Before He Wakes (25 page)

Buchanan had a long meeting later that morning with Cindy and Russ’s cousin from Florida, Jane Wood. He was still trying to learn as much as he could about Russ’s and Barbara’s pasts, and Cindy had become his willing assistant in searching family memories for information that might prove helpful. If this was murder, as he now thought, Buchanan knew that he would have to establish motive to be able to convince a jury that a woman who to all outward appearances was a loving wife and mother, an active church woman, had coldly put a pistol to her husband’s head and pulled the trigger. To find that motive, he would have to dig into every dark comer of her past, know everything that he could about her. From what he had learned so far, the motive could be any number of things.

That afternoon, Buchanan learned about the embezzlement. A woman who had worked with Barbara at Security Federal Savings and Loan nearly ten years earlier called to tell him that it had been common knowledge among the tellers that she had been stealing while she worked there, although she had never been charged. The woman also told Buchanan about another employee at Security Federal. This woman had worked with Barbara at another company, Brame Specialty. Buchanan should talk with her, she said. She could tell him something interesting.

Buchanan assigned another detective, Valerie McCabe, to work with him on the Stager case. At twenty-nine, she had been with the sheriff’s department for four years but had been a detective for less than a year. Assigned to rapes, robberies and assaults, she never had been involved in a murder case. She went with Buchanan later that afternoon to a Security Federal branch to find the woman who had worked with Barbara at Brame. Everybody at Brame knew that Barbara was having an affair with one of the salesmen while she worked there, the woman said. The affair had gone on for along time, and the salesman had sent Barbara roses when she finally broke it off. Since Russ Stager’s death, she said, everybody who had worked at Brame at the time was talking about the affair and wondering if it had anything to do with the shooting. The woman couldn’t remember the name of the salesman, but anybody at Brame could tell him, she said.

Soon after Buchanan returned to his office, he got a call from the woman he had just interviewed. She had found out the name of the salesman, but Preston Adams wasn’t at Brame any longer. She gave him the name of another former Brame employee who might know Adams’s whereabouts.

Buchanan called a company official at Brame who told him that while he had no personal knowledge of Barbara’s affair, he certainly had heard about it. Everybody at his company was talking about it. He didn’t think that the affair had been recently revived, though, because he had heard that Barbara was now having another affair, this one with a doctor at Duke University Medical Center.

Did he know a name?

He didn’t, but he might be able to get one, he said.

Had Barbara killed Russ to get him out of the way and make room for somebody else? It was not an uncommon motive for murder, Buchanan knew.

As the detective was pressing forward with his investigation, Barbara was busy at home. That morning she had called Chris Wagner, one of Russ’s favorite players on the baseball team. Wagner had been very close to Russ, had visited at his house many times, and he had been devastated by Russ’s death. When an assistant principal had pulled him aside to tell him about it on the afternoon of February 1, he had run from the room, down the hall and out of the school, running as hard as he could, not knowing why he was running or where he was going. The assistant principal, also a close friend of Russ’s, had chased him down, grabbed him and held him close while Wagner cried and screamed out in distress. That night, he and two other players had gone to see Barbara at her parents’ house and offered to help in any way that they could. When Barbara called Thursday morning, she asked if he and his friends could come that day and help her get Russ’s clothes out of the house. As with Larry Ford, Russell Stager was being tidily removed from her life.

Wagner, Steve Bumgardner and Derrick Dickerson went to the house with a pickup truck. Barbara already had all of Russ’s clothing packed into boxes. Some were in the garage, some still in the bedroom. Older clothing that Russ had outgrown because of his bodybuilding was packed away in the attic.

Barbara told them that Russ’s baseball jackets should go to the baseball team. She kept a few of his warmup suits. The rest was carted away to the Goodwill store on Avondale Drive. It was a lot of clothing, Wagner later would tell the police. He and his friends filled the truck and two cars. Barbara had not asked for a receipt to deduct the donation from her taxes, he said.

Buchanan had much to report when he went to the district attorney’s office that day to meet with Ron Stephens and Eric Evenson.

One thing seemed obvious after Buchanan had told all that he’d learned in the past two days. This shooting clearly appeared to have been murder, not an accident. If it had happened as Barbara had said, the bullet’s trajectory would have been upward, not downward, as the autopsy had shown it to be.

The problem was that the officers had talked to Barbara in general terms about this, and nobody had taken a definite statement from her. They needed to get such a statement to have solid evidence, nail her down on details. If they could just get her to reenact exactly what had happened, maybe even get it on videotape, they would have something they could use in court.

Barbara’s friend from Randolph County, Brenda Monroe, had not seen Barbara in some time. They had kept in touch over the years, had spent summer weekends together at the beach, visited each other now and then, exchanged cards on special occasions, and written infrequent letters, but the contact had lessened in recent years as their children, their primary bond, had grown apart.

When Brenda read about Russ’s death in a small item in the newspaper, she was shocked. She worked now for her former minister, Barnie Pierce, who had been the Fords’ minister. When she told him about this second husband lost to a gunshot, he remarked that it sounded strange. Brenda did not think it her place to question, but she thought that she should reach out to her friend.

Uncertain what exactly to do, she decided to call Barbara’s mother, Marva, who told her that Barbara had been having a rough time and it might do her good to hear from her. Brenda called, and Barbara seemed pleased that she had.

When Brenda told her how sorry she was about Russ, Barbara responded, “It’s just not fair. I can’t take any more of accidentally losing husbands.”

“Do you want me to come?” Brenda asked.

She would love to see her, Barbara said.

