11-year-old's long search for happiness ends in a lonely bean field.

Byline: Rick Jervis

CHICAGO _ Dave Geswein woke up early the morning of April 18 to prepare a field for soybeans.

It was a little soon in the year for planting. Farmers in his swath of northwest Indiana, along the Illinois border near Stockton, typically wait for May to start readying fields for crops.

But April had been unseasonably warm, with temperatures spiking into the 50s. This was an opportunity to get a jump on the growing season and gain an edge.

So Geswein climbed aboard his sprayer, a spiderlike tractor that spreads fertilizer across rows of dirt, and worked the earth. He had nearly finished his 80 acres of field late in the afternoon when a glint in the dirt caught his eye.

It was, he discovered to his surprise, a human skull _ a small one, like that of a child. The elements had bleached it severely.

A shaken Geswein drove back to the equipment shed to call police.

Nicolas Zavala was 7 years old when he entered the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services system in January 1998. After shuffling between four foster families over the course of four years, he was transferred to his grandmother's care in early 2002.

For the next few months, the 11-year-old would live at his grandmother's house in Oxford, Ind., before she reported him missing that August under strange circumstances. Eight more months would elapse before Geswein was to find the boy's skull in his field.

Nicolas' disappearance and death have baffled police investigators for more than a year. A posse of detectives from two states, as well as a forensic anthropologist and a forensic entomologist, have tried to figure out how he died and how his partially burned remains ended up in a soybean field near the Illinois-Indiana line _ 20 miles from where he last lived. Nicolas' remains _ comprising less than half of his total skeleton _ were spread across 50 yards of the field.

That the bones had no tissue left on them hampered pathologists in determining a cause of death. That they had been subjected to fire added a touch of the macabre.

Had Nicolas been the victim of a predatory sex criminal? Had he suffered lethal abuse at the hand of elders, who then tried to cover up their crime? Had he been in some kind of deadly accident that someone feared being held responsible for?

Investigators are maintaining a stony silence, declining to discuss what leads they have, if any. Last November, the Benton County state's attorney filed five counts of criminal neglect against Margaret Williams, Nicolas' grandmother, based on her alleged treatment of him before his disappearance. But as of this writing, no charges have been filed in Nicolas' death.

Through her lawyer, Williams has denied she had anything to do with the boy's demise.

Those close to the case say that after months of forensics, a cause of death has emerged. But what it is they will not say.

Meanwhile, the case has angered family, teachers and friends who question how the pleasant preteen with the bright smile and abundance of street charm could bounce around the child-welfare system for so long before being handed to a guardian whose own credentials as a parent seem dubious, in the light of state records. It has also raised serious questions about how authorities look for children who have vanished.

DCFS would not comment in detail about Nicolas' case, citing the ongoing police investigation and its own internal review. But the agency's records, and…