The night of the killing, I arrived at the bar just as I had the night before, only this time I was met and turned away by a plainclothes detective in an unmarked car.
It's closed, he told me shortly, We're investigating something.
Is everybody alright? I asked.
Don't know, he shrugged.
But he did know. He knew, as surely as everyone would know over the next few hours, that the owner of the bar - a five star pub and as embedded a fixture in downtown as the sidewalks - had been found shot to death that very afternoon in her quiet and quite ordinary suburban home. He knew that her live-in boyfriend, chef of the five star pub, was on the run.
Over the next 24 hours, as police released details - multiple gunshots wounds, no forced entry - the music community went into mourning. Stories of suspected domestic abuse began to emerge along with tales of convictions for several DWI's and aggravated cruelty to animals. Chef was known to be gun-happy - everyone had a story of the arsenal he allegedly maintained in the pub's second story - and we all remembered the night he'd lost his temper with a customer and shot up the place. That had cost him a brief stay in jail and the pub had been closed for several weeks but no one had been injured. As someone who'd taken hundreds if not thousands of pictures in the tavern, I'd had my own run-ins with him and thought him a gruff, disagreeable, anti-social and arrogant old son of bitch but it'd had never crossed my mind that he might kill. Social media thought otherwise, I realized, even before the warrant for his arrest on a charge of second degree murder was issued, there were dozens of comments from people who'd "see it coming for years" or "weren't the least bit surprised". There were calls for vengeance in the name of justice, a handful of innocent until proven guilty reminders, but mostly, there was shock and profound sadness and a sense of it not being quite real. A woman we all knew was dead and a man we all knew was accused. Murder happens but not to people you've had drinks or dinner with, not to people you actually know.
On the second day, the popular belief being that he'd "fled the jurisdiction", U.S. Marshals joined in the search. More horror stories - combinations of guns and alcohol usually - surfaced and social media began adding tributes to the victim. It had taken less then 36 hours for her to be sainted and him to be condemned.
On the third day, he's arrested in Mexico.
Lying in bed and waiting for sleep, unable to wrap my mind about it and equally unable to let it go, I thought of my second husband and my mother, the too many to count times I'd come close to one end or the other of that kind of violence. It makes me wonder if anything about a murder - or for that matter, any dynamic between any two people - can possibly be so saint/sinner black and white.
On the second day, the popular belief being that he'd "fled the jurisdiction", U.S. Marshals joined in the search. More horror stories - combinations of guns and alcohol usually - surfaced and social media began adding tributes to the victim. It had taken less then 36 hours for her to be sainted and him to be condemned.
On the third day, he's arrested in Mexico.
Lying in bed and waiting for sleep, unable to wrap my mind about it and equally unable to let it go, I thought of my second husband and my mother, the too many to count times I'd come close to one end or the other of that kind of violence. It makes me wonder if anything about a murder - or for that matter, any dynamic between any two people - can possibly be so saint/sinner black and white.
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