The Peace Haven Murders

by M. Glenn Graves

  Two cars were parked in front of Robertson’s small home. One of them was the county sheriff’s car. The other was a Ford Taurus from the nineties. There was a bumper sticker on the rear of the Ford that was advertising for Hospice.

  The sun had played a type of dodge ball with the clouds for most of the day. It was now overcast. The clouds had finally won. There were some rain clouds over to the west and the slight wind was moving them our way. Nothing was happening at the moment.

  Sam stayed in the car while Rosey and I approached the front door. I knocked and waited for an answer. Nothing happened. Rosey knocked harder. We waited. Again, nothing. It was my turn. I move my closed fist into position and the door opened. Sheriff Robertson stood behind the torn screen. He looked weary.

  “Is this a bad time?” I asked.

  “The nurse is inside seeing to my mother. She’s pretty sick. I think the end is close,” Robby said in a low voice, almost a whisper.

  “Didn’t know your mother was living with you.”

  “Long time,” he said. “Most people don’t know. I don’t talk about it.”

  “This a hospice nurse?” I asked.

  “Yeah. It’s a good organization. They help a lot of people.”

  “I’ve heard good things,” I said.

  “Yeah, they’re real helpful.”

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  He looked at me with searching eyes. I had no idea for what he was searching, but I could tell that he must have been satisfied when he finally nodded as he gaze fell to the ground.

  “We need to talk,” I said after a minute or so of strained silence.

  He opened the screen door and shifted so that I could pass in front of him. Rosey followed me into the living room. Robby was wearing his sheriff’s uniform with his shirttail pulled out. He badge and firearm were not evident.

  “Make it quick, Clancy. I’m not much in a mood to talk right now,” Robby said without offering us a place to sit.

  “Sorry this is a bad time, but I wanted you to know what I’ve discovered.”

  Robby was standing with his back to the faux fireplace. It was too warm for him to have the gas logs burning. It was merely a place for him to stand in an awkward situation.

  “I hope this is important. I don’t have time to waste.”

  “We know that Marie Jones is your daughter,” I said.

  He was staring out one of the front windows behind me and slowly shifted his eyes towards me. I thought I saw a tear appear in the corner of one of his eyes.

  “Well, I guess my secret is finally out,” he said.

  “Not yet. I have no desire to tell the world your secret. But, the truth is, from what I have learned, you should be proud to have her as a daughter.”

  “I am. Make no mistake about that. But there’s only two or three who know the truth, so I can’t very well brag about her accomplishments. It would hurt her as much as it would hurt me if this town knew. Maybe more. I don’t want her to be hurt and I certainly don’t want to feed the damn gossip of this town. Let ‘em talk about somebody else.”

  His tone and attitude seemed to indicate that Rogers was perhaps correct in that this man would not intentionally incriminate his own daughter in a murder.

  “Agreed. But, you do have to answer for murder.”

  “You think I murdered someone?” he asked.

  “I do. You gave Marie a concentrated dosage of potassium in a syringe for Robert Lee Rowland. She injected Rowland with concentrated potassium and it killed him. I can only guess that you were not trying to frame her. You had to have some plan in order to have her do it and get away with it. The truth is, though, you used her to kill the preacher.”

  At my mentioning of the potassium, Rosey moved effortlessly out of the small living room into the kitchen area to my right and to Robby’s left.

  “You’re just guessing. You can’t prove anything.”

  “I will.”

  “You’ll need some evidence, and that will be quite impossible.”

  “You gave Ben Pickeral several items to send off for testing,” I said.

  “Ben seems to have lost it.”

  “Wow, imagine that.”

  “It happens. Evidence sometimes gets misplaced. You know the reputations of small towns.”

  “Well, that would explain why you were willing to let Marie use your mixture without knowing what she was doing. You had planned all along to destroy the evidence.”

  “That’s quite a story. You have any evidence to support such a tale?”

  “How about these two items?” Rosey said as he re-entered the living room from the kitchen holding two bottles. One was the concentrated potassium and the other was an amber colored syringes. “You left a mess in there, next to the sink where you created the stronger dosage for your daughter to use.”

  “That proves nothing other than the fact that my mother needs potassium and that’s the way I buy it.”

  “How long has Hospice been helping with your mother?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Hospice provides some medications.”

  The Sheriff smiled slightly, “But not potassium. That would be my responsibility.”

  “Seems that you have covered all of your bases, Sheriff.”

  “I simply have rational answers for your wild speculations. You don’t have a case against me. Nor do you have a case against Marie. Why don’t you just drop it? Leave it alone, Clancy. There’s been enough pain to go around more than once. The preacher was a bad man. He used people. He had people killed. You know he was no good. Why don’t you just walk away and keep your wild notions to yourself.”

  Robby put his hands in his pants pockets and walked across the living room. He was looking at the floor as he moved slowly in front of me. He stopped in front of a large cabinet, like an armoire. Its double doors were opened. Robby had his back to me.

