To Die For (22 page)

“How you doin'? I'm Rich Bentley.”

“I'm dry mouth and pissed off,” Jim replied.

Bentley plunged in and asked him where Dana got her money and where she banked. Jim said he'd been paying all of her bills as well as giving her cash.

“OK,” Bentley said. “She's admitted a lot of stuff to us. And she's lied about a lot of stuff, OK? She's admitted a lot of, of using credit cards. And a lot of that stuff is in your house. A lot. You must have wondered where all this shit came from. So what do you know about all this stuff that's showed up in your house?”

“She just told me today she got some money from her aunt … a couple hundred dollars,” Jim said.

“Did she show it to ya?”

“No, she didn't show me anything—except her new briefcase,” Jim said.

Bentley asked Jim whether he'd been at work that day and whether anyone could verify that he was there the entire day. Jim seemed almost relaxed and told him to call his employer and look at his time card. McElvain took the number and left the room to call while Bentley continued asking questions. Jim couldn't remember whether he was at work on February 14th or the 28th but remembered taking one day off within the last two months because he didn't feel well.

Bentley wanted to know what Jim thought about Dana. If she was hardened enough to commit murder, she must have an interesting home life.

“OK, tell me about her,” Bentley said. “Does she get mean, violent, bitchy, anything like that?”

“Yeah, she was a little bitchy last night,” Jim said.

“OK. What happened last night?” Bentley asked.

“Well, actually, she got lit and passed out,” Jim said.

“What do you mean by ‘lit'? Drunk?”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “We were sittin' around talkin' about windsurfers and all of a sudden, she's noddin' off, tellin' me, yeah, ya gotta have a good relationship with your boy.

“I'm goin, what the
fuck
are you talkin' about?” Jim said, gesticulating. “It was beyond me.”

“She's a physical person?” McElvain asked.

“Yeah, she likes to run into me and throw me down and shit.”

Bentley's eyes opened wide. Jim had just given him some ammunition, he realized. Immediately, he thought of three ways he could use that statement before a jury. If she'd been moody and angry the night before a murder, that testimony could be used as evidence at trial. If this wound up being a capital case, which Bentley believed it would, and the defense brought in someone to say that she was a nice, kind person, he could put Jim on the witness stand to contradict that testimony. The third way would be if Dana mounted an insanity defense. If her lawyer put on some expert to say she was insane, Bentley could put Jim on the stand to show that when she was at home, and not being interviewed by a sympathetic psychiatrist hired by the defense, she was moody and angry, with a combative personality. At any rate, Bentley thought, it looked like they'd arrested the right person.

“Now, you puttin' us on or is this true?”

“I mean for fun,” Jim said. “You know, like you might wrestle with an older, older kid, you know.”

“Like two teenagers or something…” Bentley said.

“Yeah. Don't stand too near the couch, don't stand too near the bed, you might get attacked,” Jim said with a laugh.

“Between her and her husband, were they violent? Did she ever bop him, he bop her, that you know of?”

“Not according to her,” Jim said. “He used to let her hit him in the shoulder when she got pissed off.”

“Yeah? Is that what she did to you?”

“No, I don't go for that shit.”

“Did she ever try and strangle ya?”

Jim sat back in his chair. He seemed more amused than alarmed.

“Hmm-mm,” Jim said, shaking his head no.

“Pull a kitchen knife on ya?”

“No. She's never done anything like that. She's been extremely pissed off at me.”

“Do you think there's anything unusual about her?”

“Occasionally I wonder, but I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt,” Jim said flatly, triggering laughter from everyone. The interview had quickly turned from a tense question-and-answer interrogation into a bull session—the kind a bunch of guys would have over beer in someone's living room, griping about their wives or girlfriends. Now this is good police work, Bentley thought.

“In the last month, has she ever came home with any injuries? To her arms or anything like that? Scratches?” Bentley asked.

“No, not that I know of. I haven't seen any,” Jim said.

