by J. F. Margos
“A hankie?”
“Yep. Now, the fiber I don’t hold out much hope for. It seems like too much of a needle in a haystack to me, but those forensic people never cease to amaze me, so who knows? We do have a hair sample and fluid in the hankie. We can match the hair under a microscope and we can match both with DNA.”
I shook my head.
“You know, Drew, he was probably six sheets to the wind when he dug them up. He’s drunk all the time from what I can tell. I imagine he saw Mrs. Ferguson on television and got all upset about her son, and went off down there in a drunken stupor, did all of his digging and reburying, dropped that hankie and never realized it.”
Drew nodded. “Yeah, and that property would be easy to get on to. For all that Burkhardt’s bravado, he’s so bent over, he couldn’t possibly police all that land.”
“After your lecture the other day, I don’t imagine he’ll be policing much of anything.”
Drew grinned.
“So, what’s next?” I asked.
“I’m outta here is what’s next. I was on my way to get a court order for hair and DNA samples from Dody Waldrep, and now I am totally fired up to do exactly that.”
“Great, but before you go, I just want to know one thing.”
“All right.”
“Do you like pie?”
Chapter Eighteen
Drew and I got out of the car, and Tommy and Mike got out of their car behind us. The State Crime Lab had made an exact match on the hair sample from Dody Waldrep. They were still working on the fibers, and the DNA would take a while, but the hair, combined with what we knew about Dody’s connection to the burial site, was enough for an arrest.
As we began to approach the house, Dody came outside onto the front porch with a shotgun in his hand. He had a wild look in his eye.
“Stop where you are,” he screamed, but we had already stopped.
Dody’s thin wrists trembled and his weathered fingers wrapped the gun barrel like a rope binding. The weapon was pointed somewhere between Drew and me and I was afraid Dody would discharge it inadvertently with his tremors.
“Dody, don’t you think you’ve killed enough innocent people already?” Drew asked calmly.
“Innocent?” he screamed. “They weren’t innocent! Adulterers! Fornicators!”
“Not Brian, Dody. He wasn’t an adulterer. He was innocent.”
“The young man,” Dody almost wailed. “I didn’t mean to kill him. Tell his mama I didn’t mean to…” His voice trailed off and he began to sob softly.
“His mama on the television begging for someone to come forward about him—that’s what did it, isn’t it, Dody?” Drew said. “That’s why you dug them all up.”
Dody began to sob more. “I had to take him somewhere someone would find him. I had to—for his mama. I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“Why did you dump Addie by the river, Dody?”
“I didn’t want her to be with him. I didn’t want them to be alone together.”
“So, you reburied Brian somewhere he could be found?”
Dody nodded, but was sobbing heavily now. Sweat was pouring down his face and running into his eyes and mixing with his tears. I was growing more nervous by the second about that shotgun.
“What about the others? You didn’t want anyone to find Doug Hughes, but you wanted her found?”
Dody shook his head, and through his sobs he said, “I didn’t think anyone would ever find her. I thought the river would get her. I didn’t want to leave her out in the open, but I thought the water would come up and take her.”
“The women who found Doug, they weren’t part of your plan either, were they, Dody?”
“They weren’t supposed to be on private property! What were they doing there anyway? Snooping around—trespassers, that’s what they were! I wanted his bones to rot in the ground till the end of time!” He had become more agitated again and he began to shake more now.
There was moisture all over my face and neck. It was humid there in the warm afternoon air surrounded by all those trees and with no breeze. I looked over at Drew. The man was as dry as a bone. His arms hung loosely by his sides and his hands were open and relaxed. I expected to see his right hand near his service weapon. In my peripheral vision I saw my son begin a slow move toward the weapon inside his jacket. Drew’s arm came up slightly with his palm toward Mike, indicating that he should stop. It was a slow, controlled move. Drew was all about self-control. Mike lowered his hand.
“Dody, it’s all done now. The only way you can make things right with yourself and God is to confess what you’ve done. It’s your only hope.”
Drew Smith was making a sincere plea. He believed what he was saying. He wanted to close the case, but he was also concerned that Dody would condemn himself beyond all hope—the kind of loss of hope that lasts beyond this side of life. He always saw in his work both sides of the tragedy. In Drew’s mind there were always at least two victims in a homicide—the murdered and the murderer. I understood this view and shared it. I saw the deviation of the murderer as an evil that had taken root and then spread to include other innocents as well. Drew once told me he always thought of how each killer had been an innocent child once and somehow it had all gone wrong. It was a fact that disturbed him, but also drove him in the way he did his work.
