Worth More Dead

younger than Maria, had lost his wife, his child, and now his mistress, but according to Maria, he accepted all of it with equanimity. He had asked her to divorce her husband and marry him, he had told her he loved her, but that was all in the past. Now, she was only his good friend: “the best friend he’d ever had.”
    Roland still needed Maria’s advice. He wanted to gain custody of his daughter, Bébé. Maria pointed out that a little girl should be with her mother. He didn’t agree with her. Maria didn’t know Cheryl Pitre, but Roland was adamant that he would make a more reliable parent for his toddler daughter.
    In June, Dennis Archer returned home. “We were going to be a family again,” Maria testified sadly. “My husband always said, ‘You don’t have to tell me everything,’ but I thought I would—but I didn’t want to hurt him.” Dennis seemed to accept her confessions, and she said their last weeks together were good. “My husband had changed. We would talk until four AM . We were going to leave and go camping. I told Roland I could finally express my feelings to my husband.”
     
    Everything appeared to have come together flawlessly like the seamless ending of a romance novel. Maria’s husband appreciated and communicated with her now. She said he had forgiven her for her few months of infidelity. And her lover wasn’t the least bit upset that she had gone back to her husband. According to her astounding revelations, Pitre had moved smoothly into the position of her best friend. No one was jealous. No one had an axe to grind, or revenge to seek. All the ends were tied up neatly, too neatly for a skeptic to believe.
    His divorce papers filed, Roland Pitre traveled to the East Coast and returned with his 20-month-old daughter and his sister around the first of July. He moved them into a new apartment in Oak Harbor. He called Maria to see how things were going with her. She remembered that she wasn’t really that happy to hear from him. She told him a little sharply, “It’s none of your business. My life is my life.”
    Apparently, she no longer needed him as a best friend at that point, and after that, she said she didn’t care to see him at all. Maria was totally reconciled with Dennis. Or so it seemed.

2
    It was 11:34 on Sunday night, July 13, 1980, when Maria Archer’s frantic phone call came into the Island County Sheriff’s Office in Coupeville, Washington, ten miles south of the Archer home. The dispatcher had to calm the female on the phone before he could understand what she was saying.
    “Someone has broken in and shot my husband!” she cried.
    The dispatcher was finally able to get the address, and he radioed the call to Deputy A. J. “Bud” Graves, who arrived at the residence in minutes. Graves found Maria and a neighbor waiting at the house on North Fairwood. She appeared very agitated, which was to be expected. She and the neighbor led Graves to an upstairs bedroom, where a man she identified as her husband, Dennis Archer, lay motionless.
    There was no question that Archer was dead; the front of his polo shirt was one giant splotch of crimson, and still-liquid blood stained the carpet beneath him. Still, Graves knelt next to the body, and felt in vain for a pulse. Whatever had happened had happened very recently. There was no rigor mortis, no lividity; the body was still faintly warm to his touch. Nevertheless, Archer was dead.
    Graves radioed for backup from Captain Robert E. Sharp, the head of Sheriff Richard Medina’s Criminal Investigation Unit. Detective Sergeant Ron Edwards was next up on the list to respond. Edwards was a ten-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, and he was about to become the investigator who would be principally responsible for probing into the baffling case.
    He quickly ordered deputies to cordon off the house and yard to prevent curious bystanders from contaminating any evidence that might be there.
    On the surface, the motive for Archer’s murder appeared to have been burglary: a stereo and other belongings of the family were stacked near the front door in the living room. Yet that was strange. The Archers, while comfortable, hardly seemed prime targets for a burglary. Nor did it seem prudent for a burglar to enter a home whose occupant, a husky, six-foot-tall 33-year-old naval officer was still awake. Far better to enter in the wee hours of the morning when the lights were out and the residents were sleeping.
    Trembling, Maria