Murder of a Moral Man - 3. Chapter 3

Sam Anderson: Chewing It Over

I had to tell Pop what had happened. He could see the phone call had upset me, and he’d heard enough on my end so that deception was impossible. I was afraid the news would worsen his condition, but, instead, it had a salutary effect. His protective instinct refocused his attention on Robby and me rather than his discomfort and fear.

“You need to be there, Sam. Robby isn’t one to exercise his right to remain silent. I just hope he keeps his temper under control.”

Pop had only met Robby a few times and already understood him as well as I did.

I did my best to reassure him. “I think he’s too shaken up to do much mouthing off, Dad. They don’t have anything on him. Surely, they’ll have to let him go. I think he was more upset over their taking his laptop than being charged with murder.”

“Listen to me, Samuel. Get a lawyer, regardless of whether the police release Robby. If you need any financial help, your mother and I have a good bit put away for a rainy day.”

I had to repeat what was going on to Mom, who didn’t take the news nearly as well as Dad had. She did, however, urge me to get to Robby and take Dad’s advice about a lawyer. I promised I would, but I also knew I couldn’t take my parents’ money. They were comfortable, not well off, and lawyers’ fees could devastate their nest egg worse than a tornado going through a trailer park.

I couldn’t get a flight until 5pm. I spent the intervening hours at the hospital, chafing at the enforced inactivity. Mom insisted on driving me to the airport. As I sat in the car before she dropped me at the terminal, she held my hand tightly. Then she pulled me to her and kissed me on the cheek.

“You boys will be fine. I promise.”

I knew Mom’s promise had no actual power to make things fine. It still made me feel better.

I called Robby from the plane and was relieved the police had let him go. He wanted to pick me up, but I thought it would be better to take a Lyft home. I really didn’t want Robby to drive in his state. At the best of times, he’s somewhat reckless behind the wheel. We didn’t need a car accident on top of everything else.

When the driver let me out in front of our house, Robby rushed outside to meet me. He insisted on carrying my overnight bag. As soon as we were inside, he dropped the bag and wrapped me up in his arms so tightly I thought he might crush my ribs.

“I’m glad you’re home, Sam! So glad. It feels like days since I’ve seen you.”

After he let me go, he asked guiltily, “How’s Rollie doing? Is Sharon okay?”

“They’re more worried about you than Pop right now, which I think is a good indication. Pop’s in fighting mode, so he won’t be in a hospital bed for long. Are you okay?”

The two of us sat down, while Robby brought me up to date on what he’d gleaned from his interrogation and from the news and social media afterwards.

“It’s bad, Sam. They think I did it because I said that stuff about hoping someone choked him on cake. Someone did force feed him cake until he suffocated on it. The news reports say someone tied him up, pinched his nose shut with a binder clip, and shoved cake down his throat until….”

I rubbed Robby’s back in soothing circles. I knew he felt guilty because he’d expressed the wish something would happen and it had. I also knew he was a gentle man who could never intentionally harm another human being. I wondered if the cops had misinterpreted that guilt but kept that worry to myself.

“His wife found the body Tuesday morning when she went to the bakery around 8.45 after she’d dropped their kid off at school. Keys apparently works there all night sometimes, so she didn’t think anything about it when he didn’t come home Monday night.”

I said, “She probably was grateful to be rid of him for a while. Says a lot about their marriage that she didn’t call him or expect him to call her. I wonder if he really had enough baking to do to keep him up all night on a regular basis. I guess he could have been doing his books or inventory. More likely, he was cheating on the wife.”

Robby sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe they just didn’t like each other much and wanted to find excuses to be apart. Anyway, the poor woman came in the front door and called out to him. When he didn’t answer, she went to the back and saw him tied up like that. She just about managed to call 911 before she went into shock.”

“It must have been a terrible ordeal for her, but someone killed Keys and it wasn’t you. Maybe the wife did it. She’d probably be the logical suspect if it weren’t for the way he died. And, you know, whoever did it must have known Keys.”

“I guess so. Makes sense he wouldn’t let just anyone into the bakery while he was working alone there at night. Only the Keys would have keys.”

I smiled weakly at Robby’s joke. “Probably, though there could be other employees. I didn’t see anyone there on Saturday but his kid, and I’d think Saturday was his busiest day. Place seemed to be run on a shoestring. The wife and son were probably the only help because he wouldn’t have to pay them.”

Robby chewed his lip a moment, as if debating whether to say something. At last, he said, “What bothers me is how the hell someone managed to stuff cake down his throat. If I were tied up and couldn’t breathe through my nose, I’d just keep my teeth clenched if someone tried to force feed me.”