  “I can’t do that, Robby. Rowland was a corrupt man, and he was behind the murders at Peace Haven. But you killed him and you need to answer for that. We’ll just have to rely upon his autopsy to provide some evidence.”

  “Ah, the autopsy. Of course. Well, the problem there will be that when I called his surviving children to get permission to have it done, they all refused. It seems that the preacher had this thing in his religious faith about autopsies. I think he even had something in his will against one being performed on him after death. I just couldn’t convince his children to allow such a thing to his body.”

  “How convenient for you.”

  “Appears to me that Preacher Robert Lee Rowland must have died of natural causes, at least that’s what I will have to put into my final report. All you have is some information that a bright, young African American woman is the daughter of an aging, white sheriff in a Southern town. Tell me, Clancy, what you are going to do with what your discovered about Marie?” Robby said as he took his hands out of his pants’ pockets.

  “After I present what I know to the police in Dan River, they’ll likely want to conduct their own investigation into all this. You’ll have some questions to answer.”

  “You could leave out that part about Marie being my daughter.”

  “I think it’s germane. Goes to your motive.”

  “I killed him because Marie is my daughter?”

  “You killed him because he threatened Marie somehow. Did he know that she was your daughter?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “He knew nothing of that. He was simply this powerful, self-made, ego-maniac who loved his own authority and tried to control everyone around him. Once I put two and two together from your investigation, I realized that he was the one behind all of the murders at Peace Haven. Marie told me about the Saunders woman coming out to his home on several occasions, and after I saw Joy talking with Saunders, I knew something was going on. Then you told me your theory about someone killing the jurors from that trial, and I knew it was Rowland.”r />
  “Why didn’t you just work with me and help me put him away?”

  “You didn’t understand that man’s power. You couldn’t have put him away. He would have found a way to get around the justice system. He’s been doing that for years. He had too many friends who respected him, no matter what he did. You had no hard evidence linking him to anything. He deserved what he got. Good riddance, I say.”

  The sheriff remained motionless with his back to me. Rosey was standing off to my right. I saw him put the two bottles on the small table next to the couch.

  “I can’t convince you to change your mind, can I?” Robby said to me.

  “No.”

  “Let me show you something,” he said.

  On the shelf directly in front of him was a large television screen. Underneath that shelf was a series of four large drawers. He used his left hand to open the top drawer. He put his right hand inside of the drawer and stopped moving.

  “I can’t let you tell about Marie. This town will destroy me … and her as well. You know that. There is no mercy or compassion here for folks who violate some things. They will eat her alive. I can’t let you do that, Clancy.”

  “You should have considered all of that before you killed Rowland.”

  “Didn’t figure on you getting this far.”

  “Well, it seems that we have a conundrum here,” I said.

  “I don’t know what that is, but I do have a couple of options for solving my problem with you two.”

  “I hope nothing too violent,” I said.

  My peripheral vision caught the slightest of movements from Rosey who had remained silent the last few minutes. He seemed to know intuitively what was happening before it happened. The next thing I knew, Rosey had a gun drawn without making a sound. Mr. Stealth.

  “Not if you two come quietly with me,” Robby said.

  “I would suggest strongly that you remove your hand from that drawer,” Rosey said. “Slowly.”

  I drew my gun from my back holster and pointed it to the floor while I waited on Rosey’s lead. Rosey’s gun was aimed directly at the right side of Sheriff Robertson.

  “You two resisting arrest?” he said. His right hand was still inside of the top drawer.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “That leaves me no alternative,” Robby said.

  “Take your hand out of the drawer, Sheriff,” Rosey said again.

  “Okay,” he said and turned abruptly as he removed his hand. He had the gun and no doubt was intending to fire it at me.

  Perhaps he hoped to catch us off guard, to surprise us. The fact that both of us were armed and already suspicious of his intention meant that there could be no surprise. He was drawing against a full house and he had no chance. I think he knew that. I also think he knew that he was giving us no choice but to fire on him. He knew that we would shoot to kill. Maybe he hoped that at least one of us would shoot to kill.

  Robertson turned to his left, away from Rosey and towards me. I can only imagine that if he believed me to be the easier target, he could in fact get off a shot, perhaps kill me, before Rosey would kill him. If that were his thinking, he misjudged Rosey’s ability to shoot. Mine, too.

  I heard one round discharge before I fired. Two more rounds followed my shot. Robby never had a chance to fire his weapon. None of our shots missed. I watched him fall as if in slow motion. Sheriff Robby Robertson was now dying on his living room floor. It was stupid of him to do what he did. He probably thought it was his only out, his way of exiting the drama of life. Suicide by detectives.

  “I never had anyone,” Robby said in a slightly muffled tone, “to back ... me … up.” He rolled his head slowly in Rosey’s direction.

  “Maybe you never asked,” I said as I knelt over his bloody body after kicking his firearm away from him.

  “I couldn’t,” he said. He was having a hard time breathing. One of the shots must have punctured a lung. “Too many judges in this town.”

  “They’re other towns.”

