To Die For (21 page)

“Well, I've given you, I've, I finally broke down and I gave you the truth now.”

“Well … is there any reason why your prints would be in Beebe's house?” Greco asked.

“No.”

“Would you, would you think that, uh…”

“I don't think they're gonna find anything,” Dana said flatly.

“Would you, would you think Jim would do something like this?” Greco asked.

“Absolutely not,” Dana said.

“If you're responsible for this, I don't wanna see the pendulum swinging the other way pointing towards Jim,” Bentley said.

“He doesn't have any idea,” Dana said.

Greco thought that was probably the most truthful statement she'd made to them all night.

“Jim's gonna be sitting in this same chair you're sitting in, answering probably the same questions,” Greco said.

“Tonight?” Dana said, looking alarmed.

“Yes,” Greco said.

“I told him when I got the, um, when I got the card from the trash, that my husband had gotten a card in the mail. And, um, that's when I told him,” Dana said.

“Now this is your husband's card?” Greco asked.

“I never got a card for my husband, I just needed to explain, I really wanted to, you know, get some things for Jim. He's been taking care of me an awful lot and that's it, really, that's all.”

“And this is, this is the most important part. Is that if you're involved in this and for some reason, and there's gotta be a reason, if there was some reason that, that made you do any of these things, that reason would be very important,” Greco said.

“My reason for…?” Dana asked.

“Well,” Greco said. “I'm not talking about the card purchases.”

“Oh.”

“I'm referring to, specifically now, I'm referring to the deaths.”

“I don't, I can't do that.”

“You never get so desperate that…”

“No,” Dana said. “I wouldn't…”

“Not even for money?” Bentley asked.

“No, no. I've been working my ass off trying to get jobs and stuff, even menial shit, you know, and I've been frustrated with that and that's why, you know, I saw that bankbook and I went, ‘Yippee!' But, uh, no, I couldn't kill,” Dana said, putting her hand to her nose and taking it away again. “But the person, if I was going to kill anybody, I would have killed my husband. I would never, he's the only one that I was so mad at that I could, I could think about something that drastic. But no, I wouldn't kill.” The hand came to the nose again and stayed. “I'm used to taking care of people, not killing them.”

Greco wanted to use her rather odd admission about wanting to kill her husband as a springboard. Could she think of any reason why they now considered her a suspect?

“No. My unemployment got denied and that's why I was so desperate with the shopping.… I'm still on appeal for that, but,” she said with a sigh, referring to being dismissed from her nursing job, “I'm not a killer. I am not a killer.” The hand came up to the nose again.

“Do you know who is?” Greco asked.

“No, I don't. I do not know,” Dana said, changing the subject. “I'm trying to get a job, and you know, and you stand in the unemployment line and you bullshit and stuff.” She said she was tired of nursing and wanted to work—screen printing or even waiting tables—while Jason was at school.

“All through nursing school, I waitressed,” she said, bursting into tears. “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I've got such a problem. I'm so embarrassed. It's gonna hurt him so bad.”

“Listen, it's gonna hurt who?”

“It's gonna hurt Jim because he's tried so hard and he's done so good for me. It's gonna make him feel, well, I'm sure there's gonna be some mistrust and stuff, but I just feel so bad. I just wanted to get some stuff for Jason and us.

“You know, if you look at the purchases, it's mostly for them, you know,” Dana said, now fully sobbing. “I didn't get a lot of things for me. I didn't go clothes shopping and stuff. I got some boots and perfume. Everything else was for them.”

Greco was attempting to comfort her, but he was revulsed. Sure, he thought. It was all for them. Does she really think we'll believe that? Let her think we do …

When she settled down, Greco asked about June. Dana denied having had a fight with June, that she had not told Dana anything was bothering her.

“No, she, she's very flighty, and said she'd be in and out for a few days and this and that. You know, she, uh, didn't catch where she was or anything. But she said she'd just gotten home after being out a couple of days, but I don't know where she was.

“I don't know if she was with family or, I don't know. That miffs me. It really miffs me.”

Here she was blaming June, Greco thought, but it sounded like she was about to say something significant.

“Why?”

