by J. F. Margos
“Yeah, someone shoots a woman in the head, buries her in one place and then comes back a few weeks ago, digs her up and buries her by the river. Very weird.”
“Definitely weird. Why do you dig someone up and move their bones?”
“Don’t know. Fetish?”
I shrugged. “I’d like Leo’s take on this, though.”
Leo Driskill was Chris’s cousin by marriage. Leo’s only living relative was her cousin, Pete Driskill, who was a brainy history expert. Pete and Chris had married about two years ago, making Chris and Leo cousins-in-law.
Chris nodded. “Call her.”
The Travis County Morgue was only a few years old. The old morgue had been something out of a Charles Dickens novel and the county had finally popped to build a new one. New or not, morgues are the coldest places on earth, I think—all stainless steel with a mixture of smells that range from total disinfectant to malodorous death. It was never a great place to be, but it was a place I had to go to do the first stage of what I do.
Chris had put the skull back together for me and I saw the hole where the death wound had been inflicted. I wondered at who had ended this woman’s life in such a fashion. It was chilling to see it—this broken skull pieced back together with that sinister hole in the temple, and to envision in my mind the living person receiving such a wound. In my mind I could see before me the woman with flesh on the bones, and I drifted to that moment of death. The barrel of the gun was against her temple, she was terrified, overcome with disbelief that this was her last moment. A finger squeezed the trigger, then there was the thunder of the hammer hitting the firing pin, and the explosive impact of the bullet. I shuddered and snapped back into the current reality.
“Are you okay?” Chris asked.
“Yes. I was just thinking about how she died.”
Why had she been reburied so long after her death? It was a new one on me, and I couldn’t imagine what was going on, but I knew that my work would be critical to finding the answers. Identification of the victim is the most important stage in a murder like this.
I began to mix the materials I needed to make a mold of the skull. I had my own technique for this process. I used a plastic material similar to the one a dentist uses for making impressions of teeth. The skull is impressed into the material, and then the material hardens to a certain point, at which time I remove the skull. I then take the mold back to my studio and cast it in plaster. Once the plaster is dry, I begin sculpting the clay face back to life on the plaster skull.
When I had this skull in the casting phase, Chris showed me the rest of the bones that had been recovered from Red Bud Isle.
“We found all of them, so wherever she was buried before, she was undisturbed, and the killer moved her entire skeleton.”
I nodded and looked at all the bones neatly arranged in their proper anatomical order—a now-headless skeleton laid out on a cold autopsy table.
“Were there any personal effects found?”
“Yes.”
I looked at her quizzically.
“Just this.” She pointed to one corner of the table.
It was a tattered piece of what appeared to be flowered cloth.
“Clothing?”
Chris nodded. “Probably part of a dress or blouse.”
“So, assuming she was originally buried with clothes, the clothes either decomposed completely, except for this scrap, or the killer discarded those and retrieved only the bones but missed this scrap.”
“That would be about the size of it. There were no other personal effects, so I’d say the killer ditched them all.”
“There’s another happy thought. How long before the Aggies have results on the soil samples?” I asked.
“They didn’t give me a time frame, but they have to analyze the samples for mineral content and all the little microbes they find there, so I imagine it’ll take a little bit anyway. Between your reconstruction of her face, and their location of the burial soil, we might actually get lucky enough to figure this out.”
“I hope you’re right.”
After I left the morgue, I tried Leo at her office, but the woman who answered the phone said that Lieutenant Driskill was in the field. So, I called her on her cell phone. When she picked up, I could tell she was in transit.
“So, you’re out in the field following up on hot leads?”
“That’s a glamorous way of putting it. I just got through interviewing a rent-a-cop that I think might be suffering from a little firebug.”
“Seriously?”
“Unfortunately so. He has all the signs and he fits the behavior pattern. I got him to write out the facts of a fire he ‘reported.’ I’m taking the written description to a psychologist for analysis right now.”
“Wow. Well, I’m calling you because Chris and I would like to talk to you about the bones from Red Bud Isle.”
“Okay. Something there for me to work with?”
“It’s not the original burial place and there was a large bullet hole in the skull.”
“Interesting. When I get done with my forensic psychologist, I’ll go by the morgue and get the details from Chris. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything brilliant.”
“So, what’s up with this rent-a-cop case?”
“Warehouse fire. Fire was definitely started by human hands and not an accident. Three security guards, one killed.”
“Oh no, that’s terrible! Did he burn to death?”
“No. Smoke inhalation, or more exactly, toxic-fume inhalation, combined with soot and searing heat. It’s actually what kills most people in a fire.”
“Who’s the homicide detective on it?”
“Tommy and your son. They suspect the other guard. I know he’s innocent. The guard I’m working on is the guy who did it. I’m going to make sure an innocent man doesn’t go down. Tommy hates it when I do this, but that’s tough. I’m going to do my job in spite of any personal relationships I have with the homicide team. I’ll tell you more when I come by with an assessment of your Red Bud case.”
“Good. I’d like to hear more.”
