Noah's Rainy Day

by Sandra Brannan

  For some reason, nurses with needles aren’t fooled like most adults are by my pretending to be asleep. And my invisibility never works with them, even though it works with most adults. Maybe it’s because when I’m in the hospital, I’m not in my wheelchair. So maybe my wheelchair really is my invisibility cloak. When I am out with my family at Elitches, at the Denver Zoo, or at the Cherry Creek Mall, some people openly stare at me, study my body top to bottom. Mostly other kids, younger kids. But nearly everyone else either refuses to look at me or gives “pity glances” to my parents.

  Hello! I’m not stupid! And I’m not blind … well, not in one eye. Not entirely, anyway. I can see people who stare over my head, pretending they don’t see me. I see it all with my bionic eye, when I have my contact in. Like tonight. But they don’t see me.

  Maybe I am invisible in that chair?

  Except to children. Children—especially little ones—always see me, stare at my twisted limbs. I don’t mind at all. At least kids are honest. The funniest thing I ever heard was from a tiny tot a few years ago. The kid was wearing a cowboy hat and Levi jeans tucked into his cowboy boots. With his thumbs looped into his front pockets, the kid stepped up to me at the circus and asked his mom, “What’s the matter with this kid? Did he get kicked in the head by a horse or something?” His mom looked like she’d seen a ghost or something. I laughed until I got the hiccups. It was the funniest—and most honest—thing I’d ever heard a kid say. He’d probably seen an uncle or ranch hand all laid up and dazed looking just like I did, after a spill from a horse or from an accident during branding.

  I wish more grownups were that direct. Not all grownups ignore me. Some actually look me in the eye, smile, or offer a greeting like, “Great day, isn’t it?” or “Cool chair, bud” or “Nice haircut.” Those people don’t pretend I’m invisible.

  I wonder if people like that have seen Santa Claus?

  Tonight’s a good night to see Santa Claus. It’s cold outside, but it’s not snowing or windy. It’s quiet. I think I could hear the hooves of reindeer on the roof and the jingle of Santa’s bells. My room’s on the second floor, right under the roof where they’d land.

  I wonder if he’s already been here, because I can feel the sheets heavy near my feet, like a filled stocking was left at the foot of my bed. Santa always does that. Maybe I dozed off for a few minutes. Or maybe he put a spell on me. I think I missed him again.

  Every year Emma hangs our stockings over the fireplace and by morning—poof!—the stockings end up filled with candy and lying at the foot of our beds. I love the sound, smell, and feel of the candy when Emma grabs the stocking with the big letters NOAH running the length of it, then dumps everything out of the stocking on my bed. She describes every piece of candy and every toy Santa gave me while we wait for Mom and Dad to wake up on Christmas morning. She even holds the tangerine—Santa always sticks one in the stocking’s toe for me—close to my nose so I can smell it. Yum!

  I must have stayed awake hundreds of times trying to see him, only to fall asleep. Well, not hundreds. I’m only twelve. But a bunch. My mom says he’s magic and knows when I’m pretending to sleep and uses his magic to make my eyes heavy. Emma says Santa puts those thick, white gloves over kids’ mouths and noses like he’s squeezing the life out of the ones who try to trick him. She’s twisted like that and tries to scare younger kids. It just makes me laugh. I have proof that Emma’s version isn’t true, ’cause I’m alive to talk about all the times I’ve tried. But I can’t argue with my mom, since all those times I’ve tried, I haven’t seen him yet. I always fall asleep.

  Tonight’s different. I can just feel it.

  I agree with Emma, though, that although Santa Claus must be real, we’re not so sure about the elves. The way Emma figures it, no matter what drawing or picture or cartoon is created of Santa Claus, he’s the same—big belly, red clothes, and white beard. But the elves? Never the same. By everyone’s guess, they seem to be little people, but that’s where agreement stops. Especially with kids. Some drawings show elves with pointy ears, like aliens; some show them with big noses like Snow White’s dwarfs; and some show them as people just like us only smaller. So Emma guesses that there are no such things as elves and Santa does all this stuff by himself. She makes me laugh every time she says, “No elves, just Santa and the Mrs.”

