Hall County Murders

Chapter 1




         They found most of Lizzie McKinney’s body in a dry creek bed.    Her hair had been cut.  Large chunks of her once beautiful, shimmering blond hair were now missing, not found with the body.  And apparently she had also lost half of her index finger.  She had been only 17 years old, and now she was dead from multiple stab wounds.
         Sheriff Ricardo “Richie” Valdez, former detective for the Houston Police Department, had seen his fair share of bodies.  Since his retirement from HPD to the rural and quiet Hall County, most of the action he handled came in the form of traffic violations and lost livestock.  The big city crimes, the gang murders, the beaten and overdosed hookers, had never sent shivers down his spine the way this young, mangled body had. 
         From the look of the wounds, the murderer used a huge knife.  Maybe even a machete.  A dull machete.  The flesh around the gashes was torn, not sliced.  And there was a substance that looked like rust flecked all around the wounds.  An old, rusty machete. 
         Other than the evidence on the victim, there was nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  There wasn’t the huge pool of blood surrounding the body like there should be if she was killed there behind the town’s only convenient store.  There were no footprints, no tire tread marks.  It was as if she emerged from the ground dead instead of living, like most things that come from the earth. 
         Valdez circled the body in a practiced way, looking at the scanty evidence from every perspective.  This was a habit from his homicide days, and today he was glad he hadn’t forgotten it in his three years of semi-retirement here in the Texas panhandle.
         The body had not been carelessly dumped here.  Lizzie’s body had been positioned very carefully.  Her legs had been crossed at the ankles, her arms curled beneath her head.  If it wasn’t for the six inch slash across her throat, she might look like she was just napping. 
          In his experience, this careful positioning of the body should mean that the killer felt remorse for his actions.  But something was off, and Valdez couldn’t put his finger on what that was yet.