A Welcome Murder Page 3

  Seemed reasonable. Then, adding insult to injury, it turns out that while I was dealing drugs and shaving my head every other day I had gone bald. And I mean completely bald. Perhaps this says something about my psyche, but I was more upset about going bald than I was with the prospect of a lengthy prison term.

  Not far from Steubenville is the village of New Rumley, the birthplace of General George Armstrong Custer. Each year, fourth-graders from the Steubenville elementary schools take a field trip to New Rumley to see Custer’s statue and hear an impersonator tell the story of the general’s life—his glorious victories, his fearlessness in battle, and his death while trying to save America from the godless red horde at the Little Big Horn. Historians may think Custer a lunatic, but he’s still a hero back home.

  I told you that in order to tell you this, and it’s one of those little ironies of life that wasn’t lost on me. By the time I pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking, limpy Jimmy Hinton was no longer shoveling cow shit at the farm, as I had predicted. He had gone to college and was the chief editorial writer for the Steubenville Herald-Star. I was still at the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, awaiting my transfer to the federal penitentiary, when a smirking deputy stopped by my cell. He was carrying a manila envelope that looked like it had been opened and had its contents inspected. “Here’s something for your scrapbook, big shot,” he said, flipping the envelope to me between the bars.

  It was a copy of the Herald-Star—sent, most likely, by Rayce Daubner—opened to the editorial page.

  Steubenville’s Fallen Star

  Not since the fateful day in 1876 when this paper carried the news of the slaughter of General George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn has such a pall hung over eastern Ohio.

  On that day on the plains of Montana, a star fell.

  Today, another star has fallen.

  Johnny Earl, arguably the greatest athlete to ever graduate from Steubenville High School and a hero to many, yesterday admitted to being a cocaine dealer and was subsequently sentenced to seven to twelve years in the federal penitentiary.

  That’s all I could read. I threw up in the stainless steel toilet and wondered whether limpy Jimmy had recalled the day I stopped by his house to show off my new Camaro and squealed my tires down the road, and thus had chuckled to himself the entire time that he was writing the editorial.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHERIFF FRANCIS ROBERSON

  I love being the sheriff of Jefferson County. I love the uniform and the badge and the pistol hanging at my side. I love leading the Fourth of July parade in my cruiser and tossing bubble gum to the kids on the curb. I love walking into the diner for breakfast and seeing heads turn and hearing men say, “G’ morning, Sheriff.”

  I love all that.

  It’s being a cop that I hate.

  Admittedly, that’s an unusual confession for someone who has spent his entire professional career in law enforcement and who dragged his family from a comfortable life in Minneapolis to take a job as sheriff in the hardscrabble hills of eastern Ohio. But, it’s the truth. I hate it. It’s a disgusting, dirty job in which I am forever dealing with idiots with beer on their breath and vomit on their shoes. No fewer than a dozen guys have either pissed, vomited, or defecated themselves in the back of my cruiser. And, this isn’t a great trait for a lawman, but I get nauseated at the sight of blood. Always have. Someone starts bleeding and I start gagging. When I was at the FBI Academy I had to watch an autopsy, and I threw up in a sink. The room started whirling and I thought I was going to pass out. My instructors said I would eventually get used to the sight of blood and intestines and it would no longer bother me. They were wrong. It still makes my stomach churn.

  I try to hide it from the men. My chief deputy, Toots Majowski, knows. He’s seen me hurl several times. An elderly woman near Dillonvale died in her house a couple of summers ago, and by the time a niece got around to checking on her she had been dead for a week. The thing is, she had six dogs and a couple dozen cats. The corpse was bloated and half eaten. There were piles of feces everywhere. The smell was so overwhelming that I vomited on what was left of the old woman.

  Toots laughed and said, “Francis, why don’t you just wait outside?”

