Even without seeing his eyes, the sheriff would never forget the look on Ambrose’s face. It began as confusion spreading across his forehead, then blossomed into a white-hot rage. The sheriff had been the bearer of bad news to many families over the years. These were always the hardest words to speak. He would come back to this old grey building after seeing a single mother in the Hill District. Or a nice wealthy couple in Squirrel Hill. And the reaction was always the same. That mixture of disbelief, grief, guilt, and despair.
Except for the girl with the painted nails. Her mother was dead.
The sheriff met Carl in the coffee shop in the lobby of the grey building to collect the lock of David’s hair, get the official paperwork, and arrange for the body to be sent to the funeral parlor. They got their favorite booth. The one underneath the picture of the owner shaking hands with Steelers legend Terry Bradshaw. The first time they sat under that picture, Carl spent lunch telling him about this hot Catholic girl he met at Metropol down on the Strip. And they laughed about girls the way that young men always do (and older men never do). The autograph was faded now, along with the color, and the hot girl Carl met at Metropol was now the overweight Catholic woman who had given him three kids and made his life a happy, living hell. The sheriff smiled as he listened to Carl complain about spending another Christmas with his mother-in-law in Homestead.
“The woman can make a mean mushroom soup, though. You wanna join us?” Carl asked.
“No, thanks. Too much to do.”
“Come on. You worked all the way through Thanksgiving. Don’t be alone on Christmas again.”
The sheriff lied and said he had been invited to one of his deputies’ houses. He thanked his old friend, then got back to his car, already covered with another inch of snow.
Where was it all coming from?
As he started the car and let the defrosters clear the windshield, his mind settled back. He looked at the evidence bag, the lock of hair, and the official report before putting it to rest in the passenger seat.
Then, he started driving.
He knew where he was going. He did this every time he came downtown. He was going to drive past the hospital where he took the girl with the painted nails. Even with the blizzard and the bad roads. He would drive past it because he promised God that he would. His logical brain knew that it didn’t make any difference whether he parked in front of Mercy Hospital or looked at that Charlie Brown tree in the front or not. But in a rare moment of grief, he had made a deal with God that if he did that, the girl with the painted nails would be in Heaven. So, he was going to do this forever. If he couldn’t save her life, at least he could save her soul. He owed her that much.
He parked in front of Mercy Hospital. He stared at that tree for the better part of an hour. The tailpipe making clouds in the cold air. The windshield wiper and defroster turning fat snowflakes into streaks of water. He reached over and grabbed David Olson’s report from the seat next to the lock of the boy’s hair.
Who left the baby carriage on the porch?
The question stuck in the sheriff’s mind like a fly in a jar. Somebody planned all this. Someone went through a lot of trouble to wipe down a baby carriage and leave it out there with no prints. This wasn’t the work of some kids playing a prank. This was the work of a person (or persons) who took David to do horrible things to him.
Ambrose said there was no one he suspected. No neighbors. No teachers. No parents of friends, because David didn’t have any friends. He was just a weird, lonely kid who spent his time reading in the library. Back then, the polite people in the neighborhood called him “off” or “special,” or “touched” if their roots were Southern. Today, David might have been diagnosed anywhere from “on the spectrum” to “schizophrenic,” depending upon the doctor. Whatever his diagnosis would have been, it didn’t provide the one thing the sheriff needed to solve the case.
A motive.
David Olson wasn’t found in a ditch. He wasn’t at the bottom