Inside my studio, I mixed plaster and poured it into the mold I had made of the skull when I was down at Chris’s office. The process was familiar, but never tedious or routine. I always approached my work with the reverence it was due. I was making a cast of someone’s skull—the skull of a person who had been deprived of her life in a cruel and untimely way. My subjects were always real people who had real families and friends. They were flesh and bone, and spirit in my beliefs—and while temporarily separated, they were all parts of a whole and real person. I never forgot that in my work.
When the plaster dried, I would open the synthetic mold and begin restoring her face. As I let the plaster set, I began my preparation. I lit a candle and I began to pray. Her soul would be at peace soon—I wanted it to be at peace with a name attached to it. I prayed, as I always did, for the guidance to do this right.
Chapter Three
The skull looked as if it was covered with pencil erasers. They were tissue-depth indicators, actually, and had been cut precisely to a depth for each portion of the face, based on statistics from a forensic anthropology chart. I had taken the basic information of race, gender and approximate age to decide which part of the chart to use. Now it looked as though her skeleton had some strange version of the measles. My next step would be to fill in between the indicators with clay, the top of each indicator showing me where to stop and smooth it off. It was like connect the dots for sculpture, although I would have to use my sculpting skills to make the raw, three-dimensional “data” look like a real human being. I was intently focused on my work, when the phone rang. I was so startled, I nearly fell off my stool.
I picked up the cordless handset that I had carried into the studio and was surprised to hear Irini Nikolaides on the other end of the line, distress in her voice. We exchanged the normal greetings of good friends before she broke the news.
“To
ni, they may have found my Teddy’s bones in that horrible jungle.”
Stunned, I sat unable to form a thought, much less a word. Theodore Nikolaides had been a good friend to my husband and me in the Vietnam War. In fact, it was Ted, my compadre in faith, who had introduced me to Jack. “He’s a nice guy for you, Toni,” Ted had said—the matchmaker concerned that this woman serving in a battle zone should find a proper husband. I was a nurse then, helping put young boys back together hoping to send them home alive. Jack had been an MP there.
Teddy had talked to Jack about faith because of me. Jack hadn’t attended church in years and didn’t have any particular religious preference at the time. Ted thought he’d be a good match for me, but only if we could share faith with each other. Ted could talk to him about it—share his own experiences with Jack man-to-man. When Jack and I actually met, Jack’s conversations with Ted about faith were already taking hold. He had embraced his faith with his whole heart again and he and I had made a beautiful journey together in our lives.
Unfortunately, our matchmaker had not made the journey with us. As a pilot, Teddy flew reconnaissance missions close over the jungle treetops. One terrible day he flew out on what should have been his last mission before heading home. His hitch was up and he couldn’t wait to get back stateside with his wife and two kids. He was so excited. I could still remember that magnetic smile as he boarded his plane.
Then the word came back that Ted had been shot down and no ejection or chute had been seen. Other pilots reported seeing his plane crash on the top of a hill. It had skidded along a ridge with dense foliage. I knew that Ted, ever the hero, was trying to save himself and the plane. Determined not to give up, he must have struggled to keep the nose up and wings in the air, but it was too late to eject as he came close to the hilltop. So, Ted had committed himself to trying to land the plane. The wings had broken off as the plane began hitting trees, and then it had burst into flame. It wasn’t a spectacular fire because Ted was at the end of his mission and low on fuel, but it had been enough to ensure his death.
“Irini, what are we talking about here?”
“Those people at CILHI, they sent a team to that part where Teddy was last seen. They found bones and some other things and they think it might be him.”
CILHI stands for Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii, and they are the ID people for all military personnel missing in action. It’s an army operation located at an air force base just outside of Honolulu. They work to identify all MIAs from World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
“When will they know if it’s him?” I asked.
“Well, that is why I called you. They won’t know because there are not enough of the teeth to compare to Teddy’s dental records. You know, he had such good teeth, but they check the bad ones in these tests, not the good ones, and most of Ted’s teeth they didn’t find. So, now they can’t do the comparison. Also, the DNA is bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“They say they have to compare it to someone in his mother’s family.”
Ted’s mother had died in Greece. His father had brought him and his brother with him after she died. His mother had one brother back in Greece and they had lost track of him after World War II during the civil war that followed. Ted had talked about it many times. The only family he knew was his father’s family. Further complicating matters was the fact that Ted’s older brother, and only sibling, had a heart attack four years previously and died.
Irini continued, “I ask them why they don’t check it with someone else in his family or against the kids. They say it’s not the right kind of DNA. I don’t understand it.”
“It’s called mitochondrial DNA, Irini. It can only be compared against a person’s mother’s family. The other kind of DNA in your cells breaks down over time, so they probably can’t use it.”
“I don’t know anyone in Ted’s mother’s family. They left the uncle behind in Greece and we don’t know what happened to him.”
“I know. I remember.”
“Toni, the skull is good. They can’t use the DNA there for nothing, but I talked to them about you and they say they have worked with you twice before. They say because you work for the FBI sometimes, they use you for help.”
