| On November 11th, 2000, it was a Wednesday night and my partner, John Taggert, and myself, Nicole Grant, were patrolling the dark, quiet suburban streets expecting an uneventful night. We are police officers in Loredo, Colorado; a small town with a population of around 20,000. Loredo is normally a quiet beat to work. An exciting night usually includes a domestic disturbance; normally mommy is fighting with little Jimmy for staying out past his curfew. This particular November night started out quiet and it promised to be a long, dull shift of endless driving and speed traps. Little did we know what the evening had in store for us. It was 11:58pm and we were patrolling south on Fifth Avenue. John was driving while I was scanning the streets for activity. It was a ghostly street, mostly old turn of the century houses abandoned years ago. I noticed a house on the west side of the road that I had never noticed before. I wasn't sure why I had never noticed it, but for some unexplainable reason it seemed to be more prominent tonight. The front door to the house was standing wide open, all the lights in the house were ablaze, and the driver�s door had been left open to the old '61 Buick in the driveway. Call is gut instinct, but something in this picture just didn't seem right. Seconds later we heard a scream. As John slammed the brakes, we tried to determine were the scream was coming from, and it seemed to originate from that very house. It was exactly midnight when we heard the scream. John raced the patrol car up the short driveway and stopped just inches behind the Buick. We both ran to the front door, our weapons in hand, and listened for any further noises. Now the house was completely quiet, except for the slightest little whimper. I motioned to John, who was on the other side of the door from me, and he knocked on the door and announced us. "Loredo Police! Is everything alright?" John called out. But nobody answered. We were both peering inside but saw nothing out of the ordinary. "Loredo Police! Anybody home?" I repeated. Still no answer. I slowly opened the front door, weapon drawn, and I stepped inside with John right behind me. The front room seemed to be the living room, the TV was an old cabinet style that I hadn't seen since I was a kid. The entire decor seemed the type you would find in Grandma's house. There were beer bottles all over the living room, on the end tables, the couch, and the floor. We both continued to call out to the occupants of the house. "Hello?" John called as he slowly, cautiously walked through the house. "John, sshhh." I said as I thought I heard the faint whimper again. I followed it through the hallway, John following behind me. I checked the first room on the right, a bedroom, to no avail. Then continued down the hallway, the next room on the left seemed to be a little playroom. The whimper got closer. It sounded as if I child was quietly crying. I slowly stepped inside the playroom, and noticed a set of tiny feet with red nail polish sticking out from underneath the closet door. John turned towards the doorway and noticed her too. I then holstered my revolver and slowly walked closer to the closet. "Hello? My name is Officer Grant; I'm a police officer. Is anybody here? You want to talk? I won't hurt you." I said in a quiet gentle voice, the whimpering stopped. I kept a few feet away from the closet, not wanting to startle her. I kept talking while I picked up a little shaggy baby doll from the floor. "Wow, look at all these toys. I wish I had toys like this. This baby doll is so pretty. Is it yours?" I asked as I knelt down. The closet door opened very slowly and a set of small tear-soaked blue eyes covered by a thin layer of blonde bangs peeked out. "Would you like your doll, darlin'?" I asked. Although she still didn't move. "Are you ok? We won't hurt you. We want to help you. Where are your mommy and daddy?" She slowly moved out of the closet, and stood in front of me and held her hands out for her doll. This gorgeous little blonde girl, that couldn't have been more than 5 years old, looked as though she hadn't had a bath in days, if not weeks. She was rail thin, and obviously malnourished. Worst of all, her face was all bruised, you could make out bruises in the form of a handprint on her arm, and at the bottom of her nightgown was a huge bruise on her leg. "What's your name?" I asked. She didn't answer me, just stared at my uniform, then my holstered gun, and me. I then realized how scary it must be for a child to suddenly see the dark uniforms, shiny badges, and huge duty belts holstering weapons in her playroom. I heard John behind me on the radio calling for a backup unit and paramedics, and informed dispatch that the Child Protective Services needed notified. Since Loredo was so small we didn't have our own Child Protective Services so they would have to be called in from Jefferson County. "You must have a name? Well if you won't tell me