Dody trembled all over and shook his head vehemently. “No,” he sobbed. “No, I ain’t confessin’ nothin’. I did what I had to do.”
Drew’s calm voice continued, “Dody, no matter what your wife and Doug Hughes did to you, they did not deserve to die. And the young man, Dody, you shot Brian Ferguson to cover up your deeds. He didn’t do anything except appear at the wrong place at the wrong time. That wasn’t ‘what you had to do.’”
Dody was sobbing so hard now that the barrel of the gun lowered just slightly.
Great, I thought. If it goes off, he’ll just get my kneecaps now.
“You took the young man from his mama, Dody. Her only child and you took him. His daddy’s dead and now his mother has cancer. She’s buried her child next to his daddy and soon she’ll join them both. You took everything they had. You have to come clean, Dody—no excuses. No excuses.” Drew was calm, steadfast, his voice almost sympathetic in its litany of guilt.
Dody’s sobbing became hysterical now and he dropped to his knees. The shotgun clattered onto the porch in front of him. He put his hands up over his face and all I could see was the heaving of his chest. Then the wail of his grief and guilt came forth. Birds fluttered frantically from the surrounding trees at the sound of the calamity. Drew was calmly walking up to the porch. He claimed the shotgun as Dody continued to cry aloud. Drew laid the gun off to one side and gently took one of Dody’s arms and cuffed it. As Dody continued crying, Drew carefully helped him to his feet, and as he did so, he clasped Dody’s other arm, cuffing both arms behind him.
In a gentle but firm voice, Drew began, “Dody Waldrep, you’re under arrest for the murders of Adelaide Waldrep, Doug Hughes and Brian Ferguson. You have the right to remain silent. Can you hear me, Dody?”
Dody nodded, his sobbing becoming quieter now.
“You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning…”
Drew continued with the Miranda rights, questioning Dody after each one to make sure that he was listening in his state of mind.
Once Dody was properly Mirandized, Drew led him to the squad car and assisted him into the back seat. Tommy retrieved the gun from the porch and he and Mike got into their car.
Drew climbed behind the wheel of the car and Dody said, “Sheriff?”
Drew looked into the rearview mirror at Dody. “I’m a Texas Ranger, Dody. My name is Lieutenant Drew Smith.”
“Oh,” Dody said with a slightly confused look on his face. There was a brief silence and then he said, “Lieutenant, will you tell the boy’s mama that it was an accident that I shot her son?” Dody looked totally beaten. He sniffled and continued. “Tell her
I shot him before I even knew what I done. Tell her I got sick and threw up and I been sick ever since. Will you tell her I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry?”
His declaration was heartfelt, but even still Dody would not admit the fullness of what he had done. He wanted to believe, and to have everyone else believe, that killing Brian was something other than a murder to cover murder.
Drew looked into the rearview mirror at Dody as he spoke. He paused a moment and I could see he was considering what to say. Then he sighed and said, “Yes, Dody, I’ll tell her.”
Drew started the car. Then I noticed something I had never seen before—the slightest bit of moisture just inside the lower lid of Drew’s eyes. He turned the car around and we headed back toward Austin in silence.
Dody was booked into the Travis County Jail pending trial, and within two months he was dead from heart failure. His daughters had buried their mother’s remains in the local cemetery at Viola, but they refused to claim their father’s remains, so he was buried in the county cemetery under a cheap marker. I will always believe that it was the poison of over sixteen years of guilt, and his failure to fully accept that guilt, that killed Dody Waldrep, but even Chris didn’t have the power and authority to list “Guilty Conscience” as a cause of death.
Chapter Nineteen
A few weeks after Dody’s arrest, Sergeant Major Tomlinson called me from CILHI to tell me that CILHI had accepted my findings and had officially declared the remains as those of Theodore P. Nikolaides. I asked him that before they made the official call to Irini they allow me twenty-four hours to tell her myself. The sergeant major agreed that would be acceptable.
I had given her the news weeks before when I had told her the results of my work. Now I could call her and tell her it was official. I made the call. She took it well. The initial shock and pain of the confirmed reality had worn off and adjustment was settling in. The agony of over thirty years was beginning to be assuaged. Total closure would come soon—for all of us.
Irini had told her children and they were flying to Washington, D.C., for the funeral. Arrangements had been made to ship the casket there to Andrews Air Force Base. It would be transported with a military escort to the church in D.C. Reverend Iordani had been requested to officiate at the service and he had obtained the appropriate permission.
When the body, such that it was, arrived at the church, Irini and Reverend Iordani and I were there to meet it. Irini’s children, Eleni and Gregory, were due in that evening, along with my son, Mike. Meanwhile, prayers of blessing were to be said.
