Chapter 19 #5
Robert frowned at him. “I sure don’t know, and it would be a surprise.
But then again, who the hell really knows what goes on inside anybody’s home?
I’m not even sure what that word even means anyway.
” He shrugged. “I never heard or saw anything to make me think that way, and, until you prove different, I guess that’s where it stays. ”
“Of course,” Camden replied, with a smile.
The old man went on. “People believe in all kinds of different things—life after death, even living forever. Now, if he could have lived forever, that would have been Leonard.”
“The father?” Camden clarified.
Robert nodded. “That was definitely some of what he was into, and now that I think of it, I have to admit that, when we looked into everybody’s life a little bit deeper, it was creepy.”
“In what way?” Camden asked.
Robert hesitated. “I hate to gossip, and I don’t want it to impact your viewpoint.”
“Don’t worry about impacting my viewpoint. I don’t know the people involved, so that’s not really an issue here. However, I do need to have some understanding of who these people were. What was important to them? What was it that they did with their time?”
“Right,” Robert muttered, then swallowed and shrugged. “I will say Senior was a little bit into … graves.”
“Graves?” Camden repeated, frowning.
“Yes.” Robert winced. “This will sound even more godawful, but I know he didn’t kill his family because he was one of the victims.”
“What do you mean by graves?” Camden asked again, pulling Robert back to the main conversation.
“He apparently used to do some grave robbing.”
Camden just stared at him.
Robert grimaced. “I know. It sounds god-awful, doesn’t it? It not only sounds god-awful, it is god-awful,” he declared, with a smile. “Yet we didn’t really have any security on cemeteries or anything back then.”
“And when you say, Senior used to rob graves, can you elaborate?”
Again Robert shrugged. “I don’t know what people believed or didn’t, and he was a bit of a con man. But he did have a few things going, and his mom was definitely different. I’ll give you that.”
“Different how?”
He hesitated again and said, “This is mighty uncomfortable, young man.”
“I understand, but I’m sure she’s gone too.”
“Oh my, she’s been gone many a year. But she did want him to do something with her body when she was gone, and he didn’t seem to really want to do it. And kudos to him for not wanting to do it because it was downright creepy. Yet, in the end, that’s exactly what he did.”
“Do what?” Camden pressed.
“She wanted her body to be left in a grave so he could open her coffin and check on her. You know, to let her out if she wasn’t really dead.”
Camden frowned.
Robert shook his head and continued. “We certainly had rumors back in the olden days where people used to be buried with a bell, so they could ring that bell in case they were buried alive. You know? That kind of thing. So, I don’t know if she had narcolepsy or some other unhinged reason for this.
All I can tell you is that it was something she really wanted, and everybody was like, hell no.
If she’s dead, she’s staying dead. So, the family wouldn’t let that happen. ”
Then Robert snorted. “But then, a while later, a good six months maybe, someone noticed that the mother’s grave had been disturbed.
And everybody went to Senior, thinking that he did it.
He just looked at them and more or less told them to prove it.
Of course nobody really wanted to get involved with him because he was—” Robert shrugged and let it slide.
“What?” Camden asked.
“Senior was a scary dude, and so the family brought it to our attention, but we were busy at the time. Plus everything was back where it was as far as the grave itself. Now we didn’t open the grave to check if she was there.
We did search his house, and it’s not as if he brought his mother home.
So, it was just dropped,” he said. “But Senior definitely got a weird name for it. But then, of course, as with everything, after a year or two goes by, everybody forgets, and life just continues.”
Camden stared at him in amazement. “Interesting people you have here.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, as he shook his head. “Who knew? Who knew just how crazy some things in life would get here, and yet you had no clue?” Robert shook his head. “Who would have expected that somebody I knew would have dug up his mother’s grave just because his mother wanted him to?”
“Was he very attached to his mother?”
“Honestly, I think he was afraid of her.”
“So, that might have been a reason for him to have done what she told him to do.”
Robert stared at him. “Why?”
“Because, if he believed that she had the sight or some special abilities, he was probably terrified that, if he didn’t do what she said, she would come back and haunt him.”
