J. Margos - Shattered Image

“Any chance Rita was involved in this?”

“Not in my book. Rita is happily married, and she was Lisa’s best friend since they were eight. According to Lisa’s mother, Rita couldn’t stand Johnny, and she had begged Lisa to leave him a million times. She still hates him. Also, she and her husband have since moved to San Antonio-the husband got transferred.”

“Hmm. Interesting. Still, the fiber is a long shot.”

Drew smiled. “We also have Johnny’s credit records for the time period when Lisa would have been dumped in that cottonwood grove. Hutto is a long ways from Dallas.”

“So, you’re looking for any receipts that tie him to the area near Hutto.”

“Bingo. Lisa’s mother said that to her knowledge they did not make any trips anywhere within three months before Lisa disappeared. Lisa and Johnny didn’t have much money, and he spent what they did have on drinking and playing cards with his friends.”

“So, you might have a chance if you can tie him to this area.”

“Right. Also, that handmade blanket was real different.”

“What do you mean?”

“State Crime Lab says the fibers are very unique, so a match would be a good, solid match.”

“Drew, he’s probably cleaned that car a million times since then.”

“We only need one fiber match to nail the creep.”

I nodded. “I sure hope that one fiber is there.”

“That’s not all I have up my sleeve, Toni.”

“What else?”

“We Luminoled that car-the trunk, the back seat, the carpets-all of it.”

Luminol was a chemical the police used to spray on suspicious areas in a crime scene, or somewhere they suspected bore a relationship to a crime-like a suspect’s car. Luminol attached itself to blood proteins, and when illuminated by the right kind of light, it fluoresced to reveal those blood proteins. That stuff would show blood proteins on a wall where the blood had been scrubbed and painted over with latex paint. It was a great forensic tool.

“So, you found something with the Luminol?”

Drew nodded. “There were some spots in the trunk, and we took samples. The lab analyzed all of it.”

“I hope it’s her blood.”

“Meanwhile, I didn’t give up on his credit card records.”

Drew had patience, too. He would never push a case to the D.A. until he thought he had it airtight. Early in his career, a young and overzealous Drew Smith had made that mistake and the killer had gotten off, never to be tried again. Drew had never forgotten the sting of double jeopardy, and he carried that sting into the diligence he brought to each case he handled.

So we knew her name was Lisa Wells. We knew who her mother was and how long Lisa had been missing. We knew where she had lived and with whom. We knew who we thought had killed her. We had gone from being completely mystified about the death of an anonymous woman whose remains were found in a grove of cottonwood trees, to knowing all these things about her-and we had made that jump to light-speed by televising a picture of the bust I had made from her skull. These were the kind of results I dreamed of on every case I worked.

“You found something in the credit card records.”

“Well, Toni, let’s not get ahead of my story.” He smiled mischievously and sipped his tea.

“So tell me,” I said.

He opened the file that had been sitting there all this time, then pulled out two photographs and handed one of them to me.

“You see this,” he said. “This is a microscopic photo of a fiber taken from the blanket we found wrapped around Lisa Wells’s remains.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a very distinctive fiber, I’m told.”

“So I heard.”

He smiled again and handed me the second photograph.

“This fiber is the same kind of photo of a fiber we took from the trunk of Johnny Rowell’s car.”

“They look similar to me and I’m not a fiber expert.”

“I’m told by someone who is a fiber expert that they are dead-bang duplicates of each other. In other words, they came from the same blanket.”

“Awesome!”

He chuckled with satisfaction.

“I’m not done yet.”

“What have you got now?”

“You know the Luminol?

“Yes…”

“You know the blood-protein spots we found?”

“Yes…”

“We found some spatters near the same spare-tire compartment, which is where we also found the fiber. It’s human blood, Lisa Wells’s blood type, and we’re testing it for DNA.”

“You got samples of her DNA from her bones.”

“Yep, it was still viable. It’ll be a while before we get the DNA back, but meanwhile we know it was human blood, and it was her type.”

“You’ve got all your bases covered, don’t you, Drew.”

“I try, Toni.”

“It’s all really good when you combine it with the fiber evidence.”

“I have one more trick up my sleeve.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I told you I didn’t give up on those credit card receipts.”

He handed me a photocopy. On the page was a copy of a gas card receipt.

“It’s from his credit card, and as you can see, the address of the truck stop on the receipt is…”

“Hutto, Texas.”

“Yeahhhh.” He grinned and nodded his head in total satisfaction.

“He was actually stupid enough to fill up in Hutto before he left?”

“Well, you’ve never met Johnny Rowell, Toni, but…well, let’s just say he’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

We both laughed out loud now.

“This is rich, Drew-just totally, completely rich.”

“Oh yeah. He’s been arrested for beating her multiple times and she dropped the charges every time. There’s no one to drop charges now other than the prosecutor, and she won’t be dropping anything. This guy is finally going down.”

“I just wish the system had stopped him before Lisa Wells had to die.”

“So do I, Toni, but you and I cannot overhaul the system overnight. What we can do is what we did. I picked up Johnny Rowell in Dallas yesterday and he is now in jail without bail.”

“You’re amazing, Drew.”

“No, Toni, it’s just good persistent police work, that’s all. It wasn’t just me anyway. It was you and your awesome artwork, and the people in the State Crime Lab hustling to get me that fiber and blood evidence.”

Now I waited on similar results from the bust I had made of the skull found on Red Bud Isle. I decided to tell Drew about that case.

“I’m glad we were able to close this one,” I said. “I hope we can achieve the same results on the case I’m currently working on.”

“Are these your bones found on the riverbank the other morning?”

I nodded. “Get this, Drew. A complete skeleton just dumped in a shallow grave on the dam side of Red Bud Isle. Bones were not in anatomical order-they were just dumped in a jumble in this grave.”

“So the bones were dumped there after the body decomposed?”

“The ‘body’ had been buried somewhere else before. There was soil of a different type in the crevices of some of the bones. Chris has sent the various soil samples off to A &M for analysis.”

“The deceased had been buried before…”

“Yes. What do you think about that?”

“I think it’s different for sure. I’ve never heard of anything like that. Any idea what’s going on there?”

I told him about Leo’s impression of the murder. He sat and listened intently as I repeated what Leo had told me the day before.

He nodded. “Now that you explain everything the way she said it, I can see what she means. I actually remember a case where a man killed his neighbor and the neighbor’s wife because he thought they were vandalizing his treasured gardens.”