J. Margos - Shattered Image

The bust on the Hempstead victim was done now. I had done what I said I wouldn’t do. I had worked all day and through the night to finish it after my visit with Drew the day before. Just wanting to know had fueled me to pull an allnighter. The face was staring back at me now. An oval, narrow face with a square chin, a slender nose and a high brow line. I had taken a Polaroid of it, scanned it and e-mailed it to Drew.

He had called me five minutes later and said he was on his way over with news. I looked awful. I hadn’t slept and I was wearing my work clothes. I had clay in my hair and it stuck out all over the place. Again, the short haircut was my saving grace. I pulled the dried clay out of it, got up off the stool, then went into the bathroom and ran water through my hair and combed it. I looked pretty good for a mature chick who’d had no sleep and no shower.

I went into the kitchen and made more tea. I was standing there listening for the doorbell, when the phone rang. It scared the daylights out of me. I picked up and it was Chris.

“You sound like something warmed over more than a few times,” she said.

“Thanks. And I look so lovely, too.”

“Well, this will perk you up.”

“Lay it on me.”

“The guys at A &M called, and all the soil samples match. That means both of the samples from here and the ones the State Crime Lab just took from the Hempstead site. They all have the same composition-mineral for mineral and microbe for microbe.”

“That’s what I expected. The news just keeps getting better.”

“Definitely.”

I was about to tell her I had finished the bust, when the doorbell rang. I signed off with Chris, promising to call her and give her the latest update after I talked with Drew.

Drew was in “uniform,” so to speak, and as I would have expected. He was wearing the trousers, white shirt, his Texas Ranger tie, boots, badge, gun and western hat so familiar to Texans as the symbol of their elite in law enforcement. He took off the hat as he entered the house and we made our way into the kitchen.

“I smell hot tea,” he said, smiling.

“It’s green tea with jasmine. I made it just for you,” I said.

“Liar,” he said jokingly.

“Okay, so I made it for you and me.”

As I poured two cups, Drew sat down and placed an envelope on the table, then laid his right hand on top of it.

“Don’t keep me in suspense, Drew Smith. I’ve worked too hard for you in the last two days for you to be jerking my chain.”

He chuckled. “All right, all right.”

He opened the envelope, slipped a piece of paper out and slid it across the table.

“It’s the Texas driver’s-license photo of a man by the name of Doug Hughes,” he said.

I looked at the photo and my heart felt as if it skipped two beats. It was the same face as the one on the bust I had just made.

“Another dead-on image, Dr. Antoinette. As usual, you just keep making it easy for me.” He smiled broadly now.

Leo came over the next morning to see the crime scene photos from Hempstead, as promised. We went into the kitchen and I made tea for both of us.

“Well, I have news that I haven’t shared with you yet,” I said.

“Give.”

“I finished the bust yesterday, and took a Polaroid and faxed it to Drew.”

“And?”

“It’s Doug Hughes.”

“Good work, Toni.”

I handed her the crime scene photos that Drew had given me, and then I went back to finish our tea while Leo pored over the photos. She asked question after question and I briefed her on every detail I could think of. Then she put her tea mug down and went silent. I sat at the table and sipped my tea while I watched the wheels in her head turn. Then she spoke.

“I have more of a theory now.”

“Okay.”

“This larger site is probably where the other two were buried and I suspect this third one was buried there with them. I think the killer dug them up and moved the other two for some specific reason. Brian because of his mother. Addie because he wanted to be rid of her, but wanted the water to carry her off. He dug them all up and moved Addie and Brian. What’s significant here is that he took the bones from Doug and just dumped them back in a grave and covered them up.”

“Why do you think he did that with Doug but not Addie, too?”

“I think it was partly guilt over killing her, maybe wanting to get rid of the remains so he could ‘forget’ about what he’d done, but maybe also to get her away from him.” She pointed down at one of the photos of the skeleton.

“Jealousy after death?”

“Sure. Why not? The killer was messed up enough to kill them in the first place. This isn’t a rational thinker here. In his, or her, mind revenge is still the motive for all of this. He may feel guilt over the death of Brian, and maybe a twinge of some guilt about Addie, but his revenge would be overpowering when it came to Doug. Doug would be the primary focus of his blame and his revenge.”

“Jimmy claims that Addie and Doug were not involved, Lori isn’t commenting much to any of us, and Dody says for sure they were involved.”

“None of that really means anything,” Leo said. “Jimmy could be lying, Lori is unbalanced and Dody is a drunk. So who knows? Besides, remember what I told you about a killer like this not having to have real evidence of what he believes. What he believes could be in his mind.”

“Or not.”

“Or not. It could be real, and this is all the result of incredible rage. It happens all the time.”

“So he kills both of them, but he shoots Doug three times.”

“I think the fact that Doug was shot three times is meaningful,” Leo went on. “But I think the fact that he was shot twice in the head, once in the face, is even more significant. There was real contempt in this killing, and in the haphazard reburial. He didn’t want us to find Doug, but he thought the remoteness of the burial site itself would prevent that. So, even though he didn’t want Doug found, he also didn’t want to spend any time or effort on the reburial. So he just provides a shallow grave and dumps the bones in. He’s still angry about what Doug did.”

“Well, if it weren’t for our trespassing bird-watchers we never would have found this place. In fact, animals probably would have eventually carried off the bones.”

“Probably, and I imagine he knew that.”

“Thanks to Julie and Frances he was wrong.”

“They were friends of Brian’s?”

“Yes, and they literally risked their lives going onto that property nosing around. They knew we couldn’t get a warrant, but those ladies were determined to have answers about Brian’s death.”

“Incredible.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I believe that Brian had no connection with Addie and Doug. When I look at the way each of them was killed, and how the reburials were handled…I believe that Brian was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think he was a witness, and he was killed to ensure his silence.”

“Yes, I agree.”

“I think that’s why it became so important to the killer to move Brian so he could be found.”

“He was the only innocent one.”

“Exactly. We’re going to have to connect the killer with one of the crime scenes somehow, you know.”

“Well, Jimmy Hughes lives here in Austin, where the remains of Addie and Brian were reburied.”

“That’s not going to be enough.”

“So, what is the connection to old man Gunther. Who is this Mr. Gunther anyway?” Leo asked. “Do we know anything about him? Maybe he has some part in all of this. The body was found on his farm.”

“Mr. Gunther is dead. The old guy who lives there now isn’t Gunther, he’s not even related to Gunther. He just bought the property from the family when Mr. Gunther died. They just call it by that family’s name because of how long they owned it.”