I slowly rewound, finding the girl’s photo on the front page of the August 2 issue. She was smiling, with a left front tooth missing and straight-cut bangs. It was obviously her family’s picture, provided to the newspaper.
The search continues for a three-year-old West Nashville girl missing since early Friday morning.
The parents of Amelia Shrank report they fear she had somehow wandered out of the house.
“They think she went looking for the family’s missing dog in the middle of the night,” said detective Ralph Fulton.
Shrank is the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Mark Shrank, who described their daughter as being three feet five inches, wearing a black-and-white nightgown and her hair in a long braid.
The Shranks’ home backs up to the woods off Woodmont Avenue.
Woodmont Avenue was just a few streets away from my home. And just like that, I remembered how I knew Amelia Shrank.
I knew I was starting to sweat. I popped out the canister, making sure to keep it close by, and inserted August 5, 1945. Instead of going directly to the obituaries, I slid to the front page. But it was page three news that told of missing hunter, Josh Stone.
A 32-year-old father of twins is believed to be dead somewhere in Richland Creek, Nashville police report.
Josh Stone was last seen by his wife, Janet, heading out to squirrel hunt in the early morning hours Friday.
Janet Stone found her husband’s shotgun several yards away from Richland Creek late yesterday evening, according to police.
“We can only surmise that he walked too close to the edge and fell into the creek,” said Captain Kris Kemper.
Police said Stone wasn’t a good swimmer, and are focusing on searching the waters for his body.
The location of the gun is well known to locals in that area, due to the grave marker placed there by the Shrank family ten years ago, to mark the last spot their daughter, Amelia, was seen.
“He may have stopped to pay his respects, and that’s why he left the gun there—because he thought he’d be right back,” Kemper said.
Police said they will resume their search of the banks of river Sunday morning.
“Because of all that rain we’ve been having, we’ve had a lot of erosion, and on top of that, the creek is fast-moving and swollen,” Kemper said. “If somebody who couldn’t swim good fell in, it could be a real bad deal. It’s been so hot this August, maybe he thought he could get a quick drink and the ground collapsed under him.”
Next to a photo of Stone and his wife was another picture of a child-sized gravestone with Amelia Shrank’s name engraved upon it. A gravestone I had discovered as a child, when I followed my father and those strange men into the woods.
I sat forward. Amelia Shrank had disappeared in August, as had Josh Stone.
Eighty years later, in the same month, William would vanish from the same woods.
ELEVEN
I could see the yellow from the edge of the trees. In those first terrible weeks, the crime-scene tape, marking the spot where Chris found Brian in a state of shock, had been hidden by the dense foliage. Now, with the leaves fallen and the branches covered in a thin layer of snow, the garish yellow was easily seen.
The realization of what afforded me the view brought bile to the back of my throat. I stood under the bell on the back of the shop, and I could feel its weight bearing down on me like a wicked headache. It was here, nearly fifty-five years ago, that I watched my father and those men enter the woods. From here, the place where William disappeared was only a short walk away.
Moving through the burr oaks was easier now than in the summer; low hanging branches easily snapped away in the gray afternoon light. The winter winds, or perhaps a confused and panicked deer, had torn one section of the tape apart.
Chris could be out here. He was known to wander with everything from rakes to hoes, clawing at the ground, desperate to find some sign of his youngest son, something to indicate what had happened to him.
I’d also seen Detective Strombino a few times in the woods. Once, I had gone out to ask him for an update. He only shook his head.
I doubted either would be out here today, for the conditions were miserable. Sleet spit from the sky, and the thin layer of icy snow crunched beneath my feet. I felt confident no one would see what I was about to do.
I set the cloth grocery bag on a flat stone and lifted out the glass terrarium. I had several of them in the house and in the shop. Even in the deepest of winter, I could have moss and ferns growing inside with just a little water and maintenance. The empty terrarium I carried was my smallest, but what it contained needed little space.
Taking one more look around, I walked through the cordoned-off area, holding the terrarium over my head. I looked up through the bottom to see the ten or so ladybugs I’d collected from inside the house crawling erratically.
I’d fully understood, then, why Daddy had dropped his glass lantern when he saw that his little girl had discovered him and those other men. If anyone now came up on me suddenly, I would be unable to explain what I was doing. The glass container certainly would have slipped from my fingers as well.
You’d warned—no, threatened—me not to come in these woods. What did you know? Were those strange men some of the first Researchers, who had come to these trees investigating the disappearance of Amelia Shrank and Josh Stone? Had they needed your permission to come out here? Had they explained what they were doing with those ladybugs? You weren’t a suspicious person, and you always wanted to help people. Did you think they were a bit eccentric? Why did you help them? What did you think you would find—
The popping sound came from above.
I lifted the terrarium even higher, and the beetles inside responded with even more ferocious swarming, slamming against the glass like little rocks, just as the ladybugs had done in the sconces on the front porch the night William disappeared.
I lowered the terrarium to my waist, and almost immediately, the ladybugs stopped their furious dance. I thought of Barbara’s words the night before: “That’s what ladybugs do when they arrive. We don’t know why. But it’s been documented in so many cases. Sometimes the beetles cover entire walls, crawling, like they’ve been driven insane.”
The terrarium was out of my hands and smashed against the ground before I could even comprehend what I’d done. The sound of the shattering echoed for a moment through the lonely trees. The anger and the irrationality felt addictive and I wished for more things to break. I thought, for a wild moment, I might run into the house to gather more of the glass canisters and then return to break them all around the site, like a christening of a cursed ship.
I wanted to scream to the heavens, curse whatever crossed the skies to hover here, taking my William and leaving behind some kind of lingering force that enraged the beetles. A ruthless calling card that no one would ever understand. I imagined trying to explain it to the police, to the FBI, to my husband, to Anne and Chris. You see, they obviously come close to the earth, and whatever they use to entrap people leaves behind an aura that also happens to aggravate beetles at a certain height, like a radio frequency that only insects can pick up. What’s that? No, I don’t take antipsychotics.