Chapter 15
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Mount Warren, Texas
The drive had taken longer than Flint expected. He’d called from the road and Sheriff Milliken had agreed to wait.
Flint arrived at the Mount Warren Sheriff’s Department on the edge of town.
The building was smaller than he had imagined.
Single story, red brick, with a handful of patrol cars parked outside.
The parking lot’s asphalt had seen better decades, with weeds pushing through the edges where it met the building’s foundation.
A weathered American flag hung limp in the still air, and cracks spider-webbed through the concrete steps leading to the entrance.
A sign by the front door read “Sheriff Ralph Milliken” in faded black letters, the paint chipped and worn by countless Mount Warren sun-drenched summers.
Inside, fluorescent lights buzzed overhead revealing every crack in the worn linoleum floors.
The familiar institutional blend of coffee, old paper, and industrial cleaning solution that seemed to permeate every government building everywhere in the country.
The desk sergeant looked up from her computer, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.
“Michael Flint to see Sheriff Milliken.”
“He’s expecting you. Back office, second door on the right.”
Flint walked down a narrow hallway lined with public safety posters and community bulletin boards.
The walls were painted an institutional beige that had yellowed with age and decades of foot traffic.
Wanted posters, community event flyers, and safety notices created a patchwork of local law enforcement.
He knocked once on the door marked “Sheriff” and walked inside.
Sheriff Milliken stood behind a metal desk cluttered with case files and coffee cups.
The office felt cramped, with filing cabinets lining two walls and boxes of old case files stacked in corners.
A single window looked out onto the parking lot.
Venetian blinds were adjusted to filter the afternoon light.
Milliken was younger than Flint had expected.
Not yet sixty. Gray hair, solid build, wearing a crisply pressed uniform shirt with short sleeves.
His hands bore the calluses of physical work and his weathered face suggested years of dealing with the harsher realities of small-town policing.
Milliken extended his hand. “Drive go okay?”
Flint shook his firm grip. “Thanks for waiting.”
Milliken gave him a quick nod. “Coffee?”
“Thanks. Black, please.”
Milliken poured two paper cups from a pot that looked like it had been brewing all day. The coffee smelled burnt and bitter, the kind that got stronger and more unpalatable as the hours passed. He handed one to Flint and gestured to a chair across from his desk.
“The Marilyn Baker case.” Milliken settled into his chair. “Can’t say I expected anyone to call about that after all these years. What’s your interest?”
Flint had rehearsed this moment. He’d planned to maintain the genealogy cover story. Research for a family tree. Academic curiosity. Professional distance.
But sitting here, looking at the man who’d been first on scene thirty-two years ago, his planned approach felt wrong.
“I need to be honest with you.” Flint set his coffee cup on the desk. “I recently discovered that Marilyn Baker was my mother.”
“Your mother?” Milliken’s eyebrows popped up as if the experience of a lifetime had flown out the window. He leaned back in his chair, the springs creaking under his weight. “I knew Marilyn Baker. She died childless. What makes you think she was your mother?”
“DNA. I was placed in foster care when I was two years old. Never knew who my mother was because she never came back for me.” Flint kept his voice steady. “I learned her name only recently and that she’d been murdered. That’s why she never returned.”
Milliken studied him for a long moment. His expression shifted from surprise to compassion and then understanding. The lines around his eyes deepened as he processed the revelation, and Flint could see the sheriff recalibrating everything he’d assumed about this meeting.
“I’m sorry.” Milliken shook his head, finally. “That explains your personal interest. How did you find out?”
“Long story.” Flint didn’t elaborate. “Point is, I’ve been avoiding this investigation for years. DNA results are impossible to ignore, I guess.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” Milliken stood and walked to a filing cabinet in the corner. The metal drawer protested with a screech of old tracks and worn bearings as he pulled it open. He removed a thick folder with pleated binding and returned to his desk.
“I was the young deputy first on scene back then. Twenty-two years old. It was my first homicide case.” He opened the folder with the reverence of someone handling sacred relics.
“I’ve been the sheriff here for eight years now, and I still think about the case regularly.
