“You two have a lot of history?” Dorchester asked.
“Just one run-in, but trust me when I say that it was enough to leave a bad taste in both our mouths,” I replied. “Still, I think Jack would tell us if he knew something important. What do you think about taking a ride out to Robertson’s place and having a talk with him? If his property was the ideal location then, it would still be that way now. It’s possible the land has even increased in value.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Dorchester said.
“Tell me what you know about Lawrence Robertson, other than he owns the land the consortium wanted to buy,” I said once Dorchester gave me directions to Robertson’s farm.
“Well, he’s an enigma,” Dorchester told me. “He’s a fourth-generation farmer, he’s never married, and to look at him, you’d never know he was worth billions.”
“Plain dresser?”
“He looks like he can’t afford soap and his clothes look like they haven’t been washed in two decades,” Dorchester said solemnly. “He lives all alone in that big old family farmhouse and doesn’t socialize with anyone. You’ll see him at the grocery store occasionally or the bank, but that’s it.”
“I wonder what makes a guy live in solitude like that?” I asked him. I had lived as a bachelor for quite a few years, but I still got out and socialized. I couldn’t imagine how lonely that life must be for him. Josh was vibrant and full of life, like my personal ray of sunshine, and I couldn’t fathom living without the joys he brought to my life. “Why would he be so keen on selling his land? And to a casino of all things!”
“Keep in mind that this is pure speculation on my part,” Dorchester said. I nodded my understanding, and he continued. “He has no children to leave the farm to, but he has two nephews from his younger brother, Ken, who died in Vietnam—both brothers served, but only one returned. Rumor has it that he doesn’t like the two nephews at all. They moved away for college and never showed any interest in the farm. They tried to get him to sell the farm to a real estate developer who wanted to build a subdivision years ago—back before the casino was interested in the land.”
“How is that any different than selling the land to the casino?” I asked.
“Both nephews worked for the developer and probably would’ve been rewarded handsomely had the deal gone through,” Dorchester replied. “Ole Lawrence wasn’t about to let them profit off the land they turned their backs on. I reckon he wanted to be in control of what happened to the land rather than let his nephews get it through his estate or something.”
“It’s reasonable then that he’d strike up the conversation with McCarren Consortium again, especially if he’s tired of farming on his own,” I replied.
Lawrence Robertson lived in an extremely rural part of the county. His house was one of just a few on the road. The long driveway was a quarter of a mile long; it added to the seclusion and loneliness of the property. The old home stood tall among the barns and trees, but its haggard and worn appearance clearly showed that it had weathered at least ten decades. The closer we got to the structures the more obvious the neglect became.
“This used to be such a beautiful place,” Dorchester said sadly as I pulled to a stop next to the farmhouse. “Damn, some of the barns look like they’re about to cave in at any moment.”
“How likely is it that the man has a shotgun aimed at us when we exit the car and approach the house?” I asked him. Many people shied away from crowds, but the level of anti-socialness that Dorchester described often meant that other underlying issues were present. The last thing I wanted was to get shot by a paranoid man.
“Likely,” Dorchester replied. “We’ll just have to make our presence known.” We slowly got out of the car, and Dorchester hollered, “Mr. Robertson, we’re not here looking for any trouble. I’m Detective John Dorchester with the sheriff’s department, and I brought Detective Gabriel Wyatt from the Blissville Police Department with me. We just want to ask you a few questions about McCarren Consortium Inc.” We took a few steps closer to the front porch. “We don’t even have to come inside; we can chat on the front porch, sir.”
We had continued walking slowly as John identified us and the reason we were present on his property. The total lack of noise of any kind stuck out to me. The wind was nonexistent, there were no birds chirping in the trees, and no creaking coming from inside the house to indicate the sole occupant was home and moving around. Maybe he wasn’t home or… “Fuck!” I exclaimed when the putrid smell of decaying flesh reached my nose.
Dorchester was a step ahead of me. “Dispatch, I’m going to need the county coroner,” he said then rattled off Robertson’s address. “Detective Wyatt and I stopped by to ask Lawrence Robertson a few questions, and I can tell by the smell that there’s a DB inside. We haven’t made it inside the house to identify whether it’s Mr. Robertson yet.” Once Dorchester finished his call, he looked over at me and asked, “Are you ready?”
Death is never easy to stumble upon, but it’s worse once the decaying process had started. “Let’s do it.” The door was locked when I tested it, so I lifted my leg and kicked it hard near the doorknob, so I could knock the lock loose from where it engaged with the doorframe. The stench that rolled out of the gaping door was enough to make me gag. People that told you to just breathe through your mouth had never been in a similar situation, or they would’ve known that wouldn’t help. I walked over to the far end of the front porch and sucked some fresh air into my lungs.
“I’ve got Vick’s VapoRub in my trunk,” I told Dorchester after my stomach had settled down. It was a trick I had learned during my time with the MPD where DBs were a more common occurrence.
John and I smeared the ointment beneath our nostrils, stepped into blue booties, and slid our hands into black latex gloves before we entered the premises. We found Mr. Robertson dead at his kitchen table. It looked like he had been reading the newspaper and drinking coffee when he died. If not for the bullet hole in his skull, it would’ve looked like he had a heart attack. There was no weapon in sight, no casing on the kitchen floor anywhere, and I saw where someone had dug the bullet out of the wall where it landed after exiting Robertson’s head.
“This looks eerily similar to Nate Turner’s and Owen Smithson’s death,” Dorchester said. Both the club owner and the man who had sent him the harassing emails were killed the same way. The killer left behind no trace evidence for us to collect by removing the bullet fragment and shell casings from all three scenes.
“Call Detective Jade and let him know that we’re not going to make it to Cincinnati today,” I told Dorchester as I began taking pictures with my phone. I would delete them later once they’d been uploaded to my computer and tagged as evidence. The sheriff’s department would take official crime scene photos, but I wanted my initial findings documented. “Let them know the latest development and get them to dig into McCarren. Does the man want this land enough to kill for it?”
Dorchester made the call then we waited for the coroner to arrive before we touched anything. An odd thought struck me while I was looking around the kitchen. The room was old and outdated, but it was spotless except for the victim at the kitchen table. It was in direct contrast from the dilapidated exterior of the home. I looked in the living room we entered moments before and noticed it was in the same condition. The furniture was shabby looking, but there was no sign of the dust or clutter I would’ve expected from a man who was practically a hermit.
“Do you find it odd how clean this house is?” I asked Dorchester. “Doesn’t that seem atypical of a non-conforming, anti-social existence?” I expected to see walls of news clippings about conspiracies or alien sightings.
“Now that you mention it,” he replied. “It’s a cleaner house than I’d expect a bachelor to live in, but he’s former military, and they tend to keep that tidiness with them for their entire lives.”
It was possible that Robertson kept his house tidy. “Or, he had hired help,” I commented.
“It’s not public knowledge if that’s the case, but that’s what you’d expect from a very private man,” he replied.
The county coroner showed up and took his photographs of the kitchen and the victim before he transported the body to the county morgue. A few other members of the sheriff’s department joined us, and we combed the house looking for clues. The rest of the house was as tidy as the living room and kitchen except for one spare bedroom that Robertson used for storage. Inside, there were boxes and boxes of old newspapers and personal files filled with paperwork. It was going to take us forever to go through the files to see if they contained anything pertinent to our investigation.
The deputies who showed up to assist us carted the boxes to their vehicles and took them back to the sheriff’s office to store until we had a chance to look at them. While searching the living room, I found Mr. Robertson’s checkbook in the drawer of the end table next to the threadbare couch. I found a weekly entry in his register for an Alice Davenport.