Robert considered Camden for a long moment and then he sighed, nodded, and added, “You know something? I think that’s probably exactly why he did it.”
“Now, did he find what he wanted out of it?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, back then, we just looked at him sideways and kept on going.”
“Of course.” Camden nodded. “We’ve all had enough crazies to deal with.”
“As long as the grave was back to its status quo, and nobody was too concerned about it, then whatever, you know? But, after the entire family was murdered, it was tossed about, was brought up again.”
“Something to do with him doing all this spooky stuff?” Camden asked.
The old man winced. “You’re probably hearing the rumors, so I guess you might as well hear them all.
It was a consideration, as to whether him digging up his mother’s grave may have had something to do with the killing of his entire family.
We didn’t have any reason or any proof of that.
It was just one of those possibilities that you banter around because you got nothing else. ”
Robert sighed. “Obviously that didn’t happen, or, if it did, none of us had any reason to go forward with it.
You know, it would have been a hell of a scary tale for everybody, and I’m sure the captain at the time, who was very superstitious, would have put a lid on it pretty quickly,” Robert noted.
“That’s not the chatter you want going around your town either.
Not with as many teenagers as we had who were already getting into trouble and whatnot.
We didn’t want people going out and raiding graves because Senior had.
That was the last thing we needed. And we don’t know to this day whether he did it or not. ”
Camden frowned. “Yet any evidence of that would have been at that house,” Camden suggested. “You would have found a body back there somewhere.”
“That’s not a bad idea. Get a cadaver dog in or something. I did struggle and fight with the captain to get a dog back then, but he didn’t have any tolerance for that at all. As far as he was concerned, we had enough dead bodies, and we weren’t looking for more.”
Robert sighed. “As much as I understood that mentality, I just wasn’t sure that we found all of them. And, if there were any more to find, I felt that we should have found them then, not sometime later. The captain was very much of the opinion that I should just shut up and stay out of it.”
Robert gave Camden a one-arm shrug. “He wasn’t a bad guy.
It’s just that the last thing he wanted was more cases.
He was struggling to close the ones we had on the books as it was.
” Robert sighed. “And the poor newbie who found the family butchered? … He was never the same afterward, so we were even more short-handed.”
Camden asked, “What happened to him?”
“He ended up retiring with a disability pension and needing therapy. Even to this day, I don’t know that he’s ever told us the exact truth of what he saw.
He would just clam up. Yet it’s almost as if he tried to tell us back then.
However, I don’t know if he gave up or just couldn’t get it out.
Yet, if you want to talk to him, he’s still here in Camas.
He’s a few years younger than me, and he lives over at the …
retirement home on the other side of town. ”
Camden nodded. “I could go talk to him.”
“If you do, be prepared that he may not take it well. I don’t know that he’s talked to anybody about it in all these years.”
“Maybe talking about it would give him some sense of closure now,” Camden suggested.
“And maybe it would make him worse.”
Camden considered that and nodded. “Yeah, no way to know. I’ll go see him and just see what comes of it.”
“Let me know how it goes,” Robert added, as Camden turned and headed for the front door. “That is one case I would really love to have closed before I go.”
Camden smiled. “In that regard, maybe we should keep it open, just to give you more incentive to still be kicking around for a while.” The old man laughed in delight, and, with that, Camden took his leave and headed out to his car.
Once inside, he made some notes about the conversation and then checked his phone.
He had no new messages, and nothing else seemed to be happening.
So he looked on the map to see exactly where this retirement home was and made a quick decision.
He might as well get as much information as he could right now.
As he drove away, he got a text message from Stefan.
He pulled off to the side of the road, called him back, and shared, “Hey, I’m just heading over to hopefully talk with the cop who found the family who was murdered in Devon’s house.”
A moment of pause came from Stefan. “Interesting.”
“Yeah, I’m just trying anything at this end.”
“I get it. I’m just not sure what that poor man can tell you.”
“I’m not sure that he can tell me anything either. Apparently, he took it hard and never really came back from it.”
Stefan paused and added, “Yeah, I would agree with that, and he may not take it very kindly.” Then he added, “Yet it does feel as if maybe something is there.”