your name, then can I call you darlin'?" I persisted. "Where's your mommy and daddy darlin'?" I asked again. She hesitated, studying me and then my partner for what felt like hours. "Mama gone. Daddy hurt me." Her small phrases and inability to communicate fully was further proof that she had been mistreated. "Where is your daddy?" I said trying to hide the anger I felt swelling up inside from the thought of anyone hurting a child. She wouldn't say, just shook her head and cradled her doll. I looked back at John when I heard our backup pull up out front, sirens blazing. He motioned that he was going out front to meet them. "You want to come sit on the living room couch with me?" I asked as I held out my hand. Although she still hesitated, staring at my hand, she eventually put her small hand in mine. I stood up and walked out to the living room with her, and she walked over and sat on the couch, hugging her knees as she cradled her doll tightly between her knees and her chest. John and two other officers came through the front door, directly followed by two paramedics. As they slowly approached her, she started rocking back and forth, whimpering again. They couldn't touch her until she calmed down. The other officers went to finish searching the house, the girl had been our top priority and we had never finished our search. I knelt beside darlin' and talked to her, trying to calm her down a little. "Grant, come here!" John called from down the hall, two doors down from the playroom. I left darlin' with the paramedics as they tried to convince her to let them examine the damage of her bruises. John and the other officer, Kurt Bradley, were standing outside the bathroom. I heard Bradley on the radio calling for a Coroners Wagon. I stepped into the bathroom and there was a Caucasian man, in his middle 40's, dressed in only boxer shorts, sitting on the floor against the tub with a gunshot wound to his right temple. The antique looking .38 Special was still in his hand; it was an apparent suicide. I bent down and felt for a pulse and found the body was cold, he had obviously been there for a while. "Daddy huh?" John said. I just shook my head in disbelief and went back out to the living room. "Officer Grant, she's not going to let us touch her, she's too upset. Seems you're the only one she trusts." The paramedics told me. The mere mention of her going to the hospital to be checked out only upset her more. I got on the radio and called dispatch to see why the Child Protective Services was not on the scene yet. They told me to go ahead and bring the child into the precinct and they would be waiting for her there. I thanked the paramedics and told them we�d take it from here. The social worker would have to check into her medical needs later. This girl had obviously been through enough mental trauma in one day. The entire property had been searched, nothing more was found than a ton of beer bottles. "Darlin�, how about you come with us, ok? We'll take good care of you and your baby." I put my hand out to her again and she took it without hesitation this time. She had quit crying again. John went back to her playroom and grabbed a couple of her toys and we all headed to the patrol car. I helped her climb up into the backseat of the car and buckled her in, and John handed her all of her toys. She looked at us both and for a split second I could have sworn she smiled. The coroner was there, loading the body. We wanted to get darlin out of there before she saw her father wheeled out. We pulled out of the driveway and headed back to the precinct to get the child some help. It was an incredibly quiet ride for about 5 blocks. John and I had no idea what to say. Only God knows what this child had gone through. Then we heard her humming. It sounded like Silent Night. "Now I can go to sleep." We heard her say from the backseat. Her speech until now had been quiet and reserved. Now she sounded loud and confident. Even happy. John and I looked at each other dumbfounded wondering what she meant. I turned around to look at her... and she was gone! It was 12:43am. John and I were worried about her and completely stumped as to what happened. And we were sure we would be the laughing stock of the precinct, IF we kept our jobs. I mean... who LOOSES a 5-year-old? But when we got back to the precinct at 12:56am, it looked as if all hell had broke loose. As soon as we walked in and the Captain noticed that there was no child attached to my side, he was screaming wanting to know where the girl was. We hesitated telling him, enjoying possibly our last few moments as cops, then told him the entire story of her disappearing. He just looked at us as if without a clue. That's when he told us that the Coroner's wagon arrived at the morgue to find that their body had disappeared. They noticed him gone at 12:45am. An All Points Bulletin was immediately dispatched for a little five-year old blonde girl about four feet tall, 