“OK, when she came home today, what was she doing?”

“I don't know. I wasn't paying any attention at all.”

“Shoes. What shoes was she wearing?”

“I don't know.”

“You're a big help,” Bentley said, triggering another round of laughter.

“I told you you'd love me for this, but…” Jim joked, shifting in his chair. More laughter.

Bentley asked whether Dana had washed up that day or whether she'd done her laundry. Then he leaned forward in his chair and tried to form his words carefully.

“If, if I told you that I thought she killed somebody, what would you say?”

Jim considered the question for a moment.

“I'd be shocked. But then again, I've been through a lot of other, of other weird shit. I supposed maybe it wouldn't,” he said dryly.

Bentley, McElvain and Greco looked at him. He wasn't finished.

“I don't think she would kill anyone. Ever. What would she gain from it?” Jim said.

So, Greco thought, he gets up in the morning with this woman, goes to bed with her at night, lives with her, lets her take care of his kid while he works … they share lives together, and he doesn't ruffle an eyebrow when police ask whether she might be a killer?

Jim wasn't easily shocked; the answer he'd given was probably the only answer one could expect from him. If he wasn't so even-tempered, he would never be able to have a relationship with Dana. When she had her mood swings or when she physically attacked him, he probably showed no reaction, which probably set her off even more.

Bentley filled Jim in. But instead of just telling him what they suspected her of doing, Bentley told him that Dana at first had lied to them and denied using the credit cards, then told them that she'd found the credit cards in the trash by the bank. Those cards, Bentley told Jim, were used within an hour of June Roberts' murder.

“Obviously, does that sound like a lie to you?” Bentley said. “That sounds like bullshit, right? I found a credit card of someone who was just murdered. But here's a clue. We're tryin' to say, who was this guy, you know? Now here's the clincher, though, let me give you the description of the person she gave us. The person that had that purse was about six foot, looked like a construction guy with sandy blonde hair and kind of thin.

“Now, I never saw you before today, but guess what? The first thing that came to my mind when she gave that description…”

“Oh, geez,” Jim said.

“OK, now, I don't believe her,” Bentley said. “I don't believe her. And she didn't say you. But you see what I'm sayin', she didn't say my height, you know, my color hair, she said your height, your color hair. So, so, here's what I think. I think somehow she gets a card one hour after somebody was murdered. Either she knows who did it that fits that description and she helped them, or she did it. OK?”

“That's fucking wonderful,” Jim deadpanned.

“OK, so my next question to you is, can you help us figure it out? 'Cause you just told me you didn't think she would do it, but then she gave a, I mean, does that fit your description?”

“Oh yeah, it fits my description, I guess, but … do I look like a construction worker?” Jim asks, grinning slightly.

“Well, I, to me you do,” Bentley said, surprised at the response.

“Shit,” Jim said, pausing. “Guess I'll have to get a new job.”

The men erupted with laughter again.

No matter what they threw at Jim, he remained unbelievably even-keeled, Greco thought. He was a working drone, getting up and going to work every day. He was probably more than happy to have someone looking after his kid while he was at work. They weren't looking at romance here as much as convenience.

After less than 20 minutes, Bentley felt they'd established more than enough of a rapport with Jim to turn the corner on the interview. He decided to take him into their confidence and ask him for advice on getting her to confess. First, he asked Jim if they could examine his timecards from work to verify his whereabouts on the days of the murders. Jim agreed to cooperate. Then, Bentley sketched out how he would resume the interrogation of Dana.

“We're gonna bring her back in here, OK?… She first lied about the credit cards and while you're sittin' there, she finally says that [she used them]. So here's what I'm afraid of. We get her back in here and we start pointing more fingers at her 'cause we got all kinds of evidence against her. What's she gonna do? What do you think she's gonna do?”

“Well, when Dana's angry with me, she breaks down hysterically crying,” Jim said.

