Chapter 19 #4
He gave a big sigh. “And Leonard Jr.? He really struggled with his dad, but then after everybody was murdered”—his voice grew faint and his tone was filled with regret—“Junior was struggling with pretty-much everything. He got into substance abuse and really fought just to survive. If there ever was a case of survivor’s guilt, he was it.
I tried so hard to help him get some therapy and all kinds of stuff, but the town was against him. ”
Camden asked, “So, what happened to him?”
“He moved away for quite a few years and then moved back because I guess it was still home in many ways. Yet, for him, it was a hard place to come home to. He—he did call me a couple times, and I talked to him, but it was difficult.”
Robert shook his head. “Nobody wanted me to associate with him, yet they all figured I was days away from putting the handcuffs on him. However, we didn’t have anything to link him to the murders.
Nothing. No forensics. No DNA back then.
We’ve tested since then, once the DNA and the forensic science caught up to it.
We tested everything, but nothing came up.
So, it became the case that haunted me.”
Camden nodded at him. “There’s always one.”
“There is, isn’t there?” Robert was eagerly looking for somebody to understand the experience.
That was something Camden could definitely do.
“I understand that. We always have that one case. It doesn’t matter what else happens or how many other cases you close.
Still that one high-pressure case you just can’t close and that you can’t ever get out of your head just hangs on to you. And that is just very rough.”
“It has been,” Robert agreed. “It was incredibly difficult at the time. We didn’t know what to do. We were cornered, and the whole town was looking at us to solve it. I almost got fired over it. I almost lost my wife over it. And it blew apart all the townspeople.”
He added sadly, “And I never did get any closure.” He looked at Camden hopefully and asked, “How about you? Have you found anything?”
Camden shook his head. “I’m just now starting to look into it. I’m not sure there’s anything to find. Yet the house was sold recently.”
His eyes widened. “They found somebody to buy it?”
He winced and replied, “She wasn’t informed about the murders in the house, and that was fifty years ago. It doesn’t come up when you search now either. I didn’t even know about it, and I’ve been a local cop for a decade here. So, from that perspective, I think she feels she was ripped off.”
“Oh my … yes.” He stared at him for a long moment, shaking his head. “Nobody should buy that house. Even Junior tried to live there for a bit, but that didn’t last long. He told me that it was haunted and that he didn’t dare.”
“What did he say exactly?” Camden asked.
“He saw things there, and he couldn’t sleep a wink for fear that he would end up dead too.”
“And when you say, haunted, did he elaborate?”
Robert gave a dry laugh. “He told me that he kept seeing things in the hallways and stuff. Junior was really freaked out about it, and I couldn’t argue with him on that point.
I didn’t have any particular thoughts about ghosts at that point in my life,” he muttered, “but I sure wasn’t against the concept.
Plus he told me about enough things that had happened there that I tended to believe him.
I know people thought I was a fool and thought I should have charged him and been done with it, but … ” Robert shook his head.
“I just couldn’t do that. We didn’t have anything to charge him with.
The captain at the time wanted me to charge him too.
Yet, as I explained to the captain, we had nothing that would hold up in court.
” Robert whispered now, shaking his head, “They wanted me to … make it hold up in court.” Robert hung his head, shame-faced.
“But you didn’t?” Camden confirmed.
“Hell no. I couldn’t. I almost lost my job over it too.” He stared out at the living room, and his gaze landed outside the window. “Life isn’t easy, but you make choices, and I couldn’t sacrifice that kid who had already lost so much. It didn’t make any sense to me.”
Camden nodded. “When you spoke to the son at different times, was there ever anything from him that indicated any possible suspect? Did he ever have any suspicion of anyone in his mind?”
Robert shook his head. “No, and that was one of the things I kept asking him. Junior would look at me and would tell me that he had no idea who hated his family that much. The poor boy was clueless.”
Camden frowned. “Except about his father. Which just brings us back around. Could the father have done this after all?”
Robert shrugged. “At the time I would have said no,” he admitted. “And I don’t think anybody in the family is left, except for whoever inherited the house and turned around and sold it to that poor woman.”
