AHMM, October 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  When one newspaper article stated that Jane Doe was to be buried in a pauper's grave, donations poured in to buy a private cemetery plot. The necessary sum of ninety-five dollars was quickly raised. Stokes and Sons embalmed her pro bono and donated a coffin, and florists at 4 Seasons donated roses and sweet peas to cover it. The pastor at the Lake Street Methodist Episcopal Church offered to handle the funeral service, and promised to make it nondenominational. Over thirty people came to bid farewell to a young girl none of them had known. Or, it should be said, presumably no one there knew her. The following day a front page picture of the graveside ceremony showed the men wearing suits and snap-brim fedoras, the women wearing dresses and pillbox hats.

  Nancy Lentz said to Cellini now, “Won't you at least talk to Chief Wistrom?"

  He smiled. “Sure. Hard to turn down a request from a pretty young lady.” And she was pretty, he thought. Too young to be beautiful. She was twenty-five maybe. “I'll talk to him and get back to you."

  She jumped up from her chair with a smile that Cellini called a Pepsodent smile, which certainly dated him. “Oh, thank you!” she cried and dashed out.

  Cellini retrieved the file on the murder, a bit amazed that it was still available. He hadn't even been born then. He sat back down in his swivel chair with his feet on the desk, his favorite position for thinking, and studied the file carefully. He read the high school boys’ statements, the pathologist's autopsy report, the coroner's jury's decision, the list of junked objects found at the scene. There was a scrawled addendum stating that the newspapers had not been given a complete list of what was found at the scene.

  There were also faded red arrows pointing to two sentences that described two items that had not been released to the press: In her uterus was a three-month-old male fetus, and she had a transverse scar in the right lower quadrant of her abdomen, which was probably from an appendectomy.

  They'd been thorough, he could see. He could also see why they'd had to close the case without solving it. Oh, it looked like they really had tried to find something. Two officers had been assigned full time for the better part of a month, tracking down every little scrap of information. They'd checked people who lived nearby to see if they'd seen anything unusual during the previous week. “Yah,” one old farmer had said, “I seen something unusual. That jackpine savage next door” (half a mile away) “shot at my dog and durn near kilt him. Ufta!” And there had been some shots fired perhaps a mile from where the body was found, but the person who'd heard it figured it was deer shiners getting some “woods beef."

  No one reported seeing any vehicles that they didn't recognize as belonging to local residents.

  Cellini thought that maybe the police could do something now. They'd have to exhume the body, of course, and that would cost money, which the chief would almost certainly veto. In his interview with Nancy, he'd pointed that out. She countered with the idea of asking for donations from the general public, just like they did fifty years ago. She had it all figured out.

  He worked at his desk for a couple of hours, clearing up enough paperwork that he thought he could take some time off and speak to Chief Wistrom about Jane Doe.

  To his surprise, the chief had no objections if they didn't have to use taxpayers’ money for a project that was likely to fail.

  He called Nancy later in the day and got her voicemail. He left a message. She called back while he was out of the office and left a message. Phone tag. But her message was short and to the point: “I'll get right on it."

  And she did. Within a week she had raised three thousand six hundred dollars, which was more than enough to cover the cost of the exhumation, the DNA tests on the remains, if they ever found any relatives, and the fee for a facial reconstructionist to create a three-dimensional sculpture of what Jane Doe might have looked like. A picture of the sculpture would then be circulated widely, with the hope that someone somewhere would recognize the girl.

  A month later Cellini stood with Nancy Lentz, Chief Wistrom, and a couple of dozen other people at the grave of Jane Doe. A backhoe stood nearby. The chief asked for a moment of silence. Then the backhoe started excavating the coffin of a young woman murdered fifty years ago. Nancy said to Cellini in a quiet voice, “Fifty years ago a couple of dozen people gathered here to bury Jane Doe. Now we're here to dig her up. In both cases it's because some people cared and wondered who she was."

