Steven Havill - Prolonged Exposure

Francis was as brave a three-year-old as I’d ever known, including four of my own at various times in the distant past. And his first reaction to this spot was to snuggle close. Whether or not Estelle had other reasons for bringing the youngster along, his behavior was certainly enough to feed her intuitions.

I took a deep breath and went down on one knee, the kid between me and Estelle. I heard a small click behind me and turned my head, to see Camille winding her camera.

“Oh, that’s nice,” I said, and she made a face.

“Tiffany Cole said that this is just about where they were sitting,” Estelle said. She stretched out an arm. “The truck was over on that side, between the fire and the two-track. That means that little Cody was playing over by those trees.” She stood up, keeping Francis’s hand in hers. “The truck tracks are clearly visible.” She walked slowly away from the fire circle, her son in tow.

After ten yards, she stopped and looked back at me. “This is a nice soft spot, under this grove of junipers,” she said.

“You said that the youngster was digging? Digging with a stick was how you put it.”

“Right. That’s what his mother said. Just on the other side of the truck. And there are plenty of marks around here, even after all the adult feet stamped things flat.” She swiveled at the waist, gazing off into the trees. Francis leaned against her, still tightly clutching her hand. “Come here, sir,” Estelle said, and beckoned me.

I trudged over and she indicated the ground under the nearest pinon, soft and inviting with the thick scatter of needles. It looked soft and inviting anyway. Before I had a chance to remind her that those cussed things could be as sharp as carpet tacks and as sticky as old gum on a hot sidewalk, she sat down, cross-legged, and patted the ground. “If I get down there, I’m going to need a crane to pick me back up,” I said.

“It’s a good place to rest,” Estelle said. I glanced back at the Blazer. Camille was rummaging in her voluminous handbag, no doubt for more film. I took the plunge before she could record the episode on film.

Estelle encircled her son at the waist, hugging him close. As she talked to me, her breath whispered right beside the child’s ear.

“Suppose he’s playing right here. This is the only spot that makes sense, and this is where his mother remembers him being.” She lifted one of Francis’s arms as if he were a rag doll and pointed with it off to the left, past the Blazer. The youngster giggled and squirmed closer. “That’s the direction of the fire.” She swung Francis’s arm and pointed off into the woods. “In the dark, it would be just about impossible to walk in that direction.”

I ducked my head and looked past them at the dense limb wood. Both pinon and juniper were the kind of evergreens that went for the tender parts of the body, with sharp prongs, wild shapes, and lots of dead limb wood to cut, grab, and scrape.

“He wouldn’t have gone far, that’s for sure.”

Estelle nodded, hugging Francis. “That’s for sure.” She lifted the kid’s arm once more, pointing in the direction we’d come in the Blazer.

“Now, that way, it’s easy walking,” she said, bending her head close to her son’s. “Look way down the road, hijo . Do you see where we turned the corner by those trees? See where the fence comes in and then crosses the road?” Francis nodded. The fence was no more than thirty yards away.

Estelle pushed her jacket cuff back and held up her watch. “Show padrino how fast you can run down to the fence and back.”

Francis straightened up and turned to look at me, his dark eyes big and round, as if I’d made the strange request, or at least as if it was my fault. “Better him than me,” I muttered, and Francis heard me.

He held out a tiny hand, as if his thirty-five pounds could hoist my two hundred-plus to my feet. I grinned, seeing the same gesture mirrored that his mother had used with him earlier.

“You go,” I said. “You’ll be there and back before I even get up.” He didn’t buy that one. I turned my head to see what Camille was doing. She was reloading the camera, forehead furrowed in concentration. “Camille, take a picture of Francis.”

That was a miscalculation. Showing off his track-and-field skills wasn’t on the youngster’s agenda, especially in front of a camera. He said something in Spanish and collapsed against his mother’s knees, head down behind, out of sight. Estelle rubbed his back. I found it hard to believe that this was the same perpetual-motion machine whose standard speed setting at home was set at “Cyclone.”

“I don’t think so, sir.” She craned her neck, looking up at the canopy of contorted branches. “Especially in the dark. I can’t imagine him straying away from the campfire, especially if there was something going on, like music. Fire attracts. Children can’t ignore it. I’m sure you’ve seen the looks on kids’ faces when they’re staring into a bonfire. Every spark is a fascination.”

Francis pushed himself up and leaned against her knees. He regarded me soberly; then I saw his eyes shift. He giggled and ducked his head a fraction of a second before I heard the click of Camille’s camera.

“Estelle’s right, Dad,” she said.

“I’m not arguing,” I said. “It’s just that we don’t know everything that went on that night. For instance, if the fire had been burning for a couple of hours, the youngster might have just gotten bored and wandered off.”

“At that time of day? Wandered into the dark? I don’t think so. He’d have just gone to sleep,” Camille said.

“Maybe.” I turned and looked at Estelle. “What are you thinking?”

She frowned. “The easiest thing that could have happened is that someone picked him up.”

“How is that easy? It would be impossible not to hear another vehicle.”

“Unless they parked down out of the trees, maybe even down by the cattle guard where Sheriff Holman was.”

“All right, suppose they did that,” I said. “They sneak through the trees, or up the two-track, trip over the Cole youngster in the dark-he’s playing fifteen feet from his mom. He’s not going to utter a word?”

“Sneak?” Camille said. She stood in front of us, camera in one hand, other hand on her hip. She surveyed the stunted, gnarled caricatures of trees-little trolls compared with the towering hickories, oaks, maples, fir, and spruce of Michigan. “Cloudy as it’s been, it would have been black as pitch up here at night. And the moon’s just past quarter now anyway, even if the clouds did break. How is anyone going to sneak?”

“It’s not hard.” I looked at Estelle. Both she and I had spent more than our share of time picking our way one cautious step after another over country far rougher than this. “They could even use a light here. With the family sitting by a fire, with their backs to the camper, and the intruder’s approach behind the vehicle, they wouldn’t notice a flashlight anyway, especially if the beam was kept low.”

“I don’t think so, Dad. Someone coming to take the child just doesn’t make sense. In the first place, there’s a larger question, even if you allow that someone wanted the child badly enough to risk kidnapping. How did they know the family was camping here?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know.”

Camille crouched down beside me, balancing herself with one hand on my shoulder. “I think it’s something simple.”

“Like what?”

She stood up and pointed. “I think he’s somewhere close. Where’s the edge? The mesa edge?”

“About fifty yards straight ahead,” I said. “Or even less.”

“I’d be willing to bet that he’s somewhere within a hundred-yard radius of this campsite.”