Camden sighed. “She’s also my neighbor. That house had always sat empty, and I didn’t think anything of it.
It’s nice not to have neighbors,” he noted, with half a smile at Robert, who chuckled and agreed.
Camden continued. “But then this young woman moved in, just after taking on the care of two kids when her best friend died of cancer.”
He winced at that. “So, she needed a home then … and bad.”
“Exactly,” Camden replied. “Nobody told her about the history of the house or the reason for selling it. So, you can imagine how she feels right about now, having just learned of this horrible crime. As a cop, I didn’t even know about it myself, which is why I’m opening up this cold case to take a look.
I’m wondering if there is any legal recourse for her about the actual sale of the house.
And, short of that, I wanted to see if there was a way to reduce some of the mystery, suspicion, or whatever you want to call it, from the unsolved mystery aspect. ”
“If it was solved, that would help,” Robert began, “but I don’t know how you’ll solve it, especially at this point in time. It’s been way more than a day or two, and that’s years of information we don’t have anymore.”
“We have the cold case file,” Camden stated, a smile on his lips, “but obviously we’re lacking any of that real information to make anything pop. I’ve gone through it, but I’m not seeing anything important.”
Robert nodded. “Exactly, and that’s the problem. We went through the case over and over and over again,” he shared, “but there just wasn’t anything to bite on. And that was the hardest part. Everybody kept expecting us to do something with it, but just nothing was there.”
Robert sighed and leaned his head back against the chair.
“Don’t get me wrong. We expected to do something with it too.
However, as time passed, the case got colder and colder.
Obviously it didn’t have a good outcome,” he admitted.
“But if somehow you do find any answers, can you please let me know, if I’m still here? ”
“Of course,” Camden promised, as he slowly stood up. He’d been really hoping for something, some nugget from this visit. “When he told you that the house was haunted, can you remember anything specific?”
“Yeah, he was petrified.”
“Did he see anything?” Camden asked.
“Yeah, he sure did. He kept seeing bits and pieces, not a full-size ghost or anything.” He hesitated and then added, “I know this will sound god-awful creepy, but he saw pieces of his family, and he just couldn’t take that.
He couldn’t really identify who some of the pieces were, but they seemed to be waiting, …
just waiting for somebody to give them closure. And nobody ever got closure for them.”
Robert sighed. “God knows I tried.” Once again the tears filled the old man’s eyes. “I really did try, and, if there’s ever a failure that keeps coming back, … that’s the one.”
“Let’s hope I can come up with something on it to give you and the townspeople closure,” Camden said, “but you’re right.
It’s been a long time now. A very long time.
A lot of people are dead and gone. You don’t know of anybody who ever really benefited from their deaths, do you?
Do you happen to know what the family was into? ”
Robert snorted. “No one benefited. The old man, Leonard Sr., liked his booze. That was the one thing about him that you could always count on. If you didn’t know where he was, go down and check the pub.
Now, he wasn’t physically abusive, not as far as I know, but he was a little rough with his talk for most people’s taste.
He was definitely the guy who would rather be down at the pub than throwing a ball with the kids. ”
He added, “Those kids were really involved in sports and all kinds of other activities too. The firstborn was the son who lived. Then came the girls. The eldest girl was stunning. There were four girls as I recall, and they were all something special,” he shared, with a bright smile.
“I mean, absolutely gorgeous people physically, and I know the dad used to make comments, saying he could make money off them. His wife would get very irate when he said that crap and told him off something fierce.”
Camden snorted. “Sounds as if she needed to.”
“Oh, she did, indeed. He was definitely the kind to push it all the time, and she wasn’t having anything to do with it.
That’s not happening in our house. But again …
” He shrugged. “They were all killed. Couldn’t even spare the children.
It was annihilation. And the mother? She was a mom of the times.
She did everything for everybody. She did the bake sales and the cookie things and PTA and God-only-knows what all back then.
” Robert gave a headshake. “She was as involved as anyone, and it was just so devastating.”
Camden asked, “And nobody was into the supernatural or anything related to that?”