by J. F. Margos
“Thank you, Tommy.”
“You’re totally welcome, Toni. You raised this guy?”
“Yes.”
“Man, I would have thought you and Jack would have whipped more respect into him than this.” Tommy smiled, thoroughly enjoying himself.
“He's had issues lately, I guess.”
“Yeah, and my issue is, I’m the only guy on the force working homicides with my mom, and taking abuse from my partner simultaneously.”
I smiled, patted my son on the arm and said, “You’re such an abused child. Such a sad life.”
I started walking back to the car.
Tommy laughed out loud.
“Later, Toni,” Tommy yelled as I walked away.
I turned and waved as I got into the Mustang.
I stood at the back screen door, inhaling the fragrance of mountain laurel, redbud and ornamental peach blended by rainwater with the mustiness of oak and elm. It was three in the morning and the back of my neck was stiff from the five hours I had just spent reconstructing the face of a murder victim found near Hutto off of Highway 79. A thirtyish-year-old woman had been laid to rest in an untimely fashion in a grove of cottonwood trees. There she had spent the winter decomposing with the leaves, until two high-school kids hiked by and found her. Lieutenant Drew Smith of the Texas Rangers had asked me to put the woman’s face back on her skull in the hopes that someone might recognize her. Without her identity, there was no hope of finding her killer.
I dug gray clay shavings out from under my fingernails and rolled my head back in a circular fashion to loosen the sore muscles. The half moon peeked between branches of new growth overhead and the soft, intermittent dripping of water from the eaves and trees hypnotized me into meditation in my fatigue. My eyes glazed over and I drifted back in time to a day I remembered working in the garage with my dad. The car was an old ’50 Chevy that needed an oil change and the rain outside pounded down while Daddy instructed me on the finer points of removing and replacing an oil filter.
The phone rang like an alarm and I was startled out of my reverie. I hurried into the kitchen and picked up the receiver on the old black clunker on the wall.
“You sleepin’, Toni?” an exhausted voice breathed.
“No, kid, I’m not. Sounds like you aren’t either.”
“Uh-uh,” she groaned.
“So what’re you doing about it?”
“Drank some hot tea earlier. Slept for a while. Been awake again now for an hour or so. What’re you doin’up?”
My caller was one of the best fire investigators in the state. In her late thirties, Lieutenant Leonie “Leo” Driskill had retired from “active combat” as a firefighter with the Austin Fire Department and now fought fires with her brain cells. She had a real knack for analyzing human behavior, too.
“I’ve spent the evening putting a face back on a dead gal,” I said. “Started on it earlier today, gave it up for a while, went back to it about ten. I’m almost done now, but I think I’m gonna get some sleep here in a bit.”
“You can do that? Just say I’m gonna go get some sleep and lie down and sleep comes?”
“Yep.”
“Dead girl doesn’t keep you awake after all that?”
“Nope. I’m trying to bring her some peace. I’m okay with that.”
“Hmm. Got too many fires in my head, Toni. Can’t put ’em out long enough to grab eight.”
I knew it wasn’t just fires keeping her awake, but she changed the subject back to my current reconstruction case, wanting to know more about the victim. I told her what we knew and then I mentioned the bones found on Red Bud Isle the previous morning. Leo was Tommy’s girlfriend, but he had not mentioned the case to her. For all his teasing of Mike, Tommy had his own issues with a girlfriend who was as good an investigator as he was. I think if she had been in the police department instead of the fire department, their relationship might not have lasted. I thought Leo was actually better than either Tommy or my own son. Soon, I would request Leo to use her special insight into criminal behavior to help sort out the facts that would unfold in the coming days.
Chapter Two
The eyes are what haunt you—those beady, lifeless eyes, sculpted out of gray clay. I sculpted the “hair” out of clay as well. I would always sculpt a neutral style to the hair—short and combed for men, pulled away from the face for women. If the woman had short hair, the pulled-back style would mimic that. If the woman wore her hair long, she probably pulled it up or back from time to time, and again the style would be similar. Occasionally, there would be some hair left on a skeleton, or some article of clothing or a hair ornament that would give me a clue as to the actual appearance of the hair. In those instances, I would sculpt hair for the figure that I thought more accurately reflected the person’s actual hairstyle.
There were several styles of forensic reconstructive art. There was the two-dimensional medium of charcoal and pencil drawings, which I used only in certain instances. There were sculptors who used glass eyes and actual wigs to finish their sculptures. There were sculptors who used fiberglass and other materials for sculpting. I liked to do most of my reconstructions in the three-dimensional medium of sculpture with pure clay. It wasn’t better, it was just that I was more comfortable with it. I used plastics for making the molds, and plaster for casting the duplicated skulls, but the final result was just the clay. There was science in all the measurements that went into reapplying “flesh” to the skull, but the end result was a melding of that science with classical art. There seemed something more human about it all when I was finished.
My studio is a long room on one end of my house. There are windows on either end of the room—the front and back of the house. The ceiling is only nine feet—I prefer a twelve-foot one myself, but my house was what it was. Anyway, I have several tables in the room for various stages of my work and also for keeping busts that I’ve finished. There are some pedestals with work that I’d done purely for art, and I have a drafting board where I do sketches for all of my work.
