The devil at his elbow, p.21
The Devil at His Elbow, page 21
“Wonderful,” Alex said. He paused a beat. “I mean, I’m sure we had little things here and there, but we had a wonderful marriage, wonderful relationship.”
“And yours and Paul’s relationship?”
“As good as it could be.”
“Have you been having any problems out here? Trespassers, or people breaking in?”
“None that I know of,” Alex said. The only thing that came to mind, he said, was the boat wreck. There had been a lot of negative publicity about Paul’s arrest and charges, he said, and strangers had been making vile comments online. Paul didn’t tell him everything, he said, but he knew his son had been punched and attacked several times. Owen asked for specific names or instances but Alex couldn’t give any. Instead, he told Owen the names of some friends Paul had recently been hanging out with.
Alex still had the chewing tobacco in his mouth. He asked to open the door, then leaned out and spat for a long moment, then settled back in his seat.
Owen asked who else the detectives should be talking to.
Alex paused. “This is such a stupid thing, I’m even embarrassed to say it. But it just didn’t make any sense.”
He said he’d hired a new groundskeeper who wasn’t working out. Alex said the new guy had killed the sunflowers in the dove field and he and Paul had been out there trying to salvage the flowers.
Then he shared an odd detail. The other day, he said, the groundskeeper had told Paul a story about getting in a fight in high school. “He got in a fight with some Black guys,” Alex said. “And an FBI undercover team observed him fighting those guys and put him on an undercover team with three Navy SEALs, and that their job was to kill radical Black Panthers. They did that from Myrtle Beach to Savannah.” Alex said he didn’t think the groundskeeper had killed Paul and Maggie. But he couldn’t help noticing that the man had been off that day.
“What’s his name?” Owen asked.
“C. B. Rowe,” Alex said. “I sent him a message to text me earlier today about the sunflowers, and he called me back when I was on the way to my mom’s house.”
“Did you talk to him at that time?”
Only briefly, Alex said, because he was on the other line. “I told him I’d call him back tomorrow, see him in the morning.”
“What was his demeanor or attitude?” Owen asked.
“I mean, it seemed normal,” Alex said. Owen took down Rowe’s contact information and said he’d follow up. Again, the detective asked for the names of anyone harassing Paul. Alex said he couldn’t think of any, though he was sure Paul had been getting attacked, even getting a black eye recently in Charleston. Paul was a real man’s man, he said. Were it not for the pending criminal charges, his son would have fought back.
“I’ve never been prouder of him than the way he has handled the pressures and the adversity,” Alex said, still speaking of his son in the present tense. “Paul is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful kid. He can do almost anything. He gets along with almost anybody.”
That evening, Alex said, he and Paul had ridden the property together, and then after dinner, he had fallen asleep. “I laid down, took a nap on the couch, probably, I don’t know, twenty-five to thirty minutes. I got up. I called Maggie. Didn’t get an answer. And I left to go to my mom’s.”
Maggie had talked about going with him to Almeda, he said. But when he woke up from his nap, she wasn’t in the house anymore. He thought he’d texted her, but she hadn’t responded. Usually, she was good about answering the phone.
“So that was odd,” Alex said. “But it wasn’t that big a deal.”
From the back seat, Rutland asked, “About what time was that?”
“What time was what?” Alex said. His voice took on a slight edge.
“You sent her a text message?” Rutland reminded him.
Alex pulled out his phone and scrolled through his history. He had texted Maggie at 9:08, saying he was on his way to Almeda to check on his mother. He had texted her again at 9:47, as he pulled out of the driveway at his mother’s place and headed back to Moselle. And then he’d tried to call Paul.
“I mean, my calls are right here.”
Alex opened the door again and spat, though this time he stayed turned away from detectives a few beats longer. Then he settled back in.
“Can I have a piece of gum?”
“Yes, sir,” Owen said, and offered him a piece from a pack in the console. “Anybody else want some gum?”
Alex next asked for water. He seemed subdued, as if all the activity of the day had caught up with him. The interview was winding down.
“Do you have any other children?” Owen asked.
“I do,” Alex replied. “A twenty-four-year-old.”
“What’s his name?”
“He goes by Buster.”
Owen was walking Alex through the next steps in the investigation when the phone rang. Buster had arrived from his girlfriend’s house in Rock Hill, three hours west.
“Don’t let him come up here,” Alex said to the caller. “I think we’re about done.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The magistrate’s warrant authorized the officers to search the house. But sheriff’s deputies had identified the crime scene as the kennels, a decision Agent Owen didn’t question. SLED had a longtime working relationship with Colleton County, including a stint where Agent Owen’s lieutenant had filled in as sheriff for a year. He figured if the deputies who were first on scene thought the house had anything to do with the murders, they would have locked it down.
He gave Alex a few minutes alone with Buster, then he and Detective Rutland headed to the house to take Alex’s clothes into evidence. The house was roughly 250 yards from the kennels, up a long dirt road. Owen knocked on the door, and a man who identified himself as one of Alex’s law partners let them in, through the foyer and into the main living area, where people were gathering and talking quietly. A handful of people were in the kitchen, appearing to put away pots and dishes. Owen told Alex he needed to collect his clothing, then waited in the doorway of the master bedroom while Alex changed. He put the cargo shorts in one brown bag, the white shirt in another, and his brightly colored tennis shoes in yet another. As Owen glanced around the house, he saw no evidence of a scuffle. Nothing seemed out of place.