I thought it over a minute. “Well, it’s possible to force someone’s mouth open. I used to balk at bitter tasting medicine when I was a kid. Dad didn’t have much trouble holding my nose and forcing my mouth open, despite my best efforts to keep my teeth clenched.”

Robby said, “Yeah, but you were a little kid. It would probably take some strength to force a grown man’s mouth open. Another grown man could probably do it. I’m not sure a woman could.”

“Unless he was drugged. If he was too drugged to resist, anyone could do it, including the kid.”

“I guess they’ll do a toxicology screen when they do the autopsy, but we won’t know what the results are unless the police make them public, which I doubt. This is frustrating as hell, Sam. I wish I knew the cops were investigating other leads and not just trying to pin it on me.”

I said without conviction, “I’m sure they are, Robby. They had to question you, but I don’t see how a case against you stands up. You’re the last person on earth Keys would have let into that bakery. Let’s look at this from the question of who profits.”

“Presumably the wife and son, but who knows how much they’ll get out of it? Unless he had good life insurance, they’re probably screwed. I guess the wife might be able to operate the bakery on her own but what reputation it has rests on him.”

I said, “Not all profits are financial. Getting rid of an abusive husband or father is a solid motive.”

“But we don’t know if he was abusive. Maybe he just had a blind spot about gay people but was otherwise a wonderful husband and father.”

“Call me crazy, Robby, but I don’t think wonderful fathers poison their children against people based on some inherent trait. I understand what you mean, though. I wish I could talk to that kid. He looked almost scared when told him we had an appointment.”

Dylan Keys: Afraid

The school hallways were crowded, giving him a degree of anonymity for a few minutes. He was relieved that so far no one had tried to pump him about Dad’s death. A lot of people had mumbled they were sorry. The sympathy had felt sincere, but those offering it had been embarrassed, as though they were bringing up something indelicate. People had stared at him with curiosity but quickly averted their eyes if he looked back at them. Being connected to a notorious murder, Dylan discovered, means a whole herd of elephants is pastured in the room.

School felt weird but not as weird as being at home. His mom had never been a strong personality. Now she seemed to have no substance at all. Dad was dead, but she’d become a ghost. Dylan was unhappy she let Randy Pierson push her in front of cameras and put words in her mouth. Dylan himself had resisted Pierson’s attempts to use him in similar fashion. As Mrs. Greene, his Algebra I teacher droned on about the FOIL method, Dylan thought,

“I’d like to punch that loudmouth sonofabitch in the mouth. I’m sick of him ranting and raving about justice for Dad. It makes me sick to my stomach. Dad would be alive if he hadn’t gotten mixed up with Pierson.”

Dylan’s anger vanished as fast as it had erupted. In its place, he felt a sudden, overwhelming fear that roiled his insides. He dashed to the restroom, right past his astonished teacher, barely making it in time to heave over a toilet. He tried to calm himself. He’d deleted his social media accounts and the accounts he’d created at a few hookup sites. Dad was dead. He had nothing to fear.

Robby Wishart: The Burden

I knew I hadn’t killed Tom Keys, but I still felt responsible. I must have planted the seed in someone else’s mind. I was driving Sam crazy by covering the same ground with him over and over.

“You’re not responsible, Robby.”

“But you know damn well it couldn’t just be a coincidence, Sam. I put the idea in someone’s head. Maybe someone wanted to kill Keys and saw an opportunity to do it and make someone else look guilty, and that’s bad enough. The possibility that some sick mind took what I said and acted on it is killing me.”

Sam sighed deeply. “I don’t think that’s likely Robby. I think someone he knew did it.”

I let it go for at least two minutes. Then I couldn’t help myself. “We don’t know that. It could have been a stranger. I can think of all sorts of ways to persuade someone to let me in. Maybe someone got him to open a door on a pretext and then forced his way in. This X could have knocked Keys out, tied him up, and shoved the cake down him while he was unconscious.”

Sam threw his hands up. “I just can’t believe in that, Robby. You’re starting to sound like that DOCC asshole, Peterson. That’s his fallback position: if you didn’t do it, then some unhinged gay person did it, but either way, the entire gay population of the United States bears responsibility. Mark my words: someone he knew did it.”

The pedantic side of me couldn’t resist correcting Sam. “The asshole’s name is Pierson.”

Sam looked me straight in the eye, making sure I noticed his hands hovering meaningfully at his belt. I knew he didn’t want to discipline me. I didn’t want to be disciplined by him. But the anxiety and guilt were building inside me to the point where I wondered if we’d avoid it for long.

Sam Anderson: Eruption

Robby and I still hadn’t retained a lawyer, but I started to hope we wouldn’t need one. While I was sure the police were still watching Robby and quietly investigating us, I was equally sure they’d found nothing—chiefly because there was nothing to find.