As Reverend Iordani began the prayers, Irini wept softly. When he was finished, Irini turned to me.
“I cannot see the bones.”
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“Okay. Because, I cannot see them. I cannot look at bones when what I have in my heart and my soul is the face and the smile of Teddy.”
“I understand,” I said.
It was actually a relief. I had worried about how she would react when she saw what was left of him.
I was staying at a hotel near the Washington Mall. I decided to leave the hotel early to give myself time to go by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall before going to the church for the funeral. I told Mike I would meet him at the church.
When I arrived at the Wall, I started on the low end and walked slowly behind a small group of people who were there to see the great landmark. The panels were arranged by date of death and each name had a diamond next to it, unless the person was an MIA. If they were an MIA, there was a plus sign next to the name. This had no religious significance, as the symbol was only used because it was an easy shape to turn into a diamond if the MIA’s remains were recovered and identified, or to turn into a circle if the MIA was discovered alive. Unfortunately, there were no names on the Wall with circles next to them.
I finally arrived at the panel that contained Teddy’s name. I ran my hand down the list until my fingers found the name Theodore P. Nikolaides. There was the dreaded diamond next to his name. For years now, I had periodically made trips here to look up the names of people I had known during the war and always there was one name without the diamond. In my mind, the symbol next to Ted’s name had not been a plus sign, but a cross. A sign of hope for me—hope for life, hope that maybe it could become a circle, even though I knew better. Somehow, Ted’s death seemed less real then. Now I couldn’t even absorb it—not even with the diamond staring back at me, not even after having my hands on his skull and sculpting his face back to life in the clay. I left the Wall and made my way toward the church, hoping to find the truth in my faith, as I had so many times before.
Michael and I walked behind the family at Arlington National Cemetery, with the black, flag-draped gun carriage ahead of us. The military personnel, somber but crisp in their dress uniforms, escorted their fallen comrade, showing their respect with snap turns and rigid, deliberate salutes. I looked out across the sea of white grave markers—a sea of fallen heroes and statesmen. Too many dead—too many still missing.
When we reached the burial site, they lifted the casket off the gun carriage and placed it on the supports over the grave. In the cool wind of that early-spring morning, the American flag waved in the breeze with the air force flag. Not far from them, the black flag of the POWs and MIAs also fluttered.
The air force pallbearers and the gun detail stood at attention on one side of the casket until the command was given for them to stand at ease. They all stood that way while Reverend Iordani once again chanted our beautiful hymns of faith and life and hope.
Reverend Iordani held in his hand a beautiful cross, which he had bought for Irini in remembrance of Teddy. When he got to Irini, he handed it to her and spoke words of comfort to her, gave a blessing to her family and then uttered the words which mean “Life to you all.”
The command came for attention and the gun detail fired a salute of three shots. As the final shot echoed through that hallowed ground, taps began to play and two of the pallbearers began to fold the flag that rested across Teddy’s casket.
With the flag neatly and tightly folded into a triangle, the senior officer approached Irini, made his precision snap turns, bent down and handed her the flag with the words “Please accept this with the thanks of a grateful nation.”
We all stood as we heard the echoed breathy rumble of jets approaching for the flyover to pay homage to their fellow pilot. Irini stood with the flag in one hand and the cross held tightly in her other, tears streaming down her face. Irini’s son, Gregory, stood on one side of her and her daughter, Eleni, stood with her husband and young daughter on the other side.
I stood at the graveside looking over at Greg, who looked so much like the father he never knew. I watched Teddy’s oldest child, Eleni, weeping into the shoulder of her husband, Pete Spiropoulos.
Their five-year-old daughter looked up at Pete and whispered, “Daddy, Pappou’s sleeping now.”
Pete nodded, squeezed her small hand and held his wife tighter. Eleni looked at the casket of the father she barely remembered, but had loved and mourned all these years. In that casket his remains finally lay at rest. I never told her or her brother and mother how little of him there was. All they knew was that the skull was in good enough shape for me to do a reconstruct. I couldn’t bear for them to know that my friend Teddy, who at five-ten stood so much larger than life, had been reduced to a skull and a handful of bone pieces no bigger than large pebbles—the sacred rubble of an unholy war.
As the jets flew over in missing-man formation, and the one plane separated and flew away from the others, I thought how like Ted’s soul it was—free at last from the prison of his anonymous grave. Not only that, but I thought how like Ted himself that plane seemed—the way he had lived his whole life—independent and strong, soaring above the rest. At last I bowed my head, thanked God again for his life and wept the tears of over thirty years.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5342-5
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yright © 2004 by J.F. Margos
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