The Choice Is Yours [FICTOID]

I'm sorry to meet you under these conditions.  I can only imagine how you must feel.

I have news, but it is not good.  We caught the man who kidnapped your children.  Unfortunately, we caught him dumping one of their bodies.

He was arrested over a hundred miles from where the kidnapping occurred.  He tells us the other child is still alive, but hurt and chained up without food or water.

In this weather, survival would be measured in hours.

He has offered to tell us where the remaining child is...for a price.  If I, as governor, grant him a full and complete blanket pardon, he will tell us where to find the surviving child.

I will do that to save the child...if you want me to.

This would be horrible if only one family was involved, one set of parents.

But your children were playing together when he kidnapped them.  One is dead, the other may be.

The pardon is valid only if that child survives.  We have no idea what he may have done to that child, but from the marks on the deceased child's body, it may have been brutal.

We have searchers combing the areas of both the original crime scene and where he dumped the body, but there's no certainty you child is in those areas.  The killer is a transient, we have no known address to search. There are literally thousands of square miles between where your child may be.

There is also the possibility that he has done this to other children.  We don't know.  We have no prints to link him to other crimes, and by the time a DNA comparison is completed your child will probably be dead.

Assuming your child is still alive.

If I pardon him for unknown crimes, at least one child will have been saved.  He will not suffer punishment, but he will be known, watched.  He'll never hurt another child again.

So here you are.  I have not told you yet which child is alive.  I want you to decide based on hope.

Shall I pardon him and save your child, even though the blood of another is on his hands?  Perhaps the blood of dozens?

Whatever you desire...

© Buzz Dixon