by David Archer
“Well, I guess this is our cause of death,” he said. He was pointing at the back of the head, where a part of the skull was literally caved in. The hair around it was matted with blood, and Karen could see what looked like brain tissue. “Whatever hit her head, or whatever her head hit, that was definitely a fatal blow.” He looked the head over for a few more seconds, then placed it in a bag and carried it out.
Bonnie, the police artist, made a face of her own when Karen showed her the pictures, but she said there was enough that she could create a sketch. She set to work, and twenty minutes later the sketch was being sent by email out to all the local news stations. It would be shown on the evening news in the hope that someone might recognize the girl and contact the police.
It paid off. The following morning, Karen had a dozen messages telling her that the sketch appeared to be a woman named Julie Wesley. She called each person back and learned that Julie was originally from England. She had come to the U.S. as a girl with her parents, who lived in Los Angeles, and she had been living with a man that the callers knew only as “Digger.” The two of them, Karen was told, had three daughters, and no one had any idea where they might be, either.
Danny the Digger was known as a drug dealer and hoodlum, and Karen was able to learn from the Vice division that his real name was Daniel Samara. The nickname reportedly came from the fact that he was often used as a young man to dig graves, the kind people don’t want anyone else to find. He was about thirty-eight years old and had already done a couple of short stints in prison. Julie had never done time, but she had spent many nights in jail for minor drug offenses or prostitution.
Authorities had been told on numerous occasions that their daughters were being abused, but they never seemed to catch up with them. Each time they got a report, Digger would somehow take his family and be gone before they arrived. They knew that the oldest daughter was around ten years old, but there was no record that she had ever been to school. They didn’t know the ages of the other two girls, and no one had even been able to provide their names.
With all of this information, Karen put out a request for any information that might lead to him. He was listed as a person of interest in Julie’s death, so if he had any interaction with the police, they would be notified to hold him for her.
Unfortunately, Danny the Digger hadn’t been seen around the last few days. He wasn’t around the place where he’d been known to be staying, and even the vice snitches were unable to come up with any information on his current whereabouts.
Unfortunately, nothing came of it. The only break Karen got on the case at all came when Julie’s parents were tracked down in California. They agreed that the sketch they saw appeared to be their daughter, and were able to provide information about some identifying marks that confirmed her identity.
Karen called to speak with them, and got them both on the phone.
“First,” she said, “let me express my deepest sympathies on the loss of your daughter. I know this is a hard thing to deal with, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Wesley. “Julie was a lovely girl as a child, and I only wish we could have done better with her as a teenager. She ran away, you know, when she was fifteen.”
“No, I didn’t know. Did you ever hear from her after that?”
“Not a word. She left with a young man, one she’d met on the streets. He’d gotten her involved in using drugs, and nothing we could say or do would get through to her. We awoke one morning to find her gone, and she left behind a letter telling us that she was in love with this Digger piece of trash and had decided she wanted to be with him forever. That was the last we ever heard of her until now.”
“She said the man she ran away with was called Digger? Our information says that’s the same man she’d been living with, and that they had three daughters. Do you know anything about your grandchildren?”
“Why, no, this is the first we’ve heard of them. Three girls, do you say? Would it be possible for you to let us know if you find them? We would certainly like to know them, and perhaps, given the circumstances, we might be able to gain custody of them.”
“I certainly will,” Karen said. “In the meantime, if you should happen to think of anything else that might help us track down Digger, please call me. I’ll give you my cell number, and I don’t care what time it is, if you think of something or hear something, please let me know.”
The parents promised to do so, and Karen said goodbye. She was quite frustrated with the case, and was itching to get her hands on Daniel “the Digger” Samara and his children.
And then she got her chance, or part of it. Samara was picked up for questioning when he was stopped over a burned-out taillight, and Karen spent hours trying to get any information out of him that she could. He kept insisting that he had no idea where Julie had gone, or what had happened to her. According to him, they had gotten into a huge fight more than two months earlier and she had walked out.
“And you never heard from her again?” Karen demanded.
“Not even a peep,” he said. There was something in his expression that convinced her he was lying. Still, she couldn’t break his story, and without some kind of evidence against him, there was nothing she could do. She decided to change tacks.
“What about your daughters?” Karen asked him. “Where are they? It seems DHS has some concerns about their safety.
Once again, he stared at her blankly, but something about his demeanor made her feel that he was laughing at her. “Julie took them,” he said calmly. “I have no idea where they might be. I haven’t seen them since the night she left with them.”
No matter how she tried, Karen was unable to break the man or get any kind of idea of what had truly transpired. There was no doubt in her mind that he had murdered Julie, and she was beginning to believe that he had probably killed the little girls, as well, but without evidence, she was forced to let him go. She spent days trying to come up with any kind of information, anything that would give her the opportunity to convince the DA to take action against Samara, but she was unsuccessful.