“That’s true, but what are you saying, Irini?”
“I am saying that you must help me and Teddy. You must go and make a sculpture of this skull and put the face there, so we can see if it is Teddy.”
“Irini, this is difficult work when I don’t know the victim, but…”
“No. His soul is restless. He cannot be at peace until they give me his bones and let me lay him to eternal rest. They will not give me the bones until they know it is him. The peace of his soul is with you, Toni. You must do this for him—to restore him, to bring him home, to set him free.”
I had a knot in my stomach and I was beginning to feel sick. The war had been put behind me. Jack and I had used our faith to heal us from the things that happened there, including the loss of our beloved friend, Ted. I hated it, but what Irini was saying was right. What she wasn’t saying was that I owed this to Ted because of his friendship to me and for bringing me to Jack. I had a great marriage for all those years, and Irini had lived alone, raising their children and having no closure over the death of the only man she had ever loved. I sighed. My chest felt tight.
“They have the skull, all of it?”
“Yes,” she said. “All of that part of the bones are in good shape. The rest they say is bad, but you don’t need the rest to make the face.”
“Okay, give me the name of the person in charge so I can call and set this up.”
There was a momentary silence on the other end of the phone. I heard the rustling of some paper, and then, choking back tears, Irini read the name and phone number to me of the man at CILHI who was in charge of “Ted’s case.”
She could barely speak when we hung up, but her last words to me were, “May our Savior bless you and guide your hands.”
I was noodling around in the garage with an old carburetor, trying to work through my angst, when I heard a vehicle pull to the curb and stop in a hurry. When Lieutenant Leonie Driskill drove her official vehicle, a rather cumbersome van loaded with equipment, she drove like the law enforcement officer that she was. When Leo got behind the wheel of her Jeep, tires would screech and squeal.
She bailed out of the Jeep with her sandy hair swinging in a ponytail down her back. She had just gotten off work. She was still wearing navy trousers and a white shirt, and her badge and gun were clipped to her belt. She was about five-five and she walked with a slight limp from her last fire battle in active combat. It had almost cost her her right leg. The doctors had said she probably wouldn’t walk and definitely wouldn’t be able to do anything more physical than that. No one ever told Leo Driskill she couldn’t do something without her trying that much harder. She had rehabbed her way back to health and extreme fitness. She lifted weights and ran and water-skied, and proved the doctors wrong.
Her limp gave her just a little bounce when she walked fast, and today there appeared to be an extra spring in her step besides the limp.
“What are you working on out here, Toni?”
“Just a carburetor overhaul on my old Jeep.” I wiped some of the grease off my hands with a rag and headed for the Go-Jo canister. I smeared Go-Jo all over my hands, loosening all the grease, and then wiped my hands clean with a dry rag.
Leo sauntered over to the workbench and started to inspect the carburetor.
“Touch that and you’ll be sorry.”
“I-eeee…wasn’t…” Her voice trailed off as if she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
“I just spent half an hour getting all those needles lined up just right so I could get that thing back together,” I told her. “You knock it over or mess it up and your name is mud.”
I turned around to see that Leo was leaning over the workbench with her hands behind her back, eyeing the carburetor clo
sely. She looked like a heron perched on a log.
“You know, Toni, most people take stuff like this to a mechanic.”
“Yeah well, four things are true, kid. Most people don’t have a mechanic for a dad. Most people weren’t practically raised in a garage. Most people don’t know a thing about carburetors, and I’m not most people.”
“That’s the truth—the ‘you’re not most people’ part, anyway.”
“Are you here to harass me and disturb my auto-mechanican therapy session or do you have something important you’d like to impart?”
“Grump. You call me in the middle of my busy day and ask me to go look at a bunch of old bones dug up out of the river bottom, and when I come by to give you the benefit of my report, this is how I’m treated.”
I sighed. “Truce already. I can’t spar with you anymore today.”
“Hey, lighten up. I was kidding. What gives?”
“It’s just been a bad day. It has to do with old times in Vietnam. I’ll work it out. Distract me by giving me your brilliance on our Red Bud case.”
Leo nodded. “I’m afraid there’s no brilliance yet. There’s not much I can say because there’s not much to go on. But there were a few things that came to mind based on the apparent cause of death and the reburial.”
“Lay it on me.”
“Well, I looked at the photos of the burial site and I looked at the bones themselves and talked to Chris about the autopsy. I definitely tanked any idea that they were moved because someone thought they’d be discovered where they were. I think it’s significant that they were reburied in a shallow grave on the dam side of Red Bud. According to the photos, the bones were in a place where they would have washed away in the first floodgate release. The kayaker was the unknown quantity that foiled that plan.”
“Okay, so why do you think they were reburied and not just discarded—thrown into the river, for instance.”
“I think the fact that isn’t what happened is very significant. I think the deceased either meant something to the killer and he couldn’t do that, or maybe he felt too much guilt to do that, or maybe a little of both. I suspect he wanted to be rid of her, but he wanted nature to do the ultimate dirty work so he wouldn’t be responsible for it.”