It’s always bothered me that we never solved it. ”
“Tell me what you remember.”
“Everything.” Milliken spread several photographs across the desk.
Crime scene shots. The images were stark black and white, capturing a moment frozen in time thirty-two years ago.
“We believe she died after she was last seen leaving confession at St. Michael’s Church. She was found face down in the canal two days later. June twentieth.” Milliken delivered the facts plainly, as if he knew Flint could take it. Which was a solid guess.
Flint examined the photographs. Her body looked small and fragile against the muddy bank of the canal.
His hands remained steady as he studied the images, but something cold settled in his belly.
This was his mother. The woman who had carried him, given birth to him, and then vanished from his life in the most violent way possible.
“Cause of death was suffocation. No evidence of sexual assault or beating,” Milliken said, as Flint skimmed the relevant report. “Her purse, one shoe, and one glove were scattered over several hundred yards between the church and where we found her.”
“Evidence trail?”
“That’s what we thought at the time. Like someone grabbed her and she fought back, dropping things as she was dragged toward the water.
” Milliken pointed to a map marked with red X’s.
“Problem was, most of the physical evidence was washed away by the canal water. Made it hard to determine exactly what happened.”
“What about suspects?”
“We focused on James Preston pretty early. He had a record of violence against women. No solid alibi for that night. And he was seen in the area around the time she disappeared.”
“But you never charged him.”
“Couldn’t make it stick. Preston wasn’t talking, and we didn’t have enough physical evidence.” Milliken closed the folder. “He died in prison. Executed. He was convicted on another murder. Different case entirely.”
Flint sat back in his chair. The reports matched what he’d already discovered during his earlier research.
“Sheriff, what’s your gut feeling? Do you think Preston killed Marilyn Baker?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. But I always had my doubts.
” Milliken was quiet for a moment. He picked up his coffee cup and took a sip, maybe stalling or choosing his words.
When he met Flint’s eyes again, there was something else in his expression.
“Don’t get me wrong. Preston was a bad guy. Capable of violence, definitely.”
“But?”
“But something about the Marilyn Baker case never felt right to me.”
“In what way?” Flint asked.
“The scattered belongings. The location where we found her. The fact that there was no sexual assault,” Milliken summarized. “Preston’s offenses were crimes of opportunity. Impulsive. This felt more planned. More personal.”
“You think there was another suspect,” Flint said, unsure whether this was the good news or the bad.
“I know there were other suspects.” Milliken stood and walked back to the filing cabinet.
He knelt to the bottom drawer this time, his knees protesting audibly, and pulled out a secured evidence box.
The box was gray metal with an evidence seal that had yellowed with age.
“This is what I kept to myself all these years, hoping we’d be able to use it someday. ”
He returned to his desk and opened the box with deliberate care. The seal cracked as he broke it, releasing the musty smell. Inside were several evidence bags and a notebook filled with handwritten notes. The bags were labeled in careful block letters, each one dated and initialed.
“What am I looking at?”
“Evidence the investigators collected but couldn’t use or decided wasn’t important.
” Milliken’s tone suggested cold frustration, the bitterness of a man who’d spent three decades second-guessing decisions made by others.
“I was young and eager back then. Wanted to prove myself by being extra thorough. So I collected everything. Documented everything. Preserved everything.”
Flint leaned forward. “What physical evidence do you still have?”
“All of it. Your mother’s torn clothing.
Fabric samples from the scene. Soil samples.
A few other items of trace evidence, including a few blood splatters that are probably not relevant because they were diluted by the rain.
” Milliken picked up one of the evidence bags.
Through the clear plastic, Flint could see fragments of what had once been a white blouse, now stained and torn.
“You might be able to get usable DNA from what we have. Back then, we didn’t have the tech for it.
Nothing here will prove who murdered your mother.
But something might give us a new lead, if we’re lucky. ”
Flint stared at the bag in Milliken’s hands. His mother’s clothing. The fabric she’d been wearing when someone killed her. The physical connection to a woman he’d never known but whose death had shaped his entire life.
“Can we do the testing now?” Flint asked.