  Maybe Santa was just here and he’s over at the neighbor’s house. If I turned my head just so, I could spot the sleigh and reindeer on his rooftop. Luckily, although Mom and Dad shut my door each night to give me peace and quiet, they leave the curtains open so I can watch outside. They used to shut them so it would stay dark in my room, hoping I’d sleep better. But I told Emma to tell them to please keep the curtains open. They listened to her that time and ever since, my curtains stay open.

  I’m glad my contact lens is still in place, my vision in one eye crystal clear. The snow is falling outside and the moonlight is bright. The stars aren’t so clear yet since too many people still have their lights on in the Denver area. Only on occasion can I see the sky filled with stars twinkling against the blackness. In these winter months, the times I do see stars seem to be really, really early in the morning when most people are tucked in their beds with their lights out. Dad tells me the more lights that are turned on, the less chance I have of seeing the stars. Just the brightest ones.

  Tonight I see a few.

  No sleigh or reindeer on the neighbor’s roof. But I doubt if Santa visits our neighbor Mr. Fletcher very much anyway. No one else seems to. He never talks with anyone. Keeps to himself, mostly. Mrs. Parrent, the neighbor on the other side of Mr. Fletcher, said that he’s grumpy. I believe Mrs. Parrent because she’d never lie to me. And I’ve never been invisible to Mrs. Parrent. I wish I could see Mrs. Parrent’s house, because I bet Santa Claus is on her roof. They’re probably good friends, Santa and she. Or maybe she’s friends with Mrs. Claus? That would make sense. I wonder if they bake cookies together?

  The light that flicked on in the window across from mine startled me. I had never seen anyone in that room at night before; it was a room Mr. Fletcher never used. Or at least I didn’t think so. But tonight, there was a light. And a shadow. Oh, wait! Maybe the shadow behind the thin blinds would be Santa Claus sneaking around in Mr. Fletcher’s house and I’d finally get to see him live and in person. He couldn’t magic-dust me from here, could he? At first I reached for my football pin to record Santa, but then I remembered it only picked up audio. That wouldn’t do any good. So I just watched. And waited.

  Fingers poked between the blinds and the shadow peered outside into our backyard or off to the mountains in the west. I wasn’t sure. The fingers weren’t gloved in white. They were bare. And tiny. The face studied the surroundings, looked around at everything in the neighborhood. The gap in the blinds slammed shut as the fingers pulled free. Before I could be sad that that was my only glimpse of Santa, the blinds flew open, the light of the room becoming a perfect halo around the black-haired person standing in the window.

  It wasn’t Santa.

  Nope, too tiny.

  It was a child.

  CHAPTER 24

  SNOW WAS FALLING, THE big flakes melting almost as quickly as they landed under the bright lights surrounding the outer parking lot. I stood in the cold air, flakes sticking to my eyelashes and chilling the tip of my nose, as I drank in the surreal scene around me. I’d guess the lot was a mile long and a half-mile wide. The snow had been plowed into a wall of snow toward the east and must have been at least twelve feet high the entire length of the lot. A row of light plants, presumably brought in by Chief Gates, dotted the edges of the blacktop to augment the parking area street lamps. Barricades were placed at all eight roads leading in and out of the remote lot from the west, and several police cars—some with their blue and red lights flashing in the dark skies—were parked on the busy street leading to and beyond the lot. No cars were parked in the outer lot and the only thing I could see, well into the darkness beyond,
covering every square inch of the asphalt lot, was an ocean of garbage.

  The police escort moved the barricade for me and told me to follow a second officer in my car to the priority grid I’d been asked to search. We had driven on a single lane skirting the far edge of the lot where garbage hadn’t been strewn, and as we approached the area, I noticed a half-dozen people handpicking through trash in an area that was cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape, approximately one hundred by two hundred feet.

  The priority grid.

  I was amazed by how organized and efficient the search had become, suddenly realizing the similarities shared by Streeter and Chief Gates. Tony. That would take some getting used to. Anyway, both men were dedicated, persistent, relentless experts in their jobs. Both had deep-rooted ethics and a strong sense of justice. No wonder they were close friends. Close enough to share the holidays.