“'Cause, 'cause … I can't imagine it; that somebody … it's just so weird. I mean, I'm sorry about what happened to that other lady, but you know, I don't, it's not like what happened to June and Nana, you know. I just can't imagine.”

She's miffed? She's comparing the murder of Dora to the murders of June and Norma?

“That's, that's why I'm trying to understand what's going on,” Greco said softly.

“I got desperate to buy things. Shopping puts me to rest,” Dana said with a chuckle. “I'm lost without it.”

CHAPTER NINE

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 1994, 10:04 P.M.

Jim Wilkins had been cooling his heels for three hours in a cell. He didn't know why the hell cops were crawling all over his house or what they were looking for. He didn't know why he had been handcuffed and dragged to a police station as he was sitting down for dinner. That made him cranky and hostile. Tall and lanky with a dirty blonde ponytail and sideburns, Jim was the quintessential blue-collar guy, a mold maker who punched a time clock at a machine shop every weekday from 7:30 to 4:30. No lunch hour. He skipped it so he could pick up his kid at daycare by 5 p.m.

With expletive-laced sarcasm, Jim insisted that he had no idea why the detectives wanted to talk to him. Mostly, he was pissed because he couldn't smoke in the cell and had gotten yanked out of his house before he'd had a chance to grab his cigarettes.

Greco thought of that as he walked out of the lock-up area, where he'd just placed Dana in a cell. She didn't act the same way Jim did. Jim was confused and angry and maybe a little scared; he was protesting about being in a cell. Dana didn't say a word. She didn't yell, she didn't ask why, she didn't whine about being in a jail cell for the first time in her life or holler repeatedly that she was innocent and couldn't handle being locked up. The difference between Jim's and Dana's reactions made sense to Greco. A majority of criminals just accept their fate. Of course, not all suspects caught red-handed willingly go to jail, but for the most part, if they do something illegal and get caught, they know they'll have to go through the justice system and pay the price. Greco saw that Dana had accepted her fate and her future. It reflected her guilt—
Hey, you got me, now see what happens in court.

After Greco put Dana into her cell, James McElvain took Jim out of his. Because of the configuration of the lock-up, neither knew the other was there. McElvain walked Jim to the interview room, where he and Greco started asking detailed questions about his background, much the same way they'd interviewed Dana. His deep voice reflected a combination of irritation and incredulity that the police had arrested him, with guns drawn, so they could ask him, among other things, about his report card. He complied, telling them that he had been a horrible student “if the teacher was an asshole,” but did well if he liked the teacher. He brushed off questions about whether he was ever in the military: “With my attitude?” He told them, “I don't do sports,” and, “I don't fight.” Asked about prior contact with police, he told them that he had been arrested for smoking pot when he was 14 but was told never to tell anyone because the record was sealed. “Personally, I don't give a shit,” he said.

Jim said he met Dana after he started playing in a band in September of 1992. She was still with Tom, her husband. Jim and Dana first got together as a couple in May of 1993, and she flip-flopped back and forth between Tom and Jim for the next few months until she took a trip to Sweden that fall. Dana returned to her husband briefly, then finally left him for Jim. They'd lived together ever since at his house on Mission Trail. “Tell you the truth, I'm a bit confused, because I don't know why the hell I'm here,” he said, exasperated. “I don't smoke pot, I don't do drugs, I don't own a gun,” he said, pausing. “Might have a fillet knife in my fishing box.”

Greco jumped.

“What's the fillet knife have to do with anything? I don't understand.”

Jim laughed.

“You asked me if I've got in trouble before, right? And so I'm tryin' to tell ya, I don't do drugs,” he said, ticking off each point on his finger, “and I don't fight. I don't own a gun, I don't own knives. I mean, what could I be in trouble for?”

“OK, can you tell me in your own words why we're talking today? Do you have any idea?” Greco asked.

“I don't have a clue.”

Greco told him about purchases made using a homicide victim's credit card and asked if he was aware of the two murders in Canyon Lake.

“Yeah,” Jim said. “One of them was Dana's grandmother … in-law or something.”