I was in my studio finishing up my last case before beginning on the Red Bud victim, and I wondered who she was—this woman left to decompose among the cottonwood leaves. Her face was slim and oval-shaped. The nose bone was narrow and pronounced. It still had some of the cartilage on the very tip when she was found, although the buzzards had gotten just about all the other soft tissue. Her nose had a nice angular shape to it—a strong high ridge—and the brow formed a wonderful arch out of the nose and over the eyes. Her cheekbones were relatively high and created a smooth curve inward toward a narrow but rounded chin. The contrast of angles and curves gave her bone structure a delicate appearance overall.
In spite of the beauty I saw in this face, there was ugliness there, too. The ugliness was not hers, though. It was something inflicted upon her by human hands. There were scars—healed fractures in the bones of her face, and Drew said there had been similar scars in her arm bones and ribs.
The bone of her nose had also been broken, as had one of her cheekbones. Parts of her skull contained other fractures, too, but these wounds were not scars or healed breaks. These were death blows.
The face I had restored bore none of that terror. What I restored was a face made by the hand of God—a face that denied the abusive intervention of man. I blocked the horror of what I saw whenever I worked and remembered the sacred words: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” As long as I could focus on what I was restoring, I didn’t have to think about what had happened to the victim to put them in need of my skills.
With clay hair and eyes in place, the image was complete, and I placed it in the kiln for firing. When the bust was done, I removed it and set it out on one of my worktables. When it was cool, I made photos from all sides and then called Lieutenant Drew Smith at Ranger headquarters. He was in and wanted me to bring the bust o
ver that day. It was a beautiful day for a drive through Austin. I put on my dark brown slacks, a short-sleeve beige sweater and my brown snakeskin boots. I placed the bust in a case for transport and loaded it into the Mustang.
It was cool and clear and a breeze blew through the trees and filled the air with the fresh green scent of spring. I rolled the windows down on the ’Stang and decided to take my scenic detour through town to get to Drew’s office.
I lived in the older Hyde Park section of Austin and the trip to Ranger HQ should have been about fifteen minutes, but fifteen minutes didn’t seem like enough time to enjoy all the sights and smells of the day, so I found my way to a road through the hills—to a road called Balcones.
The wind blew through my hair and I rode the curves all the way up Balcones as it wound its way above Lake Austin to a breathtaking view that I caught in my rearview mirror. I downshifted into second to make the rest of the grade, and looking forward, I made a left at the next intersection. Then I drove to the top of the mount, where I absorbed one of the best views in town.
Soon, I found my way back down, and made a right to head back into town toward Drew’s shop. By the time I got there, it would be a thirty-minute trip, instead of the fifteen minutes of the more direct route, but these scenic detours were one of my favorite ways to avoid the gloom and doom that was inherent to the forensic work I did.
As I flew down and around the curves of the road, my thoughts turned to the face that would appear on the Red Bud Isle skull we had unearthed from the riverbank the previous morning. Once I was through with my meeting with Drew, I would have to call Chris and make arrangements to go down to the morgue for the casting of a mold of the skull. Once a mold had been made, I would take it back to my studio and begin the meticulous work of pouring a plaster version of the skull and fleshing it out with clay. What face would it reveal? The face of someone slain over ten years before, who had lain in a grave not only unidentified, but unmourned—a person whose fate had been utterly unknown for all that time. Whose face would it be? Who and where was the murderer now?
The road curved to the left and now I was on a straight path to Ranger headquarters. Within five minutes I approached the intersection at Lamar Boulevard, downshifted into second and wheeled the Black Beauty to the left, getting just a tad of tire squeal out of the rubber as I took the corner. A quick right turn into the parking lot and I was there, scoping for a place to land. I found a spot not too far from the front doors and made my way inside with case in hand.
It was always good to see Drew Smith. Drew and I had been friends a long time. We had met on a case years ago, and we had bonded as friends because our mothers were both from Terrebonne Parish in Louisiana. My mama’s people were from Boudreaux and Drew’s lived in Houma. My mom wasn’t with us anymore, but Drew’s Mama Beatrice, as everyone called her, was alive and kicking. She was some great lady. That woman could really cook, too. I had first met her on a trip back to Terrebonne Parish to visit some of my kin. She laid out a spread before me that would have fed five truck drivers. Then she insisted that I take leftovers home with me so I would have “something for the road.” You could tell that Mama Beatrice was used to feeding three big boys, now three large men. Drew had a sister, too, but she was a petite thing like her mother, and I joked with her that she had remained small and slim because her brothers devastated the dinner table before she got anything to eat. She had laughed and said that there was too much truth in my joke.
Drew was a handsome African-American man who stood six feet, four inches tall, with square shoulders and a rock-solid body underneath them. He had a dazzling smile with an endearing overbite and the softest brown eyes I had ever seen in the face of a cop. He was between the ages of thirty-eight and forty, but he had old-fashioned manners and ethics, and that was a good thing in my book.