Brenda went the next day, Friday morning, two days after the funeral. Everybody was happy to see her, and Bryan and Jason introduced her to friends as their second mom.

Barbara and Brenda didn’t get a chance to talk until after lunch. They sat at the table in the dining room, with its big windows that looked out onto the driveway and the wooded yard, and Barbara began talking about Russ’s death and the sheriff’s department’s investigation.

Because of the similarities to Larry’s death, Brenda mentioned, the officers probably would want to know whether she and Russ had had marital troubles.

“That won’t be any problem,” Barbara said.

Not long after she said that, two official-looking cars turned into the driveway and came to a stop near the windows where Brenda and Barbara sat. Brenda looked out and saw four men in suits walking single-file toward the back door. Cops. And clearly Barbara had not been expecting them.

“Well,” Brenda said, “here comes the posse now.”

Buchanan never dreamed that Barbara would agree to reenact the shooting for him. He figured that she would beg off, saying that it would be too much of an emotional strain.

“I can’t imagine somebody crawling back up in this same bed where her spouse was just shot and killed by her own hand and going through it all again,” he said later. “I can’t imagine it.”

Still, he figured, there was no harm in trying.

He didn’t want to warn her, to allow her time to think about it or to rehearse. He would just show up and spring it on her. If she agreed, he would ask her to allow it to be videotaped. If she shied from that, he would suggest still photography. If all else failed, he would settle for a close verbal description.

That morning he had lined up two crime-scene identification officers, Dave Frye and Lieutenant Bobby Ray, to handle technical matters. They assembled the cameras, tape, film and lights. Detective Tim Carroll agreed to go along to portray Russ, if they were lucky enough to get Barbara’s consent.

Buchanan was friendly when Barbara answered the door, apologetic about having to bother her again.

“If you feel up to it,” he said, “we’d like to reenact what happened so we can get it clear in our minds. So we can dispose of the case.”

He was as surprised as he was pleased when she readily agreed, although he never would let himself show any emotion. He was even more surprised and pleased when she said that videotaping would be fine.

Brenda Monroe remained in the dining room as the officers and Barbara crowded into the bedroom. Barbara’s brother Alton arrived and Brenda told him what was going on.

“You’d better go back there,” she told him.

Alton went back to watch as Tim Carroll took Russ’s position on the bed, lying on his left side, his holstered pistol protruding from his right hip. Barbara, who was wearing a dressy blouse with a long patterned skirt and boots, lay on her stomach beside him. Dave Frye, holding the video camera on his shoulder, started the tape as Barbara began to talk.

“I remember stretching out,” she said, reaching out her arm. “That’s the way I stretch. And when I stuck my hand under there”—she slid her right hand beneath the pillow under Carroll’s head—“I felt something.”

“Okay,” Buchanan said.

“I stayed asleep,” she went on. “Okay. I started pulling it out, and I pulled it out, and when I picked it up, and I don’t know—”

She had removed her hand from beneath the pillow and was pointing it, forefinger out, like a pistol, at the back of Carroll’s head.

“And I don’t know how it was in my hand. I had no idea if I touched—I don’t know. I heard the awful noise.”

Barbara lifted her head and chest, arching her back, then quickly dropped back to the pillow.

“Well, wait a minute, that wasn’t quite right.”

She moved her hand a little deeper under the pillow.

“Okay,” she said, “and then I started getting up …”

Again she removed her hand and pointed it, pistol-like, at the back of Carroll’s head.

“That’s how it was. I started getting up with it in my hand.”

“Okay,” Buchanan said.

She stopped again.

“Wait. I don’t think this is going—he’s not quite in the right position.”

She repositioned Carroll, pushing his lower body away from her, tugging his shoulder toward her, bringing his head closer.

“Maybe more like that.” She tugged at the edge of the pillow under Carroll’s head.

“This cover was all over the bottom,” she said, indicating that the pillow was partially covered. She pulled out her hand and pointed it again at Carroll’s head. “Maybe like that.”

“I have it if it will help you,” Buchanan said, offering the .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol that had fired the bullet that killed Russ.

“No!” she said sharply, shaking her head. “Please.”

“Okay, okay,” Buchanan said quickly. “All right. No problem.”

“ ’Cause I don’t even know how it was in my hand. That part doesn’t even, it doesn’t even register. I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

She sat up, looking at Buchanan.

“I didn’t even—I don’t know how, what position it was in under there. I just realized what it was, started to get up to get it out from under there, heard the noise. Shocked! Couldn’t figure out what it was, sort of realized what had happened.”

She spun around, reaching for the bedside table.

“Turned over, I got my glasses. ’Cause I’m blind. I get my glasses. I get up. I turned the light on over there. I came back in here, and I saw the pillow, and I got over him like this …”

She rolled back over, hovering over Carroll on her knees. “

“ ‘Russ, Russ, Russ!’ You know. Might even have turned him over.”

She rolled Carroll toward her, looking at his face.

“Something like that, then turned him back over like this.”

She pushed him back.

“His hand was all balled up in the stuff and I might have pulled that out,” she said, speaking of the covers. “I don’t know. I was just all over him and the pillow.”

She sat back up.

“Oh, and when I turned the light on, told Jason, ‘Call 911!’ before I got back in here on him. Jason called 911, and they were here real quick.”

She sat up on the bed, still on her knees, facing Buchanan.

“I don’t know if that’s close enough, or if that answers your questions, but that’s about the best I can do.”

“That’s fine,” Buchanan said.

The reenactment had taken exactly two minutes and thirty-eight seconds, and Buchanan was certain that he had gotten exactly what he came for. He wasn’t going to tell her that, though.