Shattered Image (6 page)

“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.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Oh yes, totally. The guy was a kind of weird guy, didn’t really get along with anybody, wasn’t really good at anything except gardening. He spent all his time on his yard. I have to admit it did look good. He never socialized with his neighbors and he and the victims had apparently gotten off to a bad start when he moved in because of something stupid that he said. It seems from that day forward he imagined that they were out to get him.”

“Were they really vandalizing his gardens?”

“No. Actually there was a rash of some of that going on in the neighborhood and it turned out to be nothing more than some smart-aleck high-school kids looking for something to do at night. But this guy was sure the culprits were his next-door neighbors.”

“So, what happened?”

“One day he came home from work and saw that his prized magnolia tree had been cut down right in the front yard and he just went nuts. He went in the house, got his shotgun, marched right through the back door of his neighbor’s house and shot him and his wife eating dinner at the kitchen table.”

“Good grief!”

“It was the most unbelievable thing I’d ever seen. Just shot ’em at nearly point-blank range—bang, bang, and that was it. He tried to run, but I pulled him over about forty miles out of town. He shot at me, and I managed to just wing him. He’s still serving time in Huntsville.”

“That’s incredible. Killed two people over a magnolia tree.”

“A magnolia tree they had nothing to do with.”

“I can’t even absorb that.”

“There are a lot of real wackos out there, Toni. He was just totally paranoid, but he was real cool about killing them. Said he had thought about it a lot. He had planned what he would do, he just waited to do it until something set him off.”

“That sounds like the kind of thing Leo was talking about.”

“I’d like you to keep me up to date on this. If it turns out the original burial site is outside of Austin, that’s something I’d want to know.”

I nodded and agreed to keep him apprised.

J
immy Hughes saw the round face with the broad cheeks, small chin and full lips on the screen of his television on the six-o’clock local news. It was a ghost—the face of a woman missing for sixteen years, a girl from his hometown, a girl from Viola, a girl he had loved since he was eighteen. Her name had been Adelaide Russell—“Addie” they called her. She was only fourteen then, and he was off to Vietnam. Addie may have been fourteen, but Jimmy had known her all of her fourteen years, and he loved her. At eighteen, Jimmy was still a boy in his heart and Addie was a pretty young girl with long, blond hair. Jimmy went to Vietnam and came back and Addie was dating someone else. Later, she married, had two children, and then disappeared at the age of thirty-two. That was sixteen years ago.

Jimmy had called the number on the screen and spoken to Tommy Lucero. Tommy had asked him to come in.

“So, what was he like?” I asked as I put lunch on the table.

Tommy shrugged. “You know, typical overage-hippie type. The normal Austin citizen.”

“I don’t know, Tommy,” Mike chimed in. “I think the guy looked like he’d tried to dress up, sort of. He was wearing dark green cords and a real clean T-shirt. I think he had even pressed the shirt a little.”

“The cords were old, man.”

“Yeah, but they were clean—and they looked pressed, too.” He looked at me. “It wasn’t one of your ironing jobs, Mario, but it wasn’t bad for a bachelor.”

Tommy smiled at the use of my nickname. He made a grab for the fresh bread, and I slapped his hand gently.

“Hey, dude, we say grace first in this house,” Mike said.

“You’re one to talk, young man, since you’re notorious for grabbing food first and saying grace later,” I admonished.

Tommy chuckled.

“So, then I’ll offer the grace,” Mike said.

I sat down at the table with them, and Mike did offer the grace. Then the two men tore into that food like two hungry wolves. You’d think they were sixteen-year-olds still growing two inches every six months.

“So, he made an attempt to look good,” I said, “but not for either one of you characters. Could he have wanted to look good for her?”

Mike nodded. “I think so.” He slugged down almost his entire glass of tea in one gulp.

“What are you talking about?” Tommy said. “She’s dead and he knew that—he ID’d the face from the news.”

“Tommy, I’m telling you, that guy thought he was going to identify a body.”

“No. I totally disagree. She’s been dead sixteen years. We had to have her face reconstructed. No one in their right mind would think he was going to ID a body.”

“Okay, man—whatever.”

I could tell this had been a running argument all day. I poured both of them some more tea. Tommy grabbed a fresh lemon wedge, squeezed it into his tea and then dropped the wedge into the glass.

“So, what else did this guy tell you?”

“She’s some girl from his hometown,” Tommy said. “He had some kind of crush on her or something. When she disappeared, she was married to a guy named Dody Waldrep. We checked the records in Viola and there is no Dody Waldrep there anymore, but we found the woman’s mother, Maureen Russell. She still lives there.”

“Yeah, she says that Dody lives in Manor now. They don’t keep in touch. She raised Addie’s two children for the last fourteen years—two girls—twenty-two and twenty-four now.”

