The Guilty (2008)
Page 25
coming off a night of wicked drinking, or that his wicked
night of drinking hadn’t yet ended.
“What you need to do now,” Jack said, “to follow up on
today’s article, is start full court press into this Willian Henry
Roberts’s background. What did his parents do? Are any of
his childhood friends willing to say he was ‘the quiet type’
or pulled the wings off of insects? You need to prove beyond
a reasonable doubt that this psychopath is in fact the greatgrandson of Billy the Kid. You planted the seeds, Henry, now
you gotta water that sucker.”
I leaned back in my chair, looked out across Rockefeller
Plaza. Tried to let my mind wander, because when it did it
usually ended up in the right place. The police had finally
pulled their surveillance off of myself and Amanda, convinced my injury was just a warning and the officers would
be better suited hunting than guarding a guy who sat at his
desk typing while his eyesight got progressively worse.
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And it was just as well. I needed to look into Roberts’s
birth certificate, family history, anything that could prove
who he was and who he knew. He had parents—they would
know if their son showed early signs of violence. Or if he had
a preoccupation with family history. Perhaps a predilection
toward antique weaponry. Or maybe he just spent a few too
many hours with his Nintendo playing Duck Hunt.
I knew who William Henry Roberts was. Knew where he
was from. When he had committed his atrocities in this city.
What kind of monster he was.
“I need anything you can possibly help me with, Jack. I
want to talk to anyone who’s ever been in contact with William Henry Roberts. Schoolteachers, classmates—”
“Neighbors, pets, yada yada, I know the drill.” For a
moment Jack teetered on the edge of my desk before planting
an unsteady hand on my keyboard to steady himself. He
looked at me, a quick splash of embarrassment appearing
and then vanishing. Like it never happened.
“Jack?” I said.
“Yeah, kid?”
“Are you okay?”
Jack looked at me incredulously. “If by that statement
you’re asking whether I am in perfect health for a man of my
age, with the virility of a tiger and countenance of a Viking—
then, yes, I am very much okay.”
“No,” I said, my voice pressing a little harder. “Are you
really okay?”
This time Jack didn’t answer so quickly. The veined hand
left my tabletop and mounted itself on my shoulder. Jack
gave a warm smile as though flattered that I cared so much
about his mental and physical state.
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“I’m fine, Henry. People are full of bull. So don’t believe
everything you hear.”
I blinked when he said this. Everything you hear?
My concern for Jack was based solely on what I could see
right in front of me. His too-sweet breath. His slightly offkilter equilibrium. His refusal to acknowledge any problems
whatsoever. Nobody had said a word to me otherwise, and I
had no clue if it was being discussed on the news floor. Obviously others were aware of the problem, as was Jack. Not
that he cared one way or another.
We both stood up. Jack began to walk back to his desk.
“So,” I said, “did you go out last night?”
Jack barked a laugh. “Go out? Kid, when you’re my age
going out means ordering in Chinese food and hoping they
remembered the sesame chicken.”
“So you stayed inside.”
“Same as I do every night.”
“Any company?”
Jack’s eyes closed as he tried to understand what I was
asking. “What’s all this about?”
“I just want to know if anyone is there to, you know…
just in case.”
“Just in case what? ”
“In case you need any help…anyone to talk to. If anything,
you know, happened.”
“Help?” Jack said. “What I hear, you need help more than I
do. Don’t think I didn’t hear about Frank Rourke and his
infamous crap-in-a-sack. You’d better work on your interpersonal relationships with the other reporters before you start
asking if I’m okay. Otherwise that won’t be the last bag you get.
Help yourself, kid. There are only so many hours in the day.”
As he left, I tried to think of something to say. Jack clearly
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had a problem, and if it were anyone else they would be confronted, put on leave, made to do something to right the ship.
But Jack O’Donnell was a living institution. You didn’t take
the Michelangelo in for a cleaning until the marble was
covered with so much grime you couldn’t tell its ass from its
elbow. Jack was still Jack, pumping out quality stories, but it
was only a matter of time. And from the look of things, this
wasn’t an issue about to go away on its own.
I needed to focus. I still had a job to do, and there was still
a killer out there. Maybe if I could uncover more information
about William Henry Roberts, I could save more lives than
just Jack’s.
I logged into LexisNexis and performed a search for
William’s parents, John and Meryl Roberts. I found records
of them owning two homes—one in Hico, Texas, and another
in Pecos Valley, New Mexico. Pecos Valley, if I remembered,
was where John Chisum ended his famous cattle drive which
began in Paris, Texas, and where Billy the Kid wreaked havoc
during the Lincoln County Wars. Hico was where Brushy Bill
Roberts had died.
