PACIFIC, Mo. -- In the northwest corner of Peggy Matlock's home, there is a window where the mini-blinds are closed nearly all the time.

Matlock can't bear to see out the window. In its range of view, about 80 yards away, stands 2014 Green Oak Lane, a single-story ranch home with a decorative red-and-yellow fireplug nearby. The sunny-colored house with the attached garage is where police found the body of her 25-year-old granddaughter, victim of a ruled suicide by gunshot.

Hours earlier, in one of her last living acts, Stacy Nicole Clem -- who, along with her 6-year-old son, lived with her grandparents -- had pulled weeds from a plant bed in a corner of the home's landscaped yard, belonging to her boyfriend. Last month, a U.S. flag, sun-bleached and tattered along its edge, flew in an intermittent daytime breeze atop a flagpole standing near the plant bed.

"She can't look over there without breaking down," said Matlock's 83-year-old husband, Tom, a soft-spoken retired carpenter and World War II Navy veteran. "She wants to move somewhere (else) in Pacific so she can't see the house where her granddaughter was killed. She can't ever get it out of her mind."

The death of Clem three years ago was ruled a suicide, but rumors and questions continue to hang over the case in this city of about 7,200 residents that straddles both Franklin and St. Louis counties. The Matlocks themselves don't put faith in the suicide finding, arguing their granddaughter was making both short and long-term plans for she and her son, Christian. Police interviews with friends and at least one acquaintance also present a picture of a woman unlikely to take her own life either in the days or hours before her body was found.

Then there are what could be perceived as gaffes in the police investigation:

-- Clem's body was found in a blue Jeep Cherokee in the garage, dressed only in a blue T-shirt, after a day of heavy drinking in which she spent time with her boyfriend, official documents show in the death of June 30, 2006, a Friday. Despite her state of dress, and that Clem had been in the home the night before, as well as a coroner's on-site assessment that "so far indications ... appear to be that (Clem) died from a self-inflected (sic) gunshot wound, and not foul play," police make no mention in a police report of entering the home's living quarters as part of their investigation.

The T-shirt Clem was found in was a Pacific Fire Protection District shirt, records show. Her boyfriend was a district volunteer firefighter at the time.

-- No gunpowder residue test was done on either of Clem's hands, nor did police bag her hands for testing, according to Pacific Police Chief Jim Brune.

-- The police incident report says police told the boyfriend, a local businessman more than 20 years Clem's elder, and the owner of both the firearm and vehicle, that he would need to come by the Pacific Police Department to be interviewed "as soon as he is able." The boyfriend, Keith Harlan Bruns, didn't show up at the department to be interviewed until six days later.

-- The report mentions nothing about the vehicle being impounded. But in addition to a spent shell casing and the firearm, an HS Products XD9 9mm handgun, the report says police seized a second fired bullet from the driveway about three feet from the street. Police later reported that Julie Howe, the on-site coroner with the Franklin County Sheriff's Department, reported the bullet that killed Clem "was so fragmented, that there was not enough to compare with the bullet found in the driveway or with the weapon that belonged to Keith Bruns."

Speaking for the benefit of background, a St. Louis-area police officer said it was not uncommon for a suicide victim to fire a test round, suggesting the gun could have been fired twice.

Peggy Matlock said Bruns himself informed her afterwards that he had replaced the home's carpeting and repainted its interior, actions she questions.

"Why was it necessary to replace everything in the house? That doesn't make sense to me."

Clem's mother, Sherry Littleton, doesn't believe her daughter committed suicide and resolutely maintains Clem wouldn't have been dressed in the fashion she was when her body was found. Littleton said her daughter was self-conscious about her body, specifically stretch marks left over from her pregnancy with her son. Also, she said, she never would have gone without underwear.

"I don't think Stacy left us" this way, said Littleton, who cried looking over police reports and the autopsy findings, all records she hadn't seen before. "If you knew my daughter.... Stacy loved Stacy. If she was going to do something like that, she would have put on her makeup and dressed to the nines. But at the time I didn't ask any questions (of police). It took me three days to tell Christian.

"I just took 600 pictures of him before I told him, because I knew his life was going to change forever."

Conflicting Accounts

Bruns, 49, owns KHB Enterprise Inc., which operates Subway sandwich shops in the cities of Pacific, Eureka, Villa Ridge and Union. He also owns Keithco Properties Inc. and has rental property.

