An Unmarked Grave Read Online Free PDF Page B

stuck his head in. "Showtime, fellas"
    Just as I hit 1-35 in downtown Dallas and headed northwest, I glanced at the dash clock. It was almost one, so beyond the city limits I pulled into a Day's Inn motel. After
compiling my notes for the day, I climbed between the sheets.
    Next morning, after checking out, I pulled into a Valero
self-service station next door to fuel up. Behind the station
ran some railroad tracks. While the tank filled, I idly watched
a slow-moving train of coal cars with open top hoppers, acid
cars, and boxcars clattering past, heading northwest.
    As I entered the on-ramp to the interstate, I glanced at
the train one last time-and froze. I blinked my eyes and
squinted at the hobos hopping into the open door of an
empty boxcar and disappearing back into the shadows.

    The face had disappeared. Or maybe I had just imagined
it. Still, I drove along the shoulder of the interstate, matching
the freight's speed and sneaking glances at the open door.
    At first, I thought I had spotted my old man, John Roney
Boudreaux, who left Mom and me when I was around seven.
Over the years, I'd run across him a few times. Last time I
spotted him was in the French Quarter in New Orleans a
few months earlier.
    I never ceased to be amazed how the old man managed
to stay alive all those years bumming across the country.
While he is my father, and I have helped him several times
over the years, if anyone existed who personified amorality,
it was he.
    He believed in and only in John Roney. All others existed to benefit him. I was in my midthirties before I finally
accepted his nature and stopped lying to myself and making excuses for him. That's why the few times he stayed
with me, I never felt a single pang of guilt about locking
various items in the garage so he couldn't pawn them.
    After a few miles, I pulled back to the inside lane and
kicked my Silverado up to the speed limit.
    Elysian Hills lay in the rolling hills and Post Oak Savannah sixty miles or so north of Fort Worth. It was a small
community stretching for half a mile or so on either side of
Farm to Market Road 1287. On both sides of the macadam
road, horses and cattle grazed in pastures dotted with oil
wells pumping the proverbial black gold from the earth.
    I looked out over the pastoral hills, remembering my
Greek mythology. The Elysian Fields were the final resting
place of the souls of the virtuous and heroic. Mythology located the fields on the western fringe of the earth. The
relatives of the gods were transported, without tasting death,
there to the immortality of heaven. Those less fortunate
skirted Elysian to face the perpetual torment of purgatory in
the Fields of Asphodel.

    Not to my surprise, I would once again witness the fact
that sometimes the Fields of Asphodel lapped over into
those of Elysian more than one wanted to believe.
    The old clapboard homes sitting on the crest of hills indicated the area had at one time been a successful farming
community. The newer brick homes pointed to a burgeoning bedroom community, a short drive, by Texas standards,
from the Fort Worth-Dallas metroplex.
    I drove slowly through the community, noting two convenience stores, three churches, a small school, a feed and tack
store, a welding shop, a lube shop, an automotive garage,
sheriff's office, and, to my surprise, an old green building of
concrete blocks with a sign in front that read:
    UFO MUSEUM,
    OPEN TUES. AND THURS. 12-3.
    I turned around and headed back, pulling in at the sheriff's
office. The tan metal building housing the office was one of
those prefabricated, cream-colored buildings so ubiquitous
along the side of the road today.
    A mature receptionist smiled up at me. "Yes, sir?"
    Glancing around, I spotted a nameplate over a door.
SHERIFF PERRY.
    "My name's Tony Boudreaux. I'd like to see Sheriff Perry
if I might."

    She nodded and picked up the phone. Moments later she
nodded to the door. "In there, sir."
    A