Gone Boy: A Father’s Search for the Truth in His Son’s Murder by Gregory Gibson

Author:Gregory Gibson [Gibson, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58394-286-4
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2011-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

14

WHAT ABOUT BOB?

There was one other bit of information in that yard of documents that particularly caught my eye. From having gone over the case so thoroughly, from having talked with so many people, from having sat in that courtroom for four weeks, I thought I was familiar with all the players. Of the hundred-odd witnesses listed, and of all the names of people who had given statements, there was only one name I did not recognize.

According to the commonwealth’s supplemental certificate of discovery dated March 30, 1993, a man named Robert Herring, Sr. had given two statements to the police on January 26, 1993. It was noted that one had been handwritten, the other typed. The address of Robert Herring, Sr. was in Lee, Massachusetts, just two towns over from Great Barrington.

I did not have the text of Robert Herring’s statement, just a document that said it existed. When I got back home I did a word search through all my computer files, and even dug up the old newspaper clippings and my handwritten notes. Who the hell was Robert Herring, Sr. and what did he know?

By the end of July I was driving through Lee, Massachusetts, on my way back to Pittsfield to pick up the 250 pages of documents that the ladies in the clerk’s office had copied for me. At the edge of town, right before the train tracks, I located Robert Herring, Sr.’s address. It was a strange little triangular shop at the corner of a building, which also housed a laundromat and a coffee shop. Herring’s shop had a big awning out in front, and junk was piled on the street under the awning. It was somewhat more interesting than flea market junk, but it was still junk.

I found a parking place and walked back to the shop. It was called Bob’s Corner Store. A wooden sign on the front door said, “Herring.” The door was open but there was no one inside. Bob’s Corner Store was an avalanche from the bottoms of decades of estate sales; of sorry box lots from country auctions; of cast off stuff from the backs of countless pickup trucks. There were old shop signs, iron farm hardware, fifty-year-old lighting fixtures, picture frames, costume jewelry, dinnerware, diplomas, humidors, knives, decoys, movie posters and, at the apex of the triangle, several shelves full of old books. My entree.

Twenty years in the old book business had brought me to many places like this. I knew exactly what to do. Without hesitation I dove into that sea of dust and petrified rat droppings. I no longer thought about Galen or the trial, or about Wayne Lo or John Hernandez or the gun both had owned, or the Berkshire County Superior Court, or even Robert Herring, Sr. I thought about nothing. I was just eyes.

The junk orgy came out better than I could have hoped. I was able to catch a box of sash weights just before it fell off the shelf and

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