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 the 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