Her partner Carlos returned to work after recovering from surgery a few days later, and the two of them went over the case together. No matter how they tried, however, they couldn’t find any new leads. After a couple of weeks, other cases began to take priority and Julie Wesley became only a name and a case file.
A week after Carlos returned, he and Karen were called out on a new case that would prove just as frustrating. A little girl, approximately five years old, had been found in a dumpster on the south end of town. Despite every effort they could make, no one could identify the child, and Karen cried herself to sleep over little Janie Doe on many nights. A part of her wondered many times over the years whether little Janie had been one of the Samara girls, but no one had ever been able to identify her. Since the county wouldn’t pay for any DNA tests and Julie’s body had been released to her parents in California, anyway, there was just no way she could be sure.
This case, just like the case of Julie Wesley, eventually was reduced to a cold case file, but Karen never forgot either of them.
2
Present Day
“Detective Parks?”
Karen looked up from her desk to see an obviously expecting young woman in a long skirt standing in her doorway. “That’s me,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
The girl stepped inside and closed the door behind her, then took a seat in the chair in front of Karen’s desk. She opened her mouth to speak, but at first nothing came out. She tried again with a little more success.
“Detective Parks, I found your name in some old newspaper stories, and I need to talk to you. My name is Melinda Davis, and you worked on a case about ten years ago that—well, it’s part of the reason I’m here.”
Karen’s eyes narrowed and she focused her attention on the young woman. “Okay, I’m listening. Go ahead.”
Melinda licke
d her lips before speaking again. “My maiden name was Melinda Samara,” she said, and something began to tickle the back of Karen’s mind. “I think you investigated the death of my mother. Her name was Julie Wesley.”
Karen’s eyes shot wide open. “Of course,” she said, “I remember the case very well. Drove me crazy for years, still does sometimes. Samara, Samara—that means you’re Digger Samara’s daughter, right?”
Melinda scowled. “Unfortunately, that’s true,” she said, “and that’s the rest of the reason I’m here. You see, I got married almost a year ago, and I’m going to have a baby in about six weeks. I just found out that my father is back in the Denver area, and I am absolutely terrified of ever letting him get near me or my child.”
Karen stared at her, nodding slowly. “I’ve met the bastard,” she said. “I can completely understand.” She reached out a hand and turned on the video camera that was sitting on her desk, turning it slightly so that it was focused on Melinda.
“Well, I talked it over with my husband,” Melinda said, “and we agreed that I should come forward. You see, when I was about ten years old, I saw my father murder my mother, and then he made me watch as he cut up her body. I had to hold open the trash bags so that he could put—so he could put the parts in them, and I have nightmares about that to this very day.”
“I’m quite certain you do. Melinda, you actually saw him kill her?”
“Yes. He had come home in a rage because something went wrong on one of his deals, I don’t know what, and my mother started saying something about how we didn’t have any food, and he just blew up on her. He hit her a couple of times, and then she fell and hit her head on the corner of a cabinet or something. He yelled at her to get up, but she didn’t respond, so he got down and looked closely at her, and then he started cussing. That’s when he went and got some kind of power saw, and started cutting her up.”
“And you actually witnessed this?” Karen asked, her face aghast.
“Oh, yes,” Melinda said, and Karen could see the tears threatening to overflow. “Me and my sisters, Ashley and Samantha, all three of us. And when he got done, he yelled at me to hold the bags open for him. I—I didn’t have any choice. I did what I was told, and then he set the bags aside and made me help him clean up blood.”
“Oh, dear heavens,” Karen said. “Melinda, I know this has to be terribly hard for you, and I’m very sorry, but please tell me everything.”
Melinda crossed her legs and fidgeted with her skirt for a moment, then looked up at Karen again. “I remember it all as if it was yesterday,” she said slowly. “After we cleaned up all the blood, he carried the bags out and put them in the car, then he made me and my sisters go get in the back seat. Whenever we rode in the car, we had to lay down and keep a blanket over us, because he said there were people trying to steal us away from him. We got in and he put the blanket over us, and then he drove for a little while and stopped. I heard the trunk open and I knew he was getting rid of the bags, but then he got back in and drove for a long time. We weren’t allowed to talk or anything when we were in the car, but finally stopped and told us to get out. We were at some house outside of Golden, where a friend of his lived. He said we were going to be staying there for a while.”
She held up a finger to ask Karen to wait, and then she took a very deep breath. As she let it out, she visibly shuddered. “There were two men there, and he told them he needed to stay there but they wanted something. He didn’t have whatever it was they wanted, so he pointed at us. He said, ‘Hey, you can use them if you let me stay.’ One of them said okay, and then he took me…”
Karen’s eyes were about to pop out of her head. “He let them use you sexually?”
Melinda nodded, unable to speak. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and it took her a moment to get herself under control.
“Yeah,” she said. “All three of us.”
“How long were you there?” Karen asked.
“I’m not really sure. A couple of weeks, probably. We were there up until Ashley disappeared.”
“Wait a minute, let me make sure I got this right. Ashley was one of your sisters?”
