Flesh Collectors (7 page)
Authors: Fred Rosen
Sam Robinson contacted Diane’s parents. He wanted to see how his kids were doing. “My parents called me and told me what he wanted, so we set something up. I asked Jenny and Jason if they wanted to see him and they said yes.”
The family got into Diane’s Honda and drove across to Nine Mile Road in Pensacola, where Sam Robinson was living in a mobile home. Diane didn’t say much to him. There had been acrimony during the divorce, as there frequently is, and “we had a lot of anger toward each other,” Diane said.
Afterward, while driving back, Jenny was quiet for a time and then told her mother, “Momma, I don’t like that man.”
“You don’t have to see him,” Diane Robinson firmly replied.
Diane Robinson remembered that conversation while Jenny was upstairs, showering for her date with Jeremiah Rodgers. Diane busied herself in the kitchen. Her company, Central Pacific, was having a fish fry the next day, Diane was making her homemade baked beans for the event.
But cooking baked beans did not prevent Diane from helping her daughter, Jenny, get ready for her date.
“Jenny put on blue nail polish, two different shades of blue mixed together. She was wearing a pair of white jeans, a black-and-white-striped bodysuit and a blue denim shirt,” she later related.
Jenny was all ready to go out when the phone rang. She picked it up. It was Rodgers, calling from his friend Jon Lawrence’s house.
“Man, I’m a little confused about how to get to your house,” said Rodgers. “How ’bout we meet up at the convenience store? I promise to drive back to your house to meet your mom.”
Jenny agreed and drove up to the store. Rodgers, driving his white Chevy Chevette, pulled in at 7:30
P.M
.
“Come on,” he urged her.
He wanted to leave without seeing her mother first.
“No,” Jenny said firmly.
Diane Robinson was looking out the front window of the house when they pulled up. She noticed that one of the headlamps on Rodgers’s white Chevy Chevette, crystal clear in the light of the full moon, was dimmed. The bulb was running down.
“Mom, I want you to meet Jeremiah,” said Jenny as she walked in.
For a moment, Rodgers just looked at Diane Robinson. Then he turned on the charm and the smile.
“He looked at me smiling and said, ‘Nice to meet you.’ He was very pleasant.”
For his date with Jenny, Rodgers was wearing a baseball cap, a button-down long-sleeved brown shirt, jogging pants and steel-toed black boots. “The shirt was long-sleeved. Even though he was covered up, I could see through the fabric that he had three tattoos showing. He had dark hair and eyes that were very attractive. He seemed normal.”
Rodgers shook her hand and looked her right in the eye.
“Now, Jeremiah, I got some rules I got to tell you about. No drinking and driving with Jenny. She’s not old enough to drink.”
Diane Robinson had never seen Jenny drink alcohol; she had never seen her drunk. Besides, Jennifer was three years shy of Florida’s drinking age of twenty-one. Like most states, it suffered from too many underage drinkers who decided to drink and drive and get into accidents.
“You’re over twenty-one, so you can drink,” Diane continued, “but I’d prefer if you didn’t.”
“I have no problem not drinking,” Rodgers answered easily.
“Her curfew is one o’clock. If anything happens, call home.”
“I have no problem with that either.” Rodgers smiled.
Thus reassured, Diane went back to her baked beans. Jenny ran to her room to get her brush.
“Mom, we’re going.”
Diane Robinson came in, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Where’re you going?” she asked.
“We’re going to ride around with a few friends,” said Jenny.
“Jenny, don’t be late.”
“Momma, tomorrow is Senior Skip Day.”
“I don’t care, you come home on time.”
“Okay,” Jenny answered, disappointed that her mother wouldn’t budge on the curfew.
“Do you need any money?”
Jenny looked at Rodgers.
“I got three dollars if I want to buy a drink,” he answered. “We’re just gonna see some friends.”
“I love you,” Diane said to her daughter.
“I love you, Mom.”
“You have a dim headlight, Jeremiah,” Diane Robinson cautioned. “You better be careful or the cops’ll stop you.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know. We’re just gonna see friends.”
Rodgers shook hands with Diane Robinson politely, and then she watched them drive away and went back to her beans.
“She was feeling like a woman for one of the first times in her life,” Diane would later say about her daughter.
Back in his trailer, Jon Lawrence was writing out a list:
Strawberry wine
sic
]
The mention of Everclear was of particular interest. At 190 proof, Everclear is 95 percent pure grain alcohol, odorless, tasteless and very potent. Among its other uses, it’s utilized by cooks, employed for medicinal purposes and added as an ingredient in other alcoholic beverages. But on every bottle is written this caution: “Because Grain Alcohol is clear, tasteless and very potent, it could be very dangerous. Use it carefully for legitimate purposes only.”