Free Shattered Image by J.F. Margos

but…well, let’s just say he’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
    We both laughed out loud now.
    “This is rich, Drew—just totally, completely rich.”
    “Oh yeah. He’s been arrested for beating her multiple times and she dropped the charges every time. There’s no one to drop charges now other than the prosecutor, and she won’t be dropping anything. This guy is finally going down.”
    “I just wish the system had stopped him before Lisa Wells had to die.”
    “So do I, Toni, but you and I cannot overhaul the system overnight. What we can do is what we did. I picked up Johnny Rowell in Dallas yesterday and he is now in jail without bail.”
    “You’re amazing, Drew.”
    “No, Toni, it’s just good persistent police work, that’s all. It wasn’t just me anyway. It was you and your awesome artwork, and the people in the State Crime Lab hustling to get me that fiber and blood evidence.”
    Now I waited on similar results from the bust I had made of the skull found on Red Bud Isle. I decided to tell Drew about that case.
    “I’m glad we were able to close this one,” I said. “I hope we can achieve the same results on the case I’m currently working on.”
    “Are these your bones found on the riverbank the other morning?”
    I nodded. “Get this, Drew. A complete skeleton just dumped in a shallow grave on the dam side of Red Bud Isle. Bones were not in anatomical order—they were just dumped in a jumble in this grave.”
    “So the bones were dumped there after the body decomposed?”
    “The ‘body’ had been buried somewhere else before. There was soil of a different type in the crevices of some of the bones. Chris has sent the various soil samples off to A&M for analysis.”
    “The deceased had been buried before….”
    “Yes. What do you think about that?”
    “I think it’s different for sure. I’ve never heard of anything like that. Any idea what’s going on there?”
    I told him about Leo’s impression of the murder. He sat and listened intently as I repeated what Leo had told me the day before.
    He nodded. “Now that you explain everything the way she said it, I can see what she means. I actually remember a case where a man killed his neighbor and the neighbor’s wife because he thought they were vandalizing his treasured gardens.”
    “You can’t be serious.”
    “Oh yes, totally. The guy was a kind of weird guy, didn’t really get along with anybody, wasn’t really good at anything except gardening. He spent all his time on his yard. I have to admit it did look good. He never socialized with his neighbors and he and the victims had apparently gotten off to a bad start when he moved in because of something stupid that he said. It seems from that day forward he imagined that they were out to get him.”
    “Were they really vandalizing his gardens?”
    “No. Actually there was a rash of some of that going on in the neighborhood and it turned out to be nothing more than some smart-aleck high-school kids looking for something to do at night. But this guy was sure the culprits were his next-door neighbors.”
    “So, what happened?”
    “One day he came home from work and saw that his prized magnolia tree had been cut down right in the front yard and he just went nuts. He went in the house, got his shotgun, marched right through the back door of his neighbor’s house and shot him and his wife eating dinner at the kitchen table.”
    “Good grief!”
    “It was the most unbelievable thing I’d ever seen. Just shot ’em at nearly point-blank range—bang, bang, and that was it. He tried to run, but I pulled him over about forty miles out of town. He shot at me, and I managed to just wing him. He’s still serving time in Huntsville.”
    “That’s incredible. Killed two people over a magnolia tree.”
    “A magnolia tree they had nothing to do with.”
    “I can’t even absorb that.”
    “There are a lot of real wackos out there, Toni. He was just totally