To Die For (24 page)

The past few hours of trying to wear Dana down had worn on him as well. He didn't get the full confession that he wanted, but they got her to admit to using the credit cards, which put her in striking distance of the murders. It was still worth a try to see if she would admit anything to her father. It was important that Russell believe that perhaps Dana hadn't acted alone, that maybe Jim had some hand in the murders.

He saw them in the report-writing room.

“How're you two doing in here?” he said.

Russell nodded and Jeri tried to smile.

“OK, we're done talking to her. She's admitted to using the cards, but we're thinking that maybe Dana wasn't the one that did it,” Greco said.

Russell looked up at him sharply.

“If she wasn't the one who committed the murders, then she was there and knows who did,” Greco said slowly. If Russell had any hope left, he would be motivated to ask Dana for some answers.

“Just get her to tell you the truth about what happened,” Greco said. “There are, um, people who were killed. People whose mothers and sisters and grandmothers are dead and they need some peace, too. And it'll be better for her to come clean about it and tell you what she knows.” He didn't tell Russell that their conversation would be taped.

Russell looked determined. He stood up and Greco walked him back to the interview room where Dana was waiting. Jeri stayed behind.

When Greco returned, James told him that he had a phone call from Jim, who was furious that his dark green pick-up truck, as well as Dana's Cadillac, had been seized as evidence. The vehicles had been towed to the county yard, where they would be processed for blood and trace evidence. Greco tried to reassure Jim that he'd get his truck back once the lab technicians were done with it, and took down the phone number of a friend's house where Jim was staying. Jim appeared to care more about his truck than he did about Dana.

Greco put down the phone to watch the monitor with James McElvain. As soon as Russell entered the room, Dana let out a loud shriek and ran to the door to hug him. Dana and her dad walked arm in arm to the interview side of the room. The police had full audio, but only the tops of their heads were picked up by the hidden camera.

“What is it, honey, what is it?” Russell said, holding Dana by the shoulders.

“I saw a man at the Ready Teller using this credit card trying to get some money out. And it wouldn't work, so he threw it in the trash,” Dana said quickly, the words spilling out as she was sobbing.

“Credit card?”

“A credit, two credit cards and a little purse. Not looking at the name, I just, oh I've been just so devastated by this. I took 'em and I charged on 'em and looked later and the name was June, but I didn't know it was June Roberts.”

Russell asked Dana questions in rapid-fire fashion: How did you get the cards? What did the man look like? How long have you had the cards? Did you go to work Monday? What about the woman in Sun City?

Gone was the smug arrogance. This was Daddy's girl, alternating her sorrowful baby voice with sobs and shrieks and curses, giving her father the same phony story she told the police. She was desperate for money, she'd wanted to buy things for Jason, she'd lost her head—now she wanted Daddy to bail her out of trouble.

Russell persisted as the detectives had asked him to, asking questions and pressing her for details, like whether she had borrowed Jim's truck, but Dana resisted.

A clerk at one of the shops said they believed the female suspect using June's credit cards was driving a dark sport utility vehicle or pick-up truck. Dana insisted that she never drove the truck, except to deliver lasagne to them after Susie's death.

“… Dad, you have to get me out of here,” said Dana.

“Um-hum,” Russell said. “We're gonna do everything we can, honey. I'll do everything we can.”

“Oh God!” Dana said, shrieking and crying. “I got so desperate, Dad, I just did this stupid thing, but I never hurt anybody, I never hurt anybody, Dad,” Dana said, her hand over her nose and mouth.

Russell hesitated.

“I wanna believe you, darling. I wanna believe you.”

“Do you?”

He hesitated slightly.

“Yea. Yes.”

He paused.

“Because there's so much evidence against you, honey. That's why I've got to know everything.…”

Russell continued with the questions, asking Dana if she was on medication, whether Jim knew about any of the credit cards. Dana insisted that Jim knew nothing and that she'd lied to him that her aunt gave her some money.

