Closing Time: A True Story of Robbery and Double Murder Read online

  Her watch read 6:20. Kenneth should be there any minute now, and she went over all the things she must do after the spaghetti supper. They were leaving early on Thursday morning to go up to Fairfield Bay for the weekend. They had signed up for a promotional tour the newly developed vacation resort was offering to folks willing to listen to an hour’s sale pitch in exchange for a stay in a condo on Greer’s Ferry Lake.

  Six thirty arrived. She telephoned the store, but there was no answer.

  Six forty came. No Kenneth.

  Ruth walked outside and looked down the street for any sign of him. It was too hot to stand on the driveway pavement for long, so she went back inside. Her dress was wet around her waist, and her forehead was dripping with little beads of sweat. Where was Kenneth? Perhaps he’d stopped to fill up the car. She realized her heart was pounding, and she felt slightly nauseous.

  Where is Kenneth?

  —||—

  Suzanne sighed, thankful she’d finished with Mrs. Newton’s watch before closing time. It was hard not to finish a job and have to start all over the next day. At least that’s what it felt like to her. Her daddy had been working on watches so long that he was able to just pick up and finish, even if a day or two had gone by.

  She liked Mrs. Newton, and she was glad they had a mainspring on hand. She placed the gold Bulova in the “to call box” inside one of the safes. They were both opened because her daddy had started his closing down chores and was emptying some of the cases already.

  She reached across the work bench and turned off the radio. She was glad her dad hadn’t minded that she brought it from home. She loved music, and KISR was her favorite station. Music made her think of Tom, and she hoped he was already in Tulsa with the guys, setting up at the Camelot.

  Suzanne stood up and pushed her chair under the table. She’d worn a dress to work, and she was anxious to get home and change into shorts. Karen was cooking spaghetti for everybody, and Suzanne was hungry.

  She joined her daddy in the front of the store.

  “Well, Daddy, I finished the Bulova.”

  The front door opened. A young guy about her age smiled. She noticed he had really white teeth, but his jeans were dirty and looked as if he’d worn them way past wash day. He looked familiar to her, and then she remembered he’d been in the store earlier. Karen had waited on him.

  The young guy set a Dr. Pepper can down on the top of the glass ring case.

  “I was in here before, looking for a ring for my girlfriend.”

  Her dad nodded hello and walked behind the ring counter.

  “Hot enough for you?” her daddy asked. “A nice rain would be welcomed.”

  The young guy didn’t answer but kept his head down and didn’t even look up.

  How rude, she thought. She was overly protective of her daddy, and she didn’t like for people to ignore him.

  Another man came inside and he, too, was carrying a canned drink, only his was a root beer. Lots of people carried something to drink in this heat, but they didn’t usually bring it into the stores. Rude, she thought once more.

  Suzanne walked over to help the second guy, who looked like he was wearing a brown wig. What’s up with that? she thought. He was tall and sort of soft looking, and a pungent scent of cigar smoke and sweat clung to his body. He smiled real big. A zap of alarm ran across her shoulders, her stomach, her legs.

  What are two men like this doing here right at closing time?

  She looked to her daddy, but she saw he was writing out a ticket. She guessed the young guy with the white teeth had bought something. But then she saw the man reach behind his back and pull out a pistol.

  “This is a robbery,” he said—not loudly, but in an everyday tone of voice.

  Her daddy dropped the pen and turned around, his face a pale gray.

  And at that moment, the guy with the wig took a gun out of his Walmart sack. Something long was attached to the barrel.

  “Put your hands up, little girl. We’re going to that there back room.”

  Her daddy was clutching the handles of his crutches so tightly that she could see his arms quiver, but he smiled at her and said, “Just do what they say, Suzanne.”

  She wasn’t sure her legs would support her body. She felt weak and nauseous. Once again, she looked to her daddy—the man who’d been her champion, her hero, her everything all her life. She was afraid he couldn’t help her now.

  “Do what they say,” he repeated. “Everything will be okay.”

  After they walked to the back room, the guy with the wig told them to take off their jewelry. He seemed to be the boss.

  Suzanne took off her wedding ring, clutching it in her fist until she had to hand it over to the young guy.

  Her daddy gave the guy with the wig his diamond wedding band, a ring he’d been given by her mother for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

  The guy with the wig held out his hand, palm up.

  “Your wallet too, old man.”

  Normally, her daddy didn’t carry cash, but she knew he had cashed a check on his lunch hour. He and her mama were going on a little break. When she thought of her mama, she began to cry.

  Her daddy said, “Now, now, Suzy. We’ll give these men what they want, and then they’ll leave. Right, fellas?”

  “On your belly. Tie ’em up,” the guy with the wig said.

  The young guy pulled their arms behind their backs and tied their hands together with a thick, scratchy rope. Then he looped it around their ankles, pulled it around their heads, and cinched it tightly across their mouths that had first been sealed with what felt like washcloths. He didn’t say a word to them.

  But the guy with the wig assured them they weren’t going to get hurt.

  “We’re just going to tie you up so we’ll have a head start when we leave here. Just do what we say, and I assure you nobody will be hurt. That sound like a deal?”