I searched for all newspaper articles in the state of Texas
containing references to either John or Meryl Roberts. Aside
from previous known addresses, there were half a dozen other
clippings. I clicked on the first piece.
It was from the Pecos Valley News, a local paper from a
town sleepy enough that high-school football was front-page
material. The article had run in the Church Briefs section of
the paper, and was about the baptism of the Roberts’s newborn
son, William Henry. A photo accompanied the article, a robed
priest holding an infant, nestled in between folds of cloth. I
could just make out William Henry’s eyes, which were
peaceful, closed.
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It was hard to imagine that this child, renouncing evil,
would eventually become a servant of the devil.
The second article was also from the Pecos Valley News, and
it was written in 1995. The article was titled “Roberts Family
Sells Home, Wish Them Luck in Texas!” An accompanying
photo showed John and Meryl with their young children
standing in front of a For Sale sign in their yard. The parents
looked young, vibrant, like they were about to start a new
chapter of their lives. An eight-year-old William stood to the
side with an expression on his face that showed neither happiness nor sorrow. It was a blank slate, as though he was simply
going along because there was nothing he
could do to stop it.
I clicked on the third article. It was from the Hamilton
Herald-News out of Hamilton County, Texas. It was dated
August 23, 2004. The headline read Five Dead in Deadly Hico
Blaze: Family Of Four Trapped Inside Their Home, Die
Along With Beloved Chaplain.
The accompanying photo showed the charred embers
where a house once stood. There were police cars, ambulances and fire trucks spread out with abandon. Men and
women in white jackets with filters over their mouths combed
through the wreckage.
I could see at least one body draped with cloth and another,
uncovered, lying among the timber.
My stomach clenched. I read further, my pulse quickening as I read the awful details.
Late last night John Roberts, his wife Meryl, their
two children William and Martha, and beloved Pastor
Mark C. Rheingold died in a four-alarm fire at the Roberts ranch in Hico, Texas.
…bodies were burned beyond recognition…
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…unknown how the fire began…
…Rheingold had just returned from a thirty-city tour
for his latest book and was set to break ground on a new
15,000-seat church in Houston…
…the Roberts family had just moved to Hico three
years ago…
…joined John Henry Roberts’s father, Oliver…
…William Henry and Martha James had recently
graduated from Hamilton High…
…police have not ruled out arson…
I read the rest of the article, stunned. It was impossible.
Either I’d made a huge mistake, or something was terribly
wrong. Because according to the newspapers, William Henry
Roberts had died in Hico, Texas, nearly four years ago.
42
The next three articles were all follow-ups to the story of the
tragic fire that had claimed the lives of four of Hico’s newest
residents, as well as the life of one of the state’s most beloved
religious servants.
According to Sheriff Chip Youngblood, experts determined
that the fire was electrical, and may have been exacerbated
when one of the Roberts children foolishly attempted to extinguish it with water. According to the local energy supplier,
there was a small spike in the Roberts family’s electrical
usage around the time the fire was believed to have started.
The county held a small, private ceremony for the burial
of John Henry Roberts, his wife and their children. A photo
ran of the burial. There were about twenty people in attendance, including several reporters from local papers.
The funeral service held for Pastor Mark Rheingold,
however, was a very different story. The proceedings were
held in Rheingold’s old church in Houston, a ten-thousand
seater that was filled to capacity for the ceremony. Ushers
were needed to corral the crowds. At least four people were
confirmed to have fainted. Another tried to drown himself in
the hopes of meeting Mark Rheingold in heaven.
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I came upon hundreds of photos of Mark Rheingold taken
during his various pilgrimages in various newspapers, pamphlets and photo-ops. Rheingold was a thin man, not skinny
but lean, with the lithe physique and stretched facial muscles
of a jogger. His jet-black hair was always slicked back in a neat
coif and his suits, like his wife’s jewelry, were decent but not
gaudy. Every photograph bore the pastor’s thousand-watt
smile. Though I did wonder why a man of God needed veneers.
Cards and flowers arrived from all fifty states and thirty
foreign countries. Numerous politicians paid their condolences
in person. Rheingold’s closest friends and pastorial acquaintances read passages from his bestselling books. Rheingold’s
wife and young son remained stoic in the front row. The
governor of Texas declared the day one of statewide mourning.
The following year, Rheingold’s wife was given her own
daytime talk show. His ten-year-old son published a book
called Never Too Young to Follow the Lord, containing prayers
and motivation for grade-schoolers.
