“What did you…,” Ian began.
Mike shook his head. “Give me a little bit, okay?”
Ian nodded and watched Mike glide away from him and deal with the emotions from his find. He turned back to the woods and saw the boys were still busy chasing each other in the early dawn light. His heart was lightened to see that the human spirit was indomitable and could survive even the torture these young boys had experienced.
He made his way through the snow, brush and trees to where they were exploring some tracks in the snow.
“It’s probably a bear,” Ronny said. “Those look like bear tracks.”
“We don’t
got
bears around here,” Timmy said. “But it could be a coyote. We got lots of those.”
“Cool,” Ronny responded. “Should we track it down?”
Timmy nodded, his eyes sparkling with excitement. “Sure, maybe we could catch him.”
“Well, before you go out on your safari, I wanted to let you know that I’m heading back to Mary’s place,” Ian said. “Timmy, do you want to bring Ronny back there with you when you’re done?”
Timmy nodded. “Yeah, I can do that.”
He turned to Ronny. “You’ll like Mary’s house, she’s got Batman, the movie, on her TV.”
“Cool,” Ronny agreed.
“Aye, she’d be happy to have you come,” Ian said. “But, I’m thinking that maybe you shouldn’t bring Ronny over to see Maggie.”
“Yeah,” Timmy nodded in agreement, having enough youthful wisdom to understand Ronny’s appearance would disturb Maggie. “Besides, she’ll be at school.”
Ian nodded. “That’s true enough,” he said. “So, I’ll see you when you’re done hunting for wild beasts.”
He started to walk away, but then thought better of it and turned. “And don’t you be bringing any of them home with you.”
The boys laughed and glided away into the woods.
Ian reached his car after a ten minute walked and was happy to turn it on and feel the heat beginning to circulate. He reached over; picked up the phone he had left on the passenger seat and read Mary’s text. “Well then, Mary,” he said to himself. “It will be interesting to see who’s had the more exciting morning.”
Mary held her flashlight in front of her and crossed from the front hallway into the kitchen. The black and white linoleum tiled floor was chipped and faded. A Formica kitchen table, grey with red and chrome trim, stood in the middle of the room flanked with four matching red vinyl chairs. The only item on the table was a white ceramic milk pitcher, with red flowers painted on the side, holding a bouquet of dust-laden silk roses.
“Emil bought that for me,” the soft, shaky voice said, “on the Mother’s Day before they took him away.”
Mary turned towards the voice and saw the petite, elderly ghost standing next to the stove on the other side of the room. She was wearing a house dress in turquoise blue that dwarfed her size and reached down below her calves.
“Mrs. Forrest?” Mary asked.
The ghost raised tired eyes to Mary and nodded. “Are you going to call me the mother of a child killer too?” she asked, pain and loneliness evident in her face.
Shaking her head, Mary moved closer. “No, I just met with Emil at the prison,” she explained. “I don’t think he did it at all. I think he was framed.”
Fire sparked in the ghost’s eyes and she nodded her head decisively. “Well, finally, someone with a head on their shoulders,” she said. “And now, what are you going to do about it?”
Mary smiled. “Emil mentioned a pair of swum trunks he found on the day they arrested him,” she said. “There are new, more advanced ways to test for DNA now. I was hoping I could find the trunks and have them tested.”
“Tested for what?” Mrs. Forrest asked.
“Well, if Timmy was wearing the trunks when he was murdered,” she said, pausing for a moment and forcing herself not to bring up a visual image of the crime. “We might be able to find the DNA of the murderer.”
Mrs. Forrest nodded her head. “That’s a smart move,” she said. “That’s what they should have done in the first place. Anyone with eyes in their head and a brain in their skull should have been able to see my Emil could have never killed those boys. He just didn’t have it in him.”
“What do you mean?”
She floated across the room and sat down at the table, “Sit down, honey,” she said. “This might take a little while.”
Mary sat across from her.
“When Emil was little, we, Mr. Forrest and I, noticed some things that weren’t quite right,” she said. “He was a little slower than the other children, but he was always happy and loving, so we didn’t care. Then we figured out that his nose didn’t work very well. Emil couldn’t smell worth a darn. Which I initially thought was very strange, because my sense of smell is very sensitive. But, once again, it just seemed to be a quirk of nature, so we accepted it.”
She leaned back in her chair and let her gaze wander around the room. “Then, as he got a little older, we discovered he was color blind,” she shook her head. “I have to admit, I was more concerned than his father. I figured the world could be dangerous for a little boy who couldn’t smell and couldn’t see color. How could he tell if something was glowing hot?”
She shook her head and then met Mary’s eyes. “Mr. Forrest told me I was coddling the boy. Not letting him become a man. So when I began to notice, later, that Emil didn’t seem to be…maturing, I paid no mind to it. I didn’t want Mr. Forrest to blame me.”
“What do you mean by maturing?” Mary asked.
“When all the other boys started becoming men, you know, their bodies started to change…well, Emil stayed like a child.”
“He didn’t go into puberty?” Mary asked.
Mrs. Forrest nodded. “He just stayed sweet, unaware Emil,” she replied.
“Weren’t until Mr. Forrest passed that I finally got the nerve to bring Emil to a specialist.
We had to drive up to Madison, Wisconsin, and go to the University Hospital up there.”
“And what did the specialist say?” Mary asked.
