. Tony and I discovered a skeleton at the state park where he disappeared.”
He talked quickly, explaining the events of the day and concluding with the grim discovery beneath an abandoned gristmill. As he spoke, Kat heard a constant hum in the background.
“Where are you?”
“In the car with Vasquez,” Nick said. “We’re heading to the county morgue. The state police brought in a forensic anthropologist to look over the bones. We’re meeting her there. What’s new on your end of the investigation?”
Nothing was new, and Kat admitted as much. She was going to talk about Becky Santangelo, weird Glenn Stewart, and the Clarks’ bomb shelter but decided against it. None of it was very exciting. Especially when compared with possibly finding the remains of one of the six missing boys on their list.
“I need to go,” she said. “Carl and I have some business to attend to. Call me if you find out anything else tonight. If not, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
She ended the call and returned to the dining room. James was exactly where she had left him, in the very same position.
“Nick says hi.”
James’s voice was barely above a murmur. “No he didn’t.”
Kat sighed. James was mad at her because she interrupted him to answer the phone. Her punishment for the transgression was going to be a night of pouting.
“I’m sorry about that. But sometimes work doesn’t stop when I come home.”
“You’re always working.” Again, it was a mumble that Kat had to strain to hear.
It was hard being the child of a police chief. Kat knew that firsthand. Her childhood had been a series of missed soccer games and late-night kisses on the forehead long after she had gone to sleep. When she was growing up, her father was absent from the dinner table more often than not and rarely tucked her in at night. The only difference between her and James was that her mother had been around to do those things in his absence. James had no such luxury.
“I’m sorry, Little Bear. I truly am.”
She was even more sorry about what she needed to do next, which was to leave for a large portion of the night. Because she couldn’t get a babysitter on such short notice, James would have to leave with her. Normally she would have taken him to Lou van Sickle’s house, where he could play with one of her grandchildren. But Lou had plans that night, leaving her with only one option.
“Why can’t I stay here?” James asked after she told him they were leaving for an hour or two.
“Because I can’t find a babysitter and you’re not old enough to stay home alone.”
“I am so.”
Kat wasn’t going to have this argument, especially when her days were spent looking for boys who went missing when they were James’s age. If it was possible, she’d choose to never let him out of her sight.
“Hurry up and grab your homework,” she said. “We need to go.”
“Where are we going?”
“To meet a friend of mine. A very old friend.”
*
Kat Campbell had a son.
For some reason, this blew Eric’s mind. Years ago he’d heard from his mother that she had married a fellow cop. A startlingly short time after that, word got out about her divorce. But he never heard about a son, especially one with Down syndrome.
But there he was, sitting on his couch as Eric stared at him. The boy stared back, daring him to be a stupid adult and say stupid things. He saw that look in a lot of kids—that I’m-hard-to-impress glare—and it never ceased to unnerve him.
“You mom said you might have some homework to do.”
“It’s done.”
“Then is there anything you’d like to watch on TV?”
“Not really.”
When she dropped James off, Kat assured him she’d only be gone two hours tops. Eric, who had been stunned to learn she had a son to begin with, told her that was no problem. She was, after all, trying to find information about his brother. Since Eric preferred thoroughness over speed, he said she should take her time. But five minutes after she left, he was regretting his words.
“How do you know my mom?” James asked.
“We used to be friends. A long time ago.”
“You’re not friends now?”
“We are,” Eric said. “Just not as good as we used to be.”
“Were you her boyfriend?”
Checking his watch again, he saw that only another minute had passed. It was going to be a long, awkward night. And although he had turned away from James and was now facing the window, he could still feel the heat of the boy’s curious gaze.
“I was,” Eric said. “When we were in school.”
“Did you two kiss?”
“I think we’re done with the questions now.” Eric stared out the window at Glenn Stewart’s house. His neighbor was home, of course, as evidenced by a single lit window on the second floor. Soon
James joined him in gazing at the rectangular glow of the window in the house next door.
“Where did my mom have to go?” he asked.
This was a question Eric knew how to answer. “She’s digging for something.”
“Digging?” James crinkled his nose. “For what?”
“A clue.”
“About what?”
