He was a clean-cut, all-American-looking guy. His round, cherubic face belied his thirty years.
Mike’s partner, Tommy Lucero, was a more senior detective and virtually Mike’s polar opposite. Tommy always wore khakis with a button-down shirt open at the neck, western boots and no jacket. Tommy didn’t wear a tie unless he was at a wedding or a funeral. He had been a rookie detective when my husband, Jack, was alive. He was ten years senior to Mike, but the difference in their appearances went beyond the ten-year age span.
Tommy was tall, but dark and muscular and chiseled in his body and facial features. He had an intensity that contrasted with Mike’s mischievous humor, and a directness that counteracted Mike’s avoidance of conflict. Mike’s blue eyes sparkled with his good nature and Tommy’s black eyes flashed with his passions. The things that would seem to make my son and his partner so incompatible were the very things that made them such a great team. Their strengths filled one another’s weaknesses. Their friendship had made them the best homicide team in the department.
“So, what’s the kayaker’s story?” I asked.
“Discovered the bones this morning on his way up to the dam,” Tommy said as he greeted me.
“On his way up to the dam?”
“Yeah, he and some other kayakers go up there to ride the waters that come through the floodgates,” Mike explained.
“All this in spite of a sign right up there near the dam that specifically warns people not to do that.”
“Yeah, well, there’s nothing we can do to stop them,” Tommy said. “Besides, this time one of them did us a favor by finding this person. Otherwise, spring rains come and they crank open three of those gates, and that whole area down there where he found the victim—all underwater.”
“Bones washing down the river, Mom.”
“Thank you for the graphic explanation, son. I was having trouble figuring that out for myself.”
Tommy smiled and continued, “The guy was paddling by, saw the bones, got up close, saw they looked human and called 911 on his cell phone.”
“We don’t consider him to be a suspect,” my son added.
“Well, since he looks like he’s about twenty-one or twenty-two years old, I’d say you’re right.”
Mike furrowed his brow at me. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Chris says the victim’s been dead at least ten years, so the Crazy Kayaker would have been an adolescent at the time this person died. While it’s possible that an adolescent can commit murder, I don’t think it’s probable under these circumstances.”
“Why is it that you get all the good info before I do?”
“Because I ask, and because I hang out with the medical examiner.”
“Mom, would you go sculpt something, please.”
“You’re just bent because you have to admit that Mom still knows something you don’t know.”
Mike gave me an eye roll and a sigh and Tommy started to laugh.
“Yeah, easy for you to laugh,” my son said. “Your mom doesn’t show up at crime scenes and bust your chops.”
“No,” Tommy said. “My mom waits until I come home for a nice Sunday dinner, and then she busts my chops.”
“At least she’s feeding you those killer tamales while she takes you down. By the way, she hasn’t sent me any of those tamales lately—or has she, and you’re just eating them all before I get any?”
Tommy smiled slyly and raised an eyebrow. “Hey, if you want any tamales, go see the woman in person and get your own. I’m not your errand boy.”
“I haven’t been invited. I was being polite.”
“You don’t need an invitation and you know it. My mom makes a bigger fuss over you than she does me. I have to go to your mom’s house to get attention like that.”
Mike looked at me. “You’re feeding him and not inviting me?”
“Well, if you don’t need an invitation at his mother’s house, why would you need an invitation to come to your own childhood home? You can come over for dinner anytime you like.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“You’re awfully grumpy this morning, young man.”
“Some of us had to get up early, shower and actually get dressed before we came down here,” he said, giving my casual attire the once-over.
Tommy laughed again. “Hey, man, don’t be dissing your mom like that. Toni’s totally cool, and a pretty good-looking chick, if I may say so.”
“Ick! You may not say so. This is my mom, and you’re my partner. Besides, you have a girlfriend.”
“I’m not dead, Mike. I may have a girlfriend, but I know a good-looking woman when I see one.”
“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