  “Only good … memories … I ever had … were here.”

  Rosey was on his cell calling for an ambulance.

  “And your secrets, too.”

  “My secrets … were ... my good memories.”

  I was leaning over him at this point. I tore off a large portion of his shirt to use as a compress for the two wounds on his left side. I could tell that the two entry wounds were within a few centimeters of each other so it was easy to press on one spot to curtail the loss of blood.

  “You …want … a confession … now?” he asked.

  “That would certainly help Marie.”

  “If … I told you … it … was … all my … idea … you … would leave her … alone?”

  “It would help her, but she still would have to answer some questions.”

  “You … could call it…. a … mercy killing … you know.”

  “Mercy for whom?” I said.

  “Mercy … for all those … jurors … he killed … and mercy … for my … good … friends … Sam and Barb…, the teenagers … you know… the ones…he had his son … kill … decades … ago.”

  “Or would you rather call it justice, Robby?”

  He smiled faintly, “No… this … was … for the … love of mercy.”

  It was the last thing he said. The ambulance arrived a few minutes later, but he was already dead. Ben Pickeral arrived after the paramedics and was asking Rosey lots of questions. I called Detective Anderson in Norfolk and told him that he had better call some friends of his in the Dan River Police Department. I suggested that they might want to come over as soon as possible to help Ben sort through some of this. Anderson thought that was a good idea.

  I told Ben that Rosey and I would be at my mother’s and we left. No sense running from the truth now. No sense at all.

  75

  The day after Robby Robertson died we enjoyed entertaining a Detective Rosenbaum from Dan River, along with his partner, Susie Chong. In light of Robby Robertson’s demise, the Dan River Police Department took over the case for Pitt County. They did a credible job of investigating what we told them. They asked good questions for the most part. They sorted through all of the information we had and did some checking to substantiate our facts as well as our stories. They told us after a week of sifting through all of the muck that we really had no hard evidence against Marie Jones nor Marilyn Saunders. However, in light of the confessions of Joy Jones and her son Henry, both Marie and Marilyn were what they referred to as persons of interest. Ubiquitous terminology, if you ask me. Surprise, surprise. So much for my detective skills.

  One might consider the fact that we had sufficient evidence to indict the preacher Robert Lee Rowland for his role in this sordid affair to be a good ending. I wasn’t all that satisfied. His death simply meant that all of those who were injured by his hatred would never find any semblance of justice. Such is life.

  The fact that the preacher’s hatchet woman got away simply did not sit well with me. I knew that she was up to her eyebrows in guilt but she had been smart enough and illusive enough to escape the confines of the law, both the locals as well as the Dan River authorities. I had a nagging suspicion that like a bad dream she might likely come back to haunt me.

  A week after our debriefing and exhausting interrogation with the Dan River detectives, Rosey, Sam, and I were back in Norfolk. It was raining and we were lounging around my apartment waiting on whatever it is detectives between jobs wait for. Sam was asleep on the sofa. Rosey was reading some recent issue of Scientific American that he had purchased on the way back to the coast from Clancyville. I was sitting by the window watching it rain and wondering about life and the choices we make, like choosing to be a detective.

  My thinking was that some investigations just don’t go by the book. You don’t really solve them as much as they solve themselves sometimes. This was one such case. I was contemplating all of the loose ends we still had dangling. There were simply too
many of them to count.

  The phone rang. Whenever I was home, Rogers would let the phone ring as well. It ring several times before I decided I had better check to see if perchance someone important might be calling me. It might even be a perspective client. It was a long shot.

  “Clancy Evans?” the voice said.

  “Me in the flesh. How can I help you?”

  “I’m going to help you.”

  “Okay. I’m game. What’s up?”

  “This is Diamond.”

  It took a moment for me to realize who was talking on the other end of the line. I remembered the voice.

  “Diamond who?”

  “Just Diamond for you.”

  “Oh. The mysterious assassin who tried to kill me and my partner.”

  “That would be me.”

  “Well, are you back in town?”

  “No. I’m on my way to Los Angeles. I just wanted you to know that since you spared me, I dropped the contract on you.”

  “Didn’t think you guys, excuse me, girls, offered rebates.”

  “No rebate. Just professional courtesy. You could have, maybe should have, killed me. But you didn’t. I figure I owe you one.”

  “Well, seeing that your employer died during the ordeal, you weren’t really going to get paid for the job anyway.”

  “I was paid. The money came while I was hiding away nursing my wounds.”

  “You were paid?”

  “Full price.”

  “Wow. Won’t this kind of charity hurt your business if word gets out?”

  “I’ll deal with that. Just wanted you to know that I won’t be lurking in the shadows around you anymore.”

  “Until someone else hires your for a contract on me,” I said.

  “There’s always that. I wouldn’t worry too much.”

  “I don’t worry at all. The way I figure it, you’re lucky to be alive. And may I offer you a warning?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. Now that Rosey has seen you, I would make sure that you don’t intentionally cross paths with him again. He won’t miss next time.”