After turning over the evidence bags to the SLED crime scene technicians, he went to brief his supervisors. They called his attention to the side of the kennels, to a stack of stray bins, including an animal travel crate. On top of the crate lay a chicken. It appeared to be dead.
Owen put on a pair of gloves and went over to inspect the chicken carcass. It was still warm to the touch.
“That chicken has a story to tell,” he said. “By God, I wish we could hear it.”
The dogs had mostly quieted and were lying in pens. Bubba was closest to the feed room, just a few steps from the chicken. He was still paying attention to the investigators’ every move.
“I know this is going to sound crazy,” Owen said, “but we need a dog whisperer.”
His lieutenant and captain both gave him the side-eye, but Owen was serious.
“I’m telling you, that dog knows what happened.”
* * *
—
The sun rose with Agent Owen still at the kennels. He had watched the crime scene technicians gather evidence; he had ordered background checks on the family employees; he had stood by while the coroner peeled back the damp pink sheets to photograph the bodies. Paul had been wearing light shorts and a black T-shirt. On the back of the shirt in red capital letters was written Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am.
Paul’s phone had been placed neatly on the back of his shorts. Using gloves, Owen picked up the phone and tried to power it on so he could put it in airplane mode. But the phone was dead. He put it into an evidence bag and locked it in his Durango.
When the coroner turned over Paul’s body, Owen could see that the young man’s smooth face was intact, almost unmarred, but flattened like a mask. The back of his head was completely gone. Behind him, the interior of the feed room was a slaughterhouse, with blood and fluids spattered on the walls and red hair plastered to the top of the door. In the early light of dawn, the detectives watched the coroner and an assistant carefully remove Paul’s body and place his brain in a bucket.
Maggie’s body had been found twelve paces away. She appeared to have fallen to her knees, then forward on her face. Her arms were stretched out on either side of her body. She was facing the feed room. She was wearing a short light pink summer dress. She had been shot five times. One of the bullets had gone straight through her wrist. It had exploded her tennis bracelet and sprinkled the ground beside her body with tiny diamonds.
Owen watched the coroner remove Maggie’s body as well. After the van with the bodies left, Owen stepped back to survey the scene, moving the puzzle pieces around in his mind. It was always difficult to know, in the first hours of an investigation, which details mattered. Near the kennels, there was an upside-down cooler on the ground. It was surrounded by empty beer cans. Had someone dumped it in a hurry? At the kennels, there was water pooling on the concrete pad near the feed room. It had been raining on and off, but the kennels were covered. Was the water from the hose used to rinse out the pens? If so, when was it sprayed and why?
The investigators thought they knew what types of guns killed Maggie and Paul, but they had not yet found the murder weapons. Based on Alex’s account and the dishes in the kitchen, they felt confident Maggie and Paul had eaten dinner at the house. But they did not know how or when the mother and son had gone down to the kennels. They couldn’t tell if they’d tried to defend themselves; the autopsy reports wouldn’t be complete for several days. They’d interviewed several people at that point. But none of the pieces were fitting.
Owen was a career law enforcement officer. He’d started out at a small-town police force out of high school, then moved up to a sheriff’s office, then eventually joined SLED. He married a woman ten years older; they were overjoyed when, after several years of uncertainty, she had given birth to twin boys. By middle school, the boys had grown into talented athletes and the family’s schedule was a blur of football practices and out-of-town baseball tournaments. Being a father had been Owen’s deepest hope, so closely held he’d rarely articulated it, even to himself. At work he was stoic and gave away nothing. But at home, with his boys, he grinned so big his eyes disappeared.
The double homicide scene was the most disorganized Owen had ever seen. Nothing about it made sense. He had a hunch Paul had been ambushed in the feed room. Owen was equally confident Maggie had been shot second. If Paul had seen his mother shot, he would not have cowered in the feed room. He would have run to stop the killer. Maggie had died with her body facing Paul. Owen felt sure she’d been running toward her son.
* * *
—
At daybreak, when the groundskeeper showed up for his daily shift, he seemed unaware that two members of the Murdaugh family were dead.
Agent Owen made a beeline for C. B. Rowe, knowing he was the only person Alex named as suspicious. Rowe was already well known to agents in SLED’s Walterboro office, where Owen was based. He was a former high school teacher who had been investigated by SLED and convicted years earlier of sexual battery for a relationship with a student. Owen led Rowe out to his Durango for an interview and they spent more than an hour going over Rowe’s dealings with the Murdaughs and his whereabouts before and after the murders. Based on a cursory glance at Rowe’s phone, Owen was satisfied that Rowe had probably been away from Moselle. He told Rowe he’d follow up and let him go about his day.
As soon as the interview was over, Rowe texted Alex, who had left for Almeda with Buster.
