In the Still of the Night by Ann Rule Read Free Book Online Page B

in the Reynolds home, but not terribly upset.
    Ron Reynolds was stoic, apparently determined to keep from giving in to emotion. It seemed that he hadn't yet accepted that Ronda was gone.
    Even rookie police officers soon learn that human beings react in many different ways to tragedies and sudden death; some go all to pieces, sobbing and shaking, while others may seem calm when they are really in deep shock.
    Although it hadn't even begun to get light on this morning only five days from the shortest day of the year in Washington state, the death scene was crowded and becoming more so. Ideally, the fewer people allowed at the site of an unexplained death, the better. Two investigators are enough to take photographs, hold opposite ends of a measuring tape, and gather, preserve, and label evidence. Usually the first to arrive are patrol deputies or police patrolmen who keep the scene secure until detectives can respond. The presence of family, friends, neighbors--and even police supervisors--raises the risk of contamination of physical evidence.
    Jerry Berry, the detective who would soon take over the investigation of Ronda Reynolds's death, calls them "Looky-Loos," and he includes members of the sheriff's department and "the brass" who invade a crime scene.
    To begin with, there were just two deputies--Bob Bishop and Gary Holt--along with the paramedics. Deputy Bishop had arrived only three minutes after Holt did. When Bishop observed Ronda's body, he saw that she lay on her left side, was covered with an electric blanket--which was turned on--and had her head on a pillow.
    "I didn't see any weapon," Bishop wrote in his report.

    A S THE AID CREW
gathered up their gear, ready to clear the premises, Gary Holt asked Ron Reynolds to step into the kitchen. He wanted to tape an interview of Reynolds's recall of events while they were still fresh in his mind. The three boys were gone, but at least Ron was still there.
    Ron told him that he had come home the night before at about 8:30. He and Ronda had had a prolonged argument; they were in the process of separating. He said he was worried when she began talking about suicide. He had told her to stop talking about killing herself, to stay with him and not leave him.
    "I'd found the empty holster for my gun," he continued, "and I asked her where the gun was. She told me she'd given it to Dave Bell--a friend of hers--for safekeeping, so I wasn't as concerned then because I knew it wasn't in the house."
    (When Jerry Berry read Bishop's follow-up report, he shook his head slightly. He'd learned that Reynolds was a black powder expert and a hunter, and it was rare for men interested in guns and ballistics to allow their weapons to be given away. Especially to his wife's old boyfriend. His intuition told him that Ron would have been angry if he thought Ronda had given his father's handgun to anyone.)
    When Reynolds spoke to Deputy Gary Holt that first morning at 7:13, he said he'd done his best to stay awake all night so he could watch over Ronda in her depressed state, but by about five in the morning he became so exhausted, he figured he must have fallen asleep. The last thing he rememberedwas that he sensed his wife was in bed next to him. When he was awakened by his alarm clock at six, she wasn't there. He hadn't heard any unusual noises during the hour since he dropped off to sleep.
    "I began to look for her, and I found her in the bathroom closet on the floor," Reynolds said.
    "I took her pulse," he told Holt once more.
    He had seen the terrible injury just below her right temple, and called 911.
    This was only the second statement the school principal had made. There would be many more as some investigators dug deeper and others were ready to mark Ronda's case "Closed. Death by suicide."
    Something bothered Deputy Bob Bishop. Ron Reynolds said that he hadn't heard a gunshot because both the bathroom and closet doors were closed. And yet Ronda died only about twelve to fifteen feet