Never See Them Again by M. William Phelps

said life would never be the same again. Birthdays. Christmases. Fourth of July celebrations. Three Kings Day. Family gatherings. Births. And even deaths, too. There, invisible and obvious, weighing everyone down, the memory of a loved one not being able to take part in the affair. It’s like having a piece of your soul stolen; you just don’t know what part. It’s hard to figure out what, exactly, hurts more: the loss itself, how the person was taken, or the simple fact that he was here one day—talking, joking, loving, laughing—and the next . . . gone. Vanished like dust. There’s no filling that void. There’s no scratching an itch you cannot find. It will always be there. And you’ll never quite understand or entirely accept it. Time doesn’t heal this wound—it only stops the pain from completely destroying you.
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    AN INVESTIGATION SUCH as the one HPD’s Homicide Division was looking at postmurder could get out of control quickly. It took a delicate hand to keep things under control. Dead people—especially victims of murder—reveal a story; their lives, told from the grave, paint a picture. Working example: On July 22, 2003, four days after the murders, HPD got word of a man, Jason Uolla, who had been beaten with a baseball bat and left for dead in the parking lot of the apartment complex where he lived. Uolla had attended Marcus’s funeral. He hung around with Marcus. He knew Adelbert through Marcus.
    He was known as “JU”; and he was someone HPD had been looking at, without telling the families, as a potential suspect.
    â€œHe was on the radar screen . . . for the killing,” one detective said.
    Ladd was focused on JU. In talking to many of the people inside a local group of dope dealers, HPD learned that Marcus was looking to become what one detective described as a “big-time dealer,” according to JU. The supplier JU used, whom JU viewed as one of the biggest connections in the Houston area, turned out to be nothing more than a mule for the Los Zetas in Mexico and had been, HPD confirmed, skimming off the top of whatever load he transported for the Los Zetas . The Zetas, as they are known, according to government sources, is “the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico” today. This is a gang, it should be noted, that does not negotiate. They do not tolerate theft. They do not take kindly to punk kids trying to rip them off, or skimming from the top. They don’t ask questions. They kill you. Period.
    JU’s connection was ultimately whacked himself, along with his girlfriend inside a Clear Lake City hotel. The HPD knew that JU, Marcus “and even Adelbert” were naïve to the fact that they were messing with big-time players in the drug world.
    Now JU lay in a hospital bed, his skull beaten so badly with a baseball bat that he had been transferred to a second hospital, where a neurosurgeon was waiting to operate and relieve pressure accumulating on the young man’s brain.
    It was always tough for a cop to get information out of friends and family gathering at a hospital, milling about the waiting area, wondering whether to plan a celebration or funeral, trying to come to terms with the idea that a loved one, no matter what he’s done throughout his life, was inside an operating room, fighting. Nonetheless, a quadruple homicide had taken place—and the trail led to JU.
    Ladd did some digging and found out that JU had gone over to a friend’s house (a girl who had dated Adelbert at one time and had been with him recently). As the first story of what happened went, JU was there with his girlfriend (a dancer at the Club Atlantis, another Houston area strip joint). They fell asleep. At one point during the night, JU went out to his car to get some clothes. Someone—or a group of people—must have been waiting for him. Because, one source