Make no mistake, however, Drew Smith was a law enforcement officer’s law enforcement officer. True to the legend of the Texas Rangers, Drew got his man—or woman—and put them away. If he couldn’t get them right away, he would dog a case until he finally dug up what he needed to make it stick. His work was meticulous and airtight every time—he made sure of it. He didn’t tolerate sloppy work in others and he tolerated it even less in himself. You don’t become a Texas Ranger by being average, and you don’t become one of the best of the Texas Rangers by being anything other than excellent in law enforcement. For this reason, I always found it a true professional reward to work on a case with Drew.
Such was the case with the cottonwood victim. Drew would not let go of this seemingly hopeless case. He was an inspiration. He had insisted that I be brought in to do a reconstruct of the victim’s face. Now I walked toward his office carrying the results of my work with me. A Jane Doe now had a face. Soon, she might also have a name. I knew that Drew Smith would not rest until he saw that she had both.
When I reached Drew’s office, we shook hands and then hugged. I hadn’t seen him in a month of Sundays. I set the case on his desk and slowly lifted the top off of it. When he saw the face he breathed in and out deliberately.
“Well, there she is then,” he said. “Somehow I already knew her. This one has haunted me, Toni.”
I nodded.
“I totally understand that. You should feel your hands in the clay, my friend.”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am, I don’t think I could do what you do. It’s tough enough to do what I do.”
He patted me on the back and smiled thoughtfully.
“Can I buy you a beverage?” he asked.
“No. I’m going to have to travel on to my next case.”
“Another one already?”
“Unfortunately so. Bones by the river.”
“Oh yes, yes. I read about it in the paper this morning. Sounds intriguing, Toni—very intriguing.”
“I think I could stand a little less intrigue for a while.”
Drew chuckled and then got out a Polaroid camera and made his own photos of the bust. He took the photos outside his office and handed them to a clerk, giving her instructions as to what to do with them. The photos would go out to all jurisdictions in Texas and various outlying jurisdictions in Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico. All federal agencies would receive copies as well, and her face would make the six o’clock local news on all networks. Maybe someone would recognize her. Only then could anything be done about locating her killer.
I said goodbye to Drew, we hugged again and I left the building. As I walked back to my car, I turned and looked up at the window to Drew’s office. I felt strange letting her go and leaving her there. I became attached to these anonymous persons. I wanted to care for her somehow, but I had done my best in that department by completing the bust. She was in good hands now. Drew would take care of her for me.
I called Chris from the car. She wanted to meet me for lunch down at Symphony Square, just a few blocks from the morgue. We would lunch on Tex-Mex before heading back to her office, where I could begin the first part of my work on our most recent victim. I only had to stop by the house briefly to pick up the supplies that I would need to make the mold. I took the short route to the house, picked up my things and headed downtown to meet Chris.
Chris was waiting at a table when I got there. She was dipping chips in hot sauce and wolfing them down as fast as her hand could make the trip from the basket to the bowl to her mouth and back to the basket again. I was always amazed to see someone so small and trim eating so much food. I wondered if she possessed a hollow leg.
“A little hungry today, are we?” I said as I took a seat opposite her.
“Mmm, hmm,” she muttered with a chip in her mouth. “Another early morning sans breakfast. I’ve been a little busy trying to do an autopsy on those bones—and I’m not done yet.”
“So, how goes the struggle?”
“Well, from one bone I discovered a type of soil that was inconsistent with the grave site—in other words, it was not that reddish-brown clay. It was embedded in one of th
e crevices of a bone—black, fertile-looking stuff. I found similar soil irregularities in other bones.”
“So, the departed had been buried before.”
“Mmm, hmm. Figured, but wanted to prove it.”
“So what else?”
“Called a guy I know down at A&M and talked it all over with him. Told him I was sending him dirt samples. The samples are going down via the Mike Sullivan Express.”
“Preserving the chain of evidence.”
“Yep. Do you know those Aggies can almost pinpoint to the spot the origin of any soil in this state?”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Agriculture is huge business here. If you’re going to be an expert in ag, you have to know your dirt.”
Chris nodded, still crunching chips. “Victim was a woman, I’d say probably between the ages of thirty and thirty-five at the time of her death.”
“Race?”
“Caucasian.”
“Know how she died yet?”
“Ordinarily that might take some careful scrutiny of the bones and I might come up with nothing, but in this case, an elementary schooler could have figured it out.”
“The suspense is killing me—no pun intended—so give.”
“Big bullet hole right in the skull,” she said with a trigger finger pointed at her temple, firing with a thumbhammer for emphasis.
“Nifty.”
“Yep. I’m going to continue my review of the rest of the bones. If I find anything earth-shattering—no pun intended right back at you—I’ll give you a shout.”
“So you think she was shot ten years ago?”
“More. Ten years is the minimum. I’ll have a better guesstimate of that when I’m done.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“I was just thinking…trying to remember what I might have been doing back then. Jack was still alive. My son was probably in high school. All that time gone by and she’s lain dead and undiscovered.”
