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 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