“So, what was the story with the dad? Why did Grandma get the kids?”

“Dad drinks, ever since Mom skipped,” Tommy said.

“Skipped?”

“Mrs. Russell said we would hear all the rumors anyway, so she would just tell us. She says the townspeople thought that her daughter was having an affair, and that she ran off with the man. She disappeared sixteen years ago, and so did he.”

“So, Mom—ask who he was.”

“This Jimmy Hughes who identified her?”

“Anhh, you lose twenty-five thousand dollars and the trip to Bermuda,” Mike said.

“Okay, smarty, who was it?”

“Jimmy’s brother, Doug,” Tommy said, nodding.

“Interesting.”

We all ate in silence awhile. I watched while the food evaporated from the table.

“So, what did this Jimmy say about his brother’s disappearance?”

“We didn’t know all that when we interviewed him this morning, so we haven’t had a chance to ask him.”

“Yeah, Mario, you’re getting ahead of us again. We just talked to Mrs. Russell on the phone a little while ago. There hasn’t been time for us to go up to Viola and see her in person, or to find and talk to Dody Waldrep, the victim’s husband, much less go back and question Jimmy again.”

“But Jimmy must have said something this morning about his brother’s disappearance—right?”

The two men looked at each other and then at me, and shook their heads in unison.

“Weird, huh, Toni?”

“To say the least. So, he just came in and identified the woman and told you who she was and a little bit about how he knew her, and that was it?”

“Yep,” Mike said as he dabbed up the last bit of food from his plate with a piece of bread.

“We couldn’t get anything else out of him. He was quiet and kind of edgylike, but he was almost belligerent in his answers a few times.”

“I agree with that,” Mike said. “He wasn’t trying to cooperate, really. I mean, he identified her by calling in, and then coming in to talk, but he wasn’t forthcoming after he got there.”

“No sign of grief?”

“That’s hard to say, Toni. It was hard to tell what was going on with this guy. He was kind of withdrawn some
times, and then like I said, he’d be belligerent. He was a tough read—strange, and a really tough read.”

“I’d like to go talk to him, if you don’t mind. You know, when people find out that I’m the one who sculpted their friend’s or family member’s face, they sometimes open up.”

Mike sighed. My son had issues with me “interfering” in his cases, but I had issues with leaving my sculptures alone—both before and after they reacquired their identities. I had already become involved with Addie Russell Waldrep before I knew that’s who she was. I had held her skull. I knew every square millimeter of her face. She and I had made a connection across the expanse of time—we had a kind of spiritual friendship. I wanted to help find who killed her. I
had
to find who killed her.

“I don’t mind,” Tommy said, “for the usual deal.”

“I tell you everything I find out.”

“Yep—and we’re still going to see him again later anyway, whether you go or not. It’s our job, you know.”

“I understand, Tommy. You know I understand.”

He nodded. “Go talk to him, then. I’ll give you the phone number and address.”

Mike sighed again, and Tommy shook his head and smiled.

“Hey, Toni, take Leo with you—Okay?”

“Not in her uniform. He won’t talk to me.”

“I didn’t say she had to be in uniform. Just take her, and tell her I said to wear that ankle holster I gave her.”

I sighed, “Right.”

“Tommy’s rules, Mario.”

“I heard, son.”

My Black Beauty rumbled to a stop in front of a dinky frame house in one of the old Central/West Austin neighborhoods. There were rows of small one-story houses on narrow little lots. Built in the late 1940s and early 1950s for the postwar set, it was affordable middle-class housing for mostly blue-collar folk…pretty stylish then, but out-of-date now and way overpriced. The houses were pretty lightweight stuff compared to the new construction in Austin, but people lived in these neighborhoods for the convenience and the atmosphere of Central/West Austin.

Jimmy’s house was chartreuse with brown and magenta trim and a tin roof—and that was the refurbished look. The yard was marginal—a combination of Bermuda grass and weeds with patches of hard, dry dirt. The shrubs that went across the front of the house were patchy—one green and looking fairly healthy, but shaggy, next to another that looked more like tumbleweed. There was a gravel driveway that led to the carport, where his 1968 Ford pickup truck was parked. It was dark green, with patches of primer and brown paint. There was a bumper sticker on the back with the symbol of the POWs/MIAs and the slogan Lest We Forget, and the back windshield bore the emblem of the United States Marines, next to which was another bumper sticker that simply read, Semper Fi.

“Interesting color scheme,” Leo said.

“At least the door is brown,” I said as I knocked on the door frame.