“Yeah,” Greco said. “The second one was a lady by the name of June Roberts … Well, it's those purchases on June Roberts'
VISA
and Mervyn's card that we're so interested about. The day that she was murdered, and the day after, somebody made purchases on June Roberts'
VISA
and Mervyn's card.”

“You're kidding,” Jim said.

“No I'm not kidding. I wouldn't kid about something like that,” Greco said.

“Well, if I had to take a stab at it, I guess you might be talkin' about Dana,” Jim volunteered. “But I don't understand why she'd go out and get someone else's credit cards. Shit, she had mine.”

“OK, well … that's the answer that I was trying to get from you. How do you feel about talking to me about that?” Greco asked. Greco suspected that Jim really didn't know what was going on, but he had to make sure. Jim had just turned on Dana in a heartbeat. A relationship of convenience rather than romance perhaps, Greco thought. Still, Greco couldn't get a read on Jim's involvement. Had he been there, or did he participate in the murders?

“I don't have a problem with it 'cause I don't, I don't have a clue,” Jim said.

“If you had anything to do with this, I want you to tell me now,” Greco said.

“I don't have anything to do with anything,” Jim said. “I've got a job, I make money, I go, I play, I have fun when I can.”

“OK. Do you have any idea who did it?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Well, you just told me that Dana might, right?”

“Beats me. She didn't like credit cards up until a couple of weeks ago.”

Jim said that Dana had access to his credit card and had used it to buy things for herself, clothes for Jason, and household necessities. As he spoke, he continued to distance himself from Dana. Greco wondered whether Jim was involved, and was trying to keep attention focused on Dana, or really was clueless.

“Is there anybody you can eliminate from this investigation?” Greco asked.

“Eliminate? Me. I ain't charged nothin' except on my own. Actually, I haven't bought anything for months.”

That was the same question they'd just asked Dana. Jim just gave them the textbook response of someone who was innnocent.

“What about Dana?”

“Yeah, she bought me some shoes the other day,” he said.

“No, I mean, can you eliminate her from this investigation, or can't you really say?”

“I, I don't know,” Jim said slowly. “I'm at work all day long, what she does while she's out lookin' for jobs or whatever she's doin', I don't know.”

Greco decided to take a leap and get personal.

“Do you guys have a really close relationship or what?”

“I think we do,” Jim said, pausing. It seemed like he was really thinking about it. “Sometimes I wonder.”

“OK,” Greco said.

“I mean, wouldn't you?”

Greco was eyeing Jim and Jim was eyeing him back.

“Now, can you tell me why you didn't do it?”

“I had no reason to,” he said. “I just got my tax return the other day. I have two thousand dollars in the bank. Why would I need to get money somewhere else?”

“Do you think you're capable of doing something like this?”

“Me? No. Bad conscience.”

“Did you tell anybody, even jokingly, that you did it?” McElvain asked.

Jim turned in his chair to face McElvain, shooting him a look.

“You gotta be kidding.”

Greco tried the polygraph question, but he couldn't even get the sentence out before Jim agreed to it. When asked what he thought the result would be, Jim said he didn't know.

“That depends on how much it irritates me. I hate being accused of things that I didn't do,” he said, pausing. “And being here is an accusation, isn't it?

“You should have talked to me at home about all of this shit instead of draggin' me down here,” Jim added.

“Well, what about Dana? Do you think that she's the type of person that could do something like this?”

“It's hard to say, hard to say,” Jim said. “Sometimes she gets pissed off and on a roll.”

Jim complained that he needed a drink of water, so they took a break. Outside the room, they watched Jim on the video camera. He sat quietly, one ankle crossed over his knee. Greco, McElvain and Bentley discussed where they were headed. He had been openly hostile at first, but seemed to be answering their questions. Not the kind of guy to get excited about anything, not even when his live-in girlfriend's accused of charging up a dead woman's credit cards. Dana had already told them that he knew nothing of the purchases and they assumed he also knew nothing about Dana's involvement in the murders. There was still a very remote possibility that he was involved with the credit card fraud. The interesting thing was how quickly he had distanced himself from Dana. Maybe they could use that. Greco, McElvain and Bentley went back into the interview room.