Eric let out a rueful chuckle. The boy was definitely Kat’s child. They shared the same stubbornness, the same unquenchable thirst for answers.
“About my brother,” he said. “He disappeared many years ago. Your mother is trying to help me find out what happened to him.”
James didn’t ask a follow-up, and for a moment Eric thought the questions were over. Then the light went out in Glenn Stewart’s window, prompting James to say, “I think whoever lives there just went to bed.”
Mr. Stewart was such a mystery that he could have been a vampire for all Eric knew. Yet he had a feeling the boy was right. No other lights flicked on in other rooms to take the place of the one that had just been extinguished.
“Why are you watching that house?” James asked.
“Because the man who lives there might also know something about my brother.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” Eric thought about what he had witnessed in his neighbor’s yard the previous night. Glenn Stewart in the rain with a shovel. Putting the shoe box into the ground. Saying his silent prayer in the dead of night. “But I think I saw him bury it.”
“Is that what my mom is digging up?”
“No. She’s somewhere else.”
“Then why don’t you do it?”
It was a valid question—and an even better suggestion. While Glenn slept, Eric could sneak into his yard and quickly dig up whatever had been buried there. Of course an eleven-year-old boy would be the one to come up with it. Even more appropriate was the fact that the boy was none other than Kat Campbell’s son.
“Maybe I’ll do that,” Eric said.
“Can I help?”
“Sure. You can help.”
As they headed to the garage to find a shovel, Eric couldn’t help but smile. Sometimes the apple really didn’t fall far from the tree. As Kat and her deputy searched the ground in the cemetery for hints about what happened to Charlie, he was about to do the same with her son. And he hoped both search parties unearthed something worthwhile.
EIGHTEEN
Dusk had firmly taken hold of Oak Knoll Cemetery by the time Kat passed through its front gate. There was enough light to see by but not enough to make out many details. The dimness seemed to erase the names on the gravestones, creating rows of blank slates that stretched from one corner of the cemetery to the other. Creeping between them, Kat pointed her flashlight at each headstone until she found Maggie Olmstead’s.
“We’re here,” she said.
Behind her were Carl Bauersox and Earl Morgan, the cemetery’s groundskeeper. Both men carried shovels, which they set down in front of the grave.
Earl, who was a far cry from the cemetery’s previous groundskeeper, waited expectantly in dirt-smeared jeans and a green John Deere cap. “What are you looking for again?”
Truth be told, Kat had no idea. Digging up the grave site was just her attempt to leave no stone unturned. She didn’t expect to find any earth-shattering clues or definitive proof about what fate had befallen Charlie Olmstead. But there was also a chance they’d discover something small that could help them in their quest.
“Hope,” she said. “We’re looking for hope.”
Dropping to her knees, she smoothed a hand through the grass until she found Charlie’s grave marker. She then rested her flashlight on top of it, the beam illuminating the grass. Earl pulled four wooden pegs from a satchel slung over his shoulder, placing them at the corners of the grave site. Next out of the satchel was white twine, which he strung from peg to peg, marking out the area where they’d be digging.
“This should do it, don’t you think?”
Carl eyed the patch of grass. “It depends on what’s down there.”
“I hope something small and close to the surface,” Kat said. “If this is going to be a waste of time, I don’t want to be here all night doing it.”
Shoving a hand into the satchel, Earl removed a spade and started the unenviable task of removing the grass from over the site. He did it quickly and thoroughly, using the spade to carve the grass into evenly spaced sections. He then pried up the squares of green and set them aside in a tidy pile.
Kat removed a plastic trash bag that poked out of the satchel and spread it on the ground to the right of the grave site. Their plan was to pile the loose dirt on top of it, which would make it easier to fill in the hole when they were finished.
With the prep work finalized, Earl picked up one shovel and handed the other to Carl. They stood on opposite sides of the rectangle of exposed earth. Then, on the count of three, both of them dug in.
*
Eric lifted the shovel out of the ground and dumped the contents off to the side. He didn’t worry about being tidy with his digging. Since the ground was freshly turned, there was no need to be. His goal was speed.
And not getting caught, of course.
“You still keeping a lookout?” he asked James, who stood a few feet away, facing Glenn Stewart’s house.
“Yeah,” the boy said. “Coast is still clear.”
