Free Shattered Image by J.F. Margos Page A

paranoid, but he was real cool about killing them. Said he had thought about it a lot. He had planned what he would do, he just waited to do it until something set him off.”
    “That sounds like the kind of thing Leo was talking about.”
    “I’d like you to keep me up to date on this. If it turns out the original burial site is outside of Austin, that’s something I’d want to know.”
    I nodded and agreed to keep him apprised.

Chapter Seven
    J immy Hughes saw the round face with the broad cheeks, small chin and full lips on the screen of his television on the six-o’clock local news. It was a ghost—the face of a woman missing for sixteen years, a girl from his hometown, a girl from Viola, a girl he had loved since he was eighteen. Her name had been Adelaide Russell—“Addie” they called her. She was only fourteen then, and he was off to Vietnam. Addie may have been fourteen, but Jimmy had known her all of her fourteen years, and he loved her. At eighteen, Jimmy was still a boy in his heart and Addie was a pretty young girl with long, blond hair. Jimmy went to Vietnam and came back and Addie was dating someone else. Later, she married, had two children, and then disappeared at the age of thirty-two. That was sixteen years ago.
    Jimmy had called the number on the screen and spoken to Tommy Lucero. Tommy had asked him to come in.
    “So, what was he like?” I asked as I put lunch on the table.
    Tommy shrugged. “You know, typical overage-hippie type. The normal Austin citizen.”
    “I don’t know, Tommy,” Mike chimed in. “I think the guy looked like he’d tried to dress up, sort of. He was wearing dark green cords and a real clean T-shirt. I think he had even pressed the shirt a little.”
    “The cords were old, man.”
    “Yeah, but they were clean—and they looked pressed, too.” He looked at me. “It wasn’t one of your ironing jobs, Mario, but it wasn’t bad for a bachelor.”
    Tommy smiled at the use of my nickname. He made a grab for the fresh bread, and I slapped his hand gently.
    “Hey, dude, we say grace first in this house,” Mike said.
    “You’re one to talk, young man, since you’re notorious for grabbing food first and saying grace later,” I admonished.
    Tommy chuckled.
    “So, then I’ll offer the grace,” Mike said.
    I sat down at the table with them, and Mike did offer the grace. Then the two men tore into that food like two hungry wolves. You’d think they were sixteen-year-olds still growing two inches every six months.
    “So, he made an attempt to look good,” I said, “but not for either one of you characters. Could he have wanted to look good for her?”
    Mike nodded. “I think so.” He slugged down almost his entire glass of tea in one gulp.
    “What are you talking about?” Tommy said. “She’s dead and he knew that—he ID’d the face from the news.”
    “Tommy, I’m telling you, that guy thought he was going to identify a body.”
    “No. I totally disagree. She’s been dead sixteen years. We had to have her face reconstructed. No one in their right mind would think he was going to ID a body.”
    “Okay, man—whatever.”
    I could tell this had been a running argument all day. I poured both of them some more tea. Tommy grabbed a fresh lemon wedge, squeezed it into his tea and then dropped the wedge into the glass.
    “So, what else did this guy tell you?”
    “She’s some girl from his hometown,” Tommy said. “He had some kind of crush on her or something. When she disappeared, she was married to a guy named Dody Waldrep. We checked the records in Viola and there is no Dody Waldrep there anymore, but we found the woman’s mother, Maureen Russell. She still lives there.”
    “Yeah, she says that Dody lives in Manor now. They don’t keep in touch. She raised Addie’s two children for the last fourteen years—two girls—twenty-two and twenty-four now.”
    “So, what was the story with the dad? Why did Grandma get the kids?”
    “Dad drinks,