  It took two days to complete the exhumation, retrieve the remains, and transfer them to the proper people. They chose as the reconstructionist a man in Minneapolis with a superb track record, a young Korean American by the name of Bae Lee. Cellini had never seen a reconstruction like this, so he made the two-hour drive from Eau Claire to watch him work.

  Lee placed the skull on his turntable in what he called the Frankfort Horizontal position. He knew that the girl was white, approximately twenty years old, and was lean almost to the point of being skinny. With that information he could gauge the proper tissue depth data. He used about twenty-five short white tissue markers that looked like stubs of cigarettes of different lengths and glued them directly to the skull. Most of them lay over prominent bones like the cheek and jaw. Because she was known to have been blond, he placed blue-tinted artificial eyeballs in the sockets and centered them carefully at the proper depth.

  Bae Lee had already noted the report of the forensic anthropologist as to lack of knowledge of Jane Doe's lifestyle, where she lived, or anything else. So he had little to go on there. “Sometimes,” he reflected, “that's helpful in such things as determining the thickness of the fat tissue between skin and bone in cases where all the soft tissue is gone.” But he started applying clay directly on the skull, following its contours, and paying strict attention to the tissue markers. Cellini stayed for a few hours, fascinated by the artist at work. The guy really knew his stuff, Cellini mused to himself. Lee had just made a good start when Cellini left, but Cellini could already detect the general appearance of the girl's face.

  Ten days later, Cellini received half a dozen photographs of the reconstructed head, taken from various angles. He studied them for a few moments, muttering under his breath about how real the sculpture looked. Then he jumped to his feet and strode rapidly to Chief Wistrom's office. The chief took one look and said, “Good Lord, she looks like she's about to say something!"

  "Yeah,” Cellini said. “Wish it would be her name."

  "Get these out to every fax machine in every police station, library, and post office within a five hundred—mile radius."

  "Yes, sir!"

  * * * *

  It was near the end of a long day for Helen Rush. She was the senior librarian in Centerville's little library and would be retiring in three months after almost forty years of service. She leaned back in her swivel chair with a deep sigh. Her oldest son wanted her to leave Little Egypt, the area around Cairo at the far southern tip of Illinois, and move closer to him in Springfield. Now that Cecil was gone, maybe that would be a good thing. She tapped the blunt end of her felt pen against her teeth and sighed again. She would hate to leave her cozy little home on the lake just a few miles outside of town. Well, she thought, there's no hurry to make up my mind.

  The fax machine behind her chattered and she could hear it kick out three sheets of paper. Idly, she spun in her chair and reached for the printouts. The top page had on it two pictures of the modeled head of a very pretty young girl, a profile and a frontal view. The girl's lips curled slightly at the corners in a winsome smile.

  Helen gazed thoughtfully at the pictures for several moments, thinking that the girl looked vaguely familiar. Then she turned to the second sheet and read, “This girl was found dead at the end of a remote logging road in a dense new-growth forest near the city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, more than fifty years ago. No identification was possible because...” It said she had blue eyes and reddish blond hair. Helen read the brief sketch of the investigation, the exhumation, and the recent reconstruction of the face. Then on the third
sheet she read the plea from the Eau Claire police department for anyone who had any information, or thought they recognized the girl, to get in touch with the department.

  Helen tossed the sheets onto her desk and studied the face once more. Yes. Colleen. Colleen Tichna. She disappeared one night. She'd gone to a movie and just didn't come home. But could that have been fifty years ago? It didn't seem possible. But, yes again. Everyone, including her parents, sister, teachers, and the police had agreed that she hadn't run away. There were no clothes or suitcases missing; she'd had no serious arguments with her parents. She didn't drink alcohol. The consensus was that she'd been abducted.

  Helen knew that Margaret, Colleen's younger sister, still lived here in town. Helen hadn't seen her for years. She was a few years older than Helen, which would put her in her early seventies.