  I glanced around to see if Jack was still out here and didn’t think so. I was admittedly avoiding him. I didn’t want to talk about his claim that the television was too loud, or his lie to me about sleeping through it. He most certainly hadn’t fallen asleep at home and missed the calls as he told Streeter. Unless he had a home in Kansas City I knew nothing about. Which was entirely possible. Maybe he wasn’t lying. To me or to Streeter.

  But why would he have a home in Denver and a home in Kansas City?

  Then it hit me, like the cold blast of winter to my face as I stepped out of my car. Maybe Jack had a family I didn’t know about. It would explain his mysterious absences and his infrequent visits while I was at Quantico. If he did have a family in Kansas City, did the home belong to his parents? That would make sense. Or did the home belong to a wife? That would make me the other woman.

  But why else would he have a home in Kansas City?

  “Well, this is it,” said the young officer approaching in the cold wind, shrugging into his padded police jacket and zipping it up to his chin.

  I wanted to ask him if he’d graduated from high school yet, his face was so boyish looking.

  Instead, I asked, “All this came from one bathroom?”

  He shook his head. “All this came from one section of the main terminal that we were told should take priority.”

  I thought about that, noticing for the first time the beer bottles, the discarded paper plates, the plastic utensils, and the empty plastic soda and water bottles. This was much, much more than a single bathroom’s garbage. This likely represented an entire chunk of the expansive main terminal’s trash.

  I sighed, my resolve slipping just a bit.

  “When you leave, back your car onto the field rather than jeopardize the integrity of the evidence,” the officer said, motioning toward the strewn garbage.

  “Evidence, of course,” I said, still amazed at how much garbage had been gathered in one day at DIA.

  I watched as the officer maneuvered the police cruiser in a two-point turn, reversing between two light plants onto the snow-covered field, and then forward in a tight curve back to the single lane of blacktop toward the barricade.

  I put on my winter coat, pulled on my boots, and put my ugly, winter-lined, red-and-black-checked hat on my head. Yes, fully equipped with earflaps. I unloaded Beulah, who seemed reluctant to be in the cold weather; she was shivering from the first moment I strapped on her harness. I ruffled her fur and told her how much I believed in her before putting on my gloves. I walked her to one corner of the priority grid and set the child’s backpack—the blue one with the yellow puppies, not the fifth grader’s camouflaged backpack I’d also thrown in the back of my vehicle—on the empty blacktop nearby. Beulah perked up, forgetting how cold she was.

  With the command, she went to work. Since we weren’t technically trailing a scent, but rather trying to find evidence that might be linked to the missing boy, I led Beulah up and down the grid, walking on the strewn garbage, repeating the single command, “Find.”

  The four leather dog boots that my brother Ole had loaned me during the last family pheasant hunt this fall fit Beulah perfectly and protected the pads of her paws from broken glass, discarded needles, anything sharp in the garbage. Beulah did as she was told, allowing me to walk her in a back and forth, crisscross motion over the grid, each time turning at the wall of snow and back to the strip of empty blacktop where I’d place the backpack in front of her again and repeat what I wanted her to do.

  I felt bad as we passed an occasional picker in the grid, knowing that Beulah and I were taking few precautions as we walked on top of the garbage, trampling the evidence. But it was part of the decision to use Beulah for faster results, knowing we may destroy something in the process.

  Weaving back and forth in about three-to four-foot-wide swaths allowed Beulah to search for a similar scent in the garbage, to determine if little Max’s belongings—or little Max—could be among the refuse.

  At what I estimated was near the halfway point of the grid’s length, I started to lose confidence that we’d find something. We’d already trampled on half the potential evidence from the priority grid, passing four of the six pickers, with no indication from Beulah that she was even working the scene any longer. Her nose, as always, was not on the ground, but instead high in the air where it always was when she trotted along, whether she was working or not.

