Trail of Blood. Wanda Evans
love me, but if he wasn’t around, I know that you would love me as much as I love you…You have five days counting today and Thursday to decide what to do. I am thru playing games! I love you too much to continue dangling on the edge of hope. I need to know, one way or the other. Love, Tim.”
As English held the letter, his mind raced. Even though the lovesick man had given her an ultimatum—choose between Scott and himself—Leisha had refused to do so. So though Leisha made no choice, Tim continued to declare his love for her.
English put the letter down and picked up a card, which apparently had accompanied flowers. It carried a Mother’s Day greeting. It simply said, “The Woman I Love! Please accept my apology.” It was signed, “Tim.”
Another undated note on a green 3x5 card read: “Dear Green Eyes. I will always love you…If you would just accept God into your heart, you would change. I know it would work between us if we would trust each other. I don’t hold it against you whatever you did with Burt. You are very special to me and I hope I get another chance to show you that I can trust you and stay off your back. With the greatest love. Tim (Superman)”
English turned this card over in his fingers, pondering. It must have been written after Scott’s disappearance, because Burt Todd had indicated that he and Leisha had not begun seeing each other until after May 16. How many other men were there in Leisha Hamilton’s life?
As the relationship deteriorated, the tone of the notes changed dramatically. An undated card read: “Don’t worry. There won’t be anymore flowers from me. You have turned into something ugly since I met you. You are letting things turn you into an ugly Bitch. It is very unfortunate, because you are, or were, a very beautiful woman at one time. I wish you would change back into that woman I know you can be. Don’t throw everything away…I still love you. Tim.”
English picked up a pink card, undated, that continued in the same vein: “Don’t worry, there won’t be anymore notes, calls or anything else. These are my last words to you. I can’t believe you would think evil of me because you know me better than that. You owe me an apology when this is all over with. A big apology. I still love you and I don’t know why. I should be extremely angry with you for the way you have been thinking.”
This must be a recent card, English concluded, written when Tim Smith found out that Leisha had been telling people she thought he had “done something to Scott.”
A card dated June 8, English noted, said, “Goodbye, Green Eyes. You broke my heart in two and don’t care. I gave you all my love, my heart, and my soul, yet you threw it all away. I have loved you beyond words. We need each other, yet you don’t see it. I wanted you to be the Yellow Rose of Texas for me, but you would not. I bought you a rose the other day, but you were gone. All they had today was a yellow carnation. As you have thrown my love away in your heart anyways, I want you to trash the carnation to symbolize your disgust of my love for you.”
The last card, also dated June 8, reinforced the sense that Tim Smith was filled with despair over the deterioration of his relationship with Leisha. “It’s ironic,” Tim wrote, “you seem to hate the one who loves you the most. All I ever wanted was to do things with you, be with you, and spend as much time with you as I could. And for this, you despise me?”
English sat, hunched over his desk, fingering the small collection of vari-colored cards, wishing he had pushed Tim Smith a little harder when he had the opportunity. He consoled himself with the thought that Tim was scheduled to come in for a polygraph test in a few days and he would be able to question him further. Maybe then Smith would tell the investigators what had happened to Scott Dunn.
It was time—past time—English knew, to move the investigation into high gear. Impetus to do just that was provided when Jim Dunn called to relay the information that Scott had type O positive blood, the same type that had been found in that small bedroom.
English and White already had checked with Leisha Hamilton’s employer and had discovered that she had been at work on her regular shift May 16. Now they decided to contact Tim Smith’s employer. The manager was cooperative, agreeing to show them Tim’s work records for the day in question. The time sheets revealed that Smith had not gone to work Thursday, May 16. Tim had told the manager his brother had been involved in a traffic accident. The other party involved in the accident was suing his brother and Smith’s entire family, Tim said, so he had to go to help his brother.
Then English and White drove back out to the Regency Apartments and asked the manager if they could see Tim Smith’s old apartment. They wanted to know if the carpet in that apartment was the same as Leisha’s—gray and green, which was also the same as the carpet fibers found on the duct tape the investigators had found in Smith’s new apartment. The carpet in Tim’s old apartment proved to be tan, brown and white, the same as that in his new apartment.
When the detectives returned to the police building, English spoke with Officer Gary Smith, who had taken the criminal mischief report that Leisha had made concerning the door that had been kicked in. He told them that when he went to the apartment, a blanket of some type was lying in the northeast bedroom. Leisha told him that this is where they slept. He did not notice the carpet missing under the couch. He couldn’t remember if there were sheets on the couch.
White tracked down Tim’s brother, who was at work in another town in Texas. White identified himself and Smith agreed to talk with the investigator. Smith said he had not been involved in an auto accident and that White could check his time card for May 15 and May 16 and see that he had been at work. He told White that on June 15, however, he had driven to Lubbock and helped Tim move to his new apartment.
When White asked the young man if Tim talked about any of his friends, he said Tim talked about a girl he was seeing. Tim seemed to like her a lot, but hadn’t mentioned her name.
English then located Tim Smith’s father, who lived in a small community near Lubbock. Tim had lived there with his family after high school. The elder Smith said to English that his son had told him that he had taken off from work because he was sick on May 16, the day Scott Dunn disappeared.
Meanwhile, White was checking into Leisha Hamilton’s background. Since Leisha had told him she had been living in Albuquerque the previous fall, White called the Albuquerque, New Mexico, police department and talked to Detective Torres. White asked Torres to check their department and see if they had information on Leisha Hamilton, Scott Dunn or Tim Smith. Torres, after a little research, said he found information only on Hamilton. She had been convicted of theft and forgery and was currently on probation. He said she gave the names of a brother and her father, both residents of Texas. Another name she gave was of her husband, whose whereabouts were, Leisha would later tell White, currently unknown.
Later that day, White got a telephone tip from a man who lived about three blocks from Scott Dunn’s apartment. The man, Ralph Jones, said it was his habit to take a walk early in the morning alongside the west perimeter of the Regency Apartments, which was only a hundred feet or so from B4, where Scott and Leisha lived. Jones said that one morning, he couldn’t remember for sure if it was May 16, but it was around that time, he walked past the alley that abutted the parking lot north of B4, as he did on most mornings. In the alley, probably less than thirty feet from the door to B4, was a Dumpster. That morning, several cats had surrounded the Dumpster and were making noises, trying to get inside it. He had never seen this happen before, so he went over to the Dumpster, threw a handful of pebbles at the cats to scatter them away and opened the lid. According to Jones, the Dumpster was not quite full and he could see a large sheet of plastic and some rolled-up carpet that looked dirty and stained. He couldn’t tell what