Dana continued to ask if he would get her out.

“Can't you get a lawyer and get me out tonight?!”

“I can't get you out tonight, honey. It's midnight, it's one o'clock, almost.”

“Is it?”

“Twelve-thirty.”

“Oh God.”

“I'll see if I can do it tomorrow. So long as you tell the truth, honey.”

“I did, I did.”

“That's all you have to do is tell the truth.”

“I did, I did. And they kept badgering me because I initially lied. I initially lied because I was scared!” Dana said, her voice rising to a squeal. “I'm not gonna commit, ah, confess right away, you know. You know I was scared 'cause I know I had done something morally bad.”

“That's why I've got to know everything.”

Greco briefly popped his head into the room to ask if they wanted a few more minutes. Dana's wails increased at learning that her father was about to leave. She insisted that he call a 24-hour bondsman, asked him to “be hard on” the detectives to release her and begged him to bail her out first thing in the morning.

Russell said he'd try, but in the meantime, said she should “try to hold up.”

“I love you, Dad,” Dana said, starting to wail again.

“I love you, too.”

“I'm so soooooooorreeeee,” Dana wailed. “Please talk to Jason.”

“I will, OK? I love you, sweetheart,” Russell said as he left the room.

“Oh my God, Dad! Oh my head,” she said, sobbing heavily. “Is anyone out there? Hello! Do you have any aspirin?”

As her father was leaving, she tearfully asked for a cigarette, but her father said no one there smoked.

Dana laid her head on the table and sobbed heavily for several minutes, loudly wailing, “Oh God! My head. Oh God, can you help me?”

12:49 A.M.

After they'd watched her wailing for a while, Greco went back in to give her water and aspirin. They were still waiting for Antoniadas to drive up from the Beebe crime scene. She'd been so tight, Greco doubted that she'd say anything, but you never knew. So far, she'd admitted using the cards, which would corroborate what the clerks had told them and what the handwriting comparisons suggested. What bothered Greco was that Russell and Jeri had never admitted that anything of Norma's was missing. He suspected that Dana had taken something belonging to Norma, for the simple reason that she never seemed to leave empty-handed. She had stashed items from her post-murder spending binges all over her house like trophies. She surrounded herself with them or, like Dora's credit cards, hid them somewhere. They could be looking squarely at something and not know it belonged to Norma. He'd have to work on that later.

Greco gave her the water and the aspirin and sat down. She gulped the pills and looked at him.

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Dana said.

He asked her about her visit with Russell and she started crying again, because her father had said that things “didn't look good.”

Greco seized the opportunity.

“Well,” he said, “it would be better if you could explain, you know, this can't all be a coincidence. It just doesn't make sense. Is it possible you were in the area at the time?”

“Yeah, I was driving around,” Dana said. “I was driving and I pulled off to the side of the road to smoke a cigarette and I look over and, um, I see this house with the screen door that's closed, but the front door was open, so I think, well, maybe there's something.

“I walked up to the house and opened the door and looked inside and I see, um, there's this lady, this woman on the ground and she's obviously dead. So I went inside and saw this purse and it, um, it was just too tempting. I needed the money and it was too tempting, so I took the purse and I left.”

Greco couldn't believe what she'd just told him. The problem was, he didn't know the Beebe crime scene. It wasn't his case and he didn't know exactly what to ask her.

“Where was the purse?”

“Right there. I just grabbed it and left,” Dana said.

“Did you think about calling an ambulance for the woman?”

“No, no, you could tell she was beyond help. There was nothing anyone could do for her.”

Greco was shocked: Dana had finally admitted that she was at a crime scene after hours and hours of going nowhere. He knew that if he could get a chance to talk to her alone, she might admit more, but he knew Antoniadas wanted to interview her, and he didn't want to mess with that case.

“OK, well, is there anything you think might be important that we missed?” Greco asked.

Dana shook her head.

