Beauty – real beauty is both a curious and interesting thing. There are varying degrees of beauty – depending upon the beholder. But what is beautiful to one is, more than likely, beautiful to all.
A beautiful woman will always retain her beauty. Regardless of age, wrinkles, even weight loss or gain – you can still see their magic and that thing we define as beauty. It’s unexplainable, but the things that made them beautiful still remain.
Age can alter how our eyes define this beauty, but it does not remove that underlying image which made them what they had always been – beautiful.
Only death has the ability to change this image and rob the beauty that was once so easily recognizable. In normal death – many remain as beautiful as they did in life - but in violent death, the beauty dissolves and a horrific site is inserted in the place of those things we knew and understood to be beautiful.
She had been in the water for more than 72 hours. Rigor mortis had come and gone and her body had begun to bloat – like a dead floating fish. Little water animals had already started to nibble at the exposed skin, leaving shreds of skin dangling for other predators to bite.
The body was never intended to be found, as is usually the case. This would have probably been accomplished except for an ambitious fisherman. Ike Murray knew the exact spot for he and his son, Rusty, to find fish in Humboldt Lake. A few yards back up in an unnoticed feeder creek is where Ike and Rusty had been catching their large mouth bass. It was here they found something tossed away like trash – without remorse and without intent of anyone ever seeing the beauty in this woman again.
My story begins many days before Ike and Rusty’s fishing trip and many days before the events that led to their tragic discovery.
