Free Body Hunter by Patricia Springer Page B

Everything had to be done to insure a thorough investigation. This was one murder Pruitt intended to see did not go unsolved.
    Neighbors told investigators they had seen a man leaving the apartment about five hours before her body was discovered. The man was described as six-feet, two-inches tall, lanky, dark hair, and wearing a blue-and-white baseball cap. Police released the description to the press, adding, “We’d sure like to talk to him.”
    The chief of police knew that was an understatement. Four young women had been murdered in the Wichita Falls area. Four killers were on the loose. Maybe they would get lucky with this one.

Chapter Nine
    A tall, shaggy-haired man stood on the seawall in Galveston, Texas. A cool breeze from the Gulf of Mexico blew across his weary face as he stared into the vastness of the open sea. The dark waters mirrored his mood. Riddled with guilt, he felt as though he had been plunged beneath the gulf’s surf and was drowning in a sea of despair.
    Back in Wichita Falls, friends of Tina Kimbrew couldn’t believe Tina was dead.
    â€œShe was funny. Always a jokester,” Tim Nardi, general manager of the Sheraton Hotel, told reporters. “This is such a shock. You don’t think about these things until they happen in your own backyard.”
    Tina was remembered by all her friends as being a really sweet, nice girl. Her killer remembered her the same way. That memory drove him deeper into despondency.
    In Vernon, Texas, north of Wichita Falls, Elaine and Robert Kimbrew felt the same darkened hopelessness. Their only child was dead. The pain in Elaine’s heart was sharper than the surgeon’s instrument used to mend her back only days before.
    Tina had been a gift from God. Elaine and Robert had been told early in their marriage that they would never have children. Then, in what they believed was a true miracle, Tina was conceived. It had been a touch-and-go pregnancy, but Elaine was determined to deliver their child.
    In what could be described as a difficult delivery, Robert was faced with the decision of saving the life of his wife or saving his child. But by the grace of God, and the skill of a special doctor, both mother and daughter pulled through. The birth had created an extraordinary bond between them.
    Robert, a small man in stature with a big heart filled with love for his daughter, had been brought to his knees by Tina’s death. Likewise, his wife’s grief was inconsolable. Swallowed by the blackness of their loss, the Kimbrews sank into the depths of depression.
    The same feelings of depression and despair gripped Tina Kimbrew’s killer as he stood on the concrete seawall in Galveston. His personal failures plunged him into hopelessness. He thought of all the people he had disappointed and deceived. His victims. Their families. His own family.
    Exhausted from the more than four-hundred-mile trip from his North Texas home to the southern Texas coastal island, he checked into a local, low-rate motel. It had been a week since the murder of Tina Kimbrew. Fatigue embraced him. Guilt consumed him. He couldn’t sleep. He reached for the phone on the nightstand and dialed the local emergency number.
    â€œI’m going to kill myself,” he told the Galveston 911 operator.
    Within minutes, officers were at his door.
    â€œWhy would you want to kill yourself?” one of the officers asked the man who sat on the wrinkled, faded bedspread of his motel room.
    â€œI killed someone in Wichita Falls,” the somber man said. He lowered his head, cradling it in his hands.
    â€œWho did you kill?” another officer asked.
    â€œTina Kimbrew,” he responded. “I went to Tina’s apartment on May sixth. She was wearing a light-colored nightgown when she answered the door. I went inside to get drugs.”
    The questioning officer glanced at his partner. The young policemen knew instantly what had to be done. The man was