Alex for the last hour I have been interrogated by sled about the activities here, he wrote. It was[n’t] until the end that they told me what happened. I am so sorry for your loss and my prayers are with you and your family. If you need anything from me let me know.
Alex did not let on that he’d told SLED about Rowe’s outlandish vigilante claim, or that he’d been dissatisfied with Rowe’s work.
Thank u CB, he texted back. We will talk but We need to get the grounds clean--drive and yard for visitors if u can start on that.
* * *
—
There was no garbage pickup out in the country. So that Tuesday morning, Roger Dale Davis—the man who cared for the Murdaugh family’s dogs—was loading trash in his truck to take to the dump when the phone rang. It was C. B. Rowe.
“You need to get down here,” the groundskeeper said. “SLED wants to talk to you. Miss Maggie and Paul have been murdered.”
“You kidding me?” Davis asked. When Rowe assured him he was not, Davis put aside the bags. “I’ll be up there in a minute.”
Davis lived a little over a mile down Moselle Road. He’d been taking care of the Murdaughs’ dogs every morning and evening for four years. When he got to the kennels, it was feeding time, and the dogs were barking.
Davis greeted Agent Owen and asked if they could talk once he’d fed the dogs. After making sure the crime scene techs were done with the kennels, Owen told him to go ahead. The ten dog pens, Davis realized instantly, were a mess. Some of the dog beds were on the top of the pens, where they didn’t belong. Even more striking, several of the dogs were in the wrong pens. The hose was all kinked up and he hadn’t left it that way. He’d run it all the way out so it could dry then wrapped it neatly, like always.
Once Davis fed the dogs, they settled down. He and Owen walked back out to the Durango. Davis told the investigator that the previous day he’d followed his usual routine, feeding the dogs and changing their water and spraying out their pens around 7 a.m. He’d repeated the process at 4 p.m., though in the afternoon he only fed Bubba and the other dogs the family treated like pets. The working dogs ate once a day. Davis said the process had taken about forty-five minutes. Davis said he’d gone home, showered, and retired to his recliner. He hadn’t gotten up until bedtime. He said he hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary the day before, but now plenty was off. In addition to the pooled water and haphazardly wound hose, he was also struck by the fact that the family’s black work truck had been parked behind the shed. It hadn’t been there when Davis had left the previous afternoon.
He also couldn’t figure out who would have put Bubba in the wrong pen. The only person he would have expected to fool with the dogs was Miss Maggie. He knew that she often came down to the kennels to let the dogs run. She loved those dogs, he said, especially Bubba. She’d never have put the yellow Lab in the pen next to the feed room. It was not where he belonged.
* * *
—
Early that morning, the crime scene techs took down the yellow tape. Sheriff’s deputies towed Alex’s Suburban to the impound lot.
SLED’s decision to clear the scene so quickly would later become a major issue in court. Owen and the other investigators would be accused of rushing. Some would ask why the house itself was not sealed off and processed for evidence. Others would wonder why SLED and the Colleton County sheriff’s department had allowed so many civilians to wander the property, possibly contaminating the scene.
David Owen found the critiques irritating. When the 911 call came in, the scene was thought to be confined to the kennels. By the time any officers realized the house might be worth searching, dozens of people had walked through those rooms.
In any case, Alex’s statements had given the detectives a great deal to think about. Agent Owen thought it possible that Alex’s theory was right and the killings had been retribution for the boat crash case. It was also possible that two people had committed the murders. As Owen headed home to get some rest, he kept scanning the crime scene in his mind. It was strange, all the things the investigators had not found—no guns, no sign of a struggle, no tire tracks that suggested anyone fleeing in a getaway car.
Several things about Alex’s story did not feel right to Owen. To begin with, Alex had given two different explanations for how he had ended up holding Paul’s phone. He had told the captain he’d reached into his son’s pocket to pull it out. But in the Durango, with the two detectives, he’d said the phone had popped out of Paul’s pocket. Either way, it made no sense that he’d picked up the phone at all. As a prosecutor, Alex would have known not to touch evidence at a crime scene.
As Detective Rutland headed back to the office, she was thinking about Alex’s clothes, the ones bagged and ready to be entered into evidence. During the interview, watching from the back seat, Rutland had noticed how clean the clothes seemed, even Alex’s white T-shirt. It didn’t add up. Alex had told the detectives he had checked both Paul’s and Maggie’s pulse and had even tried turning over Paul’s body. So why were Alex’s shirt and shorts pristine? How had he managed to walk on blood-soaked ground and touch the bodies without getting blood on his shoes or clothes?
Detective Rutland had picked up on something else. At home, with her three kids, she was constantly doing laundry. And in the Durango, what she smelled coming from Alex was the scent of freshly washed clothes.
Part Five
Chapter Twenty-Five
Blanca was getting ready to go to work at Moselle that Tuesday morning when Alex called. His voice, normally so brash, sounded shaky.
“B, they’re gone,” he said. “They’re gone.”
“What do you mean?” she said. Maggie and Paul were supposed to have stayed over at Moselle. “Did Maggie go back to Edisto?”
“No, B,” he said. “They’re dead.”
She dropped the phone. Her husband picked it up and listened. “Alex and Buster are at Almeda,” her husband told her.