Bruns refused to be interviewed for this story, denying several requests. "I don't want you writing about that," he said.

There are three separate accounts of the night prior to Clem's body being found. Two accounts are provided by Bruns himself. The third was reported in the semi-weekly Washington Missourian newspaper, in a story that quoted by name only Brune, whom the Matlocks claim is a personal friend of Bruns. As an ex-volunteer firefighter, the Matlocks say, Bruns knows many of the department's officers.

The news story contrasts heavily with the other accounts. In a paragraph unattributed to a source, the story reports that Clem came to Bruns' home the evening of June 29 as he returned from helping to fight a fire, but Bruns told her to leave.

However, in his interview six days after Clem's death, Bruns puts he and Clem together, off-and-on, the day and evening before. As well, Bruns said he returned home from fighting the fire not the evening of June 29, but at 8 o'clock that morning.

As he returned home, Bruns said, Clem showed up. She later stayed at the home to pull weeds while he went to check on his Subway stores.

Police also describe Clem in the news story as an "acquaintance" whom Bruns had previously dated for some time and who continued to come to his home uninvited.

"This appeared to be a straightforward suicide," Brune was quoted as saying. "There was absolutely no su#####ion on Mr. Bruns."

Bruns told police in his interview that he returned home between 9:30 and 10 p.m. on June 29 after having dinner in Eureka with his father, Harlan Bruns. Clem, who was still at the home, then seduced him into having sex in the garage, Bruns said. Afterwards, Clem convinced him to drive her to a friend's home in nearby Gray Summit, and the couple returned to Bruns' home about 12:30 a.m. the following day, he said.

Again at home, the interview report says, Bruns told Clem he needed to go to bed, but that she was welcome to stay the night. In the event she did not, Bruns said he told her to set the home's alarm and lock the door as she left.

He said he went to his bedroom, turned on a television and fell asleep. Waking about 8:30 a.m., he said, and not finding Clem sleeping inside the house, he got ready for work.

When he went to his vehicle, Bruns said, he found Clem's body in the drivers seat. She was dead of a gunshot wound to the head. The drivers side door was still open and Clem's left foot was at rest on the garage floor. Nine hours had passed since Bruns reported last seeing her.

A public information request discovered no 911 emergency call to police reporting the death. Rather, a department employee said in a written note that "the call in question ... came in on the business line."

A representative with the Missouri Secretary of State's Office said police departments are required to maintain audio recordings of incoming phone calls for 12 months.

A Drinking Problem

Bruns told police he had driven Clem to a local convenience store on four occasions over a span of about 14 hours to buy single bottles of wine. The fourth bottle was found half empty in the vehicle's center console area, next to Clem's body. An autopsy by the office of St. Louis Medical Examiner Mary Case put Clem's blood-alcohol content at .123 percent, just over one and one-half times the state's legal limit.

Clem's grandparents admit she had a drinking problem. In a police interview after Clem's death, the grandparents said they found two empty Vodka pint bottles in her room that weren't there the day before.

Her granddaughter hid her problem well, Peggy Matlock said. "There's one thing about it: she might have been an alcoholic, but she always took care of that baby (Christian)," she added.

No Special Treatment

Brune, the police chief, denies that he and Bruns are close friends. He admits knowing Bruns for many years, as well as his close personal family, but Brune said Bruns receives no special treatment from police. Rather, he said, Bruns has been issued traffic tickets for numerous auto accidents in Pacific, due to a leg problem. The leg was injured when Bruns' vehicle was struck by a train as he drove around a gated railroad crossing while responding to a call as a volunteer firefighter in 1977. The call turned out to be a false alarm.

Asked why police wouldn't have entered the home considering Clem's state of dress, Brune -- despite the incident report putting him at the scene -- said he wasn't sure police hadn't.

Asked if police thought Clem would have been only in the garage dressed in that manner, Brune responded that possibly Clem had been "stalking" Bruns.

Police didn't do a gunpowder residue test on Clem's hands because officers were under a misguided assumption that it would be done by the medical examiner's office, explained Brune. And police did not bag Clem's hands for testing because about nine hours had passed since anyone reported seeing Clem, he said.

Brune said the vehicle wasn't impounded because it was in a secure, inside environment. Bruns told police he kept the handgun in the vehicle because of the large amount of cash he carries for his businesses.