“Good. Keep looking. If you see a light come on, just run back to my house. I’ll take care of everything else.”
Eric felt uneasy about bringing James along. Kat would be livid if she ever found out, which is why he had made James promise not to tell her. But the extra set of eyes helped, and James seemed to be relishing his role as official lookout.
“I feel like a pirate,” the boy whispered. “This is fun.”
“Glad you’re enjoying it,” Eric whispered back. “Now, no more talking. He might hear us and wake up.”
James nodded and ran his pinched thumb and index finger across his mouth—the universal symbol for zipping his lips. He then turned back to the house, hand over his eyes like Captain Jack Sparrow surveying the sea.
Just to be sure, Eric also eyed the house, moving his gaze from the first floor all the way up to the widow’s walk on the roof. Every window was dark. The only noises were the drone of the nearby falls and Eric’s shovel as it invaded the ground once again.
That was followed by another noise—a slight crunch of steel on cardboard.
James heard it, too, and whirled around to face him. “What was that?”
“That,” Eric said, “is what we’re looking for.”
*
Carl was the one who found it. After digging for about ten minutes, he plunged his shovel into the dirt and struck something hard and impenetrable. The unexpected force of the collision made the shovel vibrate.
“You hit something,” Earl Morgan said, stating the obvious.
Carl dropped the shovel and shook the numbness out of his arms. “It seems that way.”
Something big and heavy, by the sound of it. As Earl used his shovel to clear away larger patches of dirt, Kat got down on her knees and used her hands to sweep away the rest. Running her grime-smeared palms over their find, she realized it was a child’s coffin.
Earl saw it, too, and said, “You told me there was no one buried down there.”
“There isn’t. At least, there shouldn’t be.”
The top half of the coffin was mostly intact, its lid firmly in place. The bottom half had succumbed to time and nature, swamping the interior with dirt. Leaning over the coffin’s upper lid, Kat had a flashback to the previous year. Opening all those coffins built by the Grim Reaper. Seeing all those gruesome surprises. She had thought those days were over.
Lifting the lid slightly, she tried to peek inside but couldn’t. There wasn’t enough light to see by. In order to get a good look, she had to open the entire coffin. Taking a deep breath, she yanked on the lid. It c
reaked just as loudly as the door leading to the Clarks’ bomb shelter earlier that day. But, just like that stubborn door, the lid eventually yielded.
The first thing Kat saw was dirt, which had flowed in from the breached bottom half. It filled the upper portion of the coffin, making the satin pillow that sat there look like a white island in a sea of brown. Resting on top of the pillow was an unmarked tin box.
It was in remarkably good shape for something that had spent the past four decades in the ground. Only a few blotches of rust marred the lid. When Kat picked it up, something inside rattled.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Carl asked.
It was certainly tempting. But what the box contained was personal. It had enough meaning to Maggie Olmstead that she chose to bury it in lieu of her son. If it was going to be opened, it needed to be done by family.
“No,” Kat said. “That’s a job for Eric.”
*
Sitting cross-legged on the damp grass, Eric rested the shoe box between his knees. The impact of the shovel had dented the lid slightly, but it was otherwise intact. That was a good thing. He would have been angry with himself had he damaged whatever was inside.
James stood behind him, looking excitedly over his shoulder. “Go on. Open it up.”
Removing the lid, Eric peered inside. James did, too, craning his neck for a better view. What they saw was both surprising and more than a little sad.
“What is it?” James asked.
“It’s a ferret,” Eric replied.
He gazed down at the animal that lay on the bottom of the box. Its fur was light brown, punctuated with bits of white. A band of black surrounded its closed eyes. The way it was positioned, curled into a tight ball in one of the box’s corners, made the animal look like it was sleeping. But Eric knew better.
James, still curious, asked, “What happened to it?”
“It died.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
The only thing Eric did know was that invading Glenn Stewart’s yard had been a bad idea. Clearly, the ferret had been his pet and he had braved the storm the night before because the animal, having just died, needed to be buried. Hence the late-night digging and the quick prayer when it was over. What Eric had spied from the window was nothing more than a lonely man saying good-bye to a beloved companion. Knowing that his suspicions had gotten the best of him made him sweat with shame.
