Pushing Up Bluebonnets

'Nothing obvious,' Hamlin said. 'We have to wait.'

An agonizingly long thirty minutes later a female CSU officer arrived and began photographing everything. Hamlin then removed the files to get at the newspapers beneath. From my vantage point in the doorway, I decided they were clippings, not entire newspapers. Lots of clippings. Hamlin set them on the spic-and-span desktop and the CSU officer took more pictures after Hamlin removed the letter-size manila folder that sat on top of them.

An unfiled folder? That was strange, too.

Hamlin glanced our way after opening the folder for the officer to photograph its contents. 'We can take these to the kitchen counter while she finishes up in here.' He turned to her. 'The hard drive goes to Tech, the newspaper and folder to Latents when I'm done, okay?'

She nodded and went back to work.

Carrying the newspapers and folder away from his body like a tray of coffee, Hamlin joined us in the hall. 'Let's see what we got here.' He gestured with his head toward the front of the house.

We walked to the kitchen and Hamlin placed the stack on the immaculate granite counter. I caught the Houston Chronicle date header beneath the folder—looked like from two years ago.

Hamlin said, 'I have my digital camera in the car. Be right back.' He left before I could say anything.

I said, 'But they already took pictures, and I thought he said—'

'He's taking his own photos,' Cooper said. 'If they send these for latent prints, none of us will know the importance or lack of importance of the newspapers. With his own set of pictures he can read what he wants whenever he wants and hopefully will share that info with us. That is, if it's anything related to JoLynn. Might be nothing, Abby. Just mementos.'

'This doesn't feel like nothing, Cooper. Dugan concealed these things—though, I'll admit, not very well. But he had a locked door and probably left Georgeanne, and maybe JoLynn before her, with strict instructions to stay out of his office. From what we've learned, both women were under his thumb.'

Cooper was about to respond, but Hamlin returned with his camera, breathing hard, rivulets of sweat running from his scalp.

He fiddled with his equipment for a second and then moved the folder aside to photograph the top article.

I took in a sharp breath and must have gasped, because Cooper and Hamlin said, 'What?' in unison.

'Th-that article on top,' I said. 'That's the same one I found online about the Richters. And there was a copy under a clock in the Richter library.'

Cooper said, 'Maybe this is proof Dugan knew about the family, perhaps knew where JoLynn had gone.'

Hamlin was squinting at the article. 'And you know this how?'

'Long story,' Cooper said. 'But JoLynn definitely had a fake ID that I'm betting was made right here.'

Hamlin fanned out the articles, then started taking pictures. This gave me time to look over the clippings. I began to understand their connection to the first one. These all seemed to be personal-interest stories from cities and towns all over Texas and beyond. Gosh, how I wanted to scoop them up and take them home rather than hunt them down one by one on the Internet, see how they were connected to the article about Katarina— that is, if they were connected.

'Do you mind if I get the newspaper names and dates on these?' I could look up the articles online and print them—at least the ones that were online.

'No problem.' Meanwhile Hamlin picked up the folder he'd set aside and opened it.

I was glancing around the kitchen looking for something to write on, but the magnetic whiteboard on the fridge, the one that had the words 'Georgeanne—milk today!' printed on it in black marker, probably wouldn't do.

Cooper took out his little notebook. 'I'll help.'

'Thanks.' I read off the newspaper names and dates while Cooper wrote them in his notebook.

A minute later we were interrupted by Hamlin, who now held out a stack of photographs in his palm. 'These were in the folder. They mean anything to you?' He placed them on the counter one by one, touching only a corner with his gloved hand.

The first one was a grainy shot of a petite blonde placing flowers on a grave. 'That's JoLynn at Glenwood Cemetery. The caretaker told me a girl fitting her description brought flowers every week to Elliott Richter's family plot.'

Hamlin looked confused. 'So she is related to the Richters?'

'Since we know her mother abandoned her at a bus station when she was nine and Katarina was already dead by then, I doubt it,' I said.

'Then why go to the cemetery?' Cooper asked. But he seemed to be asking himself this question, not us. 'Unless she had someone take these pictures to show Elliott how devoted she was to Katarina, her long-lost mother . . . who was not really her mother.'

'That doesn't make sense. How would she present these photos to Richter?' I said. 'By saying, 'Oh, by the way, here's proof of what a loving family member I am.' I don't think so, Cooper. Maybe we should consider the possibility that Katarina placed JoLynn with someone and that's the person who abandoned her.'

He scratched his head. 'Maybe. Big maybe, in my book. No matter what, Dugan took these pictures for a reason. You see a camera in that ID shop, Hamlin?' Cooper asked.

'Yup. A nice Canon. A forger needs good resolution from an expensive digital so he can magnify whatever he wants to copy—get a nice, up-close picture of what he hopes to re-create. That's an excellent way to capture every nuance and color blend on the target document. I'll print out any pictures that he had on the memory stick and if it looks like it's related to your case, I'll e-mail them to you.'

I rattled off my e-mail, telling Hamlin that Cooper was staying with me. Then I said, 'These are pretty poor- quality photos. Like something I'd take with my cell phone. Since I know next to nothing about photography, can either of you explain how an expensive digital camera would give us these?' I waved my hand at the pictures.

'Maybe they were taken with a cell phone,' Cooper said.

'More likely a telephoto lens.' Hamlin was staring hard at one of the cemetery pictures.

'But why?' I said. 'Unless . . .'

'Unless Dugan was stalking her, getting a handle on her routine so he could kill her,' Cooper said.

'Okay . . . but then, who murdered him?'

24

We left Dugan's condo not long after, since there was really nothing more to see. I'd hoped Georgeanne would show up because I wanted to ask her a few questions— like exactly when her boyfriend, Kent, disappeared —but I had a feeling she'd be spending a long time with Maria Chavez. Having met Georgeanne, I couldn't see her killing her boyfriend, rolling him up in a piece of carpet and tossing him into the bayou, but Jeff would argue that anyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances. Yes, I could be wrong. I often am.

As promised, Cooper took me back to the garage to pick up my car, and I paid both his fees and mine, which turned out to be enough money to feed a third world nation. They are proud of their parking garages in the Medical Center.

We went back to my house, and while Cooper called Pineview PD to find out—as he put it—'how many people pissed in the street or let their dog run wild' in his absence, I took Cooper's notebook and got busy on my computer. I printed out all the newspaper articles I could find. Most of them were from Texas, a few from Oklahoma and Arkansas. I gathered the pages and took them out to the kitchen, where Cooper was still on the phone. Maybe in his absence Pineview had been reduced to three truckloads of bean pickers without a foreman.

But when I saw his expression after he hung up, I regretted making light of his job, even in my head.

'The Montgomery County crime lab pulled Dugan's prints off JoLynn's wrecked car—where the air bags had been removed. He was in AFIS—that's the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.'

'Duh. I know what AFIS is. He's the one who tried to kill her, then?' I said.

'Ordinarily that wouldn't be enough evidence. The air bags could have been removed at any time, even when