A Dark December Night

A dead girl lay in a grassy field along a secluded rural road in southwest Grand Prairie. The unseasonably warm winter weather, harbinger of foggy nights, created a mist surrounding the still water of nearby Joe Pool Lake. Bludgeoned, shot twice in the head, her once lovely face was nearly unrecognizable. Lying on her back, her right hand clutching the grass, her left arm slightly akimbo, she still wore the workout clothes from the gym she visited with her mother the night before: a pair of blue-and-green plain flannel shorts, a white Nike brand long-sleeved knit shirt over a gray T-shirt bearing the cryptic logo UIL Region-I Cross-Country Regionals 1995. One of her white-stockinged feet dangled precariously from a barbed-wire fence; on her right ankle she wore an ankle bracelet. The victim is 16-year-old Adrianne Jones.

The dark figure turned away from the victim on the ground. Adrenaline pumping, he swiftly headed towards the idling Mazda Protégé. Scrambling behind the driver's wheel, he shifted into gear, stepped on the gas, and turned to the young woman in the passenger seat, saying breathlessly, "I love you, baby. Do you believe me now?"

"Yes, I believe you, I love you too," replied the young woman quickly, and, almost as an afterthought asked, "What have we done?"

 "I don't know. I can't believe we just did that," he replied. Panicky, he drove a short distance before turning the headlights back on and then drove off down Seeton Road.

At sunrise, a local farmer spotted a human figure on the ground. At first glance, he was confused and afraid. The car leaving the crime scene was long gone.