The cab dropped me at the Hyatt across the river from the Tribune. I couldn't check in until three, so I left my bag with the beuman and went to the pay phones. After fumbling with the phone book I called the number for CPD's Area Three Violent Crimes and asked for Detective Lawrence Washington. When he answered, I hung up. I just wanted to locate him, make sure he was there. My experience with cops as a reporter had always been not to make appointments. If you did, all you were doing was giving them a specific place to avoid and the exact time to avoid it. Most didn't like talking to reporters, the majority didn't like even being seen with reporters. And the few that did you had to be cautious of. So you had to sneak up on them.

It was a game.

I checked my watch after hanging up. Almost noon. I had twenty hours left. My flight to Dulles left at eight the next morning.

Outside the hotel I grabbed a cab and told the driver to turn up the heat and take me to Belmont and Western by way of Lincoln Park. On the way I'd take in the spot where the Smathers boy had been found. It was a year since his body had been discovered. My thought was that the spot, if I could find it, would look almost exactly as it did on that day. I opened my satchel, booted the computer and pulled up the Tribune clips I'd downloaded the night before in the Rocky's library. I scrolled through the stories on the Smathers case until I found the paragraph describing the discovery of the body by a zoo docent cutting through the park on the way from his girlfriend's apartment. The boy had been found in a snow-wvered clearing where the Italian-American League's bocce tournaments were held in the summer. The story said the clearing off Clark near Wisconsin was within sight of the red barn, which was part of the city's farm in the zoo.

Traffic was light and we were in the park within ten minutes. I told the driver to cut over to Clark and to pull to the side when we got to Wisconsin.

The snow on the field was fresh and there were only a few tracks across it. It also stood about three inches high on the boards of the benches along the walkway. This area of the park seemed completely deserted. I got out of the cab and walked into the clearing, not expecting anything but in a way expecting something. I didn't know exactly what.

Maybe just a feeling. Halfway across I came upon a grouping of tracks in the snow that cut across my intended path from left to right. I crossed these and came upon another grouping heading right to left, the party having headed back the way it had come. Kids, I thought. Maybe going to the zoo. if it was open. I looked toward the red barn and that was when I noticed the flowers at the base of a towering oak twenty yards away.