“OK, I need to go check on something.”

Greco practically ran out of the interview room to check the tape. When he got back to the office, he saw Bentley talking to Antoniadas. James was sitting nearby. No one was watching the monitor.

“Did you get that?” Greco asked.

“Get what?” James said. Bentley and Antoniadas were still talking.

“You didn't get that?” Greco wanted to shout, but if he did, Dana would be able to hear him. The walls were pretty thin. Greco took a step over to the machine and felt his face grow hot. The tape machine had been turned off, probably to save tape.

“Get what?” James asked.

1:18 A.M.

Antoniadas used to get so many pedophiles to cop out to him that he'd earned a reputation at the station. It started to bother him that these sick men trusted him so much that they would almost always end up confessing to him. But it was the same old thing. He'd bring them into the interview room, talk to them for a little while, size them up, be their friend, confide in them, and then he would casually mention that sometimes little girls—and he'd fill in the approximate age of the victim in that particular case—looked good to him. He would “confide” in the suspect that he also had those feelings. They'd get to talking about that and the suspect would confess. Antoniadas hated pedophiles, but he knew what to say to them. You have to size up your suspect, figure out their weakness and use that to get them to talk to you. A confession usually saves the taxpayers money. By the time the guy hired a defense attorney, who would quickly learn his client had copped out, there would be little else to do but plea his guy out. Saves the taxpayers another expensive trial.

Antoniadas knew a lot of ways to talk to criminals. A lot of times, he just started talking about how good it feels to get something off your chest: clear it up, get it out, you feel better, you get on with your life. Some crooks had pride, so you insulted them a little—told them they did a sloppy, amateur job. When they started protesting, you got 'em. Macho guys hated it when you insulted their manhood. Antoniadas took advantage of that by telling them that if they had the guts, they'd be man enough to say exactly what they did. He wasn't allowed to use the religious angle anymore. If he had a guy who was real religious, Antoniadas used to be able to ask whether he believed in God, whether he thought God was looking down on him, and if he thought God would want him to confess his sins and cleanse his soul. The DAs told him he couldn't use that anymore, so he stopped.

He didn't know what he was going to use on Dana. The interrogation was already underway and he was getting sloppy seconds. That wasn't how he preferred to work. Ideally, you got one person in there and they questioned the suspect for all cases. You never tag-teamed it. But he wasn't running the show.

When he and his partner, Mark Cordova, got to the Perris station, the detectives there were taking a break. McElvain briefed him about what Dana had said about finding credit cards at an ATM machine. Their last attempt centered on telling her that a witness saw her come out of Dora's house. Antoniadas nodded.

Bentley took him aside and complained about how the interview was going. He didn't like the way McElvain and Greco were interviewing her and didn't think they had the experience to handle her. Dana was controlling these guys, running them around in circles. He needed someone with experience who could handle a hard case.

“I want you to push her,” he said. “Push her real hard.”

Antoniadas had no problem with that, but the problem was, he hadn't been there for the past four hours to know how to push her, so he was going to have to start slow and easy like everyone else had. He and Mark Cordova walked in, introduced themselves and picked up where McElvain and Greco left off, telling Dana that a woman had positively identified her coming out of Dora's house.

“Maybe I stopped there, but I didn't go into the house that I remember,” Dana said.

“Well, she saw you come out of the house and you ended up with this woman's property,” Antoniadas said. “And this woman is dead. Did that woman, did you just steal the, the checkbook and her, uh, credit cards from her while she was alive and somebody else came and killed her after you left? Is that possible?”

Antoniadas was doing the same thing—offering a chance to minimize, lock her into a lie and proceed from there. But Dana didn't bite.

“I don't know,” Dana said, her head down. “I don't know what's possible.”

“I know you got it from the house, OK, Dana? At least be, have enough inside your heart to be enough of a person to admit that. If you don't remember killing her or something, that's fine, but at least don't sit there and insult my intelligence and…”