To Die For (25 page)

“I'm not trying to insult you.”

“Yeah. But we know you got it out of the house. I've got the woman sitting here telling me this, telling me that you came out of the house.”

“I stopped! That's three times … But I don't remember walking into anyone's house.”

“Well, you were in there. And you ended up with her property. She's dead now. Can you explain that to me?”

“No, I can't.”

“Well it's not that you can't, it's that you don't want to. Don't you feel … remorse at all?”

“I feel, I feel like shit, yes. I feel terrible,” Dana was twisting a tissue.

“No, not about the woman, you feel shit because things haven't gone right for you.”

“I feel terrible about everything that I've heard and I really feel terrible about stealing her money and from her…” Dana said, breaking into heavy sobbing, “from her bankbook, you know. It's just, I feel terrible.”

“You feel bad about killing her?”

“I didn't kill her.” Dana's hands were to her face again.

Antoniadas wasn't going to let her slide.

“Yeah, you did.”

“No, I didn't. I didn't kill her,” Dana said, raising her voice. Every time she denied the killing, her hand was either on her nose or trying to cover her mouth or her face.

“You were in the house. Was there somebody else with you?” He paused, waiting for her to answer, then he continued. “She didn't see anybody else with you, said you're the only one who came out.”

“I did not kill her,” Dana said. She couldn't look him in the eye.

“You know what, Dana? You can sit there and you can tell me that, you can tell the other officers that. It's not what I think, it's, it's that I know. And all's I want to know is, why? Maybe you had a problem. Obviously you had a problem.

“Is that why you killed her?”

“I did not kill her.” Dana twisted in her seat, crossing her legs and turning away.

Antoniadas continued as if he hadn't heard her. By now, Dana was crying freely.

“Is that what made you do what you did, then? You were in the house, you took her property. I'll grant you that, maybe someone else killed her, maybe you went in and took her property and somebody else came. It's a possibility, but you can't even admit that you were in the house. Even though I can put you in the house with that eyewitness. Even though you ended up with her property.”

“Yes, I ended up with her property.… I might have stopped near her house. But I did not…”

“You ended up with some property from somebody else at Canyon Lake who was killed also. All right.… And that, how did you end up with that property, Dana?”

“Because I was going to the Ready Teller to get some cash out. There was a man in front of me, he was in a car and he said several times…”

“Yeah, I've heard that story, but I want to ask you something…”

“I'm talk—can I finish!”

“Sure. I'm sorry, go ahead.”

Dana insisted on telling the same story with the same excitement about shopping with someone else's credit card, claiming that she hadn't noticed that it belonged to a friend of her father's.

“Do you think it's kind of weird or unusual that you end up with credit cards from two different ladies in that same area and that both of them happened to get murdered? In the same way, almost? Not in the exact same way, but some things were consistent from one murder scene to the other. You find that kind of unusual? How unusual do you think a jury is going to find that?”

The stark reality of this odd circumstance didn't faze Dana one bit.

“I don't know. I guess it depends on how well the prosecutor prosecutes it,” she said defiantly.

“Real well. Real well.”

“What's gonna happen now?”

This was enough for Antoniadas to size up what he had to deal with. This woman didn't believe she was going to get nailed for killing these old ladies. No one was going to touch her. She was strong-willed and cocky. She was smarter than the cops. She thought she was going to beat this case.

Antoniadas wanted to see what would happen when he tried to elicit some kind of remorse from her, but she acted like he'd never said a word: “I feel sick. My head aches.”

“I feel so bad for this family,” he said. “I had to sit up there and clean up that scene and deal with it … and I feel sorry for you because I know you have a lot of problems. And I can sympathize with you. And I really feel sorry for you because you're making it worse by lying. And it breaks my heart to see somebody like you that has these problems that need some help in order to give yourself the chance and then throw away your whole life.

“Because you can't look at me and tell me the truth. And that's your choice, you know. I'm not mad at you about it, I feel sorry for you. Because you know what, that could be me sitting there. Sometimes I get stressed out. I know when I get stressed out, I don't do the things I should sometimes. Stress causes people to do weird things sometimes.”

He wanted to give her an out, an excuse, some kind of a reason, but she cut to the chase.

“I never killed anybody.” Her hand was on her face again.

“Maybe not, maybe not knowingly.” Antoniadas still wanted to give her a graceful way to admit to the crimes.

Suddenly Dana burst into tears.

“But I've been a nurse for thirteen years,” Dana said, her voice becoming distorted from sobbing. “I didn't kill anybody.”

Antoniadas figured that by bringing up a noble profession, she'd hoped to make him think highly of her. It wasn't going to work.

Since she was sobbing so heavily, he tried a variety of questions to bring her back to the Dora Beebe crime scene, asking what time she was out there and whether she wandered around before shopping and why she was in Sun City in the first place. Dana said she wasn't sure of the time and talked about needing a calendar insert to keep track of job interviews.

After a pause, Antoniadas asked, “You feel pretty angry about this happening to you?”

Dana didn't hesitate.

“I'm angry, I'm hurt, I'm pissed and I just don't know what to think. I feel…” she sighed heavily. “I feel exhausted.”

“You've got to start doing something constructive. You've got to start getting your shit together, Dana. 'Cause, you know, you can lie to us, you can lie to the court. The truth is going to come out. And you'll sit there and lie the rest of your life until you sit down and decide you're gonna tell the truth.

“What you did was a horrible thing and I think maybe with all the problems you have, nobody's really ever gonna know 'cause you're never gonna give anybody a chance, 'cause you're never gonna be truthful with anybody and you're going to court and they'll probably convict you or whatever and you're gonna sit there and lie. You're gonna sit there and hurt yourself.…”

Dana was openly sobbing. Antoniadas was trying to give her another outlet to confess. By talking about a conviction, he wanted her to know that this was her opportunity to tell her story in a favorable light, one that would come across as a lot more human here than it would at trial.