  We’re a small county, and I am not exempt from making runs. I’m not so much a lawman as I am a babysitter for drunks, derelicts, and wife-beaters. I liked being an FBI agent. You got to deal with a better class of criminal. They were basically gentlemen who let greed or cocaine or a mistress get the better of their judgment and cause them to defraud their clients or embezzle from their banks. When I walked into a business to arrest one of these sad sacks, they would just start crying and saying, “Oh no, oh God, no, no, no.” Then they’d stand there and put their arms behind their backs and let me cuff them and walk peaceably out of the building. I never had to worry about arresting someone who might have lice and a bad attitude. Generally, the white-collar criminals were very well-groomed and didn’t want to fight.

  But every time I go to some bar to arrest one of the drunks, usually an unemployed steelworker with too much time and not enough work on his hands, the fight is on. Some are guys I went to high school with who don’t like getting arrested by a classmate. Sometimes it’s an older guy my dad pissed off somewhere along the line. They slide off the bar stool, stagger for footing, try to focus in on me, and say, “Why, you’re Edgar Roberson’s boy. You’re a sumbitch, just like your old man.” And then they take a wild swing and miss. “You motherfuckin’, cock of a son of bastard, fuckin’ ass wipe . . .” That’s generally when I hit them with the Mace. I got a call to the Hoot ’n’ Holler Bar out on County Road 12 one night when “Dimebag” Dave O’Connell was crazy on mescaline and tearing up the inside of the bar. Dimebag threw a few wild punches, and when I hit him with the Mace he kept coming. I laced him across the side of the head with my nightstick, and it sounded like I had hit a bowling ball. He dropped to his knees, swayed left, swayed right, and then fell on his face. I struggled to get him to the cruiser and asked if he needed to get sick before he got in. He said no. He waited until I shut him inside, then sent a stream of vomit through the wire mesh divider and into the front seat. I dragged him out of the car and smacked him again.

  After several weeks of listening to me complain about this and the number of prisoners leaving bodily fluids in my cruiser, Toots dragged me with him on his next drunk run. “This is a very easy problem to remedy, partner,” he said as we climbed into his cruiser. We drove to the Blue Swan near Smithfield, where Tiny Puet, who was six foot three—and two hundred and fifty pounds of mean drunk—was causing a ruckus. As soon as we walked in, Toots, who wrestled in high school and has huge hands, grabbed Tiny by the nape of his neck and marched him outside. Tiny was crying and squealing and begging to be let go, but Toots never broke stride, banging him through the door and marching him to the cruiser. He cuffed Tiny and sat him in the backseat with his feet still on the gravel parking lot. “Look at me, Tiny,” he said in a calm tone. When Tiny looked up, Toots reached down and grabbed a handful of Tiny’s privates. It sounded like he was squeezing a bag of potato chips. I don’t know how bad it hurt Tiny, but I instinctively cupped my balls and doubled over. With his balls in a vise grip, Tiny’s eyes and mouth opened wide, though only a faint squeak emitted from somewhere deep in his throat. Toots said, “Tiny, you’re going to jail. If you piss, shit, or vomit in my cruiser, I’m going to stop the elevator between floors and whip the living dog out of you.” Toots tightened his grip, and Tiny moaned. “Understand?” Tiny looked up and nodded furiously, his eyes starting to roll into the back of his head from the pain. Toots looked at me and smiled. “Any questions?”

  I shook my head. “No, I think I’ve got it.”

  The bar runs still aren’t as bad as the domestics. You never know what you’re running into, and I’d just as soon break up a fight between a couple of rabid Rottweilers as get involved in a domestic scrap. The old man can be wh
ipping the blue Jesus out of Momma, but as soon as you show up and put a hand on Daddy, all bets are off. All of a sudden you’re everyone’s enemy. You’re trying to arrest the old man and the next thing you know, Momma’s jumping on your back. Most of the time, the women don’t want you to arrest the husband; they just want you to make him stop beating her. I’d like to bottle the magic potion that would make that happen.

