M. Sellars - In the bleak midwinter

Once the waitress had disappeared again, Constance re-started the conversation. “So, what is it we need to talk about, Skip?”

Sheriff Carmichael used his fork to carve a trench into the side of the mashed potato volcano on his plate then watched in silence as the gravy began to spill out. It flowed down the side and began spreading across the plate toward the meatloaf.

Eventually, the weighty pause ended and he asked, “Exactly what did your file have to say about John Horace Colson?”

She shrugged. “The pertinent details. He had a record ranging from petty larceny to aggravated battery. There was also a conviction for sexual assault on a minor. He did just under a year in the adult correctional institution at Gumbo Flats for the latter. And, of course, there was the abduction and rape of Merrie Callahan, and then his subsequent murder.”

He finished chewing the hunk of the meatloaf he had stuffed into his mouth, then swallowed hard. After taking a sip of his coffee to wash it down, he repeated her words with a razor sharp edge of bitterness. “The abduction and rape of Merrie Callahan… Makes it sound like a made-for-TV movie from one of those damn cable channels.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied. “I’m just answering your question. I didn’t mean to sound callous.”

“I know, I know… Truth is, the story might as well be a movie. It sure as hell plays out like one… It just doesn’t have a very happy ending.” He nodded as he spoke, waving a hand and sighing in apology himself. After staring wordlessly at his plate, he finally laid the fork aside and combed his fingers through the snowy brush on his upper lip. When he finally started speaking again, there was a fire in his voice that seemed unquenchable.

“Thirty-five years ago Merrie Callahan was ten years old,” he began. “She was a bright, freckle-faced kid, with a mop of chestnut hair and a personality too big to fit her body.

“Late on the afternoon of December twenty-second, Merrie’s mother picked her up from school. It was the last day before Christmas break. They were Catholic, so she went to the Immaculate Conception school over in Mais. That’s the next town west of here. Since there wasn’t any bus service, Elizabeth-that’d be her mother-would shuttle her back and forth. On the way home she stopped over at Norris’s Market, just up the street here, to do some last minute grocery shopping for their big Christmas Eve dinner.” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder to indicate the direction.

“As the story goes, Merrie’s little sister, Rebecca, was pitching a fit about wanting to see Santa Claus and give him her list,” he continued. “Just so happened, Norris’s was pretty much right next door to the Five-and-Dime. Back then we had a little more by way of population, including kids, so they always had a Santa Claus. Usually it was Elvis Babbs, the manager’s husband, but he’d come down sick that year so they hired themselves a replacement for that last week before Christmas. Anyway, Merrie, being the sweetheart she was, volunteered to take her sister next door so that her mother could finish the shopping in peace.”

“And Colson was that Santa Claus,” Constance offered, nodding. “That was in the report.”

“Yeah…” Carmichael grunted. “He was going by John Carter, which we found out later was apparently a known alias of his. How that sonofabitch got hired I don’t know. Of course, back then there wasn’t a sex offender registry, so I guess he just flew under the radar… Anyhow, about twenty minutes or so after Merrie took her sister next door, a clerk came rushing over to Norris’s looking for Elizabeth. Rebecca was standing in the middle of the dime store in hysterics, and all they could get out of her was that Merrie had taken Santa away, or some such. Of course, as we know, it was the other way around, but sometimes five-year-olds see the world differently than the rest of us.

“At any rate, Merrie was nowhere to be found, and no one except Rebecca had seen a thing. Colson had supposedly gone on a break, but he never returned and couldn’t be found in the vicinity, so he instantly went to the top of the list of people we wanted to interview.”

“‘We?’” Constance asked.

“Yeah… ‘We.’ Thirty-five years ago I was a commissioned deputy in this very sheriff’s department,” he explained.

“So, you didn’t just retire here,” Constance said. “You’re originally from Hulis.”

He nodded.

“That wasn’t in our files,” she puzzled aloud.

“I told you we needed to talk.”

“Obviously. Go on.”

“Well, back then I was green. I’d been on the department for less than a year, and we’d never had anything like this happen in Hulis. If you had a kid go missing, you found ‘em at a friend’s house, or they were skipping school and just forgot to make sure they came home in time to not get caught. But I knew this was different almost right from the minute I arrived.

“I was the first one on the scene. Both Sheriff Morton and I figured it was a nuisance call when it came in, but I rushed on over anyway. The minute Missus Babbs started filling me in I had a gut feeling that there was more to it. Then, I found the shoe.”

“The shoe?”

He nodded. “Colson apparently took Merrie out the back, through the stockroom. Since he parked his car behind the store in the employee area, that made it even easier for him to slip away unnoticed. When I was searching for her, I noticed some things that led me in that direction, and when I went out onto the back lot, I found one of her shoes. That’s when I knew for sure she’d been taken.

“We set up road blocks and organized a search, of course. I think just about everyone living here at the time helped look for her. There were even some State Highway Patrol officers sent in. Tom-that was her dad-and Elizabeth were basket cases, understandably, what with their little girl being stolen like that.” He shook his head and stared out the window for a moment before continuing. “I still remember my mom going over and staying at their place to help out with Rebecca, and just to make sure they had someone there.

“Anyway, we searched the rest of that night, even through the snowstorm that was hitting us. We didn’t stop. The searching went on all day the next and into that night too. By then we’d found out about the alias and pulled a complete background check on Colson, so we knew about his record, including the sexual assault on a minor charge. I’m here to tell you that information didn’t do much for our spirits.”

“I understand.”

Sheriff Carmichael drew in a deep breath and then puffed his cheeks in a drawn out sigh. “There was no such thing as an Amber Alert, but we got the word out to all the agencies, including yours. And then there was the media. They jumped all over it too. Next day was Christmas Eve,” he said. “We figured by that point Colson had probably gone across the state line into Iowa, or maybe even east into Illinois, so APB’s went out in every direction. But we kept lookin’ around here anyway. We weren’t about to give up. Of course, we still couldn’t find a thing. Not a trace of either of them. So…later that afternoon I went home and caught a nap. I had a regular shift coming up and I’d been running on next to no sleep. That evening I headed in for my regular overnight duty shift. Next mornin’ is when I found her.”

“How?”

“Luck, I guess,” he replied. “I’d just been sittin’ there in the office and twiddlin’ my thumbs the whole damn night. Soon as my shift ended, I figured I’d go out and cruise. You know, have another look even if I was just covering old ground. I was out for an hour…maybe a bit more…and everything just started to catch up with me. It was pushin’ five A.M., so I decided to go on home and hit the sack. I was out on the west side of town. Turned a corner to loop around the block and there she was. Standin’ in the middle of the road.”