Love Her To Death by M. William Phelps Read Free Book Online Page B

do. But you need to get consent from Mr. Roseboro to go into his house.”
    Martin said, “Okay.” He called Neff over. “Ask Roseboro if he’ll consent us to taking a walk-through of his house.”

9
    Detective Larry Martin had walked in and out of the interview with Michael Roseboro, talking to various people on the phone, doing his job as detective sergeant. Keith Neff waited for Roseboro to return from his break, so they could continue discussing what had happened. One professional Martin needed to get ahold of was the county coroner. There was a good chance the coroner, when given all the facts of the case, would order an autopsy of Jan Roseboro’s body, which might clear up things. Any type of “suspicious death” yields an autopsy. If Jan had had a heart attack, which was definitely on the minds of everyone, an autopsy would prove it and close the case.
    In the state of Pennsylvania, the coroner is an elected position. A coroner needs no background in the field to get the job.
    “The trash can,” someone in law enforcement told me, “if elected, could be the coroner in this state. You get the idea?”
    Coroners are not the same as pathologists. It’s a suit- and-tie office job, a tradition in Lancaster County that goes back some two hundred years.
    During the break, Larry Martin called the deputy coroner,who happened to be a doctor. He was in Elizabethtown, about a forty-five-minute drive west of Denver. Martin explained what was going on.
    “I’ll drive down to the hospital, check it out,” the deputy coroner promised, adding that it was going to be a while because he was tied up with another body. Unlike Denver, Reinholds, and those towns heading into Amish country from Lancaster City, downtown Lancaster was like any other major metropolis. Murderers and thugs and gangbangers were rather frequent creatures of the night.
    As were dead bodies.
    Martin said, “I’d like an autopsy.” It actually felt good saying that out loud, Martin thought. They were finally getting somewhere.
    It was going to be midmorning by the time he got out of there, the deputy coroner said.
    That was fine, Martin told him. Then he called Dr. Steven Zebert, the attending physician back at the hospital Jan had been brought to, explaining to the ER doctor what was going to happen next, saying, “I want to be there when the autopsy’s performed.”
    Zebert said okay. Then, seeing that he had Martin on the phone, the doctor mentioned that he had some news to share.
    “What’s going on?” Martin wondered aloud.
    “It’s not a bullet wound, Detective,” Zebert reported. “The X-ray clearly spells that out.”
    So she slipped and fell, Martin thought as he hung up the phone. Being especially careful, Martin didn’t want to rush to judgment.
    “I didn’t know it was a homicide,” Martin said later. “I had to be cautious. If this was an accidental drowning and we completely nuked this guy, and his wife had just died, that wouldn’t be right.”
    Because he knew Roseboro, and had met him professionally at times out in the field, Martin said, “WhenMike first told us his story, I probably gave it a bit more credibility knowing who he was….”
    All of that, however, was about to change.
    At 2:19 A.M., Detective Keith Neff resumed his interview with Michael Roseboro. After Neff asked about any drugs or medications Jan might have been taking, Roseboro said his wife took ten to twenty milligrams of Adderall every day. An amphetamine, Adderall is said to stimulate the central nervous system, influencing different chemicals in the brain, specifically those nerves that lead to hyperactivity and impulse control. It is prescribed to treat narcolepsy, a sleeping disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the ever-more-popular ADHD. According to her husband, Jan suffered from attention deficit disorder (ADD) and needed the medication to maintain a stable life, free of symptoms. This could turn out to be imperative to