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didn’t know at this point whose side of the family they were from—gave Neff a feeling that he was not wanted. There was a sadness there for what had happened, implicit on the faces of everyone. But it was overshadowed in some ways by an eerie feeling of coldness, Neff later explained. It made the detective feel that in the Roseboro house, men in blue were the enemy. That Neff and his cohorts from the ECTPD were unwelcome guests and needed to leave at once.

8
    Jan and Michael Roseboro’s friends Rebecca Donahue and Gary Frees offered to drive Roseboro to the ECTPD so he could speak with Keith Neff and Larry Martin. It had to be done. Roseboro needed to clear up any confusion, add any details he could, so Detective Neff, now the lead investigator, could write his reports. After that was done, Roseboro could focus on perhaps the most important part of the ordeal thus far: preparing his three youngest children, who were still sound asleep back at the house, for what would be the worst news of their lives. Sam was the only Roseboro child to know what had happened. Sam was back at the scene, family surrounding him, some later claimed, walking around the pool deck area, smoking cigarettes, and, one might guess, searching for answers.
    A teacher of special education, Rebecca Donahue lived about a mile away from the Roseboro house. She had known Jan for “a little over ten years,” Rebecca later said, and considered herself to be Jan’s best friend. Before Jan and Michael had moved into Jan’s childhood home on West Main and Creek Road, they lived “two houses down from me, and across the street from my mother, and we were together often. My kids were at herhouse, and her kids were at my house, staying overnight and [on] holidays [and] birthdays.” Rebecca Donahue had been over to the Roseboro house socially on Sunday and Monday of that week. It was gut-wrenching for Rebecca to think that Jan was no longer going to be there to talk to, or whiz by with the kids, stop in, maybe have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. It was those subtle, everyday experiences we think are just simply part of our daily lives we miss the most after tragedy strikes. The way in which Rebecca was notified that something had happened to Jan was enough, in and of itself, to jolt her into the stark reality that Jan was gone forever. Rebecca had been sleeping. Susan Van Zant, Jan’s sister, had tried calling, but Rebecca wasn’t answering her phone. So Susan grabbed Mike Texter and drove over to Rebecca’s house. Susan was frantic. Crying. Shaking. She had walked in, found Rebecca, and put it as bluntly as possible: “Jan’s gone…. She had a heart attack and fell in the pool and drowned.”
    Yet no one, by that time of the night (near midnight), had said how Jan had died, or if Jan was even dead. Susan Van Zant, better known as Suzie, was telling people Jan was gone before the ER doctor had pronounced her.
    During the quick ride, in which Gary Frees drove and Rebecca Donahue sat in the back, Michael Roseboro was quiet. Frees, Jan’s sister Suzie’s boyfriend at the time, had known Jan and Michael for just over a year.
    Neff and Martin were ready and waiting for Roseboro, who walked into the lobby of the ECTPD through the glass doors around to the back of the town building. The ECTPD’s foyer is about a five-by-ten-foot area of whitewashed concrete cinder block walls. There are a few stiff and uncomfortable chairs for sitting on each side as you walk in. There’s a bulletin board with posters reminding the public that crime doesn’t pay and that drugs make you stupid and put you in prison. Directly facing people as they enter, there’s a door leading intothe small “squad room” office space, and another door, to the right, leading into the two-cell holding tank and booking station.
    Small-town Andy Griffith stuff.
    Sitting in the lobby, waiting for Detectives Neff and Martin, Roseboro was quiet. The room was well lit, and Gary Frees sat