Are You Sleeping
Kathleen Barber
Excerpt from transcript of Reconsidered: The Chuck Buhrman Murder, Episode 1: “An Introduction to the Chuck Buhrman Murder,” September 7, 2015
Charles “Chuck” Buhrman had no enemies. A mild-mannered professor of American history at a small midwestern liberal arts college, Chuck was respected by his colleagues and well liked by his students. Each year, students in the History Department at Elm Park College held an informal vote to determine their favorite professor, and each year, Chuck Buhrman was crowned the winner. By all accounts, he was similarly well regarded in the community of Elm Park, Illinois, where he made his home. People recalled his participation in thankless volunteer projects like organizing the annual town Halloween parade, selling raffle tickets to support the civic arts center, and manning the cash register at the library rummage sale. Even his family life seemed picturesque: a young, beautiful wife and a set of adoring, well-behaved daughters.
Chuck Buhrman was living the American Dream. But then, on October 19, 2002, this popular and congenial man met an untimely end—shot at point-blank range in the back of the head in his own kitchen.
Warren Cave, the seventeen-year-old next-door neighbor, was arrested and charged with the murder. He was convicted and is currently serving a life sentence.
Chuck Buhrman’s murder was a shocking, senseless crime, but at least justice has been served, right?
Right?
But what if Warren Cave didn’t do it? What if he’s spending his life in prison for a murder he did not commit?
My name is Poppy Parnell, and this is Reconsidered: The Chuck Buhrman Murder. I’m going to spend the next several weeks investigating these questions and others that may arise. My goal? To take a hard, unflinching look at the scant evidence that might have convicted an innocent man, and to perhaps uncover the truth—or put to rest any lingering doubts—about what really happened that fateful night in October 2002. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.
chapter 1
Nothing good happens after midnight. At least that’s what Aunt A used to tell us whenever we begged for later curfews. We would scoff and roll our eyes and dramatically pronounce she was ruining our social lives, but over time I came to see the wisdom in her words. Trouble is the only thing that occurs between midnight and sunrise.
So when my phone rang at three o’clock that morning, my first thought was, Something bad has happened.
I instinctively reached for Caleb, but my hand grasped only cool sheets. Momentary panic fluttered in my throat, but then I remembered Caleb was three weeks into a trip overseeing aid workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Still half asleep, I dimly worked out it was eight o’clock in the morning there. Caleb must have forgotten about the time difference or miscalculated it. Frankly, neither mistake seemed like him, but I knew how draining these trips were on him.
The phone rang again and I snatched it up with a hurried greeting, eagerly anticipating Caleb’s familiar Kiwi accent, the soft rumble of his voice saying, “Jo, love.”
But there was nothing. I sighed in frustration. Caleb’s calls from abroad were always marked with exasperating delays, echoes, and strange clicks, but they had been particularly difficult on this trip.
“Hello?” I tried again. “Caleb? . . . I think we have a bad connection.”
But even as the words left my mouth, I noted the lack of static. The connection was crisp. So crisp, in fact, that I could hear the sound of someone breathing. And . . . something else. What was that? I strained to listen and thought I heard someone humming, the tune familiar but unplaceable. A warning tingle danced up my spine.
“Caleb,” I said again, even though I was no longer convinced my boyfriend was on the other end of the line. “I’m going to hang up. If you can hear me, call me back. I miss you.”
I lowered the phone, and in the second before I pushed the disconnect button, I heard a hauntingly familiar feminine voice quietly say, “I miss you, too.”
I dropped the phone, my hand shaking and my heart thundering against my rib cage. It was just a bad connection, I told myself. Those had been my own words echoed back at me. There had been no “too.” It was three in the morning, after all. It hadn’t been her. It couldn’t have been. It had been nearly ten years; she wouldn’t call me now, not like this.
Something bad has happened.
I grabbed the phone and checked my call log, but there were no clues, just a vague UNKNOWN CALLER.
Something bad has happened, I thought again before sternly ordering myself to stop. It was only Caleb, only a bad transcontinental connection, nothing that hadn’t happened before.
But it still took me two doses of NyQuil before I could fall back asleep.
It was almost eleven by the time I woke, and in the light of day, the mysterious early-morning phone call seemed like nothing more than a bad dream. I fired off a quick, confident email to Caleb (Sorry we had such a bad connection last night. Call again soon. xoxo) and laced up my running shoes. I paused in the doorway of the Cobble Hill brownstone to chat about the weather with the elderly woman who lived on the first floor, and then took off toward the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.