KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Susan Rosemann came awake in the middle of the night.
It was David, her older brother, stirring her. Though she knew it was impossible for him to be there.
"You have to get up," he said.
Everything Rosemann knew of her older brother had stopped some 42 years ago when their weary mother, Wanda Eyman, seemingly banished all mention of the teenage David Eyman's terrifying, violent death.
His body, bound by rope, doused in gasoline and set on fire, was found in a ditch along the boundary road between Jackson and Cass counties, about 3 a.m., Aug. 14, 1974.
Investigators suspected that the local police officer first at the scene was actually the killer, but no one was ever charged.
Now, so many decades later, the presence of David, frozen in time at age 15, called out to Rosemann.
"It's urgent," he said.
"I had to gather my wits," Rosemann said, describing the unsettling feeling of her brother's presence at her bedside in her rural home west of Kearney.
His face had been almost forgotten to her.
Right after David's death, there had been a frantic year or two when Wanda Eyman made a determined effort to uncover the truth.
Then their mother shut it all off. No one talked about it. The family didn't even keep any pictures of David on the walls.
The vision of her brother lifted Rosemann from her bed. She would take actions in the months ahead: digging up old notes, calling police, even looking up the onetime suspect in her brother's murder.
But in that first moment she felt only regret and pain. Her faded memory of David's face came fully clear with his smile and wavy dark hair.
"I was so sorry," Rosemann said, trembling. "I was sorry I forgot him. His life was worth so much more than that."