There was very little reporting on the burial of the
Roberts family. A grainy photo showed the four caskets
being lowered. Two larger ones, for John and William. Two
smaller ones for Meryl and Martha. John was noted as the
grandson of Oliver P. “Brushy Bill” Roberts. Everything
else was journalism-by-the-numbers.
One line from the article, though, threw me for a loop.
The Roberts family was buried in a closed-casket service
presided over by Reverend Bert Brown. During his concluding
remarks, Reverend Brown asked the heavenly father that the
bodies of these four souls be looked after in heaven, and that
any earthly remains not in these coffins find that everlasting
peace.
Any earthly remains not in these coffins…
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I immediately picked up the phone and dialed information
for Hico, Texas. An automated voice answered.
“What listing?”
“I’d like the main number for the Hamilton County coroner’s office.”
“One moment, please.”
Muzak played in the background. I tuned out the
newsroom chatter. Frank Rourke walked by the mail drop,
turned and eyed me for what seemed like minutes, then kept
walking.
“Hello, sir?”
“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “Who is this?”
“Well, my name is Helen, but I’m afraid there is no
coroner’s office in Texas.”
“Do you mean Hamilton, Texas, or Texas as a whole?”
“I’m afraid that would be Texas as a whole.”
“Then who’s in charge of supervising wrongful death cases?”
“That would be the Justice of the Peace, sir.”
“Then can I be connected to the office of the current Justice
of the Peace?”
“Ab-so-lutely.”
A minute passed as the line rang. Another woman picked
up, her voice cheerful.
“Office of Justice Waverly, this is Brenda, how may I assist
you?”
“Hi, Brenda,” I said, trying to make my voice sound as
young as possible. Brenda sounded to be either in her late
fifties or late teens. An aunt type. And aunts loved their young
nephews. “My name is Henry Parker, and I’m with the New
York Gazette. I’m a junior reporter.”
“Oh, a junior reporter all the way up there in New York?
That’s wonderful. How can we help you, Henry?”
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“If it’s possible, I’d very much like to speak with Justice
Waverly.”
“Oh now, Justice Waverly is eating his breakfast and he
doesn’t like being disturbed during breakfast. Do you know
that man can eat an entire stack of blueberry pancakes in one
sitting? I swear I ain’t seen nothing like it ever.”
“That’s fantastic, Brenda, really, but it’s incredibly important I speak with him. We’ve had four homicides here in New
York. And I think they might be related to an old case involving deaths in Hamilton
County. Hico, to be exact.”
There was silence over the phone as the word homicide
seeped into Brenda’s thoughts. As much as she wanted to
protect Justice Waverly’s breakfast routine, a good old gal like
her couldn’t bear to let such atrocities simmer.
“Now, Henry, Justice Waverly will get mighty upset if I
barge in there, make him get all messy and syrupy and this
isn’t an emergency of the important kind.”
“Oh, I promise, Brenda, this is an emergency of the most
important kind.”
Brenda sighed as the Good Samaritan in her kicked in.
“Hold on just a sec.”
Rather than put the line on hold, I heard a clang as she
placed the phone down on her desk. I heard the sound of a
door being opened, then the voice of a man none too happy
about being interrupted. There was a brief spat, the sound of
someone yelling with food in their mouth, and then more footsteps as Brenda returned to her desk.
“Hello, Mr. Parker? Justice Waverly will be right with
you.”
“Thanks, Brenda, you’re a doll.” Brenda giggled politely.
I heard a click as the line was picked up by another party.
“Hello?” a deep, male voice intoned.
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“Is this Justice Waverly?” I said.
“Brenda, I have it, hang up now.” I heard a click as Brenda
hung up her end. “Mr. Parker, Brenda tells me you’re calling
all the way from New York, that right?”
“Yes, sir. Justice, sir. I’m with the Gazette. I appreciate
your taking my call.”
“I didn’t take no call, Brenda threatened to give me that
terrible puppy-dog look all day if I didn’t. She tells me you
said something about a homicide up there in the big city.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, if I’m not mistaken, you New Yorkers have quite
a few homicides every year and you don’t go calling me for
all of those. So what makes you think my office can help
with this one?”
“Well, sir, if I might answer a question with a question,” I said,
“were you the Justice of the Peace of Hamilton County in 2004?”
“I most certainly was,” Waverly said. “I have been justice
of this county for ought seventeen years.”
“Then you probably recall notable criminal investigations
during that time.”
“I have a mind like an eagle, son. What are you getting at?”
“Well, Mr. Eagle, sir, then you’ll remember the deaths of