Jimmy Hughes came to the door wearing an undershirt and faded, torn blue jeans—there were no shoes on his feet. A chocolate-brown Lab stood by his side. He stared at us from behind the screen door. He was about six feet
tall, slim, with a narrow face and square chin. He had piercing light blue eyes and long dark eyelashes. His gray hair was thin on top with a receding hairline, but it was long in back and pulled into a ponytail held by a green rubber band. The most noticeable thing about Jimmy’s appearance was a long scar that ran down the left cheek, and burn wounds on either cheek and near his left eye.

“Jimmy Hughes?”

“Yeah,” he said suspiciously.

“My name is Toni, and I’m the artist who sculpted the face of Addie Russell that you saw on the news.”

“Oh yeah?” His face brightened just a bit.

“Would you mind if we came in and talked just awhile? I’d like to know more about her.”

He looked at Leo and squinted.

“This is my friend, Leo.”

“Y’all work for the cops?”

“No,” I said.

It was true. Neither Leo nor I were employed by the police. I was a freelance artist who contracted with anyone who requested my services, and Leo was employed by the AFD, although technically she was a law enforcement officer. He looked us both over carefully and then motioned us in.

“It ain’t fancy, nor even neat,” he said as we entered.

There were books and magazines scattered about on the floor and on any even surface in the room—coffee table, end table, bookshelf—you name it. An old recliner sat on one end of the living room, right across from a small TV. The recliner was upholstered in a tacky plaid and it had a large hole in the fabric on one arm. There was a guitar leaning up against the wall next to the recliner. Jimmy motioned us to
the sofa, which was also worn, but was one of the only places in the room not covered with books and magazines.

Nodding toward the guitar I said, “You play?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, “I play a couple of gigs a week with some guys. We play rhythm and blues.”

“My husband and I used to listen to that kind of music. There was a man in my husband’s unit in Vietnam who used to play guitar for us in the evenings. That is, when we weren’t on duty or under mortar fire.”

He turned his head and leaned toward me on the edge of his chair. “You were in ’Nam?”

I nodded. “U.S. Air Force. I was a nurse in Da Nang. My husband and I met over there.”

He relaxed almost instantly.

“I was in the marines. I was in Da Nang for a while, too.”

“We had a lot of friends who were marines,” I said. “When were you there?”

“I was ‘in country’ 1968 to 1970. I was in Da Nang toward the end of 1968 and some of 1969.”

“We were already gone by then,” I said.

He nodded. We sat quietly for a few seconds.

“Is that how you make your living, Jimmy—playing the guitar?”

“Well, it’s one way. I do some writing for the
Freedom Journal
.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of that paper.”

It was a strange paper that had an occasional good article, but most of their pieces were pretty much all over the map.

“It doesn’t pay much, but I get a little bit per article. Then I also work down at the canoe and paddleboat rental place on Barton Creek.”

“I know that place,” Leo said. “So, are you a boater yourself?”

“I like to go out on the water, paddle up and down Town Lake and just think sometimes. It’s quiet out there and sometimes I just need that kind of quiet.”

“I can relate to that,” I said.

I looked at Leo and caught her eye. Leo and I looked at each other, and I knew she was thinking what I was about the canoeing. Then I glanced down and saw a pair of hiking boots on the floor near his chair. They had red clay caked up all around the soles. I recognized that thick red clay—it was the same red clay I had on my boots from Red Bud Isle that morning we dug up Addie Waldrep’s bones. It could be a coincidence, but I still wondered about it.

“So, Jimmy, would you mind telling me about Addie—how you knew her?”

“What’s your interest?”

“I reconstructed her face and I guess I got a little attached to her.”

The expression on his face was strange in response to my words—I couldn’t tell if it was sorrow or nervousness. He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “Well, uh, we grew up together in this little-bitty town. You probably never heard of it—Viola?”

“Actually, I have heard of it. It’s up near Giddings, right?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s right. Well, Addie was about four years younger than me, but I knew her since she was born. Her family lived just down the road from mine, and we went to the same school.”

“Was she an only child?”

“No. She had a brother. I think he lives in Houston now.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“My baby brother, Vernon, lives in Rock Hill right near Viola. Mama lives there now, too. My other little brother, Doug, moved there first, then Vernon and Mama did, too.”

“You don’t live there anymore.”

“When I got back from ’Nam, I couldn’t live there anymore. Everything was different. I didn’t like it. I moved here. I like it here.”

I nodded. He fidgeted with his hands, and shifted in his chair a lot. His mood seemed to swing from being more at ease to eyeing us suspiciously. I tried to keep my questions in the “innocent” category, to draw him out and see if he would volunteer anything to me.

“So, you knew Addie in Viola growing up, but your family moved to Rock Hill. When did your family move?”

“Not long after I got back from ’Nam, my daddy died and I moved here. Doug bought a place down at Rock Hill, and that’s when they all moved. It’s nice, I guess. Vernon runs Doug’s place now.”