To my surprise, however, I got an offer for legal help from GALA. I’d never heard of GALA, which stands for Gay Alliance for Legal Assistance. My suspension wasn’t important enough to get the ACLU or Lambda interested. GALA was willing to take on less high profile cases. Robby’s legal peril overshadowed the threat to my job, but I authorized the GALA lawyers to take on the school district for me. It gave Robby something to focus on other than his guilt.

That guilt had metastasized from Keys’ murder to Robby’s feeling responsible for the homophobic backlash that had arisen in its wake. There had been a couple of demonstrations, and a parents’ group had made firing me their mission in life. The same group also wanted to identify and purge any other gay teachers in the school district. Robby and I were on the receiving end of a lot of hateful rhetoric and more than a handful of death threats. I knew most of them weren’t credible, but I thought about getting a gun, which was something I’d never have imagined possible. I didn’t buy a gun, but I made sure my old Louisville slugger stayed close at hand, along with a cellphone for calling 911.

Pierson was now even more of a fixture on right wing media than he’d been before. It was hard to avoid his weak-chinned, doughy face, as he appeared on both network and cable television news, where he pontificated about the evils of homosexuality in general and the moral turpitude of Robby and me in particular. His interviews on right wing media followed a predictable pattern. The host of a “conservative” opinion show would affect an expression of combined concern and righteous anger as he or she—no nonbinary hosts on these programs—threw Pierson softball questions. Pierson would periodically pause to cue said host to chime in with hyperbolic outrage.

I could hear one in progress as I padded about the kitchen in search of inspiration for our dinner.

“…Thanks for having me, Pendleton. What I want to know, and what Thomas Keys’ widow and son have every right to demand to know, is why Robert Wishart is still at large. The police have more than enough evidence for an arrest. Wishart threatened Mr. Keys, and then he murdered him in cold blood in the most horrible way I can imagine. And for what? Because Mr. Keys wouldn’t make him a wedding cake? Make no mistake, Pendleton, these people are dangerous. If they can’t push their agenda through activist judges anymore, then they’ll do it through terrorism!

“Yes, I said terrorism, Pendleton. This death was an act of terror committed by a homosexual activist to intimidate business owners into buckling under. It was also a hate crime, and I expect the authorities to treat it as such.”

I took my frustration out on the head of iceberg lettuce on my cutting board, cleaving it in two with a vicious swipe of my chef’s knife. Then I went into the living room, took the clicker from Robby’s hand and turned off the TV.

“For God’s sake, Robby, let’s turn that filth off.”

He flared up at me. “I was fucking watching that, Sam! Just because you want to stick your head in the sand and ignore what’s going on around us doesn’t mean I have to. We need to know what that asshole’s saying. Give me that clicker back!”

I held it out of reach and side stepped his attempt to grab it. It would have been comical to watch us if the mood weren’t so fraught.

I said, “He’s just repeating what you’ve heard him say a dozen times. You’re only winding yourself up by watching this shit over and over.”

My attempt to calm him down failed miserably. He stomped around me towards the door. “Fine, goddamn it. If you’re going to bully me, I’ll go somewhere else to watch it.”

I interposed my body between him and the front door. Then I began unbuckling my belt. It worked like a shot of Thorazine. Robby’s face paled, but the tantrum ceased.

“Get ‘em down, Robby. This is what you apparently need, so let’s get it over with.”

The tears in his blue eyes tore at my heart. I wanted to hold him, not inflict pain. The holding would have to wait, though. We both knew he needed this whipping. He was wearing track pants, which he pulled down, together with his boxer briefs. He bent over the arm of the sofa, quietly sobbing to himself.

I doubled the belt and began to apply licks with slow deliberation. He forced himself to relax, though the only way to cope with the searing pain after a lick was to clench his buttocks. After ten licks, his beautiful buttocks were red and welted. I hesitated a moment, unsure whether he’d had enough.

“Are we done now?” he asked in an exasperated tone.

I brought the belt down harder than before across his crease. “Apparently not, Robby.”

He shrieked in pain, which I ignored as I gave him four more. He was crying in earnest now. I put my belt back on and told him to stand up. He stood passive as I pulled up his clothes, carefully easing the boxer briefs over his damaged bottom. I was equally careful with the track pants. Then I took him in my arms. Painful as it had been for both of us, he’d needed this release of emotion.

I invited him, “Come in the kitchen. You can watch me make dinner.”

He managed a grin. “Shouldn’t take long. Your idea of dinner is opening a can of chili.”

“You do me an injustice, Robby. Tonight, we’re having frozen pizza, and I’m making a nice salad to go with it.”

I instinctively threw him to the floor and covered his body with mine when I heard the shattering of one of our front windows. Someone had thrown a brick through it with the words “Murdering Fags” written with a Sharpie marker.