  The difference when she was trailing a scent was that she charged with all her strength toward the target, pulling me along. Here, I simply hoped she’d recognize something that resembled the scent of the backpack as I led her along, amid rows and rows and rows of garbage, smelly, stinky garbage that thankfully had its stench muted by the freezing temperatures.

  I felt worried because Beulah’s thin coat was not designed to withstand the cold. Her breed was more accustomed to a warm climate and I found it difficult enough to get her to go outside to relieve herself. Instead, on the days it had been cold over the last couple of weeks, she had held it for as long as she could. I had requested an insulated, canine flak jacket for her, but it hadn’t been approved yet. She could sure use it tonight in this cold weather in the dangerous heap she was searching.

  When I’d done research at Quantico, I found that most search dogs in the mountain states were trained German shepherds or Malinois with thick coats to withstand the cold. But a bloodhound’s sense of smell was estimated to be sixty times greater than that of a German shepherd. I also discovered that bloodhounds were known to be the most docile and least likely to bite, which utterly confounded me every time I thought about Beulah at the Hanson cabin attacking the killer. Bloodhounds didn’t have that attack instinct or propensity to bite. Especially Beulah. I’d always wondered what sent her into attack mode during that moment. She had saved my life.

  Beulah’s loyalty to me had earned her special favors. I would search for the perfect apartment where she could have the indoor comforts and the ability to duck outside if need be. Until then, we’d enjoy the accommodations at the Hogarty house.

  After the fourteenth pass, I was trying to decide if we should continue or abandon the search and head back to Concourse B for the interviews with the Williamses. I glanced at my watch. Eleven o’clock. I’d only been out searching for a half hour. I’d finish up the priority grid, admit the search was a bust, and head back. On the sixteenth pass, just as we were nearing the end of the first hundred-foot length before hitting the twelve-foot snow wall and doubling back, Beulah lurched to my left, pulling me into the new area of garbage that hadn’t been searched. She lowered her nose a bit and stopped, looking back over her shoulder at me.

  “Beulah?” I asked, looking around the area to find what it was she’d detected.

  Luckily, a light plant stood at the edge of this side of the outer lot and the area was easy to scan. I looked around at my feet, around either side of Beulah and in front of her, digging in the garbage with the toe of my boot. Beulah shivered, her body trembling from the cold. For a minute while I poked and prodded through paper towels and discarded coffee cups and chunks of wasted, ro
tting food, I wondered if Beulah had simply bolted off course in defiance of this silly exercise I had her doing. After all, I’d felt the same way a few passes back, until I saw the corner of green poking up from beneath the layer of strewn garbage.

  Right in front of Beulah.

  “Way to go, girl,” I said, sensing immediately that this is what we were hoping to find.

  Just as I bent to pick up the green cloth, a voice called, “What’d she find?”

  I was so startled that I nearly fell on the layer of garbage we’d been searching. A hand grabbed me under my arm and kept me hovering until I regained my footing. I rose to a standing position, finding myself face-to-face with Jack Linwood.

  I said nothing.

  He smiled.

  “What did you two find?”

  I realized then that he was the sixth picker I hadn’t yet passed on my search with Beulah. He was dressed like the others—same blue parka, same navy stocking cap, and black gloves. He had been picking through the garbage, a task well beneath his pay grade, off by himself on a remote part of the priority grid. Helping out to speed up the investigation? Or waiting for me?

  “I … We …” I couldn’t find my words.

  For an instant, my mind said I shouldn’t answer him.

  After all, here he is out in the priority grid, picking through garbage on his own, blatantly disregarding Streeter’s instructions to oversee the operations for the priority grid, gather key evidence already collected, and help Dodson review videos.

  “What are you doing out here?” I managed.

  My breath hung in the cold air near his chest.

  He looked down at me. “Searching. Like you.”

  “But you were supposed to oversee the search efforts, not become a part of it.”

  His smile wavered as he looked over his shoulder toward the other pickers. “It’s Christmas Eve and five degrees out here. I don’t have a lot of people helping.” Something came over his face that I would have to describe as a grave seriousness. “We have to find the boy. We’re running out of time. And it’s very cold. He won’t survive in this cold if he is out there.”