50 pounds, wearing a tattered pink cotton nightgown, lost in the vicinity of Ninth Avenue and State Street. John and I spent the remaining hours of our shift patrolling, looking for darlin. But we never found her. Neither one of us could get our minds off of the child that disappeared. As soon as we reported for duty the next night we vowed to dedicate whatever time we could to solving this mystery. Loredo only has 2 detectives and, according to them, this seemed like an open and shut case of suicide. But without a body the case could not be conclusively ruled as such. As soon as we started our shift we drove to the very spot that we had heard the scream the previous night. The sun was setting but there was still some daylight left. But even the daylight didn't curve the feeling that we had stepped into the twilight zone. The same house we had been at the night before appeared totally different. The landscaping that had appeared mowed and tended last night, was now grown over and looked as if it hadn't been touched in years. The front door hung on one hinge. The windows to the house were boarded up. And the Buick appeared in much worse condition, without tires, and propped up on concrete blocks. Although the driver�s door was still open. John and I were in total disbelief. We slowly got out of our car and approached the house, wondering what had happened to the property we had seen previously. I opened the front door, but this time the house was empty. No furniture, no beer bottles, just cobwebs and rats. The wallpaper was peeling and the ceiling looked ready to cave in. The playroom was just as desolate. We made our way to the bathroom, and we discovered the tub had rusted through, the toilet a home to pests and varmints. But there on the floor where the dead man was last night, were bloodstains. The same stains that he had laid in, but they appeared much older than they had the previous night. These stains had been there for years. As John and I both got the creeps, we left and headed back for the precinct, in complete silence. When we got back to the Precinct we did some research to find out who the owner of the property was. We discovered that the last known owner was Fred Russel. After his death, the property went to the state of Colorado, and they haven't been able to sell the property since. He also had a daughter, Darlene Russel. On November 11th, 1964, 1143 South Fifth Ave. was the scene for a murder/suicide. The police responded to that address when they received reports of screams at 11:58pm. A broken and abusive family, the mother had ran away a month previous to escape the abuse, leaving behind her 5-year-old daughter, Darlene. The father, Fred Russel, was a drunk with a temper. On that night he had too much to drink, and took out his anger for his wife, on little Darlene taking her life. Fred realized what he had done; he was out of control. He grabbed his .38 Special, sat on the bathroom floor, and placing the barrel to his right temple. He ended his life as he had done his daughter's. Only he left in a much simpler way than her pain filled death. When police arrived at the scene, they found the girl in the playroom closet... beaten to death. She had hemorrhaged and bled to death internally. Her wounds were still seeping blood. She was found hugging her knees, her toes covered not in nail polish, but in blood. No one knows for sure why she was in the closet. Perhaps attempting to hide from her fathers drunken rage. John and I talked to the officers that handled the original crime scene. We were hesitant to tell them what happened, but we needed answers. When we told them our story, they didn't laugh, they didn't call us insane, they just shook their heads and said they hoped she can have peace now. After that John and I went out the graveyard where the Russels were buried. There in front of us was a tiny tombstone for Darlene Russel. The little blonde girl in the torn nightgown had been found. We canceled the APB that night, certain that what we encountered was the ghost of a little girl. The neighbors, which the closest is a block away, say that they had often heard a scream at midnight, and on occasion had seen lights flickering on in the house that had no power, they even heard the song 'Silent Night' playing from the house, but never could explain it. The scream has not been heard since me and John was on patrol that night. The lights no longer flicker, and the house appears quiet. Darlene never got a chance to live, to feel loved, perhaps until that night, 36 years after her death. Maybe now Darlene can realize that not everyone was like her father, and she can Rest In Peace. -M. Bush NOTICE: All works expressed herein are the sole property of Melinda Bush. Any pieces removed from this site must be with the expressed permission of the author. |
 |
 |
| The BabyGirl Angel |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
| Short Stories: |
|
|
|
|
|
| Poems: |
 |