The cruiser smelled like burnt coffee, damp vinyl, and the faint rubber scent of my gloves drying near the heater vent.
Outside, frost had silvered the shoulder of the road.
Children do not climb overpass ledges barefoot at four in the morning because they want attention.
I said I was en route.
I did not argue.
Arguments are what people do when there is time.
I hit my lights and drove toward Mile Marker 84.
The closer I got, the less the camera image felt like an image.
It became a problem with weight.
It became a child with bare feet on cold concrete.
It became the terrible question every cop learns to hear under dispatch chatter.
What if everyone else is wrong?
By the time I reached the overpass, the ledge was empty.
That was almost worse.
The wind hit the side of my cruiser as soon as I opened the door.
The cold went straight through my uniform collar.
Below me, diesel engines screamed under the bridge, one after another, the sound rising and falling with the traffic.
My spotlight dragged across the guardrail, the concrete support pillars, the frost-crusted grass, the shoulder, the ditch.
No child.
No footprints visible from where I stood.
No crying.
No movement.
For one tired second, I almost understood why the local precinct wanted it to be nothing.
Nothing is clean.
Nothing lets you go back to your coffee.
Then my flashlight caught red and yellow in the median.
A fast-food bag.
It was crumpled and half-buried in frost, but it was too fresh to be roadside trash.
The grease stain was still dark.
A few yards beyond it, there was a wrapper.
Then a crushed paper cup.
