The Snow Angel
Authors: Michael Graham
Copyright © 2006 by Michael Graham
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for book reviews,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover Design: Darci Slaten
Cover Photos: Darren Clark
Author Photo: Brian Pietro
Book Design: Darci Slaten
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS COPYRIGHT
REGISTRATION NUMBER: Txu1-282-354
FIRST EDITION
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
2006
Schaffner Press, Inc.
Tucson, Arizona
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Graham, Michael (Michael A.)
  The snow angel : a novel / by Michael Graham. -- 1st ed.
        p. cm.
  ISBN-13: 978-0-9710598-5-6 (alk. paper)
  ISBN-10: 0-9710598-5-3 (alk. paper)
 1. Racially mixed childrenâFiction. 2. Kidnapping victimsâFiction. I. Title.
PS3607.R345S66 2006
813'.6--dc22
2006030309
FOR GAIL, my wife and best friend,
who believed in me and made me believe.
IN MEMORY OFâ¦
MARY ALICE GRAHAM, my mother;
MRS. LUCILLE JONES, who taught
a little white boy about the pain of bigotry;
DAVID HAMMERLE, a gentle policeman
who died much too young;
and PATRICK J. HOWARD,
who carried the message that saved my life.
I
t snowed hard that day, the Sunday before Christmas, the first serious snowfall we got that year. After a dry summer and autumn, we needed it for sure.
Still, no one was happy with the lousy weather, except maybe the city's children. This first snow was the kind kids pray forâheavy and crunchy, perfect for snowballs and snowmen. “Good-packing,” that was the term for it. I'll never forget the creaking of all that good-packing snow under our boots that raw December day.
Nor will I forget the snow angel, not as long as I live. None of us will.
Before his abduction, Darryl Childress had been playing alone in his family's expansive yard, which covered a full acre. He was dressed in blue cold-weather gear and red gloves. The snow was already knee-deep on his seven-year-old legs.
The brick ranch-style family house was in a remote section of the Seventeenth Precinct, an upper-middle-class racially integrated neighborhood out near the city limits. The residence stood by itself in a cul-de-sac adjoining a stand of woodsâmaple and pine, mostly. It was only partially visible from the street. There was a large wreath on the door and the house was decorated with Christmas lights, Santas and oversized candy canes.
Darryl Childress was something of a local celebrity. He was a mixed-race kid well known to the city's children and their parents due to numerous local television commercials in which he had appeared. He was a born charmer. There never was a hint of danger in the boy's life. So that Sunday, believing he was safe, his parents had given him permission to play outside while they dressed for church.
First, Darryl went to the back yard. Then, at some point, he lay on his back, facing the sky. Maybe he stuck out his tongue to catch snowflakes, the way kids do. We do know that he moved his arms up and down at his sides, laterally, as if flying. In good-packing snow, this leaves the impression of a person with wingsâan angel. Darryl did a good job of it.
Then, judging by his tracks, he walked around the north side of the house and out into the front yard. There he turned his attention to building a snowman, locating it on the median strip between the sidewalk and the street. Being a natural ham, he might have picked this spot so passersby
would be sure to notice his handiwork.
Darryl had just begun rolling the first snowball to make the snowman's body when two male suspects, one white and one black, pulled up in a late-model sedan with tinted windows, later determined to be a gray Chevrolet Malibu. The men got out of the car and engaged the boy in conversation. How long they talked is anyone's guess.
Inside the house, Darryl's mother, Louise, happened to walk past the Christmas tree in the front window. She glanced outside just in time to see the two strangers pull her only child into the front seat of the car.
Shrieking, she ran outside in a desperate race to get to her son. Skidding across the snow-covered lawn, she slipped and fell twice, the second time landing on her face. She looked up to see the Chevrolet fishtailing on the ice as it sped away with the boy inside.
Responding to his wife's screams, Stephen Childress rushed out into the cold, still in his bathrobe. He ran to her as the car rounded a corner and disappeared. He knelt down next to her in the snow and held her tight. Louise screamed and screamed. Helpless, Stephen looked heavenward, unable to believe that something this bad was really happening.
By the time the first patrol car pulled up, five minutes after the 911 call, the snow had momentarily stopped. In fact, just for a little while, the sun broke through, causing the snow to glisten.