“Yeah, she was the youngest one. She was about four at the time, and Samantha was six. I remember it was kind of cold that day, and we were all wrapped up in our blankets on the floor. My dad came in from somewhere and told us all to get up but Ashley said she was too cold and wouldn’t come out from under her blanket. He yelled at her, then he yanked her up on her feet and backhanded her so hard she kinda flew across the room and hit the wall.” Melinda blinked, trying to control the tears. “She fell down and wasn’t moving, and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t even breathing. He yelled at her again and got down on the floor beside her, and then he just picked her up and threw her over his shoulder and walked out.” She dug into her purse for a handkerchief and wiped at her eyes. “Samantha and I never saw Ashley again.”
Karen held up a hand. “Wait,” she said. She turned to the computer on her desk and started tapping on the keys, and a moment later, the printer beside her came to life. A photo came out of it, poorly printed on plain paper but still visible, and Karen looked at it for a second before passing it to Melinda.
“Oh, my God,” Melinda said. “That’s her, that’s Ashley.” She looked at the Karen. “How…”
“She was found in a dumpster on the outskirts of the city. We tried for years to figure out who she was, but we were never able to identify her.” Karen sniffled. “I’ve had many sleepless nights over her. We called her little Janie Doe, but it’s nice to finally have a name to put with her.”
Melinda was still staring at the photo. “What—whatever happened to her?”
“She was eventually buried in a pauper’s plot. The city keeps some for situations like that. I can get the exact location, if you’d like to visit her grave someday.”
Melinda nodded. “Yeah, I’d like that.” She took a deep breath and folded the picture, but continued to hold it as she looked back at Karen. “Anyway, after Ashley was gone, he took me and Samantha and we left. For about a year, we went from one of his buddies to another, and it was always the same as it had been there. We did what we were told, and that way we didn’t get hurt too badly. The only problem was that there wasn’t much food around, so me and Sam, we were hungry a lot. We didn’t get to take baths very often, and the only clothes we had were stuff we could steal off other people’s clotheslines. We got to go out in the mornings to hunt for food and stuff, and one morning this lady caught us digging in the dumpster behind her restaurant. Samantha was actually inside it, and she was passing out pieces of meat and half-eaten sandwiches to me.”
“Where was this?” Karen asked.
“Oh, this was in Grand Junction. The lady who caught us, she made us come inside the restaurant and fed us a good meal, but she kept asking us questions, like where we lived and stuff like that. It was such a relief to have some good, hot food that I didn’t even think about the fact we weren’t supposed to talk to strangers.” She smiled softly. “She had us in the kitchen, and she went out of the room for a few minutes and then came back. A few minutes later, one of the waitresses came in and had two police officers with her.”
“Good job,” Karen said.
“Yeah. They took us to the social services people, and we got lucky for once. We got placed in a foster home together, and the people who took us in were wonderful. The cops went after my dad, of course, but he was gone, like always. As far as I know, he never did find out where we were and that’s probably the only reason we survived. Our foster parents put us in counseling and therapy, and they say I came through it all fairly well, but Samantha—she had it rough. She was in and out of trouble for a few years, and she was finally institutionalized when she was fourteen.”
“Why was that?” Karen asked.
Melinda let out a deep sigh. “She got busted the first time for using marijuana when she was twelve, and then several more times over the next couple years. Th
e last time, I guess she tried to run from the cops that caught her and she stole a car. The judge said he was going to give her one more chance, and put her in an institution for troubled kids instead of jail.” She grimaced. “If you ask me, she was lucky. She doesn’t think so, of course, and she hasn’t even spoken to me in the last three years. When I would try to go to visit her, they’d just tell me that she was refusing to see me.”
“I’m sorry,” Karen said. “Melinda, do you know where your father is?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly, no,” she said. “All I know is he’s back in Denver. My husband, he grew up on what they used to call the wrong side of the tracks, you know what I mean? He knows quite a few people from the dark side of Denver, and he put the word out back when we got married that if Digger ever turned up, he wanted to know about it. Well, somebody sent him this.”
She took out her phone and called up an image, then passed it to Karen. Samara’s hair was grayer, and there were wrinkles and creases on his face, but Karen had no doubt it was the same man who had laughed in her face ten years earlier.
“That’s definitely him,” she said. “Any idea where this picture was taken?”
“It was supposedly down by Castle Pines,” Melinda said, “but several people say he’s been seen all over town. From what I hear, he’s been coming back here off and on for the last few years, but he’s always managed to avoid getting any serious charges, so nobody really does anything about him. I’m hoping maybe you can help change that.”
“You bet your ass I can,” Karen said. “Tell me how I can get in touch with you. You do realize you’re going to have to testify against him, right? I can’t do anything without your testimony.”
“Yes, I know, and I’ll do whatever it takes. Ms. Parks, please understand that I would rather die than ever let that man near me or my baby. You don’t have to worry that I’ll change my mind, because I won’t. I want him put away, and I want him put away as far and as deep as possible.”