  The men went back to the front, and she could hear them taking the jewelry out of the cases. Maybe her daddy was right. If they just cooperated and did what the men said, it would all be over quickly. She tried to remain calm, but it was hard to breathe.

  When the men returned to the back room and the young guy asked if her car keys were in her purse, she could only nod her head yes.

  “Where’s the purse?”

  She glanced at the top of one safe, where she routinely kept her purse.

  The young guy had already laid his gun on the counter while he was tying them up, but the guy with the wig was now holding his long gun just inches from their noses.

  They will kill us, Suzanne realized. She knew they would.

  She thought about Tom and hoped he knew how much she loved him. They had been arguing lately, but that didn’t mean anything. All couples have fights. She thought about her dog, Pearl, and hoped she would be okay without her. Her mama would miss her, and so would her sisters. And little Ben? She wouldn’t get to see him grow up.

  Oh, Daddy, what are these men going to do to us? Will it be quick?

  Her daddy’s glasses sat askew on his forehead, and she could tell he was in a terrific amount of pain. His crutches lay on the vinyl floor at his feet.

  Oh, Daddy, I love you so much.

  It was then that she saw the guy with the wig place his gun against her daddy’s right temple and pull the trigger. Blood spurted out into a big, wide circle under his sweet, sweet face.

  She knew she was next, but thankfully she didn’t have more than a second to ponder how it would feel to have a bullet in her brain. She fainted at the precise moment the guy with the wig pulled the trigger.

  The young guy yelled, “Why’d you do that?”

  “No witnesses,” the guy with the wig said.

  He shot each of his victims in the head one more time to make sure they were dead.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At Karen’s house, her kitchen table was beautifully prepared with the blue carnation patterned dishes her mother had given her. It was the same s
et her daddy and she and her sisters had bought for their mom for Christmas when they were little. They bought it at Sears, and their mom had loved it.

  Years later, after her mom and dad had moved into the house on Azure in Van Buren, and she had gotten another set of China, her mom passed the original dishes down to Karen because she now had a home of her own.

  “You can set the table and invite us all over for dinner,” her mom had said.

  Karen looked down at her kitchen floor, which was covered with orange and yellow linoleum patched together with silver masking tape. The countertops were covered with drab, gray linoleum. When she’d bought the house, she knew it would require lots of work, but she had seen the potential. It had the original wood floors, and the ornately carved front door had stained glass window panes that had been painted over. That door had once been elegant, she thought, and she would one day make her whole house elegant again.

  But for now, her table looked pretty, and that reminded her of going to a really fun Christmas Sunday school party at her teacher’s house when she was nine or ten years old and her family attended Temple Baptist Church in Fort Smith. The teacher was very poor, and she’d lived in a small house set close to a highway. The teacher had served cookies and hot chocolate in Mason jars, way before it became popular to do so. Karen had realized then, at that early age, that it didn’t really matter where you ate or how it was served. It was the loving spirit of an event and the people who gathered there that were important. That night, she was having her family over for dinner to celebrate her ownership of her home, and it didn’t matter what the floor looked like.

  Elaine and Ben had been at Karen’s since 6:00 that evening, and like any toddler, he was getting into things. He had been in Mother’s Day Out at the Central Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith and missed his nap. Elaine was trying to help, but mainly she just kept Ben out of mischief. They expected Suzanne any minute. She was walking over once she’d changed into shorts after work. Because of the heat, all the girls wore shorts. Karen had pulled her hair up in a barrette to get her long hair off her neck.

  “Suzanne should have been here by now, don’t you think?” Karen said, looking at her watch.

  She had the French bread buttered and waiting in the toaster oven, and the salad was in the refrigerator. The spaghetti was on low in the Crock-Pot.

  “You know,” Elaine said, “I dropped by the store earlier, and Suzy was about to leave for lunch. She asked me if I wanted anything, but I told her I had other errands to make. I left before she returned. I bet they just had some late customers.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I hope that’s what it is.”

  —||—

  Ruth Staton paced back and forth across her mother’s living room, and each time she heard a car coming down the street, she raced to the front window.

  No Kenneth.

  At 6:45, she decided to call Karen from the phone on the kitchen wall, even though she didn’t want to needlessly alarm the girls.

  “Is your dad there?”

  “No, Mom, he isn’t.”

  “Is Suzanne?”

  “No, but Elaine and Ben have driven over there to see if she’s home yet. Wait a minute, Mom. I just heard a car pull up.”

  After a moment, Karen returned to the phone.

  “Mom, Suzy wasn’t home. We’ll drive down to the store.”

  At that moment, Ruth and Karen and Elaine had each reached the conclusion that their family had been visited by something terribly wrong.

  “Mom, we’ll call you.”

  As Ruth waited for the phone call, she fretted and fretted, and she thought she could actually hear the beating of her heart.

  Kenneth would never have not called me if he was just running late.

  She dialed the store’s number, but it was busy. After four or five minutes, she called the store again. It was still busy. She called Karen’s house again and got no answer.