  We made regular domestic runs to the Goins place out on Kenton Ridge. Richard Goins was a vicious drunk, and his wife was this homely little thing who served as a punching bag every time he got a snootful, which was four or five nights a week. He’d get hammered, then go home and whale on Mildred, who couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds. As soon as the old man stopped to catch his breath or take a piss, Mildred would call us before he got out of the bathroom. We’d send a cruiser out, but she never wanted to press charges; she just wanted us to referee. Ultimately, little Mildred took care of the problem. We went out there one night and Richard was dead on the floor—shot right through the heart. Mildred demanded a lawyer and wouldn’t talk to us about it. She told the grand jury that Richard was beating her and at one point he had his hands around her neck and threatened to kill her. She got away, grabbed his shotgun out of the gun case, and fired. The grand jury ruled it self-defense.

  You have to put up with a lot of crud as sheriff. But that’s okay. It’s not forever; it’s just a means to an end. Someday, I’m going to be president. I know that sounds like pretty big talk for a guy who’s only the sheriff of Jefferson County, Ohio. My wife, Allison, hates it when I talk about becoming president. She says I shouldn’t do it because people are always suspicious of those with great ambition. I don’t think that’s true. Take my deputies, for example. They all know that I want to be president, and they actually admire me for it. My wife’s heart is in the right place, but she worries way too much. These are my people, and they respect me.

  My campaign for the presidency of the United States began when I was in the sixth grade. We were at the dinner table, and I announced that I had been elected president of my homeroom. This pleased my dad immensely. He loved politics and, working through a mouthful of pork chop, he said, “You know, with my connections, one day you could be a United States congressman.”

  I responded, “Why not president of the United States?”

  It was as if the skies opened and the angels sent down a hallelujah chorus. He was never more proud of me. His brain was just whirling—Edgar Roberson’s son, Francis Delano Roberson, president of the United States of America. My father is the most self-absorbed, scheming human being I have ever met. If my dad told you “good morning,” you had to analyze your response for fear he was going to find a way to use it against you.

  No sooner were those words out of my mouth than my mother was boring in on me with one of those withering looks, the kind I would get if I was fidgeting in church and she needed to stop it from several seats away. The brows dropped and the lips puckered. When my father had left the table, she sat down across from me, rolling a coffee cup between her palms, and said, “Why do you do this to me?” Even at the tender age of twelve, I knew exactly what she was talking about. She meant my dad would make her crazy with talk of me being the president. I was Dad’s biggest trophy, and when I said I wanted to be president, he immediately began charting the course. When he wasn’t busy promoting himself for president of the ironworkers’ union or for mayor of Steubenville, he was busy promoting me. In the years before I returned to Steubenville to take the sheriff job, at least once during every telephone conversation he would ask, “You working on the run for the White House?”

  I’d been working on it all my life. I ran for president of every club in high school, from the debate team to the chess club. I read every self-help and public-speaking book I could find. My experience in the FBI would set me up as a no-nonsense, law-and-order candidate. “Yup,” I’d say. “I’m going to be the next Republican senator from Minnesota.”

  This would make him spew venom. “Republican?” he would yelp. “Minnesota?” he would whine. “Minnesota doesn’t produce presidents. They come from Ohio and they’re Democrats, goddammit! You need to come back here to get started.”

  My father put his plan into overdrive the day Jefferson County Sheriff Beaumont T. Bonecutter abruptly resigned after he became the target of a federal investigation for dereliction of duty and taking kickbacks from drug dealers. Jefferson County sheriffs accepting kickbacks was nothing new; it was a practice dating back to the day when the mills and the mines were booming and the prostitution and gambling businesses were extremely lucrative. When those industries thrived, law officers up and down the river earned a tidy sum accepting payoffs to ignore the illegal operations.