My partner and I arrived minutes later, young bluesuits whose only involvement was to help secure the scene. One of the first things we noticed was a child's red glove lying near the curb, next to some tire tracks where another officer was already posted. Our sergeant sent us around back to guard the snow angel until the crime lab and photographers showed up. I remember being struck by how small the angel looked.
Half an hour later, a north wind picked up again and brought more black clouds. Soon heavy snow was falling again, blowing in our faces. We got the pictures okay, but the forensics search was hurried in an attempt to beat the weather. Soon the snow angel was obliterated. That's the kind of day it was.
Like just about every other cop who was there that Sunday, I was haunted by memories of the red glove and the snow angel. So five years later, after I left police work to become a writer, I decided to look up the detectives who had handled this crime. Perhaps there was some kind of a follow-up story, something of human interest.
To my great surprise, I learned that in fact something good had come of it all, something very good indeed. One might even call it a miracle.
1023 hours
R
alph Kane sat on the edge of his bed in a ratty east-end rooming house, contemplating the Beretta in his hand. KaneâDetective III, badge number 2342, forty-seven years of age, sixteen years in Organized Crime Intelligenceâwas trying to settle on the best way to kill himself.
He was a short man with a graying military haircut, wiry, without a trace of fat. His right cheek bore the scar of an ancient knife wound. His constantly-moving eyes missed nothing.
Outside the window, heavy snow was falling. Across the street a Christmas tree in the upper window of a two-flat blinked on and off, mocking him. From a church down the street a ridiculous bell pealed out “Joy to the World.”
Kane considered the options. Whenever a cop took himself out, he did it with a gun. That was the code, show the world you have balls.
But Kane had a problem with that. A nine-millimeter leaves a large exit wound, and someone would have to deal with the mess. Besides, being alone in a room like this, it was possible that no one would hear the shot. Days could go by before anyone discovered him. As much as he disliked his landlady, he couldn't do that to her.
Of course, if he capped himself somewhere else, a stranger might find himâmaybe even some little kid. Kane recalled cases where a child was the first one to come across a gunshot death. That's a terrible thing to do to an innocent.
Systematically, he considered other methods. He rejected the spectacular waysâjumping from a high building, running in front of a train, driving into an expressway overpass. People who resorted to such methods, he believed, were selfish exhibitionists. An average citizen who witnesses something like that is troubled by the memory for life. Kane's fight was with himself, not strangers.
Poisoning was too complicated, requiring too much preparation and knowledge of chemistry. Kane never worked Homicide, so he wasn't up on such things. He might screw it up, end up a brain-damaged invalid.
Ditto a pill overdose or drowning. Besides, the river was too cold this time of the year. Carbon monoxide was a good way, but he had no access to a private garage. Hanging was too messy, and there was the
same problem with finding the right location.
Kane lay the gun down.
He crossed the room to his portable refrigerator and opened another beer. Then, automatically, he turned on the radio. Hearing “The Little Drummer Boy,” he snapped it back off. He took a pull off the beer, then started to pace about the small room.
He thought back to the times past when he had considered suicide, all the times he had held back. Cowardice, that was his secret shame. Never mind the medals, the bravery citations. He was yellow, just like his old man had always said.
He thought about his only child, Pete, dead from a drug overdose at seventeen, six years ago. And his ex-wife, Jennie, now drinking herself stupid in a little shack in northern Michigan. What could he have done to change things for them?
Not only was Kane a coward, he was a guilty coward. A fresh wave of self-loathing washed over him. He picked up the remote television control and snapped it on. A preacher, in love with his own voice, droned on about the “true meaning of Christmas,” now just five days away.
He glared at the television in disgust.
What planet does this pious prick live on? How can a rational human being believe that loving-God shit? Assholes like him should spend a couple of years in some war zone. Pick one.
Kane muted the television, walked to the window and looked out at the street. Already his department car, a green Pontiac, was covered with snow.
There,
Kane decided.
That's where I'll do it, inside the car. Locked.
The more he considered the matter, the more he realized that the unmarked police car was the perfect place to die. A forty-five-degree angle up into the mouth would drive the slug through the car roof, not out the back window where it could hurt someone down the street. Locking the doors would prevent some passing dirtbag from stealing the Beretta. He'd radio for assistance just before he capped off the round. That way, the person who found him would be a fellow cop.