  All the busy signals and no answers didn’t make sense, so she decided to call the police. Nervously, she opened the phone book to look for the number, but then she realized she knew what it was so she dialed it.

  When she heard a man’s voice answer, she said, “There’s something wrong at Staton’s. Would you send someone out to check?”

  “Are you Mrs. Staton?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you go there?”

  “Yes.” And then she hung up.

  She stood by the phone a minute, thinking she might faint. Her face was hot, and the rest of her body felt cold. She didn’t know if she would be capable of driving back to Van Buren. Then she thought about calling someone to come and get her, but that would take time. Precious time. She went out into the garage, opened the door, and climbed into her mother’s car. It wasn’t far to I-540, so she began the thirteen-mile trip that would be the longest of her life.

  Off to her right, she briefly noticed a golden field covered with dried corn stalks and cracked dry soil. She’d always hated September, when the whole world seemed hot and the color of ripe persimmons she used to step on when she was a little girl. They’d squished between her toes, and wasps would buzz around the fruit, threatening to sting her bare feet. Like in that field, everything started to dry up and die in September.

  For years after, whenever Ruth drove on the interstate and passed that field, she would remember (although she never really ever forgot) that hot September day when her life was changed forever.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Elaine drove her car to Cloverleaf Shopping Center. Because they were in such a hurry, Ben sat in Karen’s lap. When they pulled into the parking lot, they saw that Suzanne’s jeep was gone, but their daddy’s Mercury was still there. They parked and walked to the front of the store and saw that the lights were still on. The front door looked like it was locked. Karen didn’t have her keys with her, so they walked into Hunt’s Department Store next door.

  “Have you all seen our dad and sister?” Karen asked.

  Buster Fowler, the night manager, saw the anguished look on the girls’ faces.

  “No, what’s wrong?”

  Elaine held Ben in her arms, and even he had a puzzled look on his face.

  “The lights are still on, but the door is locked. We don’t know where they are.”

  Mr. Fowler shook his head in disbelief.

  “Let’s go look.”

  They walked next door and stood at the glass doors. Upon careful examination, Mr. Fowler saw that the door was shut, but the top and bottom were not locked. He pulled on the door, and it opened.

  Once they were inside, Karen took one look at the empty glass cases and yelled, “We’ve been robbed!”

  Mr. Fowler followed Elaine to the back of the store, but Ben and Karen remained in the front.

  Elaine immediately saw her dad and Suzy on their stomachs on the floor with their ankles and hands tied. There were gags in their mouths, and blood was pooled on the floor. She saw the holes in their heads and thought they had been hit with something like a baseball bat. Mr. Fowler immediately picked up the phone that sat on the long work table and called the police.

  Elaine yelled as loud as she could. They had been hit so hard, they could just be unconscious and unable to hear her. She wanted them to know she was there with them.

  “Daddy, wake up!” she shouted. “Suzy, wake up!”

  Elaine knew her daddy hadn’t been able to lie on his stomach for years, and she intimately recognized how uncomfortable he must be.

  “Oh, Daddy. Oh, Daddy.”

  She was the only one who really understood the horrible and often constant pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis. It was a condition that she alone shared with her sweet daddy.

  Elaine knew her daddy and sister were really hurt bad. They may have even been dead, but she had to help them in some way. She grabbed a pair of scissors and tried to cut the ropes that bound them.

  She then rushed into the front of the store where Karen and Ben were.

  She still held the sc
issors in her bloody hands.

  “Why did they have to hit them so hard!” she yelled.

  And then Elaine and Karen were both screaming.

  Mr. Fowler and some ladies who worked at Hunt’s had come inside and were tending to Ben. One of the ladies took the scissors away and wiped off Elaine’s hands.

  Karen went to the phone at the front desk to call an ambulance, but just as she reached for the phone, the police arrived. She dropped the phone, and it dangled off the hook, creating a busy signal for her mother, who would shortly be frantically calling the store.

  The policemen told the women to please leave the store and let them do their job.

  “You can wait outside.”

  Elaine held Ben in her arms, trying to soothe him by telling him not to be scared.

  Karen refused to cry because a crowd of people were already gathering, and she didn’t want anyone to see her crying. It also seemed like, if she didn’t cry, then everything would be all right.

  But Elaine had seen the blood matted in her little sister’s long brown hair and the blood from her daddy’s head slowing spreading along the vinyl floor.

  Karen had not seen the bodies, so she was more hopeful.

  “When the ambulance comes, they’ll take them to the hospital, and everything will be okay.”

  But when help arrived, the attendants went inside the store and came out without their daddy and sister.

  “Go back! Don’t come out without them!” Karen screamed.

  A policeman Karen didn’t recognize walked up to them and said, “We’re going to put you young ladies in a police car where you’ll be safe.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  When Ruth arrived at the shopping center, cars and trucks and police cars were parked here and there in front of the store. People were milling about, and in the crowd Ruth recognized several friends. Three ambulances were parked side by side. She stopped her car in a traffic lane and got out. Through the crowd, she walked directly to the store. Just outside the store, she asked a woman driver of an ambulance, “Why are there three ambulances?”