  Bonecutter’s resignation opened the door for my dad to get me back to Steubenville and take control of my political career. Dad said that Sheriff Bonecutter’s demise and my return to Jefferson County was “divine intervention.” I always referred to it as “Edgar intervention.” Dad was an ironworker at Weirton Steel, but he lusted for the political power that always seemed just beyond his grasp. While he had been the long­time chairman of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, he had lost two bids for mayor of Steubenville and one for county commissioner. However, Bonecutter’s departure created a unique opportunity. Federal investigators were swarming all over Jefferson County, and the sphincter of every elected official with good sense was puckered up tight. Once he had their collective testicles in hand, Edgar Roberson offered to deliver his boy, the FBI agent, back to Jefferson County to clean up the mess and get the feds out of town. In return, he wanted a commitment from every elected official—Republican and Democrat—that they would support me for sheriff in the next two elections, then back me for the US House of Representatives, and then help finance a run for the governor’s office. They were only too happy to oblige.

  I’m now in my second elected term as sheriff. It will be my last. I’ll run for Congress in the next election, and I’ll be a lock, barring a scandal. That, however, may be a bit of a problem, because as of late I’ve been having trouble keeping my pecker in my pants. I’m having an affair with Dena Marie Conchek Androski Xenakis. This is bad on several fronts. I’m gambling my political future by sleeping with a woman who has the stability of a case of nitroglycerin. But I can’t help myself. I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t in love with her. I told her I liked her in the second grade, and on Valentine’s Day I gave her a homemade card and a pack of Sugar Babies, but she scorned me for my best buddy, Johnny Earl. I was crushed. While I fantasized about being married to Dena Marie, I was never so much as a blip on her radar.

  That was until I ran into her at the A&P a few days after I moved back to Steubenville. Dena Marie ran across the store, threw her arms around me, and kissed me square on the lips. It was typical Dena Marie. She knew I was married, happily, and she knew I was the new sheriff, so suddenly I seemed a lot more attractive than in the days when I was Johnny Earl’s athletic inferior and captain of the debate team. Unbelievably, Dena Marie was married to “Smoochie” Xenakis. If you had asked me in high school to create a list of the hundred males most likely to marry Dena Marie, Smoochie would have been a hundred-and-twelfth.

  I made regular stops at the grocery where Dena Marie worked, just to buy gum or a soda, because I enjoyed flirting with her. One day last spring, I casually asked her, “So, how’s married life?”

  “So-so. It’s difficult to be married to Smoochie when I’m in love with someone else.”

  I nodded and said, “I heard Johnny will be getting out of prison later this summer.”

  She slowly shook her head. “No, not Johnny. You.”

  It was a lie. I knew it was a lie the instant the words left her mouth. But when the girl you’ve dreamed about since the second grade says she loves you, you’ll make up reasons to believe her. I remember sitting in Mrs. Ferwerda’s first-grade class, looking across the room at Dena Marie and hoping that I
would someday marry her. But the only guy she’s ever loved, and ever will love, is Johnny Earl. I knew that. Anyone who got involved with Dena Marie would be playing second fiddle in her heart to Johnny. Still, I accepted her lie as the gospel. Logic should have told me to stay the hell away. She was a checkout girl. She was crazy. She was married. She would never truly love me. I knew that, but I could not stay away. I was never going to leave my wife, and even if Allison left me, did I honestly think Dena Marie would be an asset in a political campaign? Hell, no. She would be a liability of the highest order. Dena Marie is easy on the eyes, but she couldn’t spell politics if you spotted her the P and the O. She talks too much, cracks her gum, and has bad grammar, and funeral directors don’t put as much makeup on accident victims as Dena Marie trowels on every morning.

  Yet, as I stood at the checkout counter at the A&P with all of these negative factors running through my head, my loins were tingling up into my chest, and the next words out of my mouth were, “Maybe we should get together sometime.”

  “You know where to find me,” she said.

  I also knew—without a shred of doubt—that the instant I dropped my pants in the vicinity of Dena Marie, the entire city would know about it. There were no secrets in Steubenville. I had lived here long enough to know that. Even so, I was surprised that word spread so quickly. I met Dena Marie three times, always at night, at the River Downs Motel in Wheeling, West Virginia, which was about a forty-five-minute drive. I learned that word had gotten out the day my dad came storming into my office and slammed the door behind him, as mad as I’ve ever seen him. “What in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is wrong with you?”