by J. F. Margos
We chatted for a while. He asked how Michael was and I asked about his mother. Mama Beatrice was doing well, he told me, but she was thinking about leaving Louisiana and moving to Austin to be closer to Drew. She was getting up in years and thought that living closer to her son would be wise. Drew’s sister lived in San Antonio and both of his brothers worked in Houston. Mama Beatrice didn’t like either of those places as well as Austin. Plus, I knew that Drew was the one of her children who took care of things for her.
I told Drew I’d be happy to help her find a place and relocate. I would love to have my friend Beatrice in the city. Drew said he’d take me up on that, and he’d keep me posted on her plans.
“So, what is new on our cottonwood case that has caused you to work on your day off?”
“She’s been identified.”
I set my teacup down. This was always the moment for which I worked and waited.
“Her name is Lisa Wells.”
I sat still for a moment. This young girl with whom I had become so connected and whose face had come to life again under my fingertips—this young girl was reconnected with her name and her history.
“How did you find out who she was?”
“Her mother saw the photos of the bust on the local TV news and recognized her. She called the number on the screen, and wanted to come in and identify her daughter.”
I sighed a deep sigh. “Oh man.”
“Yeah. I had to explain to her as gently as I could that it would not be possible. Then I explained that I would need her daughter’s dental records and we would confirm the ID.”
“How did she take it when you explained?”
“Pretty hard. I cushioned the news as much as I could, but there aren’t a lot of sweet ways you can tell a mother that her daughter’s remains consist of bones that lay exposed in a cottonwood grove for months and have been picked clean by buzzards.”
I ran my hand through my hair and sighed again.
“Sorry, Toni.”
“No, it’s not what you said. I deal with that truth on almost every case I have. It’s…just thinking about that mother.”
“Yeah.”
“Where was the victim from?”
“She lived in Dallas with her boyfriend, but the mother, Gladys, lives in Athens, just east of Dallas.”
“So, do we have any clue who killed Lisa Wells?”
“We do. Her mother says she was living with a man named Johnathan Rowell. The police had been called to their home numerous times for domestic violence. Lisa had been hospitalized several times for broken bones. Each time, she went back to him and charges were dropped.”
“Great. So, has he been charged yet?”
“Now wait.”
I sighed.
“Let me finish. We collected as much evidence as we could from the crime scene. The body had been wrapped in a blanket, and we checked that against fibers we took from the trunk of Rowell’s car.”
“That’s a long shot. Plus, if the blanket belonged to them, why wouldn’t fibers from it be in the car?”
“The blanket didn’t belong to them.” Drew smiled.
“Give,” I said, shooting him a look.
“I showed the blanket to Mrs. Wells when she came down to claim the remains. She said she didn’t recognize that particular blanket, but that it looked similar to something that Rita’s mother had made.”
“And Rita is…?”
“Lisa’s best friend. Her mother handweaves blankets, rugs, you get the picture.”
“So…”
“So, I contacted Rita—Rita Gallekamp—Rita says the blanket was hers. It was new and her mom had made it for her. She brought it over to Lisa’s the night before Lisa disappeared. Rita’s husband was out of town, and Johnny was out playing cards and drinking with his friends, and Rita and Lisa had decided to watch a movie on TV, eat popcorn, and have some fun—you know, a girls’ night in. Rita gets cold easily and she brought the blanket because she said Lisa’s place was always cold. Johnny kept the apartment cold, and he’d get mad if Lisa turned the heat up.”
“Cheap?”
“Yep.”
“So, the place was always cold and she brought her blanket.”
“She also wanted to show it to Lisa because it was new and her mom had just made it for her and given it to her as a birthday gift.”
“So, how did it wind up wrapped around Lisa’s discarded body?”
“Rita left the blanket there by accident. She was going to go back and get it the next day, but then Lisa disappeared. She asked Johnny to look for it, but it was gone. Johnny told Rita that maybe Lisa had taken it with her. Rita’s mother was real mad about the blanket. Rita kept thinking that Lisa would call her, but they never heard from her, and Rita never got the blanket back.”
“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 cre
dit 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.”
“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.
Chapter Seven
Jimmy 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, Tom
my,” 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.”