Wendi read and learned. A corpse in water usually sinks because the specific gravity of a human body is very close to that of water. When she’d submerged the body, tissue decomposition from bacteria had begun, forming a gas byproduct. That accumulation of a lighter substance decreased the specific gravity of the body, creating sufficient buoyancy to allow it to rise to the surface and float. Weights attached to the body may delay, but will not usually prevent, the body rising. In warm water, the body will drift to the surface in eight to ten days; in colder water, it would float in two to three weeks.
Wendi wasn’t sure of how the water temperatures were defined or of the current reading at the stock tank. It was January, making her think she had the longer period of time. But, then again, she was in Texas and ponds just didn’t get as cold there as they did up North—that made her lean toward the shorter period of time.
Either way, odds were that, at the very least, Mike’s body was beginning to rise. The brake drum attached to his neck with baling wire, and the cinder block tied to his left leg were not enough. She needed more weight. She needed the body to stay underwater until decomposition of the tissue was complete.
She logged off the computer in her veterinary clinic and went out the back door. She scrounged through the barn, gathering up used auto parts and anything else of substantial weight to attach to the body.
When she finished scavenging in there, she still needed more. She planned to stop by the dump out at the 7777 Ranch to get additional items. She set the blue-handled boning knife she’d used in veterinary school on the seat of the pick-up truck when she climbed into the cab.
She exited the highway, out in the countryside. Near the fence line, a short distance before the gate, was a large pile of discarded material. The ranch owner, Terrell Sheen, liked to call it a brush pile, but it looked just like a dump to everybody else. Wendi unearthed a few more hefty items to weigh down the body and tossed them in the back of the truck.
She pulled into the ranch and locked the gate behind her and drove the mile out to the stock tank. Standing on the dock, her eyes scanned across the surface. Nothing stuck above the water. Just below the surface, though, she saw a shape. As she’d suspected, the body was rising.
She didn’t know that at about the same time she spotted the body, someone spotted her car. Fortunately for Wendi—unfortunately for everyone who cared about Michael Severance—when hired hand Jose Romero saw her vehicle, he’d thought little of it at the time. He didn’t interrupt her or try to find out what she was doing. He’d seen her out at the ranch many times before.
She got into the little boat and rowed out to the body. She reached down for it, but with the brake drum and cinder block attached, it was too heavy for her to lift. With the oar she pushed on it, guiding the corpse over to the bank, resting it half in the mud, half in the water.
She tied the boat up to the dock, disembarked and got down in the mud by the body of her husband. She had two tasks to perform. First, she wanted to make it easier for the gas to escape from his body. So she stabbed him with the blue-handled knife—through his chest into the lungs, the diaphragm and downward into the abdomen. She thrust the knife into the lower abdomen, ripping it open. She drove the knife into clusters of wounds in his right flank and into his right arm. She rolled him over and slammed the blade into his back again and again.
Homicide investigators have often said that a preponderance of wounds were evidence of overkill, and indicated anger toward the victim. But she’d killed Mike weeks earlier. Was Wendi now furious with her husband for foiling her plans to conceal her crime? Or was she driven by desperation to hide the secret of her ugly actions? Was it possible that her mind was elsewhere—that she stabbed at someone or something else? Was it a vain attempt to eliminate malevolent demons residing in her psyche?
Whatever made her exhibit this level of fury, it wasn’t possible, in the midst of her rampage, that she spared one kind thought for the individual loved by his family and friends—for the man who was the only daddy either of her sons had ever known. After forty-one thrusts of the knife, she stopped desecrating his body.
Her second chore was to weigh the body down with more objects to delay its rise to the surface. It took several trips from the truck to the dock, but she soon had all she needed by her side. She lost a couple of items in the muck at the side of the pond trying to tie them to the partially submerged body. She switched to plan B.
She dragged him up on the dock and slid the body into the boat. Then, she loaded up cinder blocks, an anchor and a tire wheel rim, along with yellow braided rope and plastic zip ties. She climbed inside, and when she was certain the load was well balanced, she moved the boat out to the center of the water, where a submerged fence separated the pond into two sections.
She methodically fastened the contents of the boat to both ankles, both wrists and the left elbow with plastic zip ties, attaching 145 pounds of weight to Mike’s 155-pound body. Then she eased the body and objects out of the boat, guided it past the fence and into the water on the smaller side of the pond away from the boat dock. She sat and watched until his body sunk to the bottom and disappeared from sight. It was hard work, but she’d accomplished what she’d set out to do. She undoubtedly felt pride in a job well done.
She returned to the dock, tied up the boat and got in her truck. She drove back down the caliche lane to the road. She got in and out of the truck to open and then close the gate. Before she left, she locked it tight. She then drove off convinced no one would ever find the body—certain that her husband would remain a missing person forever.