“Something like that,” Shooter said, and we followed Gilliam’s gaze out toward the water.
Julie Gilliam had not gone missing in Shilo’s jurisdiction, so we lacked the case file on her as a missing person. This rendered the visit more of a notification and less of an interview. Still, we could dig in on some details. Shooter asked her father about the day Julie went missing.
“We’re unincorporated out here,” he said, pointing at the area around him. “So the local sheriff asked for volunteers to search the area. A hundred people showed up. Lotta boaters and hunters familiar with the local inlets and swamps. Sheriff divided into groups of four and broke down the whole area into grids. He and I stayed here, by the phone.”
“Nothing?” Shooter asked.
“There were a lot of calls,” Gilliam said. “People checking in. I half expected her to be found in some bad condition. Somewhere in the swamp.” He paused and shrugged. “Nothing. Her friends put it onthe internet, the social media. More calls, but nothing. Sheriff still comes by every few months to check in. Her friends do the same.”
He wiped at his face again and stared out toward an inlet thick with sawgrass. A tricolored heron landed on the top of the bait shack, and I thought of something I’d heard other members of law enforcement express. That they wanted to catch a perp and watch as someone stuck a needle in their arm. I had never felt this way, but hearing Gilliam speak, I understood the sentiment.
I pulled the sketch from my satchel. “Does this man look familiar?” I asked.
He stared at the picture. “No one I know,” he said. “Who is he?”
“A person of interest,” Shooter replied. “It’s possible he has nothing to do with your daughter’s case. But we have to be sure.”
I asked to use the bathroom, but it was more of an excuse to inspect Gilliam’s boat. Inside was a small combination living and kitchen area, from which a tiny hallway led to two bedrooms.
“You have my girl in the morgue or something?” I heard Gilliam ask as I walked away.
“In a manner of speaking,” Shooter said, her voice softer than normal.
I headed down the hallway and glanced right and left at the two diminutive bedrooms, which only had enough room to fit a bed and a tiny dresser. Gilliam’s bed was unmade, but his daughter’s room looked pristine. I walked inside and opened a drawer, seeing a blue hairbrush thick with blondish-red strands. Straighter and longer than Bud Gilliam’s.
As I came out, Shooter mentioned that Gilliam had agreed to come to the Shilo PD the next day.
“I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” she said. “Is there anyone we can call to come be with you?”
“No,” he said.
“There’s a blue hairbrush,” I said. “In her drawer. Can we take it?”
He nodded, his voice caught in his throat.
Shooter moved out to the car to grab her crime kit and came back holding an evidence bag. While she was inside, Bud Gilliam asked me for another look at the photo. I showed it to him, and he held his hand over his mouth.
“How did you make this?” he asked, referring to the photo.
I wasn’t sure of everything Shooter had told him while I was inside. But I reflected on the comment she had made in the car on the way here.
“It’s computer-generated,” I said. “It’s not her, Mr. Gilliam. It’s just a computer image.”
Tears blanketed Gilliam’s cheeks, and he nodded. “Her mouth looks perfect, though.”
Shooter came out, the evidence bag in hand. But I was stuck on what Gilliam had just said. His words were wrong.
“Do you have a recent picture of Julie?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, moving inside and finding one in a four-by-six frame. He handed it to me, and I stared at it.
“She had a cleft lip.”
“Yeah,” he replied.
I looked more closely at the photo. Most cleft issues, whether to the lips or the palate, are noticed at birth in the US and repaired in the first few years of life, often in a series of surgeries. With prenatal ultrasounds, some are even detected as early as week thirteen of a pregnancy. But they would not be seen on a skull, hence our picture looking better than expected by her father.
I studied a scar mark just above her lip and could tell that she’d had at least one corrective surgery, probably as a child.