“Oh, he told me a bunch of things,” she said. “They did all kinds of tests on Emil and they told me all sorts of things about Emil’s mental acuity. But, the only thing that’s important here is that Emil had a condition called Kallmann Syndrome.”
“Kallmann Syndrome?” Mary repeated.
“It’s a condition that causes a boy to never become a man,” she said. “There’s drugs and stuff to help with it. But, because it seemed almost like a blessing from heaven, considering Emil’s other limitations, I decided not to give him the medications for it.”
Mary sat up straight in her chair. “So, you’re telling me that Emil had a medical condition that would have prevented him from abusing those boys?”
She nodded. “He couldn’t have done it,” she said. “I kept telling them, he couldn’t have done it. But no one would listen to me.”
Mary shook her head. “Why? Why wouldn’t they listen?”
“Because they were angry and hurt and someone did a real good job of setting my poor Emil up. They confused my boy and got him to confess.”
Mary stood up, the chair sliding behind her on the tile floor. “Do you have the name of the doctor that diagnosed him?” she asked.
Mrs. Forrest smiled. “I do, I have the doctor’s name and I have copies of the reports in a strong box in the attic,” she said. “And that’s where I hid the swim trunks. I figured someday, someone would come and help me get my Emil out of jail.”
“I’m sorry it took so long,” Mary said.
“No matter, long as you’re here now.”
Mary followed Emil’s mother up a narrow staircase in the corner of the kitchen to the back of the second floor. The steps were tall and narrow and not much more than a yard wide.
“Servant’s staircase,” Mrs. Forrest explained to Mary, as they made their way upwards in the confined space.
She pushed open a door and they stepped out onto the second level of the house. The wooden floors were covered with braided rag rugs and the walls were painted eggshell white. Mary moved the flashlight’s beam slowly across the area. There were six rooms that opened into the hallway and she could see as the light briefly illuminated each one, that they were filled with boxes.
Mrs. Forrest turned back to her and smiled apologetically. “I’ve always had a hard time throwing anything away,” she admitted. “I was a child during the Depression and we never had much, so it always seemed a sin to throw away something that might be useful someday.”
She glided across the floor and led Mary to a doorway in the center of the hall. Mary opened it to find a set of stairs that led to the attic. She followed Mrs. Forrest up the stairs, brushing cobwebs away with the body of the flashlight as she traveled.
The attic was also filled with boxes, cast off pieces of furniture, wooden trunks and, at the very back, an old-fashioned safe.
“It’s in there,” Mrs. Forrest said with a smile.
“It’s the safest place I know,” she added with a giggle.
The ghost made a straight line to the back of the attic, gliding through the barriers along the way. It took Mary a little longer as she searched for a clear path and finally ended up climbing over furniture and piles of boxes.
Mrs. Forrest waited patiently for Mary to join her. “I was never good at opening this thing up,” she said, “And even worse now that I’m dead.”
“I can do it for you,” Mary volunteered, “What’s the combination.”
A few moments later the door of the safe swung open. Mary was surprised to see the safe was nearly empty. She moved forward and lifted up a paper sack. She opened it and looked inside to see some blue and red material.
“The swim trunks,” Mrs. Forrest said.
Mary closed the sack and stuffed it inside her coat for safe-keeping. Then she lifted the only remaining items in the large cavity of the safe.
Two large manila envelopes.
She opened the first and saw it contained paperwork from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Hospital.
“That will prove my Emil couldn’t do it,” Mrs. Forrest explained.
Mary opened the other envelope. Inside was a family photo of a younger Mrs. Forrest, her husband and a toddler on his lap.
“That’s when Emil was three,” Mrs. Forrest said, her eyes overflowing with tears, as she studied the photo in Mary’s hand. “We were all so happy then.”
She turned and looked up to meet Mary’s eyes. “After so many years of saving things, I realized that this picture and the evidence to free my son were the only things that had any value in my life.”
“Oh, Mrs. Forrest, I promise…” Mary began.
“Wait!” Mrs. Forrest exclaimed, her eyes getting wide.
She glided across the room and peered out the small window in the eaves of the attic. “Oh, child, I am so sorry,” she said, distress and regret in her voice.
“What?” Mary asked, stuffing the other items into her coat and trying to make her way across the room.
Then she stopped in her tracks. She didn’t have to look out the window, she could smell it. Acrid smoke was making its way into the attic in wisps of grey. The house was on fire.
“Well crap,” Mary muttered as she looked around the room, searching for something to help her escape.
Mrs. Forrest glided back across the room. “I don’t want to be a bother dear, but remember how I said my sense of smell was remarkable?”
Mary nodded quickly.
“I do believe I sense the smell of natural gas in the air,” she said.
“Crap, again,” she repeated, climbing over the boxes and looking out the window Mrs. Forrest had just vacated. She could see dark, angry smoke pouring out of the front windows on the first floor. She turned back to Mrs. Forrest.
“What things use gas in your house?”
“Just the stove and the furnace,” she answered.
“Where’s the furnace located?” Mary asked.
“The furnace is in the basement, under the kitchen in the back of the house.”
Mary glanced back out the window; the back of the house was not engulfed by flames yet. “Okay, well, I have a few minutes,” she said, “before I’m blown to bits. Is there any way to get out of the house from the attic?”
Mrs. Forrest thought for a moment, brightened and then pointed to a small hatch in the ceiling. “You could use the roof access to get up on the roof,” she suggested.