deep breath, and go to the front door, which is wide open. This doesn’t feel like a good sign, and it’s not the only one. Coming through the open door is a stench that is unlike anything I have ever experienced.
In every movie I have ever seen where this situation occurs, there is a dead body waiting to be discovered by the hero. The only thing missing here is the hero, because if it’s me then I’m miscast.
I turn and look around, hoping to see Corvallis or someone who will provide guidance. Seeing no one, I softly say, “The door is open and it smells awful.” I’m sure they can hear me in the van, but the communication is only one way, so they can’t answer me, and it does me no good.
I decide to go in, because not to do so is to leave and therefore make no progress. Besides, while the stench may mean a dead body, it also would mean the body has been dead for a while. Therefore, if someone murdered that body, he has had plenty of chance to leave already.
I walk through the foyer and living room, covering my nose with my sleeve and ridiculously calling out “hello!”—as if Robinson were going to come walking out saying, Andy, welcome. I was cooking us fried horse manure for dinner. Smells delicious, doesn’t it?
When I get to the kitchen, I come upon what is easily the most disgusting sight I have ever seen… the most disgusting sight anyone has ever seen. What used to be Charles Robinson sits at the kitchen table, but he is no longer human. It is as if his enormous body has melted from the inside out, and he is covered with disgusting blotches of ooze and blood. Much of it has dripped to the floor.
I once saw the decapitated, burned body of a corrupt cop, and I later saw his head wrapped in plastic. Those were disgusting sights, but compared with this they were like a field of daffodils.
I start to run from the kitchen, simultaneously pressing the panic button and screaming, “Get in here! Get in here!” The words don’t come out quite as clearly as I would like, because my vomit gets in the way.
When I reach the outside, I literally fall to the ground and gasp for air. Agents rush to me, no doubt thinking that I’m hurt, but I motion for them to go in. Corvallis then comes running to me with two agents and Laurie, and I gasp what has happened.
Laurie stays with me as everyone else goes inside. I’m still on the ground, gasping, trying to keep the remainder of my last twelve meals down. It is not my finest moment, but right now I can’t worry about that. I just have to get control and figure out how not to be haunted the rest of my life by what I’ve just seen.
Within fifteen minutes, there are so many vehicles at the Robinson house you’d think the Yankees were playing the Red Sox in the backyard. I’m sure every FBI agent in the tristate area has been summoned, and I can see a bunch of people with forensics equipment.
Corvallis comes out and greets one of the arriving men as “Doctor,” and he brings him into the house. If this guy can do anything for Robinson, I am going to make him my personal physician for life.
Crime scenes take forever, and as the closest thing to a witness, I know that I am going to have to wait around to be questioned. Two hours go by, during which Laurie and I stroll around the grounds. I tell her in detail what I saw, and the act of walking in the fresh air and being with her makes me feel considerably better.
Finally, Corvallis comes over to talk to me. “We need a statement,” he says.
I just nod my understanding.
“You okay?” he asks, showing more concern than I expected. “It is pretty rough in there.”
“What happened to him?” I ask.
“Let’s do the statement first, okay?”
“Okay.” This is the correct procedure; if he were to tell me anything that they learned, it could be viewed as prejudicing my statement.
I basically have little to say about the actual scene; all I did was walk in and discover the body. Everyone who followed saw exactly the same thing as I did, and I’m sure by now it has been memorialized by hundreds of pictures. But I do insist on including in