  She pondered a moment, remembering that terrible week when half the village roamed the back roads and trails looking for any kind of a clue. Nothing had ever been found. There were no witnesses, no suspects, no arrests. She had a boyfriend with a hair-trigger temper who'd hit her more than once, but he had an absolutely air-tight alibi and was exonerated early on.

  Helen looked away from the pictures, trying to bring up in her mind the face of Colleen Tichna. She couldn't quite do it. All she could visualize were the pictures on the desk in front of her. Maybe she was wrong. There must be a lot of strawberry blondes who look like this. But how many went missing fifty years ago? And were never seen again?

  She wondered briefly if she should call Detective Cellini or Chief Wistrom, then decided to wait until she had talked to the girl's sister and showed her the pictures. No need to get the Eau Claire cops all excited if she was wrong. Then she wondered where Eau Claire was and looked it up in her Rand/McNally atlas. Northwest Wisconsin. Quite close to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

  Margaret had married a Foster, Helen recalled. Gordon. She riffled through the slim phone book and quickly found Gordon and Margaret Foster. On Ninth Street. She thought that she knew the house. Centerville was still a very small town, not much bigger than it had been fifty years ago.

  Helen wondered if she should call first. She looked at her watch. A few minutes after five. They were both probably retired, so even if they'd been out somewhere, they'd be home now.

  She called a hurried good-bye to her staff and made her way downstairs to the parking lot and got in her unlocked Bug.

  The Fosters lived in an older part of town where the houses were all different from each other. Most of the two-story homes had porches and one-car garages (though some were not deep enough to hold a modern van or station wagon). Helen saw a car in the open garage, so she pulled into the driveway and climbed the front steps. The screen door was closed, but the wooden door was open.

  She pushed the doorbell and heard a chime in the distance. Through the screen she could see an elderly man shuffling toward her, pushing a wheeled walker ahead of him. He was a big man, she could tell, even as he hunched over the walker. He wore a blue chambray shirt and suspendered dark brown cotton pants. His face was craggy, quite pale, and adorned with a scraggly gray beard. Before he reached the door, however, an elderly lady came bustling up.

  "Margaret?” Helen asked.

  "Yes. Do I know you?"

  "We haven't seen each other for years. I'm Helen Rush."

  "Sure. The librarian. We're not readers, or we'd have seen each other oftener. Well, come in, come in. You know Gordon too, then?"

  Margaret Foster's face was lightly lined, her hair almost pure white. She was tall and slim, and she moved with an easy stride that was almost a glide. Very graceful, Helen thought, especially for a woman over seventy. She wore bluejeans that stopped at mid calf and a man's white shirt with the tails hanging loosely.

  "Yes, I know Gordon. How are you?"

  "As you see, an old man. I worked in the coal mines all my life. Got anthracosis. That's black lung disease. Emphysema and..."

  Margaret broke in. “Gordy, Helen doesn't want to hear all that!"

  He grunted and said, “Why the hell did she ask me how I was, then?"

  "Sit down, Helen, over here. And tell me what brings you here. I take it this is not a social call."

  Helen settled in a chair before she pulled the two pictures out of her handbag. Without a word she handed them to Margaret.

  Margaret gasped and said with a slight stutter, “C-C-Colleen!” She handed the pictures to Gordon, who had remained standing, and said to Helen, “Wherever did you get these?"

  Gordon's hands trembled noticeably. His face paled, then flushed a few seconds later. Margaret jumped to her feet and crossed the room, but he waved her away. “I'm okay. Bit of a shock, though, ain't it? Where did you get these, Helen?"

  She told them.

  "Why in the world would she go to Eau Claire?” Margaret asked.

  "Maybe she was taken there. Before or after she was killed. By someone from Eau Claire or who at least knew the area,” Helen said. She paused, looked at Margaret for a long moment, then said quietly, “Are you absolutely sure that it is Colleen?"

