J. Margos - Shattered Image

“That might fit if Lori were the killer. You know, she killed Doug in a rage, then executed Addie.”

“It’d be the other way around, the way I see it. She executed Addie, Doug caught her, so she killed him in haste-may have even regretted it instantly.”

“That could be the source of her reality gap.”

“It would also explain dumping Addie’s bones on Red Bud, while burying Doug to be discovered up on the trail.”

“I’ll do my work, and then we’ll see for sure if this is Doug Hughes that we’ve found.”

I had worked two days on this bust already. The first day, I had done all the grueling work of measuring, cutting and applying all the tissue-depth indicators, until the skull had the full “eraser measles.” Then I had tediously applied the clay across all the markers. Now I sat on my high stool in front of the workbench with a cup of hot hibiscus tea in my hands and looked at the almost completed work. I only had to finish and smooth a few areas and it would be done.

The head of this man was broad and round, the cheekbones big and high. The brow was low, but not particularly pronounced and the nose was like an upside-down anvil, with a strong long line down the middle, but with the sides flaring out at the nostrils. The lips were thick and the mouth large. It was a handsome face, but not in a pretty-boy way. It was a rugged face. Now the question would be, was it Doug Hughes’s face?

One month earlier, on all local channels, the plea of a mother had been broadcast. Her name was Nadine Ferguson and her son had been missing for over sixteen years. The day of the broadcast had been his birthday. Mrs. Ferguson, now a widow, was seriously ill and dying of cancer. She only wanted to see her son one last time, or at least to know what had happened to him. Mrs. Ferguson lived in Houston, but her son had lived in Hempstead at the time of his disappearance. He was a good boy, she had said. He loved his simple life in Hempstead, working in a local clothing store as a salesman, walking and hiking in the local area observing and sketching birds. He hadn’t an enemy in the world and, in fact, everyone in Hempstead who knew him loved to be around him.

Brian Ferguson was thirty years old at the time of his disappearance from Hempstead. Now we knew that he was thirty years old at the time of his death. I had worked for three solid days to get the image out and get it right. Mike and Tommy knew as soon as I was done with it that it wasn’t Doug Hughes. I didn’t want to see his photo, in case I ever had to do another reconstruct that might be him. Tommy and Mike had pulled his Texas driver’s-license photo and compared it to my bust.

“It’s not him, Mom.”

I couldn’t believe it when Mike told me.

“That can’t be right.”

“It can and it is. It’s just not him, Mom.”

“Then who in blazes is it?”

“Don’t know, but we’re broadcasting the image and releasing it to all the papers.”

The image was only broadcast once when Mrs. Ferguson called in to the number on the screen to tell Tommy Lucero that the image on the bust was the face of her son. His Texas driver’s-license photo was pulled and compared. It was a match. His mother provided dental records for comparison and the forensic dentist in Chris’s office reviewed them. They were a match also. The bones belonged to Brian Ferguson.

As soon as I got the news, I called Leo.

“Guess Tommy told you, it’s not Doug Hughes. So, now what do you think?” I asked.

“I think we have a whole new mystery on our hands. I think we need to find out if there is any connection between Addie and this guy, Brian Ferguson.”

“What about Doug Hughes? Do you think any of this could have anything to do with why Doug is still missing?”

“Who knows? Until we find him, we won’t know. Tommy said Brian’s mother had put out some kind of plea for information on television about a month ago, right?”

“Yes.”

“No matter who the killer is, that was the trigger, Toni.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what I’ve been looking for. It’s like I said about the type of wounds that killed Brian, and where he was reburied. Killing Brian wasn’t part of his plan.”

“Okay.”

“The killer saw Mrs. Ferguson on TV and it probably made him feel bad. I think digging up Brian and reburying him where someone would find him-that was the purpose I was talking about.”

“So, it was guilt?”

“Yeah. That was all about giving Mrs. Ferguson the answer to her plea, and assuaging the killer’s guilt over killing Brian. Brian was a mistake that had to be corrected. The killer had probably buried them in the same place originally. So he digs up Brian to rebury him where he can be found-for Mrs. Ferguson-but he digs up Addie in the process and decides to get rid of her while he’s at it. It could have been Jimmy, or Lori, or Dody, or maybe even Doug himself.”

“Dody seemed to be so sure Addie and Doug were involved,” I said. “Maybe they were, maybe this Brian guy came along and messed things up and Doug is the killer.”

“We definitely need to find Doug Hughes.”

“Yes, and I need to find out more about Brian Ferguson. I need to try to find out how he’s connected to Addie and Doug.”

Brian’s funeral had been well attended by Mrs. Ferguson, her friends and all of the people in Hempstead who had known and worked with Brian. He had been a very popular guy. Ironically, the one enemy he had, had been no one he knew at all as far as any of us could tell. My only consolation in his sad death was in knowing that my work had answered the questions of a grief-stricken and dying mother.

I was back at work on the CILHI case again, trying to answer the questions of a grief-stricken widow-my friend Irini. The answer to this question might bring closure to her and her children. The clay was going on, but slowly. I was totally preoccupied with the other case-or maybe it just provided me with a convenient excuse to avoid the CILHI work.

I had been sure that the bones found at Waller Creek would be those of Doug Hughes. Doug was still missing, and now I was wondering what had happened to him.

I stopped my work on the CILHI bust and decided to make tea and think about what I wanted for lunch. About that time, the phone rang and it was Chris. She asked me to meet her and Leo for lunch. She had some news for us. I changed out of my old jeans and clay-stained work shirt and put on some nice black slacks, a plum-colored, short-sleeve knit top and some comfortable black sandals. It was an awesome day outside, so I rode with the windows down and the breeze in my hair.

I was to meet Chris and Leo at Gordon’s Lakeside out on Lake Travis, so I headed from my part of town in Hyde Park and took the winding Bull Creek Road out to the lake highway. I loved to drive the curves on Bull Creek in the Fastback. It gave me a chance to really go through the gears and feel the wheel. Once I went under the loop, I opened up that little Pony. On the segment of Bull Creek from the loop to the lake road there were few curves, but there was more opportunity to blow some soot out of the cylinders, as my dad liked to say. There was also one very large hill at one point, and if you got up a good head of steam, you could plow that hill from bottom to top in fourth gear, and that’s exactly what I did.

The wind was really blowing through the cockpit of my little land jet, and it felt good. I made a left turn onto the lake highway and headed toward Mansfield Dam, the big dam that created Lake Travis. I took the highway across the river, just below the dam, and once on the other side, I made a right turn down a narrow county road, then off the beaten path down a dirt road and into the parking lot of Gordon’s. The place was surrounded by trees and then it opened up onto the lakeshore.