deterioration.

The techs had excavated the scene like archaeologists. They had carefully used trowels to clear the mud from the bones. The decomposed tissue formed a black corona where the flesh had once been, a process that had been expedited by the larvae that teemed in the soil. The corpse had been buried facedown. Not laid to rest, but hurled down into a shallow grave. The techs estimated the grave had maybe been two feet deep based upon the erosion patterns of the surrounding bayou. A rush job, they had called it. But it hadn't been for fear of being caught in the act. Not out here. It had been the final insult to injury, of which there had been more than any child should have to bear. There were multiple fractures of the tibias and fibulae and the femora. One of the knees was deformed. A portion of the bone had broken away to reveal a coarse black crater. The entire pelvis was shattered. The spinal column was crooked and broken, the rib cage cracked along the lateral margins so that it collapsed in upon itself, the jagged ends clasped like interlaced fingers. The humeri were fractured in multiple places, the forearms snapped through and through in such a way that the hands were no longer attached.

They had photographed, documented, and removed the intact sections one by one until all that remained was a child-size indentation in the earth that would soon enough be washed away by the elements until there was nothing left of her at all. The worst had been when they extracted the cranium. It had come away like half of a broken vase, leaving the fragmented remains of the face behind. The facial bones had been destroyed, broken into hundreds of pieces that would be nearly impossible to reconstruct. Chipped teeth pocked the sludge. Despite the obliteration of the maxillae and the mandible, the techs were confident they would be able to mold the teeth into a cast to compare against dental records. They would also be able to extract DNA from the long black hair they had teased out of the mud. They understood the personal nature of the situation and promised to expedite matters from their end. The law enforcement community took care of its own.

Trey didn't have to ask how the body had come to be in such a state. It was obvious to all. Whether peri- or postmortem, the child had been kicked repeatedly. Over and over with such ferocity that the bones had snapped. Children's bones are designed for resilience, to bend significantly before breaking, almost like rubber. For them to have snapped like this, an inordinate amount of force would have to have been applied, the kind of force that can only be generated in the heat of a blinding rage.

He wandered away from the site, trying to appear nonchalant, and vomited into a shrub once he was out of sight. His eyes blurred with tears and he fought the urge to scream at the top of his lungs. He had never felt so helpless, so useless. So victimized. So furious.

They had interviewed everyone in attendance at the carnival that night two years ago. They had funneled them through an interview bottleneck that had kept all of the deputies busy until the first hint of dawn graced the sky. Those that remembered seeing Emma hadn't witnessed any signs of duress. No one had seen a struggle or heard her scream. The only detail that had stood out was the mention of a giant sucker that her mother had insisted they hadn't bought for her, but they had raised Emma not to be lured away by strangers with candy, which could mean only one thing.

Emma had been abducted by someone she knew, someone she trusted.

And it was his fault. He had been on duty and he had failed the only family he had.

He imagined the expression of horror and betrayal on his niece's face as an unknown man with a familiar face set upon her, kicking and kicking, until there was nothing left of her but a ruined sack of bruised flesh filled with jagged bone fragments like broken glass.

* * *

The setting sun bled the sky crimson behind her, casting her shadow over the barely perceptible hump at the foot of the plain marble headstone. Vanessa imagined herself lying in the shadow's stead, six feet---as close as she would ever again be---from the only man she had ever loved. The grass had filled in nicely. For a time, there had been patches of dirt that had refused to accept the lawn, as though to do so was to forgive its violation. Now it was impossible to tell that the sod had ever been slashed and rolled away, the ground impregnated with a husband and father for whom the end had come too soon.

She swept the accumulated debris from the foot of the headstone and wiped away the grime with a handful of tissues, carefully tracing each of the engraved letters.

Warren Francis Snow

April 19, 1977 -- August 2, 2011

Loving Husband and Father

His Memory Still Endures

Through the Lives He Touched

To allow the paltry monument to lose its luster, she feared, was the first step in the process of forgetting. And while remembering hurt, she couldn't let that happen. It was the pain that kept her going. All she had now were her memories. To lose them would be to lose herself. And whatever hope she clung to that Emma would one day return to her.

There were still no leads in the case, no clues to identify the person who had killed her husband and stolen her daughter, who had robbed her of her entire life. There was no one to be held accountable. Except for her. She had let Emma out of her sight and she had been the one who sent Warren to his demise. It should be her down there in the darkness. It still would be...soon enough. In one of the two vacant plots to her right, where her family would eventually be reunited, if only in death.

'I'm sorry,' she whispered for the thousandth time.

She held out the single yellow rose she had brought with her. It was the same kind that Warren had surprised her with on their first date. He had been a first-year resident at the University of Texas Hospital in San Antonio. She'd been an elementary-level substitute teacher who'd been clumsy enough to slam her finger in her car door. They'd talked while he splinted her injury, and she had fallen in love with him right then and there. He had appeared as if by magic after school two days later, holding a single yellow rose behind his back. And her life had never been the same again.

There was a crunching sound, like the crackle of dead leaves under an invisible tread, and then the breeze blew it away.

She surveyed the area around her. As usual, she was alone in a sea of emerald with cresting waves of granite and marble, some foamy with moss, at the rear of the cemetery where it met with a wall of cypresses.

The shadows grew longer on a day that would end like every other, with the same whispered promise under the same lonely twilight.

'I will find her.'

The crunching sound resumed. It was close, and yet far away at the same time. All around her.

She leaned forward and tossed the rose at the foot of the headstone.

The noise grew louder. It was coming from the trees, from the embankment ahead that bordered the bayou and the manicured knolls between the rows of gravesites. Not a single branch moved, and yet the sound continued.

She stood, turned away from her husband's grave, and walked alone back toward the setting sun with the crackling sound of unseen footsteps all around her.

* * *

Trey waited in his office through the evening and into the night. It seemed as though all he ever did was wait. The Sheriff was long gone. Travers was the only deputy formally on the clock, and he was out on a call. Lorna was up at the desk with the dispatch radio and computer, drinking coffee and watching reruns of the day's soaps, giving him a wide berth. They all knew about the child's body. About the condition in which it had been discovered. They knew what it meant and figured it best to give him his space. There were no stock platitudes or Hallmark cards for Sorry your niece was kicked to death and dumped in the bayou. He didn't blame them. He had no idea what he was supposed to say either.

Emma's dental records and her x-rays had been couriered to the Crime Scene Response Section in Dallas nearly ten hours ago now. Dr. Carlton Matthews, the town dentist, had been more than happy to take care of the details on his end. After all, he and his wife had a daughter Emma's age who they schooled at home. Last Trey knew, the evidence technicians were in the process of creating a plaster mold using the teeth they found at the site

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