The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs Read Free Book Online Page A

with his elbows perched on the headrest, pressing his face against the window to peer up and down the block. He crouched in the expectant way he did whenever he knew that Skeet was en route. The ceiling fan creaked and wobbled on high speed above his head. She’d told Rob many times not to situate himself this way. Stray bullets didn’t actually concern her, though this was sometimes the reasoning she used. She just didn’t want him to become too interested in the daily and nightly rhythms of their block; she didn’t want him to know all the loiterers and hustlers by name, the way Skeet always had. She told him to sit back, away from the window, and then she initiated the hardest conversation she’d ever had with her son.
    Afterward, she didn’t remember what exact words she’d employed to explain what had happened. She’d told him that the crime was ­murder—but not how many victims and not that they were women. She’d told him where his father was and that she had no idea how long he would be there. She’d told him that he could visit when he was ready.
    The boy nodded throughout and picked at his thick, coarse hair with thumb and index finger, saying less and less as his face tightened into an almost sepulchral mask. Unusual for him, he never asked, “Why?” The question he kept asking instead was, “When is he coming back?”
    At that point, Jackie had no idea. All she could say was, “Soon. He’ll come back soon.”

    T WO ARMS OF the criminal justice system—the county prosecutor’s office and the office of the public defender—had already begun moving. As usual, both moved glacially, the former a little less so.
    Thomas Lechliter, the Essex County prosecutor assigned to the case, immediately began interviewing the police officers who had first encountered and searched the crime scene and the detectives investigating the murder that had occurred there. He did not need much time to assemble the events that unfolded between the night of Friday, August 7, when Georgianna Broadway, Estella Moore, and Charlene Moore convened at the Moores’ apartment for a night of liquor and cocaine, and the morning of Sunday, August 9, when Robert “Skeet” Douglas was arrested in a friend’s home near Branch Brook Park, the loaded murder weapon reportedly tucked into his belt.
    Late on that Friday night, Georgianna Broadway and her roommate, Deborah Neal, went to visit the Moore sisters at 7 Chestnut Street in East Orange. The four women took turns holding Charlene’s four-month-old baby boy, they drank cocktails and malt liquor, they danced and complained about work and men and poverty—until midnight, when Georgianna took Deborah home to the house they shared on Palm Street. Georgianna then proceeded to 17th Avenue in Newark, one of the most dangerous areas of the city, to buy $40 worth of cocaine. She returned to the Moores’ apartment at around one fifteen. At thatpoint, Estella left with a man named Mervin Matthews to go drink at a nearby bar. Georgianna and Charlene sat together in the dining area. Georgianna drank Colt 45 malt liquor; Charlene drank rum and Coke. Both smoked cocaine while the baby slept in the crib in the bedroom. Georgianna smoked regularly, and so her highs lasted only fifteen minutes. For four hours, while Charlene nodded off, Georgianna had hit after hit, until $40 had been cooked into her respiratory and nervous systems. The baby cried but fell back to sleep.
    When Estella came home with Mervin at five thirty on Saturday morning, Georgianna asked if she could sleep there. She’d been up for twenty-four straight hours that had begun with a full workday. In the bedroom, with the crib at their feet, Georgianna and Charlene curled up together, backs to the door. They slept.
    On his way home, Mervin Matthews stopped to buy cigarettes and realized he still had Estella’s keys, so he returned to