The case's lead detective, Arthur Tullock, did not return several phone messages left for him over a two-week period. He later refused an interview, saying the case was closed.

An Unlikely Suicide Victim

Tom Matlock said he and his wife raised Clem since she was a baby and that she lived with them maybe 90 percent of the time. He was Clem's step-grandfather, but said their relationship was extremely close.

The couple described Clem as a committed, loving mother to her son. Though Clem spent the night at Bruns' home a lot, Peggy Matlock said, she always made sure she was home before her son woke in the morning. "It was a high passion," Tom Matlock said of the mother-son relationship.

The boy now lives with his father in Illinois.

Clem, as well, had a knack for electronics, Peggy Matlock said. "She always fixed her TV when it went bad."

Not only were Clem's relatives in disbelief over her suicide, so were friends. They described Clem as being up-beat in the time before her death.

Peggy Matlock stressed Clem, who worked at the Franklin County Humane Society, was planning to enroll at Sanford-Brown College in Fenton to study business administration. Short-term, Clem had scheduled a lunch engagement with a friend the next Monday and had planned to take her son to Six Flags in Eureka that same week to see Fourth of July fireworks, said Matlock.

Counted among Clem's friends was Cathy Potter, the friend Clem visited the night immediately before her death. In her police interview, Potter, a co-worker at the humane society, said Clem visited about 45 minutes before leaving around 1 a.m. Bruns remained in the vehicle to sleep.

Among other things, Clem talked to her about an argument she had with Bruns' father, Harlan, over her being at his son's home, Potter said. Potter said Clem told her Keith Bruns smoothed things over with her after his father left, convincing Clem to stay.

Tom Matlock said Harlan Bruns would berate Clem when he found her at his son's home, located approximately a half mile by car from his own. He assumed the elder Bruns thought Clem was after his son's money.

"Harlan treated her worse than anybody I've ever seen. He just hated her." He added: "I never did hear her holler back at him."

Harlan Bruns refused to talk to a reporter for this story.

A Relationship on the Rocks

Information gathered by police suggest a rocky, physical relationship between Clem and Bruns, and one potentially nearing its end.

A friend, Kelly Mullen, told police Clem said three weeks prior that she was breaking off her relationship with Bruns and planned to marry an unidentifed high school friend, whom she had recently reconnected with. Mullen, who babysat Clem as a child, said Clem asked her to serve as a wedding ceremony witness before a justice of the peace.

In Potter's interview, Potter said she asked Clem during their conversation to spend the night at her house, rather than go back with Bruns. Clem claimed she and Bruns were getting along, Potter said, but Eileen Clark, Potter's mother, said Clem told her daughter that if she didn't go back with Bruns, he would cause a problem.

Clem's grandparents echoed a similar desire in Bruns to keep Clem around. Whenever Clem would come home to the Matlock residence, Bruns would call for her to come back to his house, Peggy Matlock said.

"It was constant. (She'd say), `Grandma, I've got to go back. He'll be mad if I don't.'"

Police also interviewed a Crystal Milkovich, girlfriend of Roy Middleton. Peggy Matlock identified Middleton as the father of Clem's son.

Milkovich said Clem told her Bruns had slapped her in the past.

A public information request discovered one property damage complaint against Clem at Bruns' home. Police arrested Clem the night of April 16, 2006 -- about two and one-half months before her death -- on complaints signed by Bruns for property damage and peace disturbance, records show. Police were called to the residence by Bruns, who said Clem was banging on the screen door to his back entrance, and while doing so, broke the screen from the door.

Bruns said Clem -- whom police report was intoxicated -- punched him in the face, and tried to hit him several more times, but he declined to sign an assault complaint.

The adjudication of the case was unavailable. City Court Clerk Nina Weatherspoon said the case was listed as closed and confidential.

Additionally, a neighbor reported hearing Clem and Bruns arguing at the home the evening prior to Clems' death. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the neighbor said Bruns told Clem to leave him alone, to let him clean his gun. The neighbor estimated the argument took place around 6 p.m.

Tom Matlock said Bruns must have been quite attached to Clem because he purchased her burial vault and paid for her grave to be dug. Bruns also has expressed a desire to have Clem, who is buried in Matlock's family graveyard in St. James, Mo., re-interred in his own family's graveyard plot, Matlock said.