“The thing is, you're never gonna get any better until you own up to it. I know you're scared, I know you're tired, but it's got to start somewhere, Dana—the healing process—and it's got to start with you being truthful to yourself at least. Am I right or wrong?”

She didn't buy it. Crying heavily, Dana asked if she would be booked and what would happen after that. Antoniadas explained the rudiments of the court process. She thought she was in control. He started to understand what he needed to do—he needed to break her down, make her feel that she was not the one running the show and take away her feeling that she was in control. She had no idea that she was burning herself by telling him this, Antoniadas thought. No jury was going to buy the fact that she'd simply found the cards.

Antoniadas tried to pin her down to a time, but Dana again said she didn't know. He switched directions suddenly.

Dana said she wanted a lawyer, and “some psychiatric counsel. I think with the stuff I've been through, the depression I'm in and the anti-depressant, I think…”

Antoniadas was not about to stop questioning Dana just because she'd asked for an attorney.

“You can sit there and cry if you want, but you can't fool yourself.”

“I can't fool anybody,” Dana said.

“Yeah. Just like you aren't going to fool those twelve people up there.”

“Can you please stop? I need to rest my head. I haven't eaten.” She was crying again.

“Dana, you have children, right?”

Antoniadas, unaware of Dana's two previous miscarriages, unleashed another heavy bout of sobbing.

Finally, she stammered, “I can't … I can't have a kid,” her words barely discernible. “I just keep miscarrying them.”

Unmoved, Antoniadas was nevertheless patient. He waited a moment, then asked Dana whether she'd found a wallet or a purse. He just wanted her to admit that she had Dora's belongings.

Answering his question dowsed the crying jag and she went into a detailed explanation about how she'd found a billfold, but it had been stripped of cash and major credit cards.

1:40 A.M.

That was round one. Now Antoniadas had something to work with. He had found out where she was vulnerable and now he knew how to attack her. Remorse didn't work; she was too goddamned cold. He had wanted to see if she had a soft side—she didn't. Antoniadas thought he would use her need for control and superiority against her. She liked being in control. Antoniadas was going to take that away from her. He and Cordova went back in. If Bentley wanted him to push her hard, he was going to push hard.

“I'm not taking any of your bullshit,” Antoniadas said.

Dana looked surprised.

“We know you did it, you know you did it—”

When Dana shook her head and tried to speak, he cut her off.

“You're going to listen to me now!” Antoniadas said, shouting. “I don't want you to talk now. I'm not taking any more of your shit, Dana. We know you murdered these people. We know you did it—”

“I want a lawye—”

“Shut up!”

Antoniadas got up from his chair and screamed in her face.

“We're tired of your bullshit! We're tired of your lies! We're done with that. You tell us the truth, Dana—”

“You can't yell—”

“Shut up!”

“I want a lawye—”

“Shut up, Dana! We're in charge here, not you. You're not getting a lawyer right now,” Antoniadas said. He was standing over her. Dana cowered in her chair and covered her face with her hands. She was sobbing.

“I can't…”

“Shut up! You do this heinous thing and you can't even admit it. All you're doing is hanging yourself and making it worse. You're gonna go to court and go to trial and get in front of a jury and no jury in the world is going to believe you, Dana.”

“You have to get me a lawyer—”

“No, Dana, you don't get what you want. We're not taking your bullshit anymore. You're gonna start telling us the truth and you're gonna start telling us the truth right now.

“Right now, Dana!” Antoniadas was yelling in her face. She was sobbing hysterically, turning her face away, but Antoniadas was moving, literally getting in her face. “You're going to tell us the truth, Dana!”

“I want—”

“We don't care what you want! You're going to do what I want and I want you to start telling the truth, Dana. No more of your shit. All you're doing is hurting yourself by lying. You're wasting your time and you're wasting our time.

“We have a witness, Dana. A witness IDs you coming out of the house. Start talking, Dana.”

Dana was a mass of tears; her face was red and distorted from crying.

“I—I went up to the door,” Dana said, her voice quavering. She swallowed. “I went to the door and I looked inside.”

“What else?” Antoniadas said harshly.

“Nothing else,” Dana said. “I didn't do anything else. I didn't see anybody and I left. I just poked my head in the door.”

“We'll be talking to you later,” Antoniadas said darkly. “You aren't going anywhere.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1994, 2 A.M.

Greco was dead tired, but he didn't know it yet. He was in “the zone,” the Zen-like state that cops get into after staying up for 36 hours straight. They don't feel the cold, can't smell the corpse at a crime scene, and they're immune to fatigue. All they know is they gotta collar their suspect and they don't stop until they do. Even though he was done interviewing Dana, his night was far from over.

He was thrilled to finally, formally arrest and book Dana for murder. She was curled up in her chair, clutching a tissue. For all the bluster from Antoniadas, she got away with telling him less than she told Greco. The hours of interrogation left Dana subdued and a little irritated. When Greco stood in front of her, she barely looked up.

“You know you're not going home tonight,” he said, the words seeming less threatening in his soft-spoken voice. “You're under arrest. I need you to stand up and turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

Once the handcuffs were on, he talked to her back.

“You're under arrest for the murder of June Roberts,” he said. “You'll be transported to Riverside County Jail tomorrow and arraigned in forty-eight hours. After the arraignment, you'll have a preliminary hearing.

“Do you have any questions?”

“When do I get a lawyer?” Dana asked.

“One will be appointed unless you want to hire one,” Greco said, gently pushing her elbow to steer her out the door. “Come on.”