J. Margos - Shattered Image

Waller Creek fed into Town Lake here, and the running trails that banked the river crossed the creek via a wooden pedestrian bridge. I made my way down the trail to the grim group that had gathered near that bridge. As I walked up, I smiled at my son.

“That escort your idea?”

He chuckled and nodded. “I thought you might appreciate that. Besides, Mario, I know you and I didn’t want my mother getting pulled over for speeding or running down pedestrians with that hot rod you drive.”

“You are a good son.” I winked and patted him on the back.

I walked up to Chris Nakis, who stood in her usual dapper attire and lab coat, looking more serious than ever.

“What’s the word here?” I asked.

“Bad.” She shook her head. “Real scary bad. Two sets of bones in as many weeks.” She looked up at me, and our eyes met.

“I called Leo,” I told her. “It’s her day off, but I told her I wanted her down here. I want her to see this. I’ll bet this is Doug Hughes.”

“Who?”

“Lover of the first victim. They disappeared at the same time sixteen years ago. It just makes sense it would be him.”

“Hmm. That’s interesting.”

“What do you know so far?”

“Not much, just that the bones are old and the grave is fresh. The guys are digging carefully so as not to disturb any evidence.”

“It’s too much of a coincidence not to be related to the other case.”

“Yes, I agree.”

While Mike and Tommy questioned the woman who had found the “body,” Chris and I stood and watched as one of the forensic anthropologists worked on unearthing a bone.

“So, I heard you made a quick trip to Hawaii,” Chris said.

“How’d you know about that?”

“Mike told me.”

“Then he told you why I made the trip?”

“Yes. So, how did it go?”

“I made the mold I needed.”

Chris cleared her throat. “The skull was in good shape then?”

“Well, it was in five or six pieces, but one of the CILHI anthropologists had put it back together so I could work with it.”

“And the rest of the remains?”

“Not much to it. Less than twenty pieces of bone, one to two inches long.”

Chris looked down at her feet.

I continued. “The only DNA that’s usable is mitochondrial. None of Ted’s maternal family is alive or locatable now. The only thing the DNA was good for was matching all the pieces together. So, when I’m done, if the image is Ted’s, they’ll know all the remains belong to him.”

Chris nodded. “Well, you know if you need me for anything…I’m not sure what I could do, but if you need me…”

“Thanks.”

Leo’s Jeep screeched to a stop in the parking lot at the top of the bank. She bailed out and came jogging down the trail toward our position. When she got to the site, Chris filled her in on the details as she knew them.

Leo approached the site carefully to get a closer look. As she squatted next to one of the forensic anthropologists, he lifted an arm bone out of the dirt. He carefully bagged it and handed it to a forensic tech who was logging everything and laying all the separate bags into a black body bag. Leo stood up, stepped back and took in a wider view of the site. She looked out over the water with her hands on her hips. I saw the familiar trance come over her face. She stood that way for a minute or so and then shook her head as if she was shaking something off. She stepped over to where Chris and I were standing. Tommy and Mike joined us.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing more than what I told you the other day,” Leo said. “Remember what I told you?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I was hoping you’d have more to add this time.”

“No more to add. It still feels the same, except for one thing.”

“So, elaborate.”

“I said before I thought the killer wanted to get rid of the victim without being responsible for getting rid of her. There’s something different here.”

“Why does someone do this?” Chris asked.

“You mean, the reburial action?” Leo asked.

“Exactly.”

Leo shook her head. “I don’t know for sure, but I feel a real purpose in this one. He wanted this one found. So, the burning question now is-why? Why did this one need to be found?”

“What makes you so sure this one was supposed to be found?” Tommy asked.

Leo turned and spread her hands out over the scene. “Look at it. The body is next to the running trail. It’s on high ground, there’s no coverage from brush or trees-there’s not a snowball’s chance in August this body was going to wash down into the creek or the river. People jog by here all the time-it was only a matter of time before the dirt shifted enough to reveal bone. The only thing more obvious would be leaving it on the trail, but then the coons or other animals might carry parts off.”

“Okay, okay,” Tommy said. “I see all that, but maybe he thought he buried the bones deep enough, or maybe he just wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“No,” Leo said. “Look at the scene, Tommy. This is out in the wide open, next to the trail, on this little ridge above the creek. There’s no way you hide a body here. The other one was buried on Red Bud Isle in a heavily wooded area, on the opposite side from where people crossing the bridge would see it, and in the path of the waters coming out of the floodgates. He was thinking-boy, was he thinking…but what, why? Why did he hide the first one and bury this one in plain sight?”

Leo and I were both hooked on this case. The finding of more bones that morning left us with more unanswered questions than before. After we left the scene at Waller Creek, Leo wanted to go to Red Bud Isle and actually walk the scene there. I agreed. She followed me in her Jeep and we parked in a small gravel-covered parking area just off the road. As we got out of our vehicles we heard a soft splashing sound. I looked, and rowing down-river on the other side of the isle was a canoeist with a long gray ponytail. Leo caught it, too. I shuddered and looked at her.

“Interesting.”

“Could he be visiting the burial site.”

“Could be, or he could just be rowing on the river like he said he does.”

“This is a ways upriver from the rental place.”

“True. But this is also where everybody else rows when they rent those canoes.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I didn’t say I did either, just saying it’s possible that it’s nothing.”

We walked through the thick foliage on the isle down to the edge that faced the Tom Miller Dam. There was another small islet off to the right, but straight in front of us was the silent wall of the dam. The day was overcast, but there was no rain, and it was cool and still. There were few birds out, and it seemed unusually quiet in that spot. The crime scene tape had been removed, but the area from which the bones had been recovered was barren-devoid of vegetation-the red-clay surface bearing the scars of Addie Waldrep’s second grave. A blue heron, startled by our arrival, departed from a log floating near the other small islet, and flew gracefully past the end of Red Bud Isle as he ascended along the face of the limestone cliffs.

Leo stopped near the water’s edge and looked down at the naked grave site. Then she looked up and around at that end of the isle. She turned and looked back in the direction from which we had come. She stood thinking for a moment and then turned and faced the mighty dam, and with her hands on her hips she stood like that for several minutes. I said nothing.

Finally she spoke. “This wasn’t the reason the killer went back.”

“What do you mean?”

“This victim-she wasn’t the reason he went back. He went back to where they were buried because of the one we found today. That was his purpose-whatever it was, that was his purpose.”