  Margaret stood up, said, “Just a moment,” and left the room. A few minutes later she returned with a Centerville High School yearbook, dated 1953. She turned quickly to the seniors, put her finger on a face, and said, “Here."

  There was little doubt that the picture of the modeled head and the picture of Colleen were of the same person.

  "For years we left her room exactly how she'd left it. Except for dusting and vacuuming once in a while. But finally we gave up hope of ever seeing her again. Me and Mom and Dad went through her things, sold or gave away most of the stuff. But I just couldn't part with the yearbook. We had other pictures of her, of course, but that was one of the best."

  "You weren't married yet? When she disappeared?"

  "Engaged.” She glanced at Gordon's profile. He'd taken a chair from the dining room table, turned it halfway, and sat down so that he faced away from the two ladies. He nodded and said, “Yeah. And we didn't get married for almost another year. We were both too shook up about Colleen's disappearance."

  Helen stood up and put the pictures back in her bag. “I'd better get in touch with Eau Claire."

  On her way home, she replayed the scene in the Fosters’ home. They had seemed shocked, especially Gordon, but not overly emotional. Perhaps after fifty years a more subdued reaction might be expected. She remembered now that Gordon and Margaret had been high school sweethearts, but had broken up when Margaret went to the college in Carbondale for two years and Gordon left town for work elsewhere. She couldn't remember where, but she thought it was with a logging company because he used to say he'd found one job he didn't want to do the rest of his life and that was cutting down trees.

  When he came back to Centerville, he'd gone directly into the coal mine. He and Margaret got together again when she came home from school. Helen couldn't remember why Margaret hadn't finished college. Money problems perhaps? Poor grades? Or just lack of motivation to continue? It certainly didn't matter now.

  At home Helen called the station house in Eau Claire. The chief had gone home already, but Cellini was still there. She went right to the point. “This is Helen Rush. I'm calling from Centerville, a little town in southern Illinois that you never heard of. I think I've identified your Jane Doe.” She sketched for him just why she thought she knew.

  "This is great news, Mrs. Rush. But we've got to be completely certain. Are there any living blood relatives?"

  "A sister."

  "Will she cooperate with a DNA test?"

  "Oh yes, I think so. How will you do that?"

  "It's become very simple. We've always used hair samples and forensic pathologists. But now there are labs all over the country that use the cheek swab technique. Mainly it's used in paternity cases because it can be done in the privacy of the home. In this case where a murder has—"

  "There's no doubt that this was murder?"

  "None.
We haven't released the details officially, although the press certainly learned most of them back fifty years ago. As I was saying, we'll have to ask Mrs. Foster to go into the local police station because we need official witnesses that the test was actually done on her."

  "Will you be coming down? To reopen the case?"

  "I might have to. Since the body was found in Eau Claire County, we have jurisdiction in the case. But perhaps your police force could handle the details and save me the trip. We'd have no problem with sending them all the information we've got here."

  Helen's voice had a smile in it. “We have a two-man police force. No detectives."

  "What's your closest big town?"

  "Cairo.” She pronounced it “Care-oh.” “But that's a hundred miles away."

  "They probably should be notified anyway. The sister should do it. Her husband's living?"

  "Yes. Gordon."

  "He could handle it if Margaret doesn't want to."

  "She'd be better able. He's pretty well crippled up with black lung disease from the coal mines."

  Cellini recalled that among all the junk found near Colleen there had been a headlamp. Apparently no one had thought anything of it because deer hunters sometimes used them to get to their stands in the dark and farmers sometimes used them to get to their barns before sunup.

  "Well, Mrs. Rush, there are a few things I can check on here. Oh, by the way, did Gordon Foster ever work in Eau Claire or near here?"

  "Not that I know of. Well, he did work for a logging company somewhere just after he graduated from high school.” She paused several seconds. “Detective Cellini! What are you suggesting?"