Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

investigators. The latent prints, body fluids, hairs, and fibers in the parsonage were traced back to the Winkler family, which, of course, was to be expected. The bedding, sleeping pillows, and decorative pillows were also gathered up, bagged, and labeled.
    The criminalists and the investigators processed the room where Matthew Winkler’s body had lain undiscovered all day Wednesday. It was a nice enough room, with white crown moldings and bifold French doors against a fabric-covered wall. All light was shut out by the closed wooden blinds, and no one could have peered in and seen the minister’s body lying there.
    In contrast to the white woodwork, the Winklers’ bedroom set was made of heavy dark wood. There was a sterile feel to the room, as if the occupants hadn’t cared enough to do much more than make the bed. It was like the lawn outside—very basic. Three months after Christmas, a wooden box with snowmen on it remained on a round stand near the bathroom door.
    The bulb on the lamp next to the bed wouldn’t have given off enough light to read by; maybe it had been used as a night-light. A combination light and ceiling fan whirled slowly as the investigators worked. They took photos of every corner of the crime scene, and then measured the room. When they cut out a large chunk of the wall-to-wall carpet between the bed and the bathroom, they found the subfloor beneath was also deeply stained with blood.
    Aside from the tangle of blankets Matthew Winkler had been wrapped in and the welter of blood beneath, there was no indication that there had been a struggle there. His autopsy would show that he had been shot just once—in the back—as he lay facedown, probably in the wide four-poster bed he shared with Mary. He might even have been sound asleep when he was shot. But he had been found lying on his back. Mary, even in desperation, could not possibly have lifted him and turned him over, so he had lived long enough to make that last, massive effort to heave himself out of bed.
    Perhaps he had been trying to call for help? That would have been impossible. The white phone was on the floor several feet away from him, and its cord was unplugged—not from the wall, but from the phone itself, and the cord was coiled beneath his body.
    At 3 A.M. , a nationwide Amber Alert was sent out by the Tennessee authorities. They used a smiling picture of the Winkler family they’d found in the house to help people recognize Mary and the three girls. These alerts are not issued lightly and are used only in cases where law enforcement agencies have reason to believe that the people missing are likely to be in extreme danger. Amber Alerts are usually employed to find missing or kidnapped children.
    Every possible media outlet now repeated information and descriptions of Mary Winkler and her daughters, and the family’s Sienna minivan. The picture of the perfect family flashed across TV screens and appeared on the front page of newspapers again and again. Illuminated signs along freeways also blazed with this information. If the minivan was on the main freeways, surely someone would spot it and call police.
    But if Mary and her little girls had been abducted, whoever had them would probably know that and switch vehicles soon, or at least steal other license plates, so lawmen had to work fast.
    Thursday dawned with no sightings of Mary Winkler and her three daughters. There were so many places where a minivan, perhaps holding the four bodies of the missing members of the family, could be hidden from view. Not knowing was somehow worse than knowing what had happened to them. The Reverend Dan Winkler, Matthew’s father; his mother, Dianne; his brothers, Dan and Jacob; Mary’s father, Clark Freeman; and Mary’s four adopted brothers and sisters needed every scintilla of their Christian faith as they waited for word, even as they mourned the loss of Matthew.
     
    Orange Beach, Alabama, is almost 350 miles from Selmer, Tennessee, a resort town with white sugar sand beaches on the Gulf of Mexico. Tourism brochures for the Alabama Gulf Coast cities and towns advertise the area as a place to “slow down, let loose, rediscover yourself,” and let its attractions “cast a spell over you.”
    Beyond the beach itself, Orange Beach has a “Monster Theatre” with continuous film footage of sharks and other deadly sea creatures, a mall, a fifteen-screen theater, a Starbucks, and “the South’s Tallest Ferris Wheel.”
    It