Police initially told Peggy Matlock she could see the police report, she said. "But everytime I called, they had excuses." She also called about seeing the autopsy report, to no avail, she said, and gave up after two weeks.

Three years later, answers in the case have been few, if any, for the Matlocks.

Peggy Matlock noted it's tough for her to express her bitterness over all that's happened in regard to her granddaughter. That bitterness will last until her last day on Earth, she said.

"The day she was born, they laid her in my arms," Matlock said of Clem. "We had her all her life. We were more or less her shield and protector."

Editor's note: Tom Matlock passed away in early June. He was buried next to Clem, Peggy Matlock said.

Sitting in an area establishment of the large-chain variety, I just witnessed a small, black SUV pull in line for the drive-up window. On its back window was the written, trumpeted message, "Just Married!" The proud declaration brought to mind a current piece in The Atlantic magazine, questioning whether our most sacred institution is a doomed dinosaur mired in a tarpit.

Personally, I'm constantly amazed that people still choose to get married. All the poetry and literature that's been written over all the past centuries, and people still choose to make the same mistake over and over again.

Someone once said or wrote: "The greatest vested interest is not property, but ignorance." I couldn't be in more agreement.

There's a tradition in my hometown of Pacific. Each fall, Jesus Christ becomes a caveman.
 
Not a caveman as in a troglodyte, but a caveman nonetheless.
    
You see, sometime prior to the Christmas season, in a small cave in a sandstone bluff directly overlooking scenic Route 66, a manger scene appears -- as if by miracle.
     
I guess I just haven't seen the manger scene's erectors. Or, if I have, I don't recall it. But each year, in this cave with its equipped electrical box, the baby Jesus is reborn amid the limelight.
 
The locals love the scene, especially at night. Visitors I have met in town -- some traveling Route 66 for nostalgic joy -- love it. There's only one problem: the manger scene is displayed on public property, something we all know -- or at least should, courtesy of court decisions dealing with similar cases -- is a no-no.
 
For years, I've generally kept the question locked in my mind: why would the people or person responsible do this when they know it's been ruled to be wrong?
 
Last fall I tracked down the man behind the scene. I discussed in a phone call with him all the standard issues: the overlapping of the religious with U.S. secular government, that everyone is not Christian, that everyone is not even religious. I added that, if someone was so inclined, he could file a complaint with the American Civil Liberties Union.
 
To say he was dismissive toward my concern is an understatement. It doesn't account for the arrogance he displayed.
 
He replied, `EJ, knock yourself out' -- and suggested I have fun doing it.
 
I found myself at a loss to argue with his suggestion. So early last December, I filed a complaint with the ACLU of Eastern Missouri, outlining the details of the case and our discussion.
 
Apparently the case is still under consideration. Earlier this year I received a letter from the ACLU acknowledging it had received the complaint. The letter said the organization's Legal Intake Department would contact me once it determined if it could help.
 
I don't have a problem with a manger scene being displayed. The props serve the Christian story. But I do have a problem with it being on public property, as should anyone who lives in a country where a government shouldn't endorse a particular religion, and rightly so.
 
There are a couple ways to address this, solutions that would serve nearly everyone -- whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, atheist or agnostic.

Directly across Route 66 is St. Bridget's of Kildare Catholic school. The manger scene could be moved to its roof. There, it would be clearly visible to both East and Westbound motorists. As things stand now, Westbound motorists can't see the display until they get right below it. Even then, at best, they only get in a quick glance.
 
The other way to address the issue -- and this is the one I like best -- would be to showcase the world's major religions in the cave, say one each month. Jesus would be up there in December, Muhammad during the month of Ramadan, one of Hindu's supreme beings -- for the sake of argument, let's go with Vishnu -- during another month. Judaism would also get its time in the limelight, as could religions such as Shinto, Buddhism and Taoism.
 
This jockeying of world religions in the cave would promote understanding of beliefs other than Christianity. As well, it would be a unique offering by my hometown, possibly without rival. On top of everything else, it would be along the inimitable mother road of Route 66, still a draw to the motoring tourist.
 
Let's face it: with globalization and our warring capacity to dispatch ourselves back to being troglodytes ourselves, our need for understanding and accepting the world's other religions has reached its zenith. Understanding a different religion is a big leap toward understanding another culture. In turn, that becomes a leap toward understanding other human beings, all of whom -- at their core -- are just like us.
 
After all, when it's all proselytized and done, culture is only veneer.