“She's either gonna point the finger at you or somebody else. So my question is, what can you give us? I hope you got an alibi. It makes it easier for me. The second thing is, what else can you give us to get her straightened out when she starts doin' that? She's copped to most of it. She's copped to the credit cards … How do you get the credit cards and not know about the murder? She hasn't copped to the murder. But I think when we get her back in, she's gonna say, finally say she did it, or she's gonna say, she's gonna blame somebody. That's why I asked you who her girlfriends are.”

Jim skirted the larger question, but said that Dana hadn't seen her friends much lately, except for a visit with David and Joanie Fulton a month ago. “She was going to spend the night and she ended up coming home, like, real early in the morning. She was upset and crying hysterically over having lost her job and all kinds of shit.”

OK, so he wasn't the go-to guy for sympathy, Greco thought. They weren't there as relationship therapists.

Bentley asked Jim if Dana had ever mentioned visiting either Norma Davis or June Roberts, and he said she hadn't. He asked if Dana ever mentioned getting nutritional advice from June, and Jim, again, was disdainful. “What's she need a nutritionist for? She's got a cabinet full of every kind of vitamin you could imagine.”

Bentley and Jim reviewed some of the purchases Dana had made, like the boots and the shoes for him and his son, then asked where Dana got her money.

“I don't have a clue, as far as I know, she didn't have any money,” Jim said. “I've been paying all of her bills.”

“What if I told you we found $2,000 in a sock in your house?” Bentley asked.

“Oh, fuckin' great,” Jim said. “I'm goin' into debt paying her bills and she's got money. Nice. No, I paid everything, uh, except today she gave me twenty bucks. 'Cause she said her aunt sent her some money and she tried to give me more and I'm goin' hey, fuck this.”

“What would happen if you confronted her about what happened?” Bentley asked. “What do you think she'd do?”

“I don't have a clue. Probably either break down and cry or accuse me. Some shit.”

The interview took on the aroma of a locker-room bull session.

“That's the least she's gonna do,” Bentley said sympathetically.

“I think she'll probably just bald-face lie,” Greco said.

“She might,” Bentley said.

“I, I just don't see a real close relationship there,” Greco finally said. “I mean, did you guys talk about anything or did she just come home and say, hi, how's it goin'…?”

“No, actually, we talked a lot about a lot of things … windsurfing, surfing,” Jim said.

“I mean, did she seem sane to you?” Bentley asked.

“Well, she had her moments after she lost her job because she was freaking out,” Jim said. “All of a sudden, she didn't have an income.” That was right after Thanksgiving. Then they took a four-day trip to Mammoth Mountain, the largest ski resort in Northern California.

“Did she lie to you a lot?” Bentley asked.

“That's hard to say.”

“To your face, she lied? Did you ever catch her lyin' to ya?”

“I've caught her twistin' things once or twice, but that's it. But it didn't amount to anything, you know.”

“She ever come in in clothes with blood on her in any way?”

“No, I've never seen her come in bloody.”

McElvain asked whether any clothes had disappeared from Dana's wardrobe recently.

“No, she's like the jeans, the T-shirt, or the shorts and T-shirt kind of person, so you know, shit, there's probably twenty-five white T-shirts in that damn closet. Half of them probably say ‘Impeach Clinton Early,'” Jim said.

Greco asked Jim about their relationship and where it would head.

“I think I'm a little irritated at her,” Jim said.

“A little?” Bentley said, chuckling. “Well, I mean, we're asking for your help, because I'm telling you right now … we're gonna have her here for a while and if we catch her in some more lies, I mean, we've caught her in a bunch. And that she admitted it. And that she started playing games and making excuses, I mean, outrageous excuses.

“So, my question is, how can you help us before she does something to you? Or tries to do something to you?”

Jim again avoided Bentley's attempt to rope him into helping them.

“Well, I don't know how hard it is to condemn the innocent, but maybe she could do that.”

“I guarantee